Paleontologist fascinates with talk in Cody

Of all the animals ever to have roamed Earth, the iconic long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as sauropods stand unrivaled.

  That was a main message delivered not long ago by Dr. Michael D’Emic during a lecture in Coe Auditorium at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. Some 150 persons from youngsters to senior citizens attended the talk during which D’Emic described himself as a vertebrate paleontologist, currently an associate professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, where he teaches a mix of undergraduate and graduate courses in anatomy and physiology, histology, evolution and a two-week summer field paleontology course in Montana and Wyoming.

He explained that vertebrate paleontologists study the fossils of ancient organisms with backbones, or vertebrates, to learn about their behavior, reproduction and appearance. 
In fact, he stated that he has worked and is working on dinosaur digs “near Lovell,” although he declined to be more explicit. Actually, when asked from the audience, “How close to Lovell?” his response was “not too close.”

He said that the Big Horn Basin is rich in dino fossils. He observed that from outer space or on a Wyoming highway map, the basin appears as a giant oval hole about 150 miles long by 80 miles wide.

“The high points of the surrounding mountains reach more than 11,000 feet,” he said, “while the low point of the basin is only 3,500 feet. The Big Horn Basin is a curious bit of topography, and it has one of the best geological stories on the planet.

“In fact, the Big Horn Basin may be the best place on Earth to tell the story of our planet. Because of its geology, the Big Horn Basin contains layers of rock older than 2.5 billion years, as well as many, many younger rock layers. What makes this place so amazing is that it has layers of rock from almost every single geologic time period. If you had to pick one place in the world to tell the story of Earth’s history, you would pick this place. So we picked this place.”

But he further explained that “it’s generally illegal to collect fossils from public land, including national parks and monuments. This includes trading, bartering or selling fossils, and it can be punishable as a misdemeanor or felony. However, you may be able to collect a reasonable amount of common invertebrate fossils for personal use, such as mollusks and trilobites. A reasonable amount is usually up to 10 pounds, OK on private land with owner permission.”

He explained that sauropods, perhaps among the most iconic critters from our past, had quite long necks, long tails, small heads and four thick, pillar-like legs.

“They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land,” he said.

He added that when it comes to sauropods “no other terrestrial creatures have come close to attaining their colossal sizes. They overshadowed all other dinosaurs, from the duck-billed hadrosaurs and the horned ceratopsians to the armored ankylosaurs and predatory tyrannosaurs. Even the mightiest land mammals -- mammoths and rhinoceros-like beasts that were up to twice as heavy as the largest elephants alive today -- were featherweights compared with the biggest sauropods.”

For example, adult elephants weigh from two to seven tons -- “no match” for the 30-to-40 ton Diplodocus and the 88-to-110 ton Argentinosaurus. The latter stood 24 feet tall at its shoulder and had a 30-foot-long neck. Overall, the critter measured from 98 to 115 feet.
Generally, it was observed that several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of more than 50 tons by conservative estimates. But as soon as the first true sauropods evolved near the end of the Triassic (200 million years ago) they reached estimated body masses of 10 tons or more.

Many people can identify the Brontosaurus, a large sauropod, as a group of typically large dinosaurs with long necks and long tails. It lived during the Late Jurassic Period, from about 156 to 145 million years ago. The first recorded evidence of Brontosaurus was discovered in the 1870s in the USA.

The focus of his work, said D’Emic, is that thanks to a wealth of sauropod discoveries during the past few decades, “paleontologists are beginning to piece together the answer” to questions that will reveal “where and when these dinosaurs became giants and the factors that allowed them to evolve extreme sizes again and again over the course of their nearly 150-million-year-long reign.”

And he observed, “They also suggest that, as mind-bogglingly huge as the largest-known sauropods were, even bigger ones remain to be discovered.”