T. REX - Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

ABOUT TOWN
MOVE OVER,
T. REX
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
introduces budding paleontologists to
an even bigger predatory dinosaur.
BY CRISTINA ROUVALIS
piny lumbers onto the stage. She
whips around her enormous tail, and
using her powerful jaws steals a fish
right under the nose of Dr. Dino, her human
handler. The kids in the auditorium burst
into laughter.
“Spiny, Spiny,” Dr. Dino scolds the hulking
Spinosaurus, a ferocious meat-eater that, as
it turns out, not only towered over T. rex but
is the first known dinosaur built to swim,
explaining her penchant for fish. “You’ll get
more treats later. I think she’s getting bored.
When she gets bored, she likes to hear a
nice, loud roar.”
S
Though she stands about 10 feet tall and
measures 15 feet long, with a sail protruding
from her hulking back, Spiny has a playful
streak. That’s because she was built as a
6-year-old youngster.
Spiny is played with prehistoric panache
by Kalie Tomiczek, one of the four handlers
of the wearable puppet. By sticking her feet
in Spiny’s feet and using bicycle handles to
maneuver the mouth and eyes, Tomiczek
stomps like a young dinosaur.
“She looks pretty good for a 95-millionyear-old gal,” says Dr. Dino, who is played by
Joe Connelly. He then enlists a few volunteers
What audiences react to is a dinosaur
costume made with the scientific know-how
of Matt Lamanna, paleontologist and
Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s
very own dinosaur hunter.
Lamanna explains that Spinosaurus
first gained notoriety a century ago when
a German scientist unearthed its fossils
in Egypt. But the ancient remains were
destroyed in an Allied bombing of Munich in
1944, leaving researchers without its fossil
record until the recent discovery of new
Spinosaurus bones—including a partial
skeleton—in Morocco.
“When I was a kid, I became fascinated by Spinosaurus. It’s so cool to me that our show is introducing a
new generation to this amazing dinosaur and the world it lived in.” - MATT LAMANNA, CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY PALEONTOLOGIST
Dr. Dino leads the cheer, “Dear Spiny,
you are the fiercest predator in all the land.”
And soon the children and parents seated
inside Gateway Middle School in Monroeville
are shouting out to the mighty Spinosaurus
in unison.
The fun-loving crowd has a front-row seat
for Spinosaurus Encounter!, the new headliner
in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s
Natural History on the Move program, a sciencemeets-entertainment show that travels to
community centers, libraries, and schools
around the region, as well as Children’s
Hospital of Pittsburgh.
The human legs poking out of the latex
costume notwithstanding, the kids suspend
disbelief as they watch the life-size juvenile
Spinosaurus bring its ancient ecosystem to
life in a science-themed assembly, this one
sponsored by Monroeville Public Library.
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to come up to the stage and play hide-andseek with Spiny.
The kids count, “One-Spinosaurus, twoSpinosaurus, three-Spinosaurus,” as the star
of the show hides behind the curtain. A little
boy squeals as he runs across the stage
and points to one big feature.
“Spiny, your tail gave you away again,”
Dr. Dino reports. “She never knows what to
do with that tail.”
Despite this playfulness, the Spinosaurus
Encounter! is big on pint-sized science, a
trademark of Natural History on the Move.
With the basic philosophy that “anyone can
learn science,” Natural History on the Move
reaches nearly 18,000 people a year, says
Pam Brutsche Keiper, outreach program manager. Spiny, for example, stomps on the stages
at Idlewild and Kennywood parks, bringing
natural history lessons to the masses.
While it’s true that Spinosaurus is now
the largest known predatory dinosaur—at
least eight feet longer than the biggest
known T. rex—its size isn’t its only defining
feature. What did it say about Spinosaurus,
Dr. Dino asks the audience, that various
aspects of its body were similar to those
of a crocodile, a whale, and a crane? The
startling conclusion: Spinosaurus must
have lived at least partially in water, making
it the first known semi-aquatic dinosaur.
Lamanna—who was a consulting
expert on several national TV specials
about Spinosaurus—weighed in on the
museum’s purchase of the Spinosaurus
costume for its Natural History on the
Move show. “The first one was clearly
based on the Spinosaurus in the Jurassic
Park III movie, which is pretty inaccurate,”
he recalls. So he asked the designers to
make changes, ensuring Spiny would be
“scientifically legit.”
In fact, every last detail of the show—down
to the kinds of plants used in materials to
advertise the assembly—were well researched.
While Lamanna calls the new design
“waaaay better and certainly more accurate”
than the Hollywood-based costume, the
designers couldn’t accommodate
every single change.
“Based on the most recent
fossil discoveries from
Morocco, the hand claws of Spinosaurus were
probably almost straight rather than strongly
curved,” Lamanna explains. Down the road, an
artist may make that tweak along with minor
modifications to the animal’s hind feet.
Back in the auditorium, Dr. Dino calls a
handful of kids onto the stage, hands them
field vests, and addresses them as doctor as
he teaches them about an environment that
Spiny once inhabited—the Bahariya Oasis
in Egypt’s Sahara Desert. It’s a location the
museum’s dinosaur hunter knows well, Dr. Dino
points out, having prospected there on and off
for the last 15 years. While Lamanna and his
collaborators have only discovered bits and
pieces of Spinosaurus, they did unearth a completely new and gigantic dinosaur species,
Paralititan, during their first expedition to the
location in 2000.
The kids approach the show’s backdrop of
layers of rock, removing sections until they
uncover lifelike replicas of a skull bone of a
giant fish and a fossil crab—items Lamanna
himself found in the ancient ocean where Spiny,
believed to be an adept swimmer, once lived.
Dr. Dino comes up with a catchy chant to
explain stratigraphy, the study of rock layers
and their ages. “New on top. Old on bottom,”
he says, explaining that the older fossils are
buried deeper within the earth.
He also gives the wide-eyed kids a reason
not to pet a dinosaur.
“She almost bit you,” he warns one young
volunteer. “Do you have your fingers and toes?
You have to watch her every second or she
eats everything.”
But this does anything but scare away a
crowd filled with spirited dinosaur enthusiasts.
With a little prompting from their parents,
Jonathon Eisenman, 8, and his friend, Jay Sen,
7, laugh together after the show, reciting the
chant they learned about a new word, stratigraphy. “New on top and old on bottom.”
The kids share a sense of wonder not lost
on Lamanna. “When I was a kid, I became
fascinated by Spinosaurus,” he says. “It’s so
cool to me that our show is introducing a new
generation to this amazing dinosaur and the
world it lived in. Who knows, maybe one of
these kids will grow up to be the person who
answers the many questions we still have
about Spinosaurus.” n
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