The Four State Museum of Natural History

12/18/2023

We've just added our second pterosaur! This is the skull of Dimorphodon, a medium-sized pterosaur from Europe during the early Jurassic Period (about 201-191 million years ago).

12/03/2023

Make a wish!
A furcula is a forked bone found in most birds and many species of predatory dinosaurs that are formed by the fusion of the two clavicles- commonly referred to as a "wish bone." Here we have the smallest example in our collection (circled in white) next to our largest one- the smallest belonging to our Microraptor, while the biggest is from a T. rex!

11/12/2023

After a day of prepping, painting, and a little research, here's our finished baby Triceratops skull! Once again, we really cannot thank Joe Goda enough for this fantastic donation!

11/11/2023

We just had this super cool piece donated to the museum- the skull of a baby Triceratops! This animal would have been around 1 year old when it died and about 3 feet long! The fossil that this is made from were discovered by amateur fossil hunter Harley Garbani in 1997 in Montana's Hell Creek Formation.

11/08/2023

Our newest piece is officially all done! Here is the full sized skeleton of the tiny dromaeosaur (raptor) Microraptor next to the foot of the largest known member of the group, Utahraptor. It really puts into perspective just how varied raptors were across time and continents- truly one of the success stories of the Mesozoic.

11/05/2023

We are happy to introduce the first of our fully articulated skeletons- Microraptor!

09/25/2023

We're getting an update!
While we've had the skeleton of Microraptor as it was first discovered on display for quite some time, we will now be adding a fully articulated skeleton of this ferocious, flying little raptor!

09/21/2023

It may not look like much at first glance, but that odd chunk of bone (or in this case, a cast of bone) is the parietal crest- one of the adaptations that helped give T. rex its legendary bite.

09/21/2023

09/13/2023

We've got two new faces on the way! Our first hadrosaur- the duck billed dinosaurs- will be this juvenile Maiasaura. And the first of our pterosaurs- the flying reptiles who lived alongside dinosaurs- Rhamphorhynchus!

11/21/2022

The Dinosaur Park Formation would have been a much noisier place 76 million years ago- 4 separate genera of hadrosaurs would have been hooting and trumpeting across the floodplains of North America, with 2 of them sporting the large tube-filled "resonating crests" attached to their nasal passages that would have allowed them to vocalize even louder.

11/20/2022

This is the flag of the Chernyshevsky District in Russia, and it features the Jurassic neornithischian dinosaur Kulindadromeus! The discovery of this little dinosaur led to a lot of questions regarding the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, as they had previously only been found in theropods. 3 sorts of feathers were fossilized, as well as a variety of scales- hair-like fuzzy "proto feathers," longer branching feathers typically seen in theropod dinosaurs, and a unique 3rd sort made up of bundles of six or seven ribbon-like structures.

11/18/2022

This is the holotype of Dimorphodon that was discovered in 1828 by the English paleontologist Mary Anning, who also happens to be one of my personal heroes. The other image is a drawing done by her brother Joseph of the find using reconstituted belemnite ink from the finds at Lyme Regis- an ink actually made from the fossils of ancient cephalopods! The remains are now in the Natural History Museum, London, though they aren't on display.

11/07/2022

We don't have many bones from the Mexican ornithomimosaur dinosaur Paraxenisaurus, but we do have just enough of the right bones to suggest something very exciting- that it was the first known North American Deinocheirid. The remains were of an mature animal, allowing for an estimate of 20 feet long and 1,300 lb.

Information from the paper," Paraxenisaurus normalensis, a large deinocheirid ornithomimosaur from the Cerro del Pueblo Formation, Coahuila, Mexico," by Claudia Inés Serrano-Brañas, Belinda Espinosa-Chávez, S. Augusta Maccracken; Cirene Gutiérrez-Blando; Claudio de León-Dávila; José Flores Ventura.

Artwork by Daniel Barrera Guevara

08/31/2022

While it's true that Ceratosaurus was only a medium sized predator compared to other carnivorous dinosaurs in its environment, it's also important to remember just how big a "medium sized predator" actually was in North America during the Jurassic period.

08/27/2022

"I could probably take a dinosaur the size of Deinonychus in a fight!"
No, you really probably couldn't.

08/19/2022

Which team does the little guy in the middle belong to? Some studies place the very early dinosaur Eoraptor with the theropods like the Velociraptor on the left, but others have found it firmly in the group sauropodomorpha like the gigantic long necked Camarasaurus on the right. They might have even existed at a point when the two groups were starting to diverge away from one another, making the situation extra tricky.

08/16/2022

I'm starting my next fundraiser!
This time I'm aiming for the skulls of Saurolophus and Pinacosaurus, which would complete the major branches of the family tree for the museum! Being able to cover all of the major groups has been one of the big milestones I've set for the project, and it's exciting to be this close!

Everything helps- donations, shares, even just well wishes! It's all appreciated!
https://gofund.me/4aea4416

07/06/2022

Stegosaurus had a surprisingly powerful bite for an herbivorous dinosaur- similar to that of living mammals like sheep and cows. This would have allowed the low browsing Stegosaurus to eat a wider variety of plants in its Jurassic environment. Stegosaurus is also one of the dinosaurs I teach about- our collection includes a skull, tail spikes, and back plates!

07/02/2022

I've added a couple of new skulls to the collection, and I can't wait to show them off! The first is the massive skull of the long necked dinosaur Camarasaurus, which would have weighed up to 50 tons when alive! The other is Pachycephalosaurus, who is famous for the thick dome of bone on its head that may have been used for ramming.

06/11/2022

Out at Commerce Days in Commerce OK today and I've already had plenty of questions about and - thankfully I've already already watched them both a few times now!

06/09/2022

Now here's something you don't see every day- the parietal bone of a , specifically a T. rex named Dynamo. It's a little mind-blowing just how big and robust this single bone in their skull was! The first picture is the "top" of the bone and shows the sagittal crest, which was a vital piece of the cranial anatomy that gave T. rex it's legendary bite force!
The second picture is the "underside" that normally isn't in view, so you may well have never seen it before!
Diagram by Scott Hartman

06/07/2022

This poor Dilophosaurus really had a rough life- it had a record breaking 8 different bone pathologies associated with its arms! This even includes a finger that became so permanently deformed that the poor animal lost the ability to bend it.

06/05/2022

One of the unique features that helped sauropods get so big was a system of air sacs that left telltale marks on many of the bones. These allowed the animals to be lighter, especially in their massive necks, and to have a specialized form of breathing.

06/02/2022

I'll be doing a thing this Saturday with Fossil Crates!

05/31/2022

We've some upgrades to two of our skull replicas from the incredibly talented Scaled Beast compay- Velociraptor and Eoraptor! These new additions (on the right in these photos) are larger and tremendously more detailed! I'm looking forward to showing them off at our next display!

05/28/2022

Futalognkosaurus was a massive titanosaur from the late Cretaceous period of Argentina. Its long neck was made up of 14 vertebrae and was over a meter deep in places due to its extremely tall neural spines which had a distinctive "shark-fin" shape.

05/25/2022

Time for a nap and then right back up for some Zoom calls with kids to talk about how awesome dinosaurs are. Pterosaurs and aquatic reptiles will probably get an honorable mention, too.

05/11/2022

Due to a variety of primitive traits, it has been hard to decide just where Herrerasaurus sits in the dinosaur family tree. It might have been an early theropod, an early sauropodomorph, a basal saurischian (before the theropod/sauropod split happened), or not even a dinosaur at all! Herrerasaurus is one of the Triassic dinosaurs that we feature in our setups!

04/16/2022

We're here at City Hall in Commerce with our free dinosaur museum, feel free to drop in! Just look for the big T. rex out front!