MEET AUGGIE, CALIFORNIA'S STATE DINOSAUR

Did you know that California had a state dinosaur? Meet Auggie. In September 2017, Augustynolophus morrisi (Auggie's scientific name), was declared the official state dinosaur of California, the only place its fossil bones have been found. It was a large hadrosaur, reaching 26 feet in length and weighed a hefty 3.3 tons. Like all species of hadrosaur, Auggie was a plant eater. Hadrosaurs were one of the few known species of dinosaur that chewed their food.

I first learned about Auggie on a recent visit to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where numerous Auggie souvenirs are featured in the gift shop. The museum also has an impressive display of dinosaur fossils.

I have always been fascinated with dinosaurs and prehistoric animals and written a number of books about them. Here are a few. You can find these books in your library or as ebooks on Amazon.

MARY ANNING, FOSSIL GIRL, Discoverer of Ancient Giant Sea Reptiles

Mary Anning. Illustration by Laurie Caple for Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age by Caroline Arnold

Last night I watched the movie Ammonite, about Mary Anning, the woman who made remarkable fossil discoveries of ancient giant sea reptiles along the English coast near Lyme Regis in the early 1800s. I have long been fascinated by Mary Anning and wrote about her in my book GIANT SEA REPTILES OF THE DINOSAUR AGE. It is illustrated with beautiful watercolor paintings by Laurie Caple. (The book is out of print. You can look for it at your library.)

Although Mary Anning had little formal education, she had an uncanny knack for finding fossils and for understanding how the bones fit together. After excavating her specimens, she carefully reconstructed them and made detailed drawings. She collected fossils for many of the leading scientists of the day. Her work helped develop new ideas about what the world was like in prehistoric times.

Ammonites found at Lyme Regis

Many of Mary Anning's discoveries are on display at the British Museum of Natural History in London. Several years ago I visited the museum and was surprised to find a Mary Anning's look-alike sharing some of the fossils with museum visitors. It almost seemed like meeting Mary Anning herself! You can read about that visit in my post at The Intrepid Tourist.

Project: Peanut Butter and Jelly Geology

I love learning about fossils, and they are often the topics of my books.  When I was a child in Minneapolis, Minnesota, my family used to go on rock and fossil collecting expeditions. I still remember climbing cliffs along the Mississippi river to collect chunks of limestone and the thrill of cracking them open.  If we were lucky, we would find inside the perfectly preserved skeleton of a creature that had lived millions of years earlier. Later, on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon, I remember looking at the layered rock of the canyon walls and learning how each one represented a period of geologic time.

"Earth Sandwich" an edible demonstration of various layers of the Earth's crust

One of my all time favorite classroom projects is making  an “Earth Sandwich” as a model of the layers of the earth.  Each part of the sandwich represents a part of Earth’s crust.  When you cut the sandwich in half, it is a little like looking at the walls of the Grand Canyon.  As you enjoy your Earth Sandwich, you are eating your way through time!
To make your sandwich, you will need:
    pumpernickel bread for coal
    rye bread for sandstone
    white bread for limestone
    peanut butter for dirt
    jelly for oil or tar
    raisins for boulders
    pretzel sticks for fossil bones
My recent books about fossils include Global Warming and the Dinosaurs and Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age.