Meeting Your Hero

How many of you have a hero?  

How many of you have actually MET your hero?

Last week while I was out of town, Billy took Will to a very very very cool event at the Houston Museum of Natural Science - The lead paleo curator, Dr. Bob Bakker was having a children's seminar - complete with conversations about which dinosaurs have the most gas, and how to tell if a dinosaur is a meat eater or plant eater (and no - it's not in the teeth!).  

If you want to be cool - and see exactly how awesome Dr. Bakker is (his resume includes Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Jurassic Park), check out this link: http://www.hmns.org/?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=94 

Since I wasn't there -- I know defer the following blogosphere comments to Billy :)

 The event started out with some arts and crafts stations for the kids.  Will saw a "herd" of triceratops kids pass by him so that is what he wanted to do first.  

 Here is a happy and excited Will-Cer-A-Tops 

 Then Dr. Bakker came out and did an impromptu learning series for just the kids that were there early. Will ran up to the front as Dr. Bakker drew all the "major" dino's and gave great "kid" facts about each of them.  Like....hey kids who had worse gas...the T-Rex or Triceratops?  Answer:  Triceratops  Why: Dr. Bakker first made a quick jab that the Triceratops must be a liberal because he had an unsightly amount of hot air coming from his behind....but then worked in that it is incorrect to only look at a dino's teeth to see if it was a meat eater or plant eater.  The real secret is in their midsections and those with the biggest midsections have the most vast network of intestines to break down all the plant matter and coincidentally have the most gas.  

 This is Will with his three dino claws he helped make.  He of course had to "lecture" the kid next to him at the claw station that he was an Allosaurus and not a T-Rex because he had three claws and not two.  

Here is the unveiling of Dr. Bakker's book on dinosaurs.  This is the latest version of the "Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs".  He actually called it the GIANT Golden Book of Dinosaurs at the introduction and someone from the museum said the name of it is the Big Golden Book....which prompted the Dr. to ask if it was too late to change the name, because this book is GIANT.

 This is Will's signed copy of the book.  We were the third from the last in the book signing because we were in the very front of the lecture hall for his speech.  College Carolyn, who never saw a front row she didn't love, would have been proud.  

 Dr. Bakker went over alot of the new discoveries they have found in Texas over the past two years.  This frog-like animal is affectionately known as Fluffer; actually discovered by a local teacher on a public dig with various museum paleontologists.  

This little guy is one of the only mammals around in the Cretaceous period.   Our museum has the only bones of this Cretaceous Taz (head of a Tasmanian devil and bod of an otter) in existence.  

 Will absolutely loved these guys, called "Boomers", one of the strangest amphibians of all time.  In the picture they are fighting attempting to position their head on the bottom of the pond - where the most food can be found.  They fight by swinging their boomerang shaped skulls sideways and hitting the other one as hard as they can.  Will thought that was awesome.  

Here is the star of the show, the T-Rex...only this one looks different.  One of the exciting new discoveries is that the T-Rex was covered in feathers, from head to toe = mind blown.  That blew the kids minds in the crowd too, so much that when Dr. Bakker opened it up for questions three kids asked him about the feathers on the T-Rex.  

 Dr. Bakker also spoke about the softer side of the T-Rex, like why were their arms so tiny.  Well, Dr. Bakker's idea goes back to what some believed back in 1905...that T-Rex was a tickler.  He also talked about how such a scary predator could find a mate and express their romantic gestures.  Well it could reach out to a female and stroke her feathers.  Crazy stuff overall and a great night out.