"Dinosaur Giants" exhibition

January 26, 2000

Paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon from Project Exploration chat about paleontology and the "Dinosaur Giants" exhibition.

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ChicagoSunTimes: Welcome to all dinosaur enthusiasts! Our guests today are paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon from Project Exploration. Paul and Gabrielle have traveled the world in search of buried treasures, uncovering clues of creatures long gone and yet to be discovered. Their expedition to Niger led to the discovery of a new dinosaur species, Suchomimus, whose skeleton is now on display at Navy Pier as part of the "Dinosaur Giants" exhibition. Welcome Paul and Gabrielle!

Paul: Actually Jobaria and Afrovenator are the ones on display right now.

Gabrielle: Hi everyone this is Gabrielle.

Paul: And I'm Paul Sereno and I'm delighted to be here.

Gabrielle: We're ready for anybody's questions.

AlanaMoonstar: Do you think there is anything still out there to discover? And what do you think we might still be missing?

Paul: There are plenty of things to discover; we're only now beginning to understand Africa's dinosaurs, for example. We have discovered nearly half of all known dinosaurs in the last 25 years.

Gabrielle: And there are plenty more discoveries still occurring in North America and close to home.

BrightAngel: What is the difference between an archaeologist and a paleontologist? Don't you both do much of the same work?

Paul: An archaeologist excavates artifacts and human sites. A paleontologist excavates bones and skeletons of animals and also fossil remains of plants.

Gabrielle: The word 'paleo' means ancient, so you can have people studying ancient plants. So when you see the word 'paleo' it's a clue that they are studying something ancient.

DarthWife: While I know you work with dinosaurs, you still must have a personal opinion on what you see as the value of the finding of Kennewick Man. Can you share your views please?

Paul: We love dinosaurs but we have a special interest in human history. And this particular fossil is very important for understanding the legacy of humans in North America. So I really believe we will always be especially interested in our own particular history of the continent we inhabit, and I think it's a very important fossil.

Tuatha: In what ways do mistakes like the case of the brontosaurus, or more recently, the hoax of the fossil that was supposed to be half bird/half dinosaur, make your task that much more difficult?

Paul: When you have fossils collected in secrecy, and bought at markets for money, you always run the risk of embellishment of the remains to increase their value. So particular care needs to be taken when specimens come to light under those circumstances. I think that the scientists involved should have been a little more careful with the Archaeoraptor fossil. But it was very artfully done; it was only discovered after a CAT scan of the fossil and the discovery of parts belonging to the dinosaur. Like the Piltdown hoax, the reason Archaeoraptor survived at least for a month as a hoax was because there are real fossils that look similar; i.e. very primitive birds with bony tails. So in conclusion, the hoax survived for a short time, only because they were imitating a real fossil.

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