Today marks the 134th birthday of my city 🏙️ zoo, Zoo Atlanta! 🍑 🐘🦁🦧🐊🦒🦓🐼🐯🐅 I am honored to be volunteering there now. Happy Birthday 🎂 Zoo Atlanta, from PALEO-Puppeteer-Productions! #ZooAtlanta #AtlantaZoo #134th #134thBirthday #134thAnniversary #134years #ATL #Atlanta #AtlantaGA #AtlantaGeorgia #AtlantaGeorgia🍑 #Georgia
Happy Kori Bustard Day! I was studying the movement of the Kori Bustard at Zoo Atlanta, @zooatl and compare them to the leg bones 🦴 of Tyrannosaurus rex, 🦖 and other members of its family. Including the Georgia Tyrant, Appalachiosaurus. 🦖 More evidence comes from the ichnotaxa (Study of dinosaur 🦖 footprints) of the tracks of an Albertosaurus 🦖 in Canada. 🇨🇦 This allows scientists, animators, and puppeteers to reconstruct the movement of these large theropods. I’m using that formula for designing the control for the Appalachiosaurus puppet for, “The Making of Georgia.” It’s easy to see the Kori Bustard, as one of the living relatives of Tyrannosaurus. In many ways, it is! #ZooAtlanta #KoriBustard #KoriBustardDay #KoriBustardDay2023 #BirdLocomotion #DinosaurLocomotion #Fernbank #FernbankMuseum #FernbankMuseumofNaturalHistory #GEORGIA #Tyrannosaur #Tyrannosaurs #TyrannosaurusLeg #TellusScienceMuseum #Theropod #Theropods #TheropodLocomotion #GeorgiaDinosaurs #Appalachiosaurus #Ichnotaxa #Albertosaurus #AlbertosaurusFootprints #TheropodTracks #TyrannosaurTracks #TyrannosaurFootprint #TheropodFootprint #TheropodFootprints #PrehistoricGeorgia #TheMakingofGeorgia #TyrannosaursMeettheFamily
Today marks the 40th birthday 🎂 of Kelly the African Elephant 🐘 at Zoo Atlanta! One of my favorite animals I see whenever I volunteer at the zoo on Thursdays. Like humans, elephants 🐘 can reach their adult size in their early 20s. Just now, I drew a new portrait of one of my favorite elephants 🐘 along with an old one. It’s a gift I kept in my TRUNK! (Elephant Pun) Happy 40th Birthday 🥳 Kelly! 🐘 from Triple P! #ZooAtlanta #AtlantaZoo #ZooAtl #ZooAtlantaElephants #HappyBirthday #Happy40thBirthday #40thBirthday #AfricanElephant #FemaleAfricanElephant #AfricanBushElephant
Happy Fossil Friday! The people at Fernbank just asked, “What do you like about museums?” For me, it’s a lot to explain. But it’s like my second home, and it continues to inspire me. Anyway, this time I thought about sharing with you my greatest fossil in my collection. I have a real hadrosaur femur 🦴 in my bedroom! Really. It was a gift from my Aunt Marie @mtconte for Christmas 2016. It’s from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, so I believe it’s from an Edmontosaurus. The largest hadrosaur in North America. Discovered in 1985, this femur is 13.5 inches long. A 3rd 🥉 of the whole bone. 🦴 Since I read in the card that was found by itself, I wondered why the rest of the body wasn’t there. I also saw punctures in the area with the femur broke. Probably from erosion, but to me those punctures were bite marks, and I had a cast of a tooth of the possible culprit. I took my resin cast of a tooth of a Tyrannosaurus rex, put it in the punctures, and it fit very perfectly! This told me that the T.rex 🦖 bit the femur 🦴 in half. With the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom. I also think the 7 ton predator carried the rest of the carcass away, in its 4 foot jaws. Along with a bitten tail vertebra in a hadrosaur in Denver that healed. We know for sure that tyrannosaurs hunted and ate hadrosaurs. The same thing was true in the Southeast in Appalachia, when tyrannosaurs hunted the elephant sized hadrosaurs in Late Cretaceous Georgia. #FossilFriday #FossilFriday⛏️ #Hadrosaur #Hadrosaurid #HadrosaurFemur #HellCreek #HellCreekFormation #Edmontosaurus #Edmontosaurusannectens #BrokenBone #Femur #FossilFemur #FossilFemurBone #HadrosaurThighBone #FossilThighBone #ThighBone #BiteMarks #Punctures #Tyrannosaur #Tyrannosaurus #Tyrannosaurusrex #Trex #TrexBite #BitteninHalf #EasternMontana #PrehistoricGeorgia #PrehistoricCrimeScene #Montana #MontanaFossils #TrexBiteForce
Last week, the dinosaur 🦕 with the longest neck of any animal had been described! Meet, “Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum.” Named in 1993, this Jurassic Chinese giant hat a neck 50 feet long! Twice the length of a bus! 🚌 #LongestDinosaurNeck #Mamenchisaurus #Mamenchisaurussinocanadorum #Paleonews #PaleoNews2023
Since World Puppetry Day was yesterday, I was getting back into the art of doing it. Last night, I was working on another design idea for the Lophorhothons in The Making of Georgia. Inspired by what I saw and read in Hobey’s Rod Puppetry book. One thing I’m trying to figure out is how I’m going to animate this two of the complicated characters at once. In other words, to do a rod puppet that be operated with just one hand. Specifically, how to make this dinosaur, in this case a hadrosaur go from all fours to 2 legs like a kangaroo. 🦘 It just takes patience, because it takes a while to get your hands 🙌 and your hand muscles to operate the character very naturally. It’s like playing a violin. 🎻 I also need to think about what materials 🪵📦📰🗞️🎨🖌️ I want to make it out of. #WorldPuppetryDay #WorldPuppetryDay2023 #Georgia #GeorgiaArtist #GeorgiaArtists #RodPuppet #RodPuppetry #TheMakingofGeorgia #PrehistoricGeorgia #GeorgiaDinosaurs #CretaceousGeorgia #Hadrosaur #Hadrosaurs #Hadrosauroid #Lophorhothon #Lophorhothonatopus #HobeyFord #SoutheasternDinosaurs #PuppetDesign #CharacterDesign #OneHandPuppet #Decatur #DecaturGA #DecaturGeorgia #DinosaurPuppet #DinosaurPuppets
Happy World Puppetry Day from PALEO-Puppeteer-Productions! 🦖🎭🦴🪵📦🧵🎻🦣🦤🦕🐘🦁🐻👹📰🗞️🔪✂️🎨🖌️🖼️🎎 #WorldPuppetryDay #WorldPuppetryDay2023 #PALEOPuppeteerProductions #PPP #Logo #PPPLogo #PALEOPuppeteer #PALEOPuppets #PALEOPuppetry #TripleP #SimbatheDinosaur #SimbatheTRex #SimbatheTyrannosaurusrex #Decatur #DecaturGeorgia #Georgia #GeorgiaArtist #GeorgiaArtists #GeorgiaPuppeteer #TocattaandFugue #TocattaandFugueinDMinor
Today is also World Day of Theatre 🎭 and Performance 🎭 for Children 👧🏽 👦🏽 and Young People. I was honored to be scientific advisor for the Alliance Theater’s Dinosaur! 🦕 🦖 For the Theater for the Very Young. This is a photo me on the day of its premiere back in 2017. I hope to volunteer at the Alliance again. I do have some ideas for a show for the very young. But they, for now, will have to remain a secret. 🤫 #WorldDayofTheatreandPerformanceforChildrenaandYoungPeople #Alliance #AllianceTheatre #AllianceTheater #Dinosaur #TheatrefortheVeryYoung #Atlanta #AtlantaGeorgia #GeorgiaArtist #GeorgiaArtists #2017
Happy First Day of Spring! Today also marks the birthdays 🥳 🎂 of 2 PBS Kids legends. Big Bird, and Mr Fred Rogers. In the 1970s I think, Rogers made an appearance on an episode of Sesame Street. Also, Caroll Spinney showed up as Big Bird on an episode of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Because that’s what Jim Henson requested. The kids would want to see Big Bird himself. And he was right. #FirstDayofSpring #HappyBirthday #PBS #PBSKids #PBSKidsClassics #PBSLegends PBSKidsLegends #SesameStreet #BigBird #CarollSpinney #FredRogers #MisterRogersNeighborhood
My sister just sent me this link to some news in Savannah GA that happened last Friday, and it was Shocking! It read that on March 9th, a Great White Shark 🦈 that was 10 feet long and weighed 700 lbs, was found off the Georgia Coast! This juvenile female Great White Shark named Hali, was pinged off the coast of Nova Scotia, near Tybee Island! She’s the 75th tagged shark 🦈 in the OCEARCH North Atlantic White Shark 🦈 Study. My puzzle was, “How did she get here?” “What was she doing here?” I remember learning that dolphins 🐬 are usually top predators off the Southeastern coast, and large sharks 🦈 are usually rare here. “Could she be an invasive species, or did she migrate here?” I just did some quick research, and found the answer. This modern relative of the Megalodon migrated to west of the Atlantic Ocean, right here off the coast of Georgia and Florida, to spend the spring. Hali is said to return to back to the New England coast in the north, and back here for summer, then to the coast of Florida for the winter. So when I return to Tybee this year, I’m not sure if I will be able to see her. I never got attacked by any sharks. 🦈 Thank goodness for that. Dolphins 🐬 are more common there. #GeorgiaNews #Georgia #GeorgiaCoast #GeorgiaShark #GeorgiaSharks #GreatWhiteShark #JuvenileFemaleShark #Hali #HalitheShark #OCEARCH #TybeeIsland #CumberlandIsland #OssabawIsland #SharkSighting #SharkSightings #SharkSightings🦈 #SharksofGeorgia
I did see this Spanish Cardinal Robe 👘 in the red section of The Nature of Color, now at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta. Also, this was unexpectedly surprising. Because I didn’t expect any Spanish 🇪🇸 Inquisition. Monty Python: NOBODY Expects the SPANISH INQUISITION! #Fernbank #FernbankMuseum #FernbankMuseumofNaturalHistory #TheNatureofColor #TheNatureofColorExhibit #TheNatureofColorExhibition #CardinalRobe #SpanishInquisition #MontyPython #MontyPythonsFlyingCircus #MontyPythonSpanishInquisition
Happy Fossil Friday! And Happy St Patrick’s Day Me Friends! ☘️🇮🇪🌈💎🥬🍻🍺 I had an idea for this special Fossil Friday Post, in honor of this festive Irish ☘️ Holiday. The Lost Dinosaurs 🦖 of Ireland! 🇮🇪 Ireland isn’t known for dinosaurs, 🦖 and it was once thought they didn’t live there. But then, in 1989, a man named Roger Byrne found a couple of bones. 🦴 Off the coast of Islandmagee, North Ireland. They remained in storage at the National Museum of North Ireland. Then in 2020, Irish paleontologist Mike Simms determined that they were Ireland’s First Dinosaur 🦖 Bones! 🦴 The first dinosaur was a femur of a thyreophoran. A tank like herbivorous dinosaur like Stegosaurs and Ankylosaurs. Comparisons with bones 🦴 from Britain 🇬🇧 proved it was probably a Scelidosaur. Scelidosaurus was the size of a small cow. 🐄 12 feet long, it was covered in boney plates (osteoderms) along its back. There were there for good reason. Because the second dinosaur bone was a tibia 🦴 from a theropod 🦖 a meat 🥩 eating dinosaur! At first it was thought to be a Megalosaurus. But it’s now believed to belong to a Sarcosaur. Sarcosaurus, was a European member of the Dilophosaur Family. At 12 feet in length, it was the size of a Great Dane. The sediment from the Early Jurassic, 190 million years ago, shows that these dinosaurs were swept out to sea 🌊 after death. The find is so important and so fascinating, because it proved that dinosaurs 🦖 had once lived in Ireland! 🇮🇪 #FossilFriday #StPatricksDay #StPatricksDay🇮🇪 #StPatricksDay🇮🇪☘️💚 #StPatricksDay2023 #stpatricksday2023☘️🌈🎩 #Ireland #Ireland🇮🇪 #Ireland🇮🇪☘️ #PrehistoricIreland #IrishDinosaur #IrishDinosaurs #Thyreophora #Thyreophoran #Scelidosaurus #Scelidosaurusharrisonii #Theropod #Dilophosaur #Sarcosaurus #Sarcosauruswoodi #EarlyJurassic #EarlyJurassicPeriod #Islandmaggee #Belafast #IrishCoast #IrishFossils #JurassicIreland #DinosaursinIreland #DinosaursofIreland #TheLostDinosaursofIreland