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of the Sternberg Museum, highlighted several
paleontology research projects now under way,
including a dinosaur dig in southeastern Colo-
rado and an international research project in
Meade County, Kansas, with scientists from
Spain and Italy, on several million years of ro-
dent evolution.
The Sternberg Museum's holdings include
more than 3 million specimens, including
more than 2 million fossils. The paleontol-
ogy collections contain some of the finest
Cretaceous era fossils ever found. Its col-
lection of flying reptiles is recognized as the
third best in the world and its collection of
mosasaurs and plesiosaurs have some of the
most complete specimens of those animals
in any museum.
The famous Fish-Within-a-Fish is
unique.
Altogether, the museum houses collec-
tions representing the disciplines of paleontol-
ogy, geology, history, archaeology and ethnol-
ogy, botany, entomology, ichthyology, herpetol-
ogy, ornithology and mammalogy.
The news conference ended in a tour of
the museum's rooms containing the various col-
lections and areas where specimens and displays
are prepared. The tour also included the recently
completed permanent geological exhibits on the
museum's main floor.
The preceding press release is from Fort Hays
State University.
During Greg Leggett's tour of the Sternberg
Museum, he discussed some of the current
thinking (fact and conjecture) about the Smokey
Hill chalk sea(80--85 million years ago) and
the creatures associated with it:
There was abundant sea life, but low diversity
of species.
The sea depth varied between 200 and 600
feet, and possibly as deep as 1000 feet.
The fossils are well preserved because the sea
floor was anoxic. It would seem that a shallow,
continental sea would be an oxidized environ-
ment. Mr. Leggett explained that no one knows
exactly why the seafloor was anoxic, but many
think it was due to weak or nonexistent currents
at the bottom of the sea.
Pterosaurs have long been regarded as gliders.
Recently, many scientists think that they were
true fliers, with the ability to take off under their
own power. Their reptilian metabolism may
have enabled them to take off with lower energy
requirements than birds. Pterosaurs have been
found at the Graneros--Greenhorn boundary
(92 million years ago).
Dinosaurs found in Kansas lived and died on
land in Colorado. Their bloated bodies were
swept out to sea and sank in Kansas.