The Mighty Brontosaurus
When I was a kid, most children's favorite dinosaur was the Brontosaurus and most children's favorite planet was Pluto. But Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet while the Brontosaurus is nothing more than an Apatosaurus with the wrong head. Brontosuaurs is still my favorite dinosaur. The word Brontosuaurs is more fun to say than Apatosaurus and the common depiction of a Brontosuarus is both cute and awe-inspiring.
My favorite art store near by has paper-mache animals and other objects for sale to bring home an paint. I got the Brontosuaurs! Here are before and after pictures.
Before, a pale brown dinosaur ready for color!
After, green with acrylic paint.
Painting the paper-mache Brontosaurus was quite fun. It made me want to try and make something out of paper-mache from scratch.
I learned about another interesting Brontosaurus/ Apatosaurus myth. Originally paleontologists thought that the Apatosaurus lived in swamps. The Apatosaurus has a very small head and scientists thought that with their tiny heads and mouths they could only chew the bare minimum amount of food needed in order to sustain their massive body size. But the bare minimum of fuel would leave them weak and slow.... To weak and slow to drag their gigantic tail's or efficiently move their bulky bodies. To compensate for this, it was believed they lived in swamps so they could float about and use the water to support their weight.
But this was disproved do to the discovery of the gizzard. Gizzards are in the lower stomach and grind food. Which means that the Apatosaurus's small mouths didn't matter in food consumption because unlike humans they do not use their mouths to grind food, they use gizzards. Fossil proof has actually shown that the Apatosaurus probably disliked water. I found this info from the website unmuseum.
My favorite art store near by has paper-mache animals and other objects for sale to bring home an paint. I got the Brontosuaurs! Here are before and after pictures.
Before, a pale brown dinosaur ready for color!
After, green with acrylic paint.
Painting the paper-mache Brontosaurus was quite fun. It made me want to try and make something out of paper-mache from scratch.
I learned about another interesting Brontosaurus/ Apatosaurus myth. Originally paleontologists thought that the Apatosaurus lived in swamps. The Apatosaurus has a very small head and scientists thought that with their tiny heads and mouths they could only chew the bare minimum amount of food needed in order to sustain their massive body size. But the bare minimum of fuel would leave them weak and slow.... To weak and slow to drag their gigantic tail's or efficiently move their bulky bodies. To compensate for this, it was believed they lived in swamps so they could float about and use the water to support their weight.
But this was disproved do to the discovery of the gizzard. Gizzards are in the lower stomach and grind food. Which means that the Apatosaurus's small mouths didn't matter in food consumption because unlike humans they do not use their mouths to grind food, they use gizzards. Fossil proof has actually shown that the Apatosaurus probably disliked water. I found this info from the website unmuseum.