Frank and I went to Lawrence on Friday. He had a Dr. appointment at noon and suggested I ask to get off work early and come along -- we could go see the Natural History Museum at the University (KU). He'd seen it as a child and not since. I'd never been there. There's a lot to see. We didn't go to all the floors, but concentrated on the first level with the fossils (naturally!). Since none of the dinosaurs or Neanderthal Man were along with us, I took pictures to take back to them. Almost everything was behind glass. So many of my pictures, including this, have reflections off the glass. The most impressive thing was a huge Mosasuar hanging in the two story entryway. This is NOT a picture of that. This Mosasaur is in a case with other complete or partial Mosasaurs of three different species.
They were found in the Niobrara chalk of Kansas -- not around here because, as Frank pointed out a while back, the Flint Hills are PreCambrian substrata and the Mosasuars are late Cretaceous. Darn! But I was super excited to read on the placard that "Kansas is the Mosasaur capitol of the world." And to discover that a mosasaur relative of the Mosasaurus -- Tylosaurus -- is one of the two state fossils of Kansas (Pteranodon being the other.)
I haven't actually shared that with the Mosasaurus yet. I'm afraid he'll get a big head... Perhaps I shouldn't worry. I do want the dinosaurs to be proud of who they are. Someday maybe we'll go back again and take a couple of the dinosaurs with us. And to balance things out, we'll allow enough time to see the other exhibits also. Live snakes on the sixth floor! Live insects in Bugtown! I wonder if they allow adults to crawl through the worm tunnel?
