A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face • Hacker News Board

diego_moita wrote: post #7

This fossil is at the Royal Tyrrell Museum[0] in Drumheller, Southern Alberta, Canada. It is by far the best dinossaur museum in the world and also has a fine exhibition on the Burgess Shale, one the best fossil sites in the world for the Cambrian Revolution. The only other claim to fame for the town of Drumheller is the band Nickelback was formed close by. But that's something most Canadians don't like to talk about…

Drumheller is up there on ideal family road trip spots to take your kids. I remember enjoying it a lot as a child.

Head-Smashed-in-Buffalo Jump is nearby too and kind of a hidden gem. [1]

[1] http://headsmashedin.ca/

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#34

Post by autoexec » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 7:03 AM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #7

This fossil is at the Royal Tyrrell Museum[0] in Drumheller, Southern Alberta, Canada. It is by far the best dinossaur museum in the world and also has a fine exhibition on the Burgess Shale, one the best fossil sites in the world for the Cambrian Revolution. The only other claim to fame for the town of Drumheller is the band Nickelback was formed close by. But that's something most Canadians don't like to talk about…

It looks like a cool place but they don't seem to list which dinosaurs they have on display. I was lucky enough to see an amargasaurus skeleton on exhibit in North America and I'd still like to make it to Australia some time to check out their triceratops (https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/20/world/horridus-triceratops-sk...).

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#35

Post by xivzgrev » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 7:20 AM UTC

So basically dinosaurs (at least this one) DO look shrink wrapped?

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#36

Post by echelon » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 7:41 AM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #22

diego_moita wrote: post #7

This fossil is at the Royal Tyrrell Museum[0] in Drumheller, Southern Alberta, Canada. It is by far the best dinossaur museum in the world and also has a fine exhibition on the Burgess Shale, one the best fossil sites in the world for the Cambrian Revolution. The only other claim to fame for the town of Drumheller is the band Nickelback was formed close by. But that's something most Canadians don't like to talk about…

If you type into Google “why does everyone hate” it will autosuggest “nickelback”. I watched a doco once on why everyone hates them. It was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard their music.

> I don’t think I’ve ever heard their music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3rXdeOvhNE

Sorry.

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#37

Post by unwind » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 7:43 AM UTC

This bit:

It took the researchers 14 days to excavate the find and bring it back in separate enormous blocks to the museum. There, senior preparation technician Mark Mitchell was tasked with separating the fossil from the stone. This was no small endeavor, taking Mitchell seven hours per day over five and a half years. That task, he wrote in an email, took him a staggering 7,000 hours.

Is just staggering. I'm old(ish), and not in the frantic startup-race culture that's sometimes pervasive here, but still find it really hard to imagine going to work and spending all day chipping at rocks, for over 5 years straight. I feel they did the right thing when naming the dinosaur after him. Respect.

Speaking of interesting dinosaur names, my other favorite has got to be the Atlascopcosaurus [1], named after Swedish industry tooling company Atlas Copco [2] who sponsored the particular dig (in 1984) when it was found with equipment.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlascopcosaurus

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Copco

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#38

Post by fsloth » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

unwind wrote: post #37

This bit: It took the researchers 14 days to excavate the find and bring it back in separate enormous blocks to the museum. There, senior preparation technician Mark Mitchell was tasked with separating the fossil from the stone. This was no small endeavor, taking Mitchell seven hours per day over five and a half years. That task, he wrote in an email, took him a staggering 7,000 hours. Is just staggering. I'm old(ish…

"l find it really hard to imagine going to work and spending all day chipping at rocks, for over 5 years straight."

Frankly, this feels like my career right now :D (i.e. kinda senior in an individual contributor role without a daily team collaboratin as such, which means I don't have to run around doing standups, but have gazillion lines of code to maintain and not much time for greenfield development).

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#39

Post by 867-5309 » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 9:30 AM UTC

smusamashah wrote: post #10

hcrisp wrote: post #3

I remember seeing this in a Nat Geo article back in 2017. More pictures available here: http://www.natgeo.com/nodosaur

This is pay walled. Where else I can see it's more and clear pictures. I failed to find a face in the original article.

set your VPN to France to bypass the paywall

Re: A dinosaur with a remarkably preserved face

#40

Post by verisimi » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 9:31 AM UTC

> “We can see it went in water deeper than 50 meters because it was preserved with a particular mineral called glauconite, which is a green phosphate mineral. And it only forms in cooler temperatures in water deeper than 50 meters,” explained Henderson.

Surely this is nonsense.

You cannot tell the depths that a living creature swam, from the mineral deposits on its fossilised body!

I mean, if I drown and my dead body comes to rest deeper than 50 meters, and then several trillion of years later my fossilised body is uncovered with glauconite all over it, you would be wrong to deduce that I swam 50 metres under the sea.

> But Brown and his colleagues discovered something completely unexpected: Borealopelta’s coloring may have helped keep it camouflaged in its environment. The team found evidence that the animal used countershading, meaning that the coloration of its body was darker on the top and tapering into a lighter underbelly.

Oh please. How is it possible to deduce the colouring of a fossilised creature? The creature itself is gone - its just stone. You can no more do this, than tell the colour of a man's eyes from his footprint.