Fun with Science Club®


			A lucky graduate student discovered a new dinosaur. Beth Tyler 06.08.01 Scientists usually attend graduate school, where they take sometimes difficult, but fascinating classes; they learn to do experiments, different kinds of systematic observations, and they write papers. They often get to do fun stuff, too, like take trips to other parts of the world to do research. Josh Smith, a graduate student in Pennsylvania studying paleontology, took a trip to Egypt in 1998 to look for dinosaur bones. He planned on going to a place where a famous paleontologist had found dinosaur bones in the early 1900s. However, he got lost in the Egyptian desert. As he poked his head out of the car window to figure out which way to go, he spotted a dinosaur bone. He got permission to dig in this area and then returned the next year with some other scientists. Not only did they find a lot of dinosaur bones there, but they discovered a new dinosaur noone knew existed. Because the bones they found had several differences from other known dinosaur bones, they knew they had found a new dinosaur. They named it Paralititan stromeri, and classified it in the suborder Sauropods, which includes the dinosaurs with long necks and small heads. This 95 million year old dinosaur is the second largest ever found.


			Stokstad, Erik. 2001. New dig at old trove yields giant sauropod. Science 292: 1623-1625.