This is Throwback Thursday #157. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
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Here is a poem written by Eugene Richardson Jr, about "Gorgeous George", the Field Museum's Daspletosaurus. We posted about George back in Throwback Thursday #93. "George" was the centerpiece of Stanley Field Hall in the Field Museum from 1956 to 1992. He was incorrectly called a Gorgosaurus for most of his "life". That was corrected in 1999 and he is now known as a Daspletosaurus, a species of tyrannosaur. "George" originally hailed from Alberta, Canada and was found by none other than Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Brown found a few of the the first T. rex specimens, including the holotype in 1902. "George" lived around 75 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. The full story can be found on the Field Museum website.
Currently, this gorgeous fossil specimen resides in Dinosaur Hall standing over the same Lambeosaurus. They are part of the Evolving Planet exhibit.
Eugene Richardson Jr. was Curator of Fossil Invertebrates in 1956. He wrote this poem to highlight the new special methods used to display "George". For this display, the armature was hidden which made the skeleton appear free standing.
Chief Preparator Orville Gilpin enthusiastically took to the task of mounting the newly-acquired Gorgosaurus—now affectionately nicknamed Gorgeous George—in a lifelike pose. Gilpin challenged himself to create a completely free-standing mount, without any visible support structure obscuring the skeleton. No museum had assembled a free-standing dinosaur before, but George was a good candidate because most of the leg bones were never found. Gilpin and his colleagues sculpted the legs and feet in plaster around a steel armature, which supported the weight of the real hips, vertebrae, ribs, and skull.
Here is his poem.
THE WORLD'S FIRST SELF-SUPPORTING DINOSAUR
EUGENE S. RICHARDSON, JR. CURATOR OF FOSSIL. INVERTEBRATESCome and see the Gorgosaurus,
Tall as life but somewhat thinner,
Standing in the hall before us,
Interrupted in his dinner.Hundred million years ago he
Found a Lambeosaur to munch on.
Something stopped the feast and so he
Never had that final luncheon.Long ago (the date, Cretaceous)
On Alberta's plains his walking
Shook the earth in his voracious
Anything-but-stealthy stalking.Then he died, became a fossil
Buried near the Red Deer River;
Passed the years asleep and docile,
Giving not a jerk or quiver.Found and shipped to the Museum
With that meal he never tasted,
Here he stands and here you see him;
Not a bone of him was wasted.Posts support all other mounted
Skeletons of heavy creatures;
His preparators discounted
Such distracting extra features.Engineers may well be baffled.
By the structure we're reporting:
Here he stands without a scaffold!
Gorgosaur is self-supporting!
