Dinosaur Museum Adventure
Fiction
Billy was going on a guided a tour of a museum to look at dinosaurs
There was a animatronic dinosaur in front of Billy which he asked the tour guide questions about
Billy asked the tour guide, "Is that a real dinosaur."
The tour guide said, "It is an animatronic machine designed to look like a real dinosaur."
Billy asked the tour guide, "Where was it designed?"
The tour guide said, "It was built in China"
Billy asked the tour guide, "How did the builders decide how to color that type of dinosaur."
The tour guide said, "Since we do not have actual dinosaur skin we can not tell what color pattern dinosaurs had but scientists guess what type of color patterns each type of dinosaur has based on which specific reptiles and specific birds are most similar to that type of dinosaur that exist in real life, I mean in the current time period. Also sometimes the artists choose whatever color scheme will look the best and attract the most visitors, or whatever color schemes previous artists use so that it matches what the public has learned to expect."
Billy said, "I am confused, I thought scientists were people who did actual experiments where they make predictions about what will happen in the future based on mathematical formula and then they see how close those formula were to making correct predictions and change the formula if it did not fit the actual data and then test the new formula on a new experiment. But what type of experiment did they do?"
At this the tour guide started to stutter and have a very uncomfortable look on her face
Suddenly, the animatronic dinosaur roared and the tour guide had a relieved look on her face. "Interrupted just in time," she thought.
Billy asked the tour guide, "Is that what that type of dinosaur really sounded like."
The tour guide said, "Nobody knows what such a dinosaur really sounded like but scientists guess based on the anatomical shape and physiological patterns of the dinosaur skull cavities, rib cage, lungs, tongue and throat what the dinosaur sounds like."
Billy asked, "What shape are a dinosaurs lungs, and tongue and what physiological pattern do they have?"
The tour guide said, "Scientists have claimed to find bone soft tissue inside dinosaur bone fossils. But nobody knows for sure because scientists have not found the types of soft tissue found outside bones like lungs or a tongue for dinosaurs but only soft tissue inside fossilized bones. But we can guess how the soft tissue was shaped based on the bone structure we find from the fossils and by comparing it with birds and reptiles in modern times that would be most similar to that type of dinosaur."
The tour guide started walking toward a dinosaur skeleton and said, "Now if we go this way here is the skeleton of a"
The animatronic dinsosaur roared muffling the tour guides speech
Billy asked, "Are those real dinosaur bones?"
The tour guide said, "Paleontologists do not actually work with dinosaur bones in their original state but fossils of dinosaur bones."
Billy asked, "Are those real dinosaur fossils?"
The tour guide said, "We do not have real dinosaur fossils, I mean we do not have real dinosaur fossils on this display, because we do not want dinosaur fossils to be damaged. Now fossils are not made out of the same material as bone and could have a different texture and color pattern. Different types of animals have different bone physiology than other types of animals but even within the same type of animal there are different types of bones that each have different physiology. Since scientists do not have the actual bones but only the fossils they guess at the physiology of the dinosaur bones by looking at the physiology of different types of bones from birds and reptiles that exist today which they believe are most similar to the specific dinosaur type they imagined, I mean made an educated guess about. In some cases they might find bone soft tissue inside of fossils which might give them a hint into what the original physiology of the bones might have been before it was interrupted by death and fossilization both of which would alter their physiology to be different than the physiology of a living bone. After making an educated guess about the type of physiology different types of dinosaurs bones have, the scientists then explain to the artists whatever color pattern and texture the dinosaur bones would be imagined I mean guessed to have if they existed today, I mean if they were alive today and not extinct. Artists then choose material that is strong enough to hold together in the display and also can resemble the color pattern and texture of the bones as described by the scientists. Or sometimes they just try to decide the color patterns and texture based on what the general public would think bones would look like. Fortunately, because most people eat bird meat, the general public is very familiar with bird bones like chicken bones, much more so than they are with reptile bones, and conveniently dinosaurs were in more recent times imagined, I mean discovered to be closely related to birds, so we do not have to worry too much about a disconnect between what type of bones the public would expect and what type of bones the scientists decided, I mean discovered dinosaurs would have. Now, the shape is a much simpler matter for the artists to find out than the color and texture as the other parts of the rock that are not the fossil are somehow carefully separated from the fossil like how an artist fabricates a sculpture by deciding where to chisel out of the rock and where not to chisel out of the rock, choosing to either keep or remove the parts of the material to get the shape he wants, I mean the shape he discovers to have been in the rock all along before the fossil is sculpted. Although it is not exactly the same as how an artists chisels whatever he wants out of rock, because scientists have other methods than chiseling, including other mechanical tools and the use of chemicals that can dissolve the parts they choose to create the appearance they want, I mean the appearance of the genuine fossil they want out of the rock."
Billy said, "So scientists say what they want it to look like, and then artists make it look the way the scientists want?"
The tour Guide said, "Yes, they try to make it look the way the scientists believe it looked."
Billy said, "So how do they decide which bones is connected to which bone in the display, is that also based on what the scientists believe?"
The tour Guide said, "Well, bones in some animals are fused to other bones. For example, a lot of skull bones in humans are fused to other skull bones, instead of forming a joint with a great degree of movement where the bones are generally separate. So, in the case of bones that are fused together it is easy to know which bone goes with which bone if they did not break apart prior to fossilization. For the bones that form joints scientists consider the joints of birds and reptiles that they believe were the most similar to the type of dinosaur the fossils were from and assume the bones formed a similar pattern to guess what bone goes with what bone. They can also look for bones that might form something similar to a rib cage and assume it is there to house the lungs similar to certain types of bird or reptile ribcages, they might assume a ribcage has different types of bones then a limb. Additionally. they can look for bones that look like spinal vertebra. So they can somewhat guess if a bone goes with a limb, or ribcage, or spine, and so on and so forth which will give them somewhat of a hint of what goes where."
Billy said, "So if it is all the same dinosaur they might be able to guess what goes where based on the shape and size but how do they know they are not mixing up the bones of multiple different dinosaurs and putting the wrong thing in the wrong place"
The Tour Guide said, "Some of the types of dinosaurs repeat a lot in the fossil record and are not necessarily the only fossils of that kind of dinosaur. So, if they found a newly discovered type of dinosaur mixed in with the bones of a previously discovered type of dinosaur they could eliminate the bones they already recognize from the prior discoveries, and whatever is left would be from the new dinosaur."
Billy said, "But how did they know the first discovered dinosaur was not actually a mixture of multiple dinosaurs and what if two different types of dinosaurs have some bones that are shaped similar but other bones that are shaped different then you could not use process of elimination to keep from mixing up bones and additionally how do they know they only found one new dinosaur and not multiple newly discovered types of dinosaurs?"
The tour guide said, "Will sometimes they found all the bones neatly arranged in a pattern so they know exactly what goes where based on how it was fossilized and other times it is more chaotic and requires more guesswork."
Billy said, "Earlier you said they had to guess about the soft tissue like the tongue and lungs in order to know what dinosaurs sound like. Without the soft tissue like muscles, tendons and ligaments they can not know what bone connects to what other bone in a joint. Of course that does not matter because the bones all lined up just in the right place when they were fossilized. But if the soft tissue is keeping the bones in the right place then it would be there to create a barrier preventing the fossilization process. On the other hand, if the soft tissue was destroyed so that the chemicals can get to the bones and fossilize them, then the soft tissue would never hold the bones in the right place to be neatly aligned exactly in the skeletal pattern they would have had when they were alive or even would have had in an intact corpse with the flesh still holding the bones in a certain arrangement that would let you know what bone would connect to what bone in a living dinosaur. Either way the bones would not be aligned in such a way that you can know what bone lines up with what bone. And by what bone connects with or lines up with what bone I do not actually mean that any bones would be connected directly to any other bone at all because of course there would be a medium of flesh separating one bone from another bone even for the same movable joint."
The tour guide said, "There is something important I did not mention before and that is that we can tell what a portion of the outline of the outer surface of a dinosaurs body looked like through imprint fossils, trace fossils and fossil footprints that do not have fossilized bones within them. These might be fossils that form from material that changes shape to conform to the soft flesh or hard tissue on the outside of an animal and then later hardens to show what part of the outside of an animal was shaped like. We assume that bones do not stick outside the rest of the flesh except maybe certain structures like fangs, teeth, horns, antlers and so on, although some people might not label teeth as bones. There also might be hard structures like beaks or nails that could fossilize that are technically not bone but are made out of keratin much like human fingernails or bird beaks or some reptile or bird claws. And if you want to be really technical some body parts are a mixture of different sections some with bone and other with keratin like horns with bone on the inside and keratin on the outside or claws with keratin attached to bone but these fine details do not matter to the main point. The main point is that except for these exceptions bone or hard tissue would not stick outside the flesh of animals. And even when these exceptions occur and the hard tissue is outside the flesh of the animal, in such cases the hard tissue would still form the outline of the outer surface of the animal. This means that the bones must be contained within a limited shape so that they do not exist outside the outer surface of the body but are on the border of this outer surface or are inside the outer surface of the body. To the degree that the shape of the outer surface of the body can be known through imprint fossils, trace fossils, fossil footprints and so on we can limit or get a hint at what types of configurations can work for what locations one bone might be relative to another."
Billy said, "But there are many bone configurations that can still fit within that outer shape so we still can not tell which bone is connected to which bone without muscles, ligaments and tendons to connect them together, even if knowing the outer shape provides some limitations to the configuration. Furthermore, if those imprint fossils, trace fossils and fossil footprints do not come with fossilized bone then you can not know that those bones match an animal limited by the shape guessed at through the imprint fossil. An imprint fossil would only let you guess what a portion of the animal looks like and not it's whole outer surface. If the imprint fossil was based on surrounding the whole outer surface of the animal you would not see the imprint fossil there until you accidentally already dug out a portion of it and even then you probably would not know you are digging through an imprint fossil. Now maybe you might be able to detect a imprint fossil surrounded a whole entire animal from outside of it with some sort of modern sensor equipment and that might lead to an exception to what I just said."
The Tour Guide said, "I do not know about that but what I do know is it is my lunch break and we also went to all the tour stop points and so the tour is over for now."
