Day 2 of Big Sky Country

Today, I headed over to the Museum of the Rockies (MOR), on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman. It is always a reinvigoration of my childhood when I get to go to a museum with a dinosaur exhibit. As a child dinosaurs were what I loved, I read books about them, drew pictures of them, and would try to get my hands on anything dinosaurs. Jurassic Park is still, to this day, one of my favorite all time movies - the film brought many creatures I had read about to life. I'd attribute the film to sparking a greater interest in watching movies too. The state of Montana is one of the epicenters of the paleontologic community as many dinosaur skeletons and fossils have been found there. One of the most notable paleontologists, Jack Horner, is a Montana native and is the Curator of Paleontology at MOR. Horner was an advisor for the Jurassic Park films and was an inspiration for the character Dr. Alan Grant. The museum was great. It's not a very large museum, but the halls that housed the dinos were quite impressive. Almost all of the castings and real skeletons of dinosaurs came from Montana. The museum boasts the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the world. The exhibits have many interesting theories about dinosaurs that I had not heard before. A couple that struck me included T-Rex being a scavenger and ceratopsians'(horned dinosaurs) horns were used for species recognition. One amazing discovery the museum houses is a bone of a T-Rex found in Montana that is the first fossil containing soft tissue - quite a find! Below are just a few pics of the museum.





After work at the airport and seeing lots of bones in the museum, I was hungry and sort of in the mood for some ribs. I stopped in at Bar 3 BBQ. I got a half a rack of St. Louis ribs and I have to admit, I've never had to work so hard to clean off a half rack. The ribs were huge and they don't trim off a lot of the meat like other places do. The sides I chose (garlic mash potatoes and baked beans) were a bit dry, but they did the trick. Definitely another filling meal in Montana.