Dinosaur bones: Up close and personal
By ROBERT BRYAN
Friday, September 28, 2007 10:27 PM EDT
Though dinosaurs have long disappeared from the scene, even the youngest of our children will be able to participate someday in understanding them.
"We're just beginning to learn about these animals," Dr. G. Thomas Sharp told assemblies of area elementary school children Friday morning in the Honeywell Center gym.
Several times in his two 45-minute presentations he urged children to consider the profession. " We need people like your to become earth scientists," he said.
While discussing how dinosaurs are found, classified, and named, he continually reminded the children that far more is unknown than known about them.
Very often, he said, theories about particular dinosaurs had to be modified again and again as new pieces of skeletal or fossil remains were discovered and fitted into the picture.
The most famous of the dinosaurs, T Rex, for instance, was initially assumed to be a predator (killer) of the most frightening sort. Then scientists discovered it had tiny arms - arms so short it could not catch itself in a fall, a head-first fall likely to kill it.
So, said Sharp, scientists wondered it it were not a predator but a scavenger.
Another example: Several thick-skulled dinosaurs were initially thought to use their heads as battering rams, but when a more-or-less complete specimen was put together, it had a very thin neck, a neck easily broken if the head were used often as a ram.
And Sharp demonstrated that some "dinosaurs" never existed: A fossilized T-Rex with feathers turned out recently to be a hoax. But some scientists still believe dinosaurs didn't disappear but become birds.
Part of Sharp's presentation concerned current scientific classifications:
They are of two kinds, depending on the bone structure of the hips - lizard or saurus hips, and bird hips. And dinosaurs were land animals: Those that fly are flying reptiles; those that swim are marine reptiles.
Sharp also talked about fossils: animal remains encased more or less forever in rock. They remain because, by sudden burial, they were preserved from predators and normal processes of decay. Encasement and death was clearly sudden: Sharp showed pictures of fossils in which the dinosaur was giving birth, or swallowing a prey.
At the end, Sharp left time for questions the squirming youngsters.
Sure enough one child asked: Do dinosaurs poop?
Yes, indeed they did, and Sharp was able to show fossilized evidence.
The Friday morning sessions were open to several Metro and Wabash City Schools classes.
A session inviting the public was held at 7 p.m. Friday night in the Honeywell gym. On Saturday and Sunday, Sharp, and Indiana native and Purdue University graduate, is to give presentations at the Treaty Church of Christ. They are free and open to the public. At 7 p.m. Saturday the program will be "1,000 years in One Day." On Sunday at 9 a.m. he will speak on "Creation and Evolution," and at 10 a.m. on "Raising Godly Children in a Pagan Culture.
Sharp believes scientific findings about the dinosaurs are consistent with biblical teachings. His presentation to the school children did not delve into religious interpretation.
Print this story | Email this story
|
