Mummies and Death Traps
7:48 am
Coming up on the National Geographic Channel this weekend are a couple of dinosaur documentaries, including “Dino Death Trap,” highlighting Jurassic discoveries from China’s Junggar Basin (including the crested tyrannosauroid Guanlong, pictured above). Next in the lineup is “Dino Autopsy,” focusing on what information can be gleaned from the 67,000,000 year-old corpse of Dakota, the hadrosaur mummy who’s been all over the papers of late.
The National Geographic Channel has put a ton of effort into online marketing for these programs, ranging from the silly (dinocentralpark.com, where you get the simulated experience of unleashing a Jurassic roar at unsuspecting passersby) to fairly informational, such as the 3-D Dino Death Trap viewer (scroll down for the link to launch it), which introduces some of the Junggar Basin’s unique paleofauna (toothless, two-fingered ceratosaur?). I must admit, however, most my time on the site was spent trying to uncover theropod bones in the Taipei-style Fossil Hunt game.
ARGH! Pronated hands!