Dinosaur Bone Clues To The Past
Dinosaur bones give us clues about how dinosaurs moved, how they behaved and what they looked like. These dinosaur fossils, although impressive in size, help us to understand the past, the evolutionary process and the biology of these beautiful creatures. The skulls give us information about the brain size and how well their senses were developed. They relied on seeing, smelling or hearing, possibly all of the above. So the size of the brain tells us how smart these animals were. The size of the openings for the nostrils, eyes and ears tell us how important these senses were and we can also tell how large the nerves were that carried information from these organs to the brain.People have 206 bones in their bodies, and most of the time our bones stay virtually intact when we die. However, imagine if they didn't. Finding and identifying dinosaur bones is more involved. Dinosaurs lived everywhere on this planet. as they died, their bones were mostly spread by carnivores and scavengers. Insects and bacteria also contribute to the decline. In such situations, the bones can still be buried and eventually fossilize, but not much can be learned from individual bones. The pleasure of a paleontologist is to find a skeleton intact or largely intact. For this to happen, the animal must be buried shortly after it dies or sinks to the bottom of a lake that is deep enough so that there is very little oxygen on the bottom. This prevents the animal from rotting. Once that happens, it's just a matter of time.
The dinosaur bones are buried deep in the earth for millions of years. They are embedded in sediments and finally buried under tons and tons of earth.
Once the skeleton is found, paleontologists can take years to dig up and prepare a complete dinosaur skeleton. Such a skeleton, named after explorer Sue Hendrickson, was discovered in August 1990. "Sue" is one of the better-preserved T-rex specimens. The amazing thing about 'Sue' was that more than 90% of the bones were articulated or intact. Most T-rex monsters miss half of their bones. Wow!! Well done Sue! Just a side note here, Sue was also the most controversial dinosaur ever found. She ended up in the Chicago Field Museum, where she can be seen to this day, but there was a lengthy lawsuit that disputed her ownership. No wonder Sue was sold for $ 10,000,000.00! Unfortunately, those who discovered Sue, cleaned her and prepared her for the exhibition, have none of that money !!
Most of us only see dinosaur bones complete like Sue in a large museum. They are rare finds that take 1000 hours to be prepared by expert hands. Dinosaur bone fragments are much more common and relatively cheap. They can be found as jewelry and as specimens in even modest fossil collections.