How To Build A Dinosaur
Here is professor Jack Horner, the technical advisor for the Jurassic Park movies and the inspiration for the film’s lead character, Dr. Alan Grant, who says: “I’m extremely dyslexic… reading is the hardest thing I do.”
We should all be so afflicted! He loves to talk to sixth-graders because they love dinosaurs… almost as much as he does; and he’s going to tell us how to build a dinosaur!
How To Build A Dinosaur
ADHD Couldn’t Stop Him
At the time of this filming, Jack Horner was the Museum of the Rockies Curator of Paleontology but he has since retired. He is known for his groundbreaking discoveries of the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, the first evidence of dinosaur colonial nesting, the first evidence of parental care among dinosaurs, and the first dinosaur embryos.
Paleontologist Jack Horner discovered the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere. He and his dig teams have discovered the first evidence of parental care in dinosaurs, extensive nesting grounds, evidence of dinosaur herds, and the world’s first dinosaur embryos. He’s now exploring how to build a dinosaur.
His lifelong quest to research dinosaurs was not stifled by the ADHD which kept him from a formal college degree but enabled him to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Montana in 1986 and later be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Now he has a dinosaur named after him! The recently discovered Daspletosaurus horneri, or “Horner’s frightful lizard,” lived in Montana around 75 million years ago and is a cousin of the T. Rex. It stood at 2.2 meters tall and, as its name hints, it had a large horn behind each eye. A scaly face dotted with tactile sensory organs (similar to the ones modern crocodiles have) provided their snouts with sensitivity similar to fingertips. Its discovery provides new insight into how tyrannosaurids evolved. This new species appears to have evolved directly from its sister species, Daspletosaurus torosus. The finding supports the theory of anagenesis, or direct evolution without branching, in which a species changes enough over time from its ancestral form to become a new species.
Jack, widely acknowledged to be the inspiration for the main character in the book and film Jurassic Park is now the Retired Curator of Paleontology of the Rocky Mountain Museum and Museum of the Rockies Emeritus Regent’s Professor, Montana State University