Digging up the past St. Isaac Jogues students get a history lesson unearthing dinosaur bones By Julie Stevens C & G Staff Writer After Alex Yarbrough excavated a juvenile Maiasaura dinosaur skull at his school last week, he immediately began hypothesizing to determine how the duck-billed creature became extinct billions of year ago. “Maybe it’s because they got in fights with other dinosaurs. The other dinosaurs killed them,” said the 8-year-old St. Isaac Jogues Catholic School student. Yarbrough’s third-grade classmate Charley Bemiss had another theory. “What if it was when the meteor hit?” asked Bemiss, 8. And just like that, the entire student body became junior paleontologists. Throughout the day on March 16, paleontologist John Ribbing, director of the Dinosaur Recovery Bureau in Rochester, gave the students a history lesson about a time before man walked the planet. “What we are going to do is solve a mystery,” said Ribbing. “We’re going to figure out what could have possibly happened based on the bones that we dig up.” Ribbing said the Maiasaura bones that the students unearthed were from a juvenile that had only grown to 8 feet in length and 4 feet in height. If the dinosaur had grown to maturity, its length would have exceeded 30 feet and it would have weighed anywhere from 4,000 pounds to 6,000 pounds. Students spent the start of the activity digging through the dirt in numerous crates set up on the cafeteria floor, searching for bones that would allow them to reassemble the dinosaur. Students discovered and then carefully dusted off the bones with brushes, assisted Ribbing in putting the Maiasaura skeleton together, and discussed clues that indicated how the dinosaur might have died. St. Isaac Jogues parent Lori Hakim said she learned about the Dinosaur Recovery Bureau on the Internet, and approached the school’s Parent’s Club for help in funding the educational visit. “This is great for us, and it’s very exciting for them,” said Hakim, adding that the project will help the students along with their studies about dinosaurs and fossils. After the students finished the dig, Ribbing described the dinosaur’s physical and behavioral traits as revealed by the bones that were unearthed. Ribbing told students that the brain of the Maiasaura was the size of a human fist, it ran very slow, and the animal had hands with four fingers and feet with three toes, all shaped like shovels. Ribbing speculates that this trait allowed the dinosaur to dig into the ground and pull up roots for meals. Ribbing said a Maiasaura, which means Good Mother Lizard, could eat up to 200 pounds of food per day. Due to how a section of the Maiasaura rib cage was missing and how its hip was shattered, Ribbing told the students that in this particular case, a Tyrannosaurus rex might have knocked down the smaller dinosaur, breaking its hip, and then eating it. Afterward, the students were given a DRB Associate Special Agent ID Card, they viewed a video featuring Ribbing during an excavation trip unearthing a Triceratops in Montana last summer, and were asked to name the Maiasaura. “I want to name it something with duck in it,” said Yarbrough, who said his favorite dinosaur is the Triceratops. “That means three-horned face.” For more information about the Dinosaur Recovery Bureau or to schedule an educational excavation, go to www.dinobureau.com You can reach Julie Stevens at jstevens@candgnews.com