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Marcus Foreman visits, 8th December, 2009
We were honoured and delighted to welcome budding palaeontologist Marcus Foreman and his mother and grandmother to the laboratory. Read more in this report, and watch the short film made by BBC news.
Press launch of the latest phase of the Bristol Dinosaur Project, 3rd November 2009
Thanks to substantial funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we will hire a Preparator and an Education officer, beginning in early 2010, to finish removing the Thecodontosaurus bones from the rock, and to coordinate the engagement activity respectively. This will enable us to reach our final goal of completing the scientific research on this dinosaur, to understand all aspects of its anatomy and its importance as one of the world's earliest plant-eating dinosaurs. The event, held in Bristol City Museum, and attended by enthusiastic junior palaeontologists from Almondsbury Primary School, attracted wide press interest. Some links and reports follow:
The Bristol Dinosaur Team visits your neighbourhood
An amazing team of volunteers routinely visit schools, shopping malls, science centres and festivals around the city of Bristol to tell you more about our very own dinosaur! Most recently they were spotted at Science Alive, a celebration of National Science Week at the Galleries in Broadmead on 19th and 20th March. Visitors had the opportunity to learn about our local dinosaur, touch real dinosaur bones, watch videos, and they even made replicas to take home! The event offered a range of hands-on exhibits, activities and displays. The enthusiasm and interest shown by children and adults alike made this a fantastic event to be involved in and a great opportunity for people to learn a little about science. Over 1,000 adults and children visited during the two days which resulted in some happy but exhausted staff and volunteers:)
Browse through the impressive list of past events the Bristol Dinosaur Team have been involved in and click here to find out where they are headed to next.
Just Discovered: Five Tonnes of Bone-Rich Rock!
The first Thecodontosaurus bones were found in Bristol in 1834. But the site has now been built over, and nothing more can be found there (unless we can knock down the houses, and their owners aren't too keen about that).
In 1975, an amazing new discovery was made - five tonnes of rock stuffed full of Thecodontosaurus bones. They came from a quarry near Bristol, and the quarry owners kindly transported the huge boulders, some of them a metre cubed, back to the University.
There they sat for nearly 25 years, stored in farm buildings near Bristol, until we were able to secure enough funding to begin work. In 1999, the University received a grant of £100,000 from the Leverhulme Trust to begin scientific work on the new specimens. Dr Adam Yates, who had just completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia, came over to begin the study of the bones. Remmert Schouten, who had worked on dinosaur bones in the Netherlands, his home country, as well as in Australia and France, joined the team as preparator and conservator.
Remmert's first job was to bring the blocks inside the lab. They were too huge to carry or bring in through the door, so he had to smash them up with a huge hammer. He did this carefully, trying not to damage any of the precious bones. Eventually, after months of work, the blocks were reduced to smaller-sized blocks, and they came inside.
The next step was to get the bones out of the rock. First, Remmert tried acid treatment. Palaeontologists can use weak acetic acid (= vinegar) to dissolve limestone off bones. Unfortunately, there was not enough limestone in the rock matrix to allow this technique to work.
So he had to use physical methods - drills and airpens. The drills are just like dental drills, and they allow the preparator to remove small chips of rock from the bones. The airpen is a narrow tube through which air is blasted at very high pressure. Small beads of polystyrene, and other substances, can be included, and they gently batter the rock off the bone, and cause minimal damage.
Every week, new bones are extracted from the rock by Remmert and his team, and in another two or three years, all the bones will be out.
We were honoured and delighted to welcome budding palaeontologist Marcus Foreman and his mother and grandmother to the laboratory. Read more in this report, and watch the short film made by BBC news.
Press launch of the latest phase of the Bristol Dinosaur Project, 3rd November 2009
Thanks to substantial funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we will hire a Preparator and an Education officer, beginning in early 2010, to finish removing the Thecodontosaurus bones from the rock, and to coordinate the engagement activity respectively. This will enable us to reach our final goal of completing the scientific research on this dinosaur, to understand all aspects of its anatomy and its importance as one of the world's earliest plant-eating dinosaurs. The event, held in Bristol City Museum, and attended by enthusiastic junior palaeontologists from Almondsbury Primary School, attracted wide press interest. Some links and reports follow:
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The Bristol Dinosaur Team visits your neighbourhood
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An amazing team of volunteers routinely visit schools, shopping malls, science centres and festivals around the city of Bristol to tell you more about our very own dinosaur! Most recently they were spotted at Science Alive, a celebration of National Science Week at the Galleries in Broadmead on 19th and 20th March. Visitors had the opportunity to learn about our local dinosaur, touch real dinosaur bones, watch videos, and they even made replicas to take home! The event offered a range of hands-on exhibits, activities and displays. The enthusiasm and interest shown by children and adults alike made this a fantastic event to be involved in and a great opportunity for people to learn a little about science. Over 1,000 adults and children visited during the two days which resulted in some happy but exhausted staff and volunteers:)
Browse through the impressive list of past events the Bristol Dinosaur Team have been involved in and click here to find out where they are headed to next.
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A reconstruction of
Bristol's |
New Photo Galleries
Due to popular demand the Bristol Dinosaur website has launched two new photo galleries. Check out the main gallery for photos of community and educational events. Currently, we will be featuring pictures taken in March 2006 at Science Alive, a spectacular science fair in the Galleries in Broadmead.
Also, make sure to check out our Thecodontosaurus gallery which will features illustrated reconstructions of the Bristol Dinosaur.
It's a really tough job reconstructing a dinosaur, after extracting bones from the rock they are put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Then once we know what the skeleton looked like, a specialized palaeoartist works to reconstruct the rest of the animal. Of course we don't know everything about Theco so features like the colour and texture of the skin are left to the artist's imagination.
Keep visiting because more pictures are coming soon!
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The first Thecodontosaurus bones were found in Bristol in 1834. But the site has now been built over, and nothing more can be found there (unless we can knock down the houses, and their owners aren't too keen about that).
In 1975, an amazing new discovery was made - five tonnes of rock stuffed full of Thecodontosaurus bones. They came from a quarry near Bristol, and the quarry owners kindly transported the huge boulders, some of them a metre cubed, back to the University.
 |
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 |
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Remmert's first job was to bring the blocks inside the lab. They were too huge to carry or bring in through the door, so he had to smash them up with a huge hammer. He did this carefully, trying not to damage any of the precious bones. Eventually, after months of work, the blocks were reduced to smaller-sized blocks, and they came inside.
The next step was to get the bones out of the rock. First, Remmert tried acid treatment. Palaeontologists can use weak acetic acid (= vinegar) to dissolve limestone off bones. Unfortunately, there was not enough limestone in the rock matrix to allow this technique to work.
So he had to use physical methods - drills and airpens. The drills are just like dental drills, and they allow the preparator to remove small chips of rock from the bones. The airpen is a narrow tube through which air is blasted at very high pressure. Small beads of polystyrene, and other substances, can be included, and they gently batter the rock off the bone, and cause minimal damage.
Every week, new bones are extracted from the rock by Remmert and his team, and in another two or three years, all the bones will be out.
