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Anatomy of a Dragon and America’s Founding Monsters
October 20, 2018
Sponsored by: Virtual Curation Laboratory @ Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Museum of Natural History
This public archaeology event is timed to coincide with a Dragon Festival at the Virginia Museum of Natural History that mixes art, archaeology, and paleontology to explore the lore around dragons. Zooarchaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Moore of the Virginia Museum of Natural History will compare fish mouths and teeth to the dragon, and consider carnivore skull prominent features for muscle attachments, with bird wings used as an analogy for the flight of dragons. Real and 3D printed replicas will be used in the demonstration, with the latter provided by Dr. Bernard K. Means, Director of the Virtual Curation Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Means will use replicas of mastodon and giant ground sloth bones to discuss why these Ice Age megafauna were a focus of interested by some of America’s founding fathers, notably Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.