(Rock music theme song) Let's uncrate an adventure
today!
Hello, everybody! Welcome back to PaleoFest
2019! We are here to interview an actual dinosaur!
Ok, I think I'm a little terrified now. Um, I
don't know if I wanna do this interview with
a real dinosaur. Oh no! (dinosaur growls and
chirps) Dinosaur?
Yes?
Can you tell me what kind of dinosaur you
are?
I am a Deinonychus.
A Deinonychus?!
Yep.
That's a pretty cool dinosaur.
I know, right?
Can you tell me about yourself? What kind
of prey did you eat? Cuz you got those teeth
there, and I think I can see what you ate...
Yep. I was a raptor dinosaur. So maybe you've
seen Jurassic Park and seen the Velociraptors.
I love that movie! It's my favorite. Let's
be honest here, who doesn't love that movie?
I know, right? But they got a few things wrong.
For one, the Velociraptors are too big.
They are?
They're huge. They're, like, person sized.
Too big?! What size is a Velociraptor supposed
to be?
Velociraptor was only 6 feet long. That's
like turkey sized.
Turkey?
Now, Deinonychus was 10 feet long, so that's
a little more in the size range of what we're
talking about. And it ate other dinosaurs.
What?! Other dinosaurs!
Yep.
Do you think it would eat me?
Maybe...I don't know. Do you taste good?
I don't know, maybe. Tell me more about this
amazing, beautiful head dress you have here.
Well, I made it.
Wait, you made it? You made your head?
Yep. Because the truth is, I'm not a dinosaur.
Wow! That's crazy! Oh my gosh, I don't even
know what to say right now! So, please, tell
me more about how you made this. This is awesome!
So what I like to do is, I'm an artist, I
like to make things, but I also love dinosaurs.
Don't we all?
So I've always wanted to make myself a dinosaur
costume. I started with the mask because that
might affect how I make the rest of the body.
So I took some materials I had at home, just
some stuff I had been given and assembled
this. I looked online for references about
how the skull looked. I read about the body
covering because one thing we've learned about
raptor dinosaurs like Deinonychus is that
they were covered with feathers. That's another
thing that's wrong about the Jurassic Park
Velociraptors: they should have been feathered!
It seems like they got a lot wrong in that
movie.
Yeah, unfortunately.
I mean, I still enjoy it, don't get me wrong.
They're still absolutely fun movies.
Absolutely.
But, they don't give us a very good idea of
what we actually know about dinosaurs today.
So what I wanted to do was make a costume
that was as accurate as possible so I could
make myself look like a dinosaur. Pad the
body out so I don't look like a person running
around in a costume like a bad Godzilla movie.
Right! Boom, boom, stompin' around. (Odis
laughs)
Nope, I didn't want to do that. I want it
to look like there's a real dinosaur alive
today. So that's what I've been working on.
This is the first version of the mask, but
I've learned more about how to make stuff
and what dinosaurs look like, so I'm working
on a brand new one.
Wow! That's awesome!
I've actually gotten some work done on it
this weekend, to get the skin covering on
the snout done and then pattern out what the
patterns are going to be. This is not what
the final product is gonna look like.
Wow. Do you mind if I give it a little pet,
here?
Sure.
Awesome. Wow, that kinda feels like a real
dinosaur maybe, huh?
Yeah, a little bit. And that's the idea. I
want people to see this and see what a real
dinosaur might have looked like. These are
going to be different stripes of color. It's
going to be the same colors because I still
have the fabric from this because I still
haven't made the full costume. It's a huge
process to try to do something like that.
Seems like it would take very very long time
to do this.
Oh yeah. This has been a dream of mine since
I was in middle school, and I've graduated
college now!
WOW!
So this is a very long term project.
Long time comin', huh?
Mmhmm.
Well, I'm glad that you're doing this. This
is amazing! So, guys, do your research. You
guys can do this if you want to be a dinosaur
like all of us when we were kids, cuz I know
all ya did, you can do this! Go home, try
it out guys, have fun. Thank you for showing
us these beautiful creations that you have
and enjoy the rest of your PaleoFest experience!
Absolutely, thank you.
Thank you so much, guys.
Hey there, how's everybody doin'? Still here,
at the beautiful PaleoFest. Please, tell us
your name.
I'm Daniel Vitkus.
Whaddaya got here? This looks pretty interesting.
Yeah, so this is a caudal, or tail vertebra.
Something a little bit more down here in the
lower part of the tail.
That's actually pretty big, so I'm guessing
this creature's going to be pretty big?
Yeah, this is a large sauropod dinosaur. So,
something more like Apatasaurus, or Diplodocus,
or maybe even Barosaurus. We're not really
able to tell species from one isolated bone.
This was just one bone in the jacket.
Wow, so you said sauropods and all that. How
big do those usually get?
Ones like this from the Jurassic, we know
Apatasaurus got to be about 80-90 feet. The
biggest ones are well over 100 feet long.
Over 100 feet long?
Yes.
That is unbelievably...long. Wow.
They were very large animals. They are the
largest land animals to have ever walked the
Earth.
My gosh! That's crazy. So what are you doing
with it, then?
After we got it out of the jacket, I spent
about a month to two months cleaning off the
dirt and gluing together a lot of the broken
pieces. Now that it's all glued back together,
you'll see a lot of this gray kind of clay
stuff that's in the bone.
Yeah, I see that.
Well, that is what we call Apoxie. Apoxie
is kind of a two part molding clay that is
filling in the cracks, filling in the gaps.
I'm using it to repair the individual parts
that are missing. You can see right about
here there is a gap in the bone. You can see
a lot of those porous structures.
Yeah, wow!
That's where all the blood vessels were. As
opposed to the surface here, which is where
we want the bone to be. So I'm trying to use
enough Apoxie to fill in those gaps and get
it back to looking as close to normal as it
would.
Wow, that's crazy! I betchya that takes a
long time to do.
Yeah, I'm already two months in just repairing
and cleaning and it's probably going to take
another couple of weeks just to do all the
Apoxie repairing.
Wow! Well, thank you so much for taking the
time to show this beautiful specimen.
OH YEAH! Absolutely! (laughing off screen)
This is the lab here at Burpee. You can come
see gentlemen like this working on things
like this. Alright, guys, enjoy!
Hello, everybody. I'm here with Roy Plotnick!
How ya doin', buddy?
I'm doing quite well, thank you.
He's a speaker here at PaleoFest 2019. Can
you tell everybody what your talk was about?
My talk is about not what the past is like,
but what the future is going to be like.
The future?!
The future. So what is today going to be like
a million years from now? We'll look back
and see what kind of fossils they find from
today.
Wow, maybe they'll find my fossil one day!
They could find your fossil. Depends what
happens to you after you die.
And then they can study me and I can live
through the eons and the history books!
They can try to figure out what kind of bones
you have and how that mouth worked and things
like that.
Bones?
Bones.
I don't know anything about the bones, but
please, tell me what is your favorite part
about this weekend here at PaleoFest?
Learning new things. There have been people
here who are just amazing at what they're
doing. New technology, new young people doing
new things, new fossils, it's great stuff.
It really is. So, I have been asking this
question all weekend and it seems like people
have a hard time answering it: What is your
favorite dinosaur?
That's always a good one. I just like...I'm
going to always say Diplodocus. Because it
starts over there and it ends over there and
it's just amazing.
Yeah, you don't know where it begins and ends,
huh?
That's right.
That's what I'm talking about. Alright, thank
you so much for taking the time, Roy. I appreciate
it. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend here at
PaleoFest.
I hope to.
Alright, Roy, thank you so much!
Bye bye.
(Instrumental rock music theme)
