Page 460 - The Secret Museum

apart, each island had its own distinct ‘seed’ for each dinosaur species. As Jeff

explained, ‘We’re looking at the evolution of dinosaurs against the background of a
fragmenting world. What we want to know is, are this dinosaur’s closest relatives
nearby or across the world?’

This skull looks most like that of two other titanosaur dinosaurs, Rapetosaurus
from Madagascar and Nemegtosaurus from Mongolia. All three have a long snout, a
nose-opening that is level with the eyes, and narrow crowns on the teeth. What has
amazed palaeontologists is the discovery that this Brazilian skull is 60 million years
older than the Madagascan and Mongolian skulls. Finding the skull has meant that

they have had to reconsider when the titanosaurs developed their characteristics:
previously, it was thought that these skull features developed after the landmass
broke up, but now it seems they must have evolved when the continents were still
one, which is much earlier than they had thought. Parts of sauropod evolutionary
history may need to be rethought – but this is what science is about.

I was amazed at how fortunate it was that all this happened because one boy went
out for a walk. The curators were less so: it happens all the time in the dinosaur
world. ‘We found dinosaur eggs in India thanks to a cement plant; the workers found

these huge balls, called them cannon balls and kept them on their desk. Some
geologists saw the balls and realized they were eggs. Chance favours only the
prepared mind,’ said Jeff.

Often, palaeontologists turn up in a new area to look for dinosaur bones and ask
locals, such as shepherds – they’re usually the ones who know of unusual bones.
Sometimes, these bones have been exposed for too long to be of use. It is very rare to
find a skeleton as intact as this one because sauropods were so massive the chances
of the rocks they are found in staying in the same position over millennia is slim.

Also, sauropod vertebrae are almost 80 per cent air, which makes the bones light.
This was useful for the sauropod (a lighter neck is easier to lift) but not so handy for
palaeontologists in search of bones millennia later, as they break apart easily.

Pretty much every dinosaur exhibit you have ever seen in a museum will be a cast
of the original bones. Sometimes, it will be a mixture of real bone and cast. The
bones themselves are simply too precious, both for their rarity and their importance
from a research perspective, to be put on display. The skull I saw was packed in
foam, away from prying eyes and bright lights. Not only will dinosaur exhibits more

often than not be casts, but also, often, they don’t even have the right head.

In London, the dinosaur at the Natural History Museum affectionately known as
‘Dippy’ the Diplodocus (star of the 1975 Disney film One of Our Dinosaurs is
Missing) is a cast of a Diplodocus skeleton found in Wyoming in 1899. It was found
on an expedition funded by a Scottish-American businessman, Andrew Carnegie. It
turned up on 4 July, so one team member suggested calling it the ‘Star-Spangled
Dinosaur’. Carnegie’s friends called it ‘Dippy’, and the name stuck.

King Edward VII saw an illustration of Dippy and asked for a plaster-cast copy