DinoFest '98

DinoFest was a series of big get-togethers for dinosaur fanatics, held in 1994, 1996, and 1998. I was able to attend the 1998 session, which was held in Philadelphia and sponsored by the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. I went to DinoFest '98 with a couple of friends from on-line, Troy Britain and Don Frack. Together, the three of us had a lot of fun prowling around the Academy's own museum and the fossil exhibits at DinoFest. We also took a day-trip to the American Museum of Natural History, and had even more fun there.

We were at DinoFest for a total of five days, Wednesday through Sunday. On Wednesday afternoon, after getting in from the airport, we walked over to the Academy of Natural Sciences to see their exhibits. The Academy has a fossil hall that is small but pretty well done. If you're ever in Philadelphia with some hours to spare, it's definitely worth a look.

At DinoFest, there was an enormous exhibition hall that contained countless exhibits of all sorts of fossils, from Cambrian-age trace fossils to relatively recent mastodons and camels. I shot a couple of rolls of photos there. Below and on the next two pages are some of the best ones.

Deinonychus is a small theropod dinosaur that is probably more famous than it has any right to be, thanks to the Jurassic Park movies. This dinosaur was the actual model for the "raptors" in those films. The man-high raptors of the movies were somewhat exaggerated. Deinonychus and most of its relatives (collectively called "dromaeosaurs") were relatively small. Deinonychus itself was about the size of a wolf.

1. This left-front view of a Deinonychus skeleton shows its rather thin and wiry build. This dinosaur was no sluggish monster like T. rex; it was small and quick, and probably a very dangerous and effective predator.

2. This closeup of Deinonychus's foot clearly shows the huge sickle claw on the second toe. The toes are numbered from inside to outside, so the nearest one, the stub, is toe #1. The big claw is on toe #2, and #s 3 and 4 are the walking toes.

China is a place rich in dinosaur fossils of all kinds and from all times in Earth's history. Many of the dinosaur fossils at DinoFest were from a touring Chinese exhibit, which featured many dinosaurs known from China and nowhere else.

3. This particular mount featured two Chinese theropods. If I recall right, the large one is called Yangchuanosaurus and the smaller one is called Gasosaurus. Fellow shutterbug Don Frack is visible at right.

4. This closer view of Yangchuanosaurus's skull and foreparts clearly shows its impressive mouthful of teeth and very nasty claws. Yangchuanosaurus was related to the better-known dinosaur Allosaurus.

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Photographs of DinoFest exhibits are used with permission. All other contents of this website are copyright Jonathon Woolf, 1998, unless otherwise noted. Please see my Copyright and Legal Stuff page for more information in copyright and reproducing pages from this site.

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