RE: When dinos roamed

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> ptnorton
>
> The URL below includes a bit of information about the upcoming Discovery
> Channel special "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" including several
> streaming
> video clips from the series, each one about 2 minutes. One clip stars
> Coelophysis, another Dilophosaurus and the third a few different taxa all
> competing for water during the peak of a long-ago dry season.
>
> If interested, you can check them out at
> http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/dinos/video/video.html
>
Checked out the site.  Last I saw of some of these sequences, the dinosaurs
were still cyberballoons floating through the landscape!  Very cool to see
them fully rendered and textured.

For those who are interested, here's a line up of the main taxa featured in
WDRA (I've probably forgotten some, including a few who show up but are not
named):

In the Newark Supegroup, Triassic
-Coelophysis
-Rutiodon (a phytosaur)
-Desmatosuchus (an aetosaur)
-a traversodont, called Traversodon (even though that particular genus was,
if memory serves, strictly South American)
-Icarosaurus

In the Newark Supergroup, Jurassic
-Syntarsus
-Dilophosaurus
-Anchisaurus

In the Morrison Fm.
-Apatosaurus
-Camarasaurus
-Dryosaurus
-Stegosaurus
-Allosaurus
-Ceratosaurus
-a rhamphorhynchoid

In the Moreno Hills Fm.
-Zuniceratops
-Nothronychus
-an unnamed dromaeosaurid
-the unnamed Zuni basal coelurosaur

In the Hell Creek Fm.
-Tyrannosaurus
-Triceratops
-Anatotitan
(in other words, the Big Three from the good ol' days of the Cretaceous Hall
of the AMNH)
-Quetzalcoatlus
-Ornithomimus
(I can't remember if Ankylosaurus made it into the final version).

Unfortunately, I have a new item to add to the list of "Things to do to make
a really good dinosaur documentary":
Item 73. Have a paleontologist on staff during the taping of the narration.

So a new name is introduced for the big Hell Creek hadrosaurine:
Anatatotitan.  (Sorry, Mike!!).  Urk.

Also, once again the Lancian dinosaurs are out on the open plains (okay,
there is some woodland, too), grazing like Neogene mammals of the
grasslands.  Ah, well, the Serengeti lies deep in the human psyche, I
guess...

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> ptnorton
> Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 3:05 PM
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: When dinos roamed
>
>
> The URL below includes a bit of information about the upcoming Discovery
> Channel special "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" including several
> streaming
> video clips from the series, each one about 2 minutes. One clip stars
> Coelophysis, another Dilophosaurus and the third a few different taxa all
> competing for water during the peak of a long-ago dry season.  The quality
> of the video stream through my 28.8 modem was pretty bad, but
> still worth a
> look.
>
> If interested, you can check them out at
> http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/dinos/video/video.html
>
> PTN
>