Because I Can't Wait for Jurassic World .... Dinosaurs!!!

I am a HUGE dinosaur person! I've always loved them. At the beginning of my first book, Acea and the Animal Kingdom, Acea would spend his recesses in elementary school digging through rocks at his playground looking for dinosaur fossils. This was actually me. I used to come back to class with pockets full of rocks that I thought were fossils or footprints. Naturally, dinosaurs were then featured prominently at the end of my trilogy in Acea and the Adventure Thru Time.

So, I can't wait for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to come out! Part of it is nostalgia with wanting to re-live my memories of being enthralled with Jurassic Park as a kid. But the other part of it is that it's just way awesome to see dinosaurs on the big screen!

In anticipation of JW, we went to our local dinosaur museum (Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point, Utah).  We loved it!  We'll skip to animal facts for today - and instead just post some pics of the dinosaur fossils we encountered:

One of the coolest things we did was cleaning fossils of fish - real fossils that came from a Wyoming quarry. I'd been wanting to go to that quarry for a while now, and so getting to finally see those fish fossils in person was great. And we got to keep them!

Worm from Hell? It's the Hyrdothermal Worm!

Ever watched tremors and wondered if worms like that really exist? They don't. But something that's just a creepy-looking-cool does exist: the Hydrothermal Worm!

The little guys are ... well ... little! The below image is zoomed in 525 times and was taken by an electron microscope. They are actually about the size as bacteria. But most people will never encounter these things, so no need to fear. They are deep sea creatures that live primarily next to hydrothermal vents deep in the sea.

Still ... there's something about this picture that makes me thing "Worm From Hell."

(Photo credit: Philippe Crassous & FEI)