Mission
The Dinosaur Institute's mission is to research and interpret the diversity and evolution of dinosaurs and other tetrapods (four-legged vertebrate animals) that lived during the Mesozoic Era, the time interval contained between 250 and 65 million years ago. Core to our mission is also to safeguard and build through fieldwork the Museum's collection of these fossils, to provide mentorship and training to students and postdoctoral fellows, and to inspire and educate the public.
To achieve its mission, the Dinosaur Institute maintains a staff of paleontologists whose responsibilities are to conduct laboratory and field research, to curate and maintain current and new collections, to supervise students, fellows, and volunteers, and to create educational and public programs in association with other units of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Contact us! - dinosaur@nhm.org
What's New
Fieldwork
Spring – Summer 2008
Posted by Luis M. Chiappe
The Dinosaur Institute's 2008 field season began in April with a weeklong trip to the Mojave Desert (Matt Dinosaur Expedition) in southeastern California to collect diverse 170-million-year-old trackways contained in the Jurassic Aztec Sandstone. The crew included staff, students, and volunteers of the Dinosaur Institute as well staff from the San Bernardino County Museum. This expedition was very successful, resulting in the collection of trackways from theropod dinosaurs as well as other animals that lived with them.
The next excursion (Thornbury Dinosaur Expedition) revisited the area of San Juan County, Utah that was prospected in the summer of 2007. From mid May to mid June an international team including Dinosaur Institute personnel, members of the NHM's education department, and a colleague from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark surveyed the Late Jurassic exposures (150 million year old) of the Morrison Formation. Most of the work focused on collecting the large bones of a sauropod, but the team also discovered and collected a large quantity of dinosaur footprints contained in the approximately 100-million-year-old Cedar Mountain Formation. These fossils included the prints of sauropods, theropods, ornithopods, and stegosaurs. The team also collected a humerus of a brachiosaur that was larger than several members of the excavation team!
The summer season closed with an expedition (Holland Dinosaur Expedition) to the late Cretaceous of Carter County, southwestern Montana. The team surveyed 75-million-year-old rocks deposited in a shallow sea that flooded this portion of the world at that time and collected fossils of ancient seabirds and another marine animals. Additionally, the team collected fossils of small vertebrates from the somewhat younger, Latest Cretaceous, Hell Creek Formation, also within Carter County. On their way back to Los Angeles the expedition members collected footprints of flying reptiles (pterosaurs) from Late Jurassic rock exposures of the Sundance Formation near Casper, central Wyoming.
Overall this field season was a huge success! The fossils discovered are great additions to our growing collection, and some of them may go on display in our upcoming new dinosaur galleries. We are very excited to continue these field projects next year!
New collaborative research: The primitive bird Zhongornis
07/2008
Posted by Luis M. Chiappe
The newly discovered primitive bird Zhongornis haoae, from the early Cretaceous of China, was collected from rocks dating to approximately 125 million years old. As the most primitive short tailed bird known to date, Zhongornis helps to clarify the evolutionary transition between more primitive long tailed birds and short tailed birds like those living today.
Short tailed and long tailed birds have distinct anatomical, skeletal differences, such as the number of tail vertebrae and other specific skeletal structures. Long tailed birds have a greater number of tail vertebrae than short tailed birds, and short tailed birds have a bony structure of fused tail vertebrae called a “pygostyle” which is lacking in long tailed birds.
Zhongornis is the first bird discovered that has a short tail and a corresponding reduced number of tail vertebrae, yet lacks the pygostyle that is present in all other short tailed birds. Therefore, Zhongornis represents an evolutionary stage between the primitive long tailed birds and the short tailed, “pygostylian” birds. Additionally, Zhongornis suggests that a short tail with a reduced number of vertebrae evolved earlier in birds than did the pygostyle.
A paper published in the British Jjournal Palaeontology (Vol. 51, Part 4, pp. 775-791) details the research on Zhongornis. This investigation was part of the ongoing collaborative research project between the Dinosaur Institute and the Dalian Natural History Museum in China. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and individuals such as Carl and Lynn Cooper, Ron and Judy Perlstein, and Richard and Eileen Garson.
