In February of 2002, we were treated to a personal tour of the Waterhouse Hawkins dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Park in south London. While it was closed to the public, we donned hard hats and safety vests and met up with Dr. Peter Doyle who took us through the mud to see the reconstruction efforts (which opened to the public about a year after our visit, but could only be viewed from a distance even though we got up close and personal!). Waterhouse Hawkins designed and created life-sized models of dinosaurs, which were supposed to be accurate but have been proven incorrect since he created them in the 1850s. In case you don't know, Walt is a science teacher and dinosaur fanatic, and has used the tour yearly in his lesson plans to show how our understanding of concepts change as new information becomes available.
Why am I telling you this? On the weekend we tuned into the History Channel, and there was Dr. Doyle supervising and archaeological dig of the WWI trenches in France and Belgium. While dinosaurs are his specialty, which he teaches at Greenwich University (and he recently discovered a large, fossilized Mosasaur puke pile), the battlefields of World War I are his hobby. It was cool to see him on TV. If you have the chance to watch the show, I highly recommend it...I think the title is something like "Digging Up Trenches".
These are photos from our 2002 private tour of the dinosaurs. Our thanks continues to go out to Dr. Doyle for taking the time to meet with us - a meeting which has added to the science education of hundreds of middle school students!
That is totally awesome. I'll have to check out the show.
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