Not a Dinosaur!

Yesterday evening we went to the Utah Museum of Natural History. Livy did surprisingly good. I always worry that she will scream or act out while we are in public. Even though my opinion of children has changed since I became a mother, there are still somethings that I can not stand. That would be unruly children that obviously the parents are doing nothing about. I know that children will be children, but when they are in public running around, screaming and continuously bumping into you something needs to be done about it. This is a completely different topic for a completely different day.

So at the museum we saw lots of rocks, fossils and bones. There was a large collection of Native American artifacts, specifically the Indians that live in Utah. From the Freemont to the Ute and Navajo.

Livy was fascinated with the temporary exhibit of Wild America. The exhibit talked about different wildlife refuges in the U.S. starting with Pelican Island in Florida to various ones in Alaska. Livy could care less about that, what she loves was seeing the taxidermy pelicans, grizzly bear, elk, ducks, cranes and wolf. She did correctly sign bear. (*Proud Moment*)

The largest exhibit was of the Dinosaurs. Not nearly as impressive as Dinosaur National Park in Vernal, but still very interesting.

There was one exhibit that caught my attention. It had a large sign saying, "Not a Dinosaur."

"Despite what you might expect, this extinct animal is not a dinosaur. Dimetrodon had sharp serrated teeth and strong jaws for tearing flesh, and like T. rex it was the top carnivore of its time. However, Dimetrodon actually lived millions of years before T. rex during the Early Permian Period (about 275 million years ago) and is an early relative of mammals, so it is more closely related to you then to T. rex!"

So this is a Dimetrodon---