Re: Discovery Channel's "Beasts in Your Back Yard"

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 11:01:40  
 christopher robert noto wrote:
>I think that because we know that relevant dinosaur fossils are not found
>everywhere in the US, the Discovery Channel took some liberties in
>generalizing the dinosaur distribution database in order to make it
>relevant to  everyone.  I doubt many people would be impressed if a "no
>significant material" message popped up instead of a name.  I live in
>Chicago and they said Hadrosaurus lived around here, though I know very
>few (if any) Cretaceous terrestrial rocks outcrop in Chicago.  We're a
>Paleozoic town.

Chris and group,
I live in Ottawa, IL (about 75 miles from Chicago) and Hadrosaurus is listed 
for my ZIP Code, also.  That is a bunch of @#&$%, since the only bones found in 
this area are very small fragments of amphibians and fish (the Pennsylvanian 
bones that I mentioned last week).  This area is all Pennsylvanian and 
Ordovician, and Chicago itself is actually mostly Silurian.  The only Mesozoic 
rocks in the state of Illinois are located in a narrow band in the west of the 
state and another small band in the south.  In these formations (the Baylis 
Formation), only fragments of plants are known.  People have been searching for 
dinosaurs for years, but nothing has been found.  So, to keep it short, no 
dinosaurs in Illinois, yet two different ZIP codes give Hadrosaurus ???!!!

I agree, though, that a "no material found here" line would draw people away 
from the site, instead of luring them into clicking on the link, which takes 
them to another page with advertising :-)))

Outside of that, though, I think the site is really interesting.  

Steve

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