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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Barnum in the Washington Post

Barnum received a wonderful review online yesterday from the Washington Post!  Here's the review:

Like the circus showman he was named for, Barnum Brown (1873-1963) was raised to think big — in his case, dinosaur big. He dug far and wide and deep, discovering more dinosaur bones than anyone else ever has. And in the badlands near Hell Creek, Mont., he was the first to find the king of them all, Tyrannosaurus rex. In this engaging picture-book biography, Tracey Fern and illustrator Boris Kulikov supply many distinctive details about Brown, including the spiffy wardrobe he favored and the dancing talents he would occasionally unleash. But they focus on the excitement of fossil hunting. Barnum evidently felt this enthusiasm early on, following his father’s plow to collect the small, ancient treasures it unearthed. His mentor at New York City’s Museum of Natural History thought Barnum “must be able to smell fossils,” but he apparently relished the work involved on and off the digging site. Kulikov’s inventive, playfully skewed illustrations capture Barnum’s ardent curiosity and forceful presence — he often appears larger than life, as when he’s diving off of “Cuba” (seemingly just a few yards wide) to retrieve a fossil. On the last spread, the scale seems about right, but the concept is truly wild: Barnum Brown riding a very-much-alive T. rex through Central Park. He’s so cool he doesn’t need a saddle.
— Abby McGanney Nolan

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Tyrannosaurus Goes to Court

A cousin of Barnum's T. rex recently made the news.  A nearly complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar was up for auction in New York City.  Marc Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, spotted the fully assembled, 24-foot-long skeleton in an auction catalog.  The dinosaur has only been found in Mongolia, and Mr. Norell was concerned that the skeleton had been illegally removed from that country by poachers.  The fossil was purchased at the auction by an anonymous buyer for more than $1,000,000.  However, thanks to a federal civil complaint, the sale was halted and the skeleton is now in federal custody, awaiting resolution of the legal dispute over its ownership.  You can read the full article from The New York Times here.