An Exciting Find

By Reviewed by Sidney Barritt

Eight years ago, Tyler Lyson, then a 16-year-old high school student and now a graduate student in geology and geophysics at Yale, discovered a piece of fossilized dinosaur tail vertebra while out hunting on his uncle’s farm in the Badlands of North Dakota. Now he and a team of experts in various disciplines related to paleontology have excavated the entire beast, not just the bones but also fossilized skin, tendons, ligaments, etc. These additional finds raise the exciting possibility that some original organic molecules may be extracted from the fossil; this would offer considerable insight beyond what bare bones can offer.

Phillip Manning, himself a member of the team, a paleontologist, museum curator and fossil hunter, has stitched together a very readable account not just of the dinosaur’s discovery, exhumation and reconstruction, but also of the history of dinosaur prospecting and how current cutting edge technology can simulate processes in the lives of the dinosaurs millions of years ago.

National Geographic television aired a documentary on this topic in early December. The book is a little more complex than a television documentary but potentially rewarding for the reader looking for more than a quick glance into the world of the dinosaurs.

GRAVE SECRETS OF DINOSAURS: Soft Tissues and Hard Science By Phillip Manning. National Geographic. $28

SIDNEY BARRITT is a Roanoke physician.

(c) 2008 Roanoke Times & World News. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.