Re: Kansas Elasmosaur

[Keith90291@aol.com]

n a message dated 7/7/99 6:39:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
_smichael@excite.com writes:

<< I can see a Tylosaur
 eating whatever it wanted, including smaller mosasaurs. >>

Just last week I visited the Museum of Geology at the So. Dakota School of 
Mines and Technology.  They are displaying a field jacket with the stomach 
contents of 
a Tylosaurus.  It contains the remains of a Hesperornis, a Platecarpus, a 
Bananogmius (a sizeable teleost) and an Odontaspis (a shark ancestral to the 
modern sand shark).  The museum has also added a cast of the massive Miocene 
alligatorid Purussaurus.

>From my trip, other notes on uncommon displays and new mounts, which won't be 
revelations to the professionals and advanced amateurs on the list, but, 
perhaps, of interest to fellow paleo-travelers....

The Journey Museum (Rapid City, SD) displays vertebrae of a Camarasaurus 
quarried by SDSM&T at Sundance, Wy.  Eventually a mount of the animal will go 
on display.

The Adams Museum (Deadwood, SD) displays skull, a few vertebrae and forelimb 
of an as-yet un-renamed plesiosaur (formerly thought to be Trinacomerum).  
Dr. Gordon Bell of SDSM&T now believes the animal might be a missing link 
between the large-headed Jurassic pliosaurs and the Cretaceous procotylids.  
Eventually a mount will go on display.

Pioneer Trails Regional Museum (Bowman, ND) features a Triceratops (cast) 
mount, parts of their T. rex find and an Edmontosaurus undergoing preparation 
for eventually mounting and display.

The North Dakota Heritage Center (Bismarck, ND) and the Theodore Roosevelt 
National  Park Visitors Center (Medora, ND) both display mounts of a 7 foot 
long Champsosaurus gigas.

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center (Thermopolis, WY), apart from mounts of some 
familiar North American dinosaurs, displays some uncommon, foreign finds:  
Monolophosaurus, Tuojiangosaurus, Bellusaurus and the awesome Russian 
Pliosaurus sp.  Also mounts of the pterosaurs Anhanguera blittersdorfi, 
Tapejara sp. and Tropeognathus mesembrinus.

Tate Museum (Casper, Wy) displays parts of very interesting Sundance 
Formation specimens undergoing preparation for eventual display:  the 
ichthyosaur Baptanodon, the plesiosaur Tatenektes larameniensis, and the 
forelimbs and shoulder girdle (models except the cast of one "flipper") of 
the massive pliosaur Megalneusaurus rex. 

The Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite (outside Shell, Wy) was a hive of activity 
last week with scientists engaged in mapping the Middle Jurassic (165 million 
year old) theropod track site (in the Sundance Fm.)

The Big Pig Dig (in the Badlands National Park, SD) is an active quarry of a 
concentration of Archeotherium and Subhyracodon remains whose roadside 
location makes it easy to visit.

Agate National Park (western Nebraska) has erected a new visitors center 
since I was last there.  It features a very nice collection of mounts:  three 
Moropus, two Dinohyus, two Daphoenodon and a Menoceras bonebed. 

Oh, yeah, also saw Stan, Stan, Stan and, somehow yet again, Stan.  Two mounts 
(one cast, one fossil with cast skull) at the Black Hills Museum of Natural 
History (Hill City, SD); a cast mount at Wyoming Dinosaur Center; a cast 
mount at the Kirby Science Discovery Center (located in the Washington 
Pavilion of Arts and Sciences, Sioux Falls, SD); and a cast skull at the Tate 
Museum.  With the proliferation of this specimen, T. rex mounts may 
eventually replace those of Allosaurus as the most represented dinosaur in 
North America.