Name GEOL 104 Dinosaurs A Natural History Video Assignment DUE Mon Oct 29 Documentaries represent one of the main media by which scientific information reaches the general public For this assignment you ll be looking a series of three different TV documentaries that reflect our changing knowledge of dinosaurs and changing styles of presentation over the last three decades or more These videos are available for watching via Dial Access in the NonPrint Media lab in the basement of Hornbake Library during the week of October 14 20 Dial Access is a program by which the videos are shown on a continuous basis during open hours see http www lib umd edu NPRINT dialaccess html for more details Should you miss this you ll have to go to the NonPrint Media lab and watch them in the week following NOTE these videos are not generally available for rental or purchase nor are they on YouTube you will actually have to go to the library The three documentaries are each about one hour long They represent changing ideas about dinosaurs over the past thirty some years Each has a particular different emphasis The documentaries in question are The Hot Blooded Dinosaurs Horizon BBC 1976 Shown in the US on the PBS program Nova in 1977 The Great Dinosaur Hunt Infinite Voyage PBS 1988 The Mystery Dinosaur Brave New Pictures 2006 A side note some researchers appear in two or more of these documentaries In particular paleontologist Robert T Bakker shows up in all three so you can see his transformation from young Harvard graduate student to University of Colorado faculty member to freelance paleontologist For each documentary watch the video and answer the questions as you go along You may want to see them more than once if you miss part of the question 1 Name The Hot Blooded Dinosaurs Horizon BBC 1976 Shown in the US on the PBS program Nova in 1977 This program documents the dawn of the Dinosaur Renaissance of paleontology The version you will see is the original British version When I was a kid I saw the version shown on American PBS stations After scenes in the Badlands of Alberta with Dale Russell and the obligatory Lost World clips Robert T Bakker discusses some aspects of changing view of dinosaurs In particular he deals with different ideas about the posture and habitat of brontosaurs sauropods debated in the early 20th Century 1 What evidence did Holland use to demonstrate that the European model of sprawling was wrong Extra Credit What evidence was there that brontosaurs sauropods were not aquatic snorkelers On a beach R McNeill Alexander discusses dinosaur locomotion 2 Based on his footprint studies and comparisons with the relative motions Froude numbers of modern animals what speed did Alexander find for sauropods Extra Credit Based on his work with the mechanical strength of bone what did Alexander suggest was the maximum speed of sauropods John Ostrom discusses his great discovery the dromaeosaurid Deinonychus 3 Two major sets of adaptations led Ostrom to suggest that Deinonychus had a more energetic lifestyle than coldblooded animals One adaptation was related to the foot the other to the tail Identify both these specializations 2 Name After a discussion of the basics of endothermy and ectothermy with Philip Regal we move to the work of Armand de Ricql s on bone cross section 4 Which type of bone had abundant oval shaped reworked zones and many blood capillaries modern cold blooded animals like lizards or modern warm blooded animals like foxes 5 Which of the two types of bone tissue cold blooded or warm blooded did dinosaur bone resemble After a look at stegosaur plates and tyrannosaur feeding the program moves on to a discussion of the food requirements of warm blooded vs cold blooded animals 6 Which needs to eat more per unit time cold blooded animals like crocodiles or warm blooded animals like lions Bob Bakker used the above information to test fossil communities 7 Were the communities of primitive reptiles really synapsids and amphibians show cold blooded style predator prey ratios or warm blooded style predator prey ratios 8 What were the predator prey ratios of mammal like reptiles therapsids like 9 What were the predator prey ratios of dinosaur communities like 3 Name The Great Dinosaur Hunt Infinite Voyage PBS 1988 This documentary was part of a series of PBS science documentaries from the late 1980s This reflects some of the new understanding of dinosaurs that had happened by the time I had finished up as an undergraduate and started my graduate work After a look at the Paluxy Texas dinosaur tracks and hadrosaurids eggs in Montana Robert Bakker with the animatronics designers at Dinamation and the obligate scenes from the silent movie The Lost World we look a bit a the origins of the science of paleontology in 18th Century France Stephen Jay Gould who made an appearance in an episode of The Simpsons puts some of this in context 1 What important aspect about the history of life did the fossils like French Palaeotherium and Dutch Mosasaurus reveal to Georges Cuvier The documentary reviews some similar aspects to the previous documentary But then it goes back to the Paluxy River tracks in Texas and the work started by Roland T Bird who excavated the tracks Current researcher Jim Farlow is shown measuring dinosaur tracks 2 What particular dimensions does Farlow measure in order to calculate the speed of dinosaurs Extra Credit If dinosaur tracks are further apart more widely spaced what does that indicate about the speed of the dinosaur The show moves on to the work of Jack Horner in Teton County Montana His work there in the late 1970s onward helped reveal a great amount of information concerning dinosaur growth and behavior 3 Looking at the ends of the bones of the hypsilophodonts did Horner conclude that they were stuck in their nests or that they could use their limbs like adults 4 What feature of the ends of the bones did Horner use to conclude that 4 Name An aside work about a decade later showed that the eggs in question were really from the small theropod Troodon and not the small hypsilophodonts Orodromeus 5 Horner shows that the eggs in the nests of the hadrosaurid Maiasaura were all broken up What did that suggest to him about the habits of baby Maiasaura 6 The ends of the bones of baby Maiasaura were spongy and not fully formed Did Horner conclude that they were stuck in their nests or did he conclude that they could use their limbs like adults We see the work of Philip