NO BONES ABOUT IT: KIDS DIG DINOSAURS FUNDRAISING EFFORTS HELP RE-CREATE PREHISTORIC BEASTS
Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Feb 23, 2000;
Carolyn Rusin Special to the Tribune
Copyright 2000 by the Chicago Tribune

In recent months, 7th-grade science students from Barrington Middle School's Prairie Campus have been thinking and talking a lot about what the world was like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and what it would be like now to discover the creatures' fossils.

The daydreams came a little closer to reality recently when University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, educator Gabrielle Lyon, visited the pupils to thank them for helping to raise enough money to build a replica of a 60-foot-long, plant- eating sauropod called Jobaria tiguidensis that lived in Africa about 135 million years ago.

Sereno and Lyon also presented the cast of a Jobaria jawbone and showed pupils bones--real ones and replicas--from a 1997 expedition the couple made to the Sahara. During the expedition, the couple discovered bones from an adult Jobaria and a juvenile Jobaria, as well as the remains of a carnivorous Afrovenator.

The pupils were fascinated by the 6-foot-long, 40-pound cast of a Jobaria thighbone. Sereno told students the real bone weighs around 350 pounds.

"If you look at something like this it forces you to imagine, and kids love to imagine," Sereno said. "They can visualize the rest of it."

Twelve-year-old Meghan Hofherr did just that.

"If you were living then, you would have to run away from (Jobaria)," she said. "I mean, everybody thinks it's so fascinating but if you were there, you would be freaked out. You would be scared to be near it."

Sereno also showed the pupils a real Jobaria toe bone, which weighs about 15 pounds. He explained how the sturdy feet and toes allowed the creature to balance on its hind legs like a modern elephant and support its weight of 40,000 pounds.

Student Jessica Engelman wondered how a plant-eating dinosaur could survive in the Sahara.

"Because the Sahara is entirely desert, what types of trees did Jobaria eat?" Engelman asked.

Lyon said the dinosaur lived in the Cretaceous Period, when the region flourished with forests and rivers.

Sereno and Lyon thanked 28 of the 7th-graders for raising $1,550 to help build the Jobaria skeleton, the cause Sereno picked when he ran in the 1999 Chicago Marathon Celebrity Challenge last fall. The fundraiser was the first event by the couple's non-profit science education program Project Exploration .

Student Buddy Torcum, who raised $400, said, "What really helped me was the community. They pitched in a lot and it went to a good cause."

The adult Jobaria skeleton is one of the three from Sereno and Lyon's 1997 Saharan expedition that are on display for the first time in the Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier in Chicago. The free exhibit, "Dinosaur Giants," runs until March 19.

"The main thing we are trying to do is to make these bones accessible to the public," said Lyon, director of Project Exploration . "It's great to read about them, but it's even better to be able to touch or see them."

Science teacher Sheryl Campen introduced students to the fundraiser as a way for them to gain a better interest in science.

"I wanted my kids to know that science isn't about nerds in lab coats. Science can be about attractive, intelligent young men and women with dynamic lifestyles," Campen said. "We didn't know we would own a part of what they're doing."

And in a surprising moment, Campen presented the dino-duo with gifts from the students as well as a $500 check of her own to go toward Project Exploration .

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