Odell Grade School
Odell, Illinois
Mrs. McCorvie, 2nd Grade
This second grade class from Odell
were very excited to learn that they
were going to be involved in Dinsaur
Expedition 2003. They love studying
dinosaurs and it is very exciting
for them to be apart of a discovery
in the making. Their favorite pre-historic
giant is Super Croc and they love
finding out facts about the giant
that ruled the rivers. They measured
Super Croc and it was amazing to find
out how big Super Croc really was.
- What kind
of body covering did SuperCroc have?
GRAY: Like most modern crocodilians,
SuperCroc had lots of bony scutes
in the skin of it's back and neck.
In large adult specimens these plates
of bone were more than 12 x 35 cm!
We are almost certain that SuperCroc
also had scales on it's skin as
well, but these aren't preserved
as easily as bones and so we haven't
been able to find any yet.
- How many eggs does a
female SuperCroc lay? Are they good
mothers? How do they carry their
babies?
GRAY: Without finding an actual
fossilized nest of SuperCroc eggs,
we can't say for sure how many one
would have laid, nor can we really
ever know how they cared for their
babies. However, the overall shape
of SuperCroc's body and the environment
that it lived in were very similar
to many modern crocodilians and
we can make pretty good guesses
about how SuperCroc lived based
on these modern relatives. Modern
crocodilians will lay from 10 to
40 eggs at a time. Larger croc species
generally lay fewer eggs of a larger
size, so we think that SuperCroc
probably females may have produced
even less than 10 eggs in per clutch.
Mothers often guard their nests
and even carry their babies in their
mouths after they are born. I think
that SuperCroc probably did the
same.
- Will you bring SuperCroc
back to the U. S.?
If not, where it be displayed once
completed?
GRAY: SuperCroc is in the US right
now! National Geographic has a display
on tour. There is another copy of
the skeleton that we brought with
us to Niger for display in the capital,
Niamey.
- How long do you estimate
it will take to collect the bones?
MILLER: Dinosaur and crocodile bones
often take a long time to get out
of the ground safely. These bones
are very old and they can very delicate,
so we must be careful when we work
on them. When we find a bone or
skeleton we want to collect, we
dig around the bones with ice picks
and paint brushes and then place
a plaster cast (the same stuff the
doctors use to protect your bones
if you break them) around them.
When the cast is on, we can remove
the bones from the ground and start
their journey to our lab. The time
it takes to get the bones out depends
on the kind of rock it is in and
how many bones there are. We can
spend anywhere from fifteen minutes
on a bone to a whole week or more
if we have a whole skeleton to collect.
- When you find the bones
and put them together, how do you
get them to stay in place? How do
you preserve them?
GRAY: These days we usually make
exact replicas of the bones that
we have and mount the copies instead
of the real bones. The fake ones
are much easier to mount - we can
drill holes through them to fit
in metal frames and they are much
lighter than the real thing. Also,
the real bones are very valuable
to us for research and it is much
easier for scientists to study bones
when they are not tied into a display,
sometimes many meters in the air.
Think of how big of a ladder we'de
need to look at the neck bones of
Diplodocus!
- PARENT QUESTIONS
How long did the dinosaurs live
before they died?
GRAY: We don't really know.
How many fingers and toes do dinosaurs
have?
GRAY: Fingers: 2 to 5, Toes: 4 or
5
Do you call their hands
and feet,"hands" and "feet"
?
GRAY: Manus and Pes.
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