Sunday, July 13, 2014

Submitted by Professor Thor Trolldahl of The Centroll Environmentroll Controll staff.
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  Recently, on July 4, 2014, I had the privilege of meeting with renowned Paleontologist Dr. Robert T Bakker in Salt Lake City at the very first Fantasy Con Event held July 3, 4, 5.  Dr Bakker helped reshape theories about dinosaurs particularly about some of them being warm-blooded (endothermic) reinforcing the view that they are more related to birds than to lizards.
    Dr. Bakker presented a panel at the convention regarding how J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers who created great monsters and creatures for their books could be shown to be accurate (or not) by a comparison to fossil and other developmental (evolutionary) records.
    I am not sure if Dr, Bakker had ever discussed his ideas with a Troll but I must say he was courteous and patient as we covered a lot of ground in a short (paleontologically wise) time.   I came away with a greater appreciation of how much humans have learned about creatures that were here, perhaps, even before trolls.

Mr. Mossbrucker was kind enough to hold me up by this great artifact and the Dino Hotel sign!

Along with Dr. Bakker was Paleontologist Matthew Mossbrucker, director and chief curator of  the Morrison Natural History Museum located in Morrison, Colorado.   He and I also chatted about all the great things 'his' Museum had to offer.  We particularly got to discuss the stegosaurus and some 'hatchling' footprints he has of these wonderful dinosaurs.  (He had a photo or three and we looked at them together and the prints were not much larger than I am tall when I am my preferred size that I use when dealing with humans. 

It is the purpose of this blog to share knowledge and fun and we hope you look at the fields mentioned here and Dr. Bakker and Mr. Mossbrucker and learn more about dinosaurs and their place in the history of this great big wonderful planet we call Earth.