How Big Is BIG? Well, the TITANOSAUR IS TITANIC!
Here's today's challenge: how many words can you think of to describe something that's really, really, really, really big?
Huge? Humongous? Tremendous? Colossal? Immense? Hulking? Humongous? Mammoth? Monster? How about TITANIC?
I adore the American Museum of Natural History. It's one of my favorite places in New York City to go and play. I can spend all day there wandering from dinosaurs to the blue whale to the stars. So, yesterday, I was ready for a break from the cold. What better place for an indoor adventure?
The museum just opened a new exhibit called TITANOSAUR and I was dying to see it. This Titanosaur skeleton was found in Argentina in 2012. Just like its name suggests, this 122 foot long dinosaur is TITANIC! GIGANTIC! HUGE! (Titanosaur, Titanic, get it?)
I tried really hard to get a great photo, but it was just too big! How big? Draw a line on the sidewalk with some chalk. Start walking from that line. Take 122 steps. Look back to your line! That will be a little less than 122 feet, depending on your shoe size! But walking about 122 feet should give you a sense of how big it is.
You're probably familiar with one of the big bad boys of the dinosaur world, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. To give you an idea of how big it is, here is my best photo of the Titanosaur next to a photo of the T. Rex (also at the museum).
The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of several dinosaurs in a room. The Titanosaur has a whole room to itself AND its head still sticks out into the corridor because it's so big!
Scientists are still learning about the Titanosaur. The Titanosaur is the name for a group of dinosaurs that lived 100 million years ago. They do know that they were herbivores, meaning they ate plants. So, even though this Titanosaur has a serious set of teeth, it's nothing to worry about! Also, scientists were excited to learn that this Titanosaur skeleton belongs to a brand new species of dinosaurs! It's so new, they don't even have a name for it yet. Isn't that cool? What do you think they will call it?
Now, if the Titanosaur was made out of real bones, it would be really, really, really heavy. The Titanosaur that you see at the museum is a replica. It's life-sized, but made out of fiberglass, which is much lighter than the real bones. Here are some photos of the museum's exhibit in the making.
SO... if you visit, make sure to go over to the exhibit at the very edge of the room. There, you can see the actual bones! Not replicas! The femur of the Titanosaur (the part of the leg that stretch from your knee to your hip) is over 8 feet tall. Here I am next to the femur bone! I'm pretty short!
I hope you get a chance to see this new dinosaur. It's pretty spectacular! And, if you do, see if you can do a better job than me showing how GIGANTIC it is!
PS: Don't worry! I stopped by to see the big, blue whale too and all of my ocean friends in the Hall of Ocean Life! More on that some other time!
