A New Beginning...

Hello and welcome dear readers to my humble abode. This is my starting post to a blog that will hopefully turn out to be a good permanent residence for my writings and rambles. What are the topics of these writings gonna be? Mostly extinct animals and paleontology in general, I hope, but I also plan to use this blog to write about quite a bit more than that. I have many interests covering a wide range of topics, and because of that, I hope to use this blog to talk a whole range of things that I, and I hope readers, finds interesting.

First thing's first though: disclaimers. Although I will be writing about dinosaur-themed topics as well as various other interests of mine, I want to make clear that I'm simply an enthusiast, and not a actual paleontologist with any form of degree. I have a volunteer job at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum where I work as an educational docent, have taken classes on paleontology and geology, and have published writings in online magazines, but everything posted here doesn't come from an "expert". Just someone who loves to learn, and loves sharing what he has learned with others. If you want to read from actual experts, there's plenty of other blogs out there that can fulfill your wishes, such as TetZoo, SV:POW, and Mark Witton's Blogspot.

I hope to use this blog to introduce people to new ways of looking at science. Whether it be hard factual discoveries that shape the way we perceive the past, to speculative sciences that allow people to see things they find familiar in a new light. This is a place to educate those who know little, while also enriching the experiences of those that know much.

As such, this is also a blog that will openly take requests if people wish to learn more. I will be sure to take the time to read every post made here, and if anyone wishes to pass me a question, either here, on Facebook, or some other form of media, I'll try my best to answer it.

And with that, I thank you all for joining me at my new location. I'll leave you all with a rather popular picture of the LA Natural History Museum's famous mount of a Triceratops prorsus (LACM 59049) and Tyrannosaurus rex (LACM 23844).

Picture by yours truly, with shameful iPhone quality to boot.

We at the museum call this T. rex Harley, after the late Harley Garbani who discovered most of our institution's Tyrannosaurus. When he was unearthed in the late 1960s, his bones were disarticulated and scattered, and most of the body was missing; but the head was largely complete. It was so complete, in fact, that Harley (the dinosaur) held the title of the most complete T. rex skull of in the world for a long time. That is, until more complete Tyrannosaurus like Sue (FMNH PR 2081) beat him out in the late 1990s. That head, however, isn't displayed on this mount. The head shown is a lightweight cast, built to be replaceable in case it ever falls due to California's infamous earthquakes or other disasters. His real, concrete-filled skull is in a well-protected display case in our Dinosaur Hall.

Pictures of that will be coming soon! Cheers! :)