Not many updates for March!

[richard]

I've turned the calendar over and it looks like most of my Saturdays are busy - Saturday mornings are when I usually add new pages. I'll be prioritising on PH.Groom's photos, and some other relatively minor updates when I have time in the evenings.

This Saturday I'm co-leading a Univ. of Dallas field trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park. We intend to have a bunch of students who have never seen geology or palaeontology, do things like calculate dinosaur speeds from footprints, disprove the depictions of two World Fair dinosaur models that are at the park, and give them a taste of field geology.

Then the week after, it is the Fort Worth Show. Our club has invited some of the regional modular clubs, and we'll have a layout approx. 45x50ft. Rather than a big rectangle, we design out setups with smaller loops and 'arms' to make it more interesting. So lots of scale miles!

The weekend after is actually still clear - so perhaps the J21 page will go up then.

The final weekend, I'm judging at the Regional Science Fair! I've done it a few times before and is good fun. Science Fairs are a good idea - perhaps the UK should have them?
Basically they're science projects from schoolkids - tiny little research projects. The best from each school go the Regional competition, and then on to the National Final. Although I put my name down for a few subject areas, I usually end up judging "Junior Physics". The quality of entrants varies from year to year, but there have been some good projects in the past.


Richard

[richard]

And now the 'free' weekend has filled with long weekend up in the Texas Panhandle in the Quitaque/Turkey area (about 90 miles south of Amarillo). For one of the days, we'll probably hike or bike on an old railroad line. I've hiked it before - about 4 miles in, you come to "Clarity Tunnel" which was the last railroad tunnel in Texas when it closed in the 1980s (*). Now it is just occupied by Mexican long tail bats.

Saturday's dinosaur trip went well. Found a lot more fossils than usual - including 5 types of Cretaceous snail, which I'm sure you'll all be impressed with



(*) Dallas' DART light rail now has at least one tunnel and even an underground station.

[richard]

The University newspaper has an article about Saturday's little dinosaur excursion:

http://www.udallasnews.com/media/paper7 ... asnews.com

I'm in the photo but you can't see my face (I have a rucksack on, and leaning forward over a book trying to identify a fossil).


Richard

[TimMeese]

Hi Richard - now, I've been to a place in the states called 'Dinosaur' about 20 year sago, but as I recall that was in Colorado (+/- a several hundered miles; we drove coast to coast). Is that the same place as Dinosaur Valley State Park?
Anyway, we do have science fairs in the UK, and they seem to be growing in popularity, though I'm sad to say I've always been too busy to contribute. Still, great stuff.

cheers
t.

[richard]

A quick google comes up with Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, near the Utah border - which is probably where you went?

http://www.nps.gov/dino/

- dinosaurs, and where the Powell Expedition entered the Colorado River.

Dinosaur Valley State Park is in Texas. Glen Rose. About 90mins drive SW of Dallas-Fort Worth. It is a small park, but has better hiking that most of the state parks in the DFW area (most are really water reservoirs that have boating and fishing, walking being an after-thought).
The Glen Rose limestones are known for their dinosaur footprints. The first sauropod prints were discovered here, and at least one trackway is in the American Museum of Natural History.

Yes I'm the admin/owner of this site, and I live in Irving, Texas!!
(I grew up in the Leeds area, and a Yorkshireman through and through - I was probably the only one wearing a white rose at the open air "Richard III" last summer )


Richard

[TimMeese]

Yep - that's the one.
(I'm a white rose man too)

t.