Program Overview Topic: The step-by-step process of casting, painting, and assembling a dinosaur skeleton. Theme: The skills and knowledge required in the art and science of casting, painting, and articulating casts of fossilized bones into the vertebrate body plan. Program Description: Art and science come together as students cast and paint a complete skeleton of a small carnivorous dinosaur. They discover how the Museum creates replicas of fossils, and how the bones are arranged in the vertebrate body plan. Students create and paint their own cast, and as a group, assemble the bones into a full skeleton that is taken back to their school where it can be mounted for display! Audience: Grades 5 12 Duration: 2 hours Curriculum Connections: Grades 5/6 Grade 7 Grade 8 Grade 9 Grade 10 Grade 9 11 Grade 11 Grade 12 Art: Forms and Proportions; Qualities and Details; Media and Techniques science: Cooperative Planning of Procedures; Material Selection and Use art: Compositions, Techniques and Media: 2D & 3D science: Structures and Forces (skeletons); Planet Earth (fossil record) art: Compositions, Space, Proportion and Relationships in 2D & 3D science: Cells and Systems art: Elements and Principles in Compositions Art: Experiment with Various Representational Formats Art: Compositions in 2D & 3D Science 20: The Changing Earth Art: Natural and Human-made Forms Program Objectives: Students will: 1. Cast and paint a dinosaur skeleton and appreciate the tremendous amount of work involved in displaying skeletons at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. 2. Learn how the bones of the vertebrate body plan are articulated. 3. Understand how a mould is made from the original fossil. 4. Discover the importance of casts used in the displays at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. ARTiculation 1
Suggested Pre-Visit Activities 1. Program Terminology The following are some terms that you may want to go over with your class before you participate in this program. Articulated: In palaeontology, articulated means the fossilized bones have remained joined or are in close proximity, as they would have been in real life. Bonebed: A section of rock where there are disarticulated bones from one or more individuals from one or more species. Cast: Any object which is formed by placing a castable substance in a mould, or form, and allowing it to solidify. Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy: The comparison between the skeletons of different vertebrates. Disarticulated: Where the bones of an individual have become jumbled up in the same rock layer. Fossil: The preserved remains, or traces, of ancient life. Geology: The scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of Earth. Mould: The cavity in which a substance is shaped. Palaeontology: The study of ancient life, based on the fossil record. Taphonomy: The study of the processes: burial, decay, and preservation, that affects animal and plant remains as they become fossilized. Theropod: A carnivorous dinosaur that walked on two legs. Vertebrate: An animal with a backbone. 2. Make Your Own Dinosaur Out Of Chicken Bones Use standard household tools and materials to turn boiled-and-dried chicken carcasses into amazingly accurate skeletons of T. rex. Through this activity, students will learn about the vertebrate body plan and understand that birds and dinosaurs are closely related. This will provide them with a solid background of dinosaur skeletons prior to their program at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The book that contains all the information to complete this classroom project is: Make Your Own Dinosaur Out Of Chicken Bones by Chris McGowan, illustrated by Julian Mulock, 144 pages, softcover, Harper Perennial Books. ARTiculation 2
The class will take their completed cast skeleton back to their school. Information on how to assemble and mount the skeleton will be given via handouts and discussion during the program. Searchable topics on vertebrate anatomy: comparative vertebrate anatomy (to compare human/other mammal/reptile/ avian skeletons), comparative vertebrate skeletal anatomy Additional link of interest: http://3dmuseum.org/ 1. IDENTIFICATION Sheet Program hosted at the ATCO Tyrrell Learning Centre. ARTiculation 3
2. MOUNTING Take your experience at the Royal Tyrrell Museum to the next level by mounting your casted skeleton in your school. Use the template you created during the program to place the bones in your favourite pose for your school to enjoy. Add the Royal Tyrrell Museum logo, the key to the names of the bones, and your own text panel with interesting facts about Ornitholestes. Listed below are a variety of glues and materials you can use to mount the casts. GLUES Contact Cement: adheres to any surface, very strong, but a little stinky Silicone Caulking: adheres to any surface, very strong, but expensive Hot Glue Gun: adheres to any surface, strong, but time consuming to apply White Glue: adheres to any surface, strong, but may not last as long as other glues MOUNTING SURFACES Cardboard (alone, or in combination with a bulletin board) Plywood or MDF Any flat surface that the glue will adhere to HELPFUL HINTS For the glue you use, follow the directions provided to ensure the best adhesion. Paint the mounting surface like rock to give the impression of real rock matrix. If possible, glue all casts down to the mounting surface first, as it lies on the floor, then hang the whole thing on the wall. If the back surface of the cast is uneven, you may need a thicker layer of glue to ensure the cast will stick. You may choose to glue each cast to individual pieces of cardboard then attach each individual piece to a bulletin board. If you plan to disassemble your mounted skeleton and allow the students to take their casts home, we recommend not gluing the casts directly to plywood or MDF as you may break the casts when trying to pull them off. Instead, use cardboard so you can cut around the casts and remove them individually. ARTiculation 4
3. fact SHEET Ornitholestes Ornitholestes lived during the Jurassic Period from about 155 to 145 million years ago. The full scientific name is Ornitholestes hermanni. Ornitholestes means bird robber. It was probably about 2.5 metres long and weighed around 12 kilograms. Ornitholestes was a theropod (meaning beast-foot ), or a meat-eating dinosaur. Ornitholestes most likely ate small mammals, lizards, and eggs. It probably scavenged on dead and decaying meat. Only one skeleton of Ornitholestes has been found. It was found in the Morrison Formation at the Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming in 1898. It was collected in 1900, and was described by Henry F. Osborn in 1903. Most of the skeleton was discovered, including an excellent skull. It is about 80% complete, which is rare! There has been some debate about whether or not Ornitholestes had a nose crest. Although there are bones that taper up from the snout, a crest has not been found. This skeleton is one of the more rare small theropod skeletons, as carnivorous dinosaurs were less abundant than herbivores. Small theropods have delicate, hollow bones that seldom withstand fossilization. Ornitholestes may have been an ancestor of the dromaeosaurs ( raptors ) and was probably very similar to the ancestor of birds! 4. MUSEUM TEXT PANEL A museum text panel includes the full species name, how old or time period the specimen is from, and where the specimen was found. The rest of the panel includes interesting facts about the specimen. Here is an example to get you started. NAME DESCRIPTION SCIENTIFIC NAME LOCATION Triceratops Triceratops was the last and largest of the horned dinosaurs. Its massive head made up almost one-third of its total length. Several partial skulls have been found near Drumheller, but no complete skeleton has been found in this area. Triceratops horridus Late Cretaceous, Montana ARTiculation 5
5. PAINT FORMULAS Once you ve attached your dinosaur to the display panel, you may want to paint the background to look like rock matrix. Depending on the colour of matrix your class chose, here are the paint formulas. These formulas are based on a ten-part scale. As well, you may have to slightly adjust the amount of each colour to better match your casts. BADLANDS SUNRISE light grey sandstone 8 parts Titanium White 1.75 parts Burnt Umber 0.25 parts Carbon Black Sprinkle sand on top of wet paint GOBI DELIGHT orange sandstone from the deserts of Mongolia 7 parts Unbleached Titanium 2 parts Burnt Umber 1 part Raw Sienna Sprinkle sand on top of wet paint SLIPPERY WHEN WET slick bentonite clay 8 parts Unbleached Titanium 2 parts Raw Umber Museum logo to be added to your project: Links to Other Websites Links to websites are provided solely for your convenience. The Royal Tyrrell Museum does not endorse, authorize, approve, certify, maintain, or control these external Internet addresses and does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy or timeliness of the sites listed. ARTiculation 6