View Full Version : NE's prehistoric dinosaurs
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Mr. Atthapol says media members have been invited to famous tourist destinations in Nakhon Ratchasima such as ASEAN’s largest petrified wood museum ......
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http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/previewnews.php?news_id=255005240016
Looks a tad more interesting than the petrified wood museum in the previous post:
Jurassic Isaan
By Aree Chaisatien
The Nation
All those dinosaurs they've been digging up in the Northeast for years finally have a home - and the Sirindhorn Museum is something to behold
Thailand's northeastern Kalasin province, long known for its pong lang folk music, prae wa silk and the mountains of Phu Phan National Park, is now drawing even more visitors with its dinosaur-friendly Sirindhorn Museum.
Having unofficially opened in April, it's already getting more than 500 visitors a day from across the country. Some 30,000 people came last month alone.
A 90-minute drive from Khon Kaen Airport, the 383-million baht (US$11.95 million) museum is easily found with a string of dinosaur statues pointing the way and a sign out front announcing "I-San Jurassic Park".
The Northeast has one of the country's largest concentrations of dinosaur fossils, as almost 20 years of excavations have shown.
In 1994, 630 bones from at least seven of the giant reptiles - including the long-necked, 20-metre-tall Phuwiangosaurus Sirindhornae - were discovered in Kalasin.
"Bones from Phuwiangosaurus were first found in Khon Kaen's Phuwiang district 13 years earlier, but the skeleton in Kalasin was almost perfect, intact except for its head," says museum director Naramase Teerarungsigul, a geologist with the government's Mineral Resources Department.
"It marked a turning point for dinosaur studies in Thailand, and led to the establishment of the Sirindhorn Museum."
A replica of the gigantic Siamotyrannaus isanensis welcomes visitors inside the entrance. Admission is free until the museum is officially opened - a task awaiting Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, tentatively set for December.
Once past the tyrannosaur of Isaan, visitors encounter a display board offering a thought-provoking definition of the term "survivor".
"Survivors are those who can adjust to the environment - not those who adjust the environment to suit their limitless desires," the display board reads.
The museum's ambition reaches beyond lessons in palaeontology - it aims to instil in visitors a life-long interest in learning, says Siriporn Poncheewin of Rakluke Edutex, the exhibition contractor that also set up Bangkok's Children's Discovery Museum.
Dinosaur footprints lead into a chamber devoted to "The Universe and the Earth", dark but for the glittering of stars on the ceiling. The origins of life are explained, among other things, via some amazing exhibits.
There is a globe with layers that visitors can open one by one, and an aquarium-like panorama that demonstrates how tsunamis occur.
Skeletons of flying lizards soar overhead in the zone called "Mesozoic: the Era of Reptiles and Dinosaurs".
Under the museum's central dome are the reassembled skeletons of the eight types of dinosaurs found in Thailand, from a metre and a half in length to a colossal 20 metres.
The herbivorous Phuwiangosarus lived in the early Cretaceous Period, 130 million years ago, as did Siamotyrannus, eldest of all the fearsome tyrannosaurs.
Similarly, Isanosaurus Attavipatchi is the granddaddy of the world's sauropods, hailing from the late Triassic Period 209 million years ago.
Little Psittacosaurus Sattayaraki, with its parrot-like beak, lived 100 million years ago. Its remains were first found in Chaiyaphum province in 1992.
In "The Life of Dinosaurs", a series of small screens called "ghost boxes" play animations showing how T Rex walked and laid its eggs and how huge herbivores managed to get enough food.
Hi-tech exhibits aren't the key, though, says Chanida Intaravisut, the managing director of Rakluke Edutex. The important thing is to vary the style of presentation.
"Too many plasma screens and nothing else is boring," she says, adding that this exhibit alone cost Bt94 million ($2.93 million).
The museum also houses a research lab where local and foreign scientists will be able to examine the more than 10,000 fossils found in this country since 1976.
In the zone dedicated to the Cenozoic Era - the transition period between the dinosaurs and the age of mammals - shadows on the floor suddenly bloom with animated sunflowers when visitors step on them.
Finally, there is another reminder: "Environment is the key to evolution." The idea is to get people wondering whether what happened to the dinosaurs might happen to man if the global ecology is thrown out of balance.
The Sirindhorn Museum is in Kalasin's Sahatsakhan district. It sits next to Wat Pa Sakkawan, 29 kilometres north of downtown Kalasin on Highway 227. It is open daily, except Mondays and public holidays, from 8:30am to 5pm. Call (043) 871 014 or 871 394.
http://www.asianewsnet.net/stech.php?aid=10622
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Mr. Atthapol says media members have been invited to famous tourist destinations in Nakhon Ratchasima such as ASEAN’s largest petrified wood museum ......
http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/previewnews.php?news_id=255005240016
Remains of the prehistoric day
By Phoowadon Duangmee
The Nation
Publication Date: 18-07-2007
On Nakhon Ratchasima's southeastern edge, not far from where the elephants, monkeys and gibbons entertain kids at Korat Zoo, the new Petrified Wood Museum is offering time travel - 16 million years back, if you'd like to see Siam the way it was in Miocene times.
Local geography researcher Pratueng Jintasakul spent a decade exploring the province's prehistory, and uncovered not just wood turned to stone but sabre-tooth tigers, mammoths and, yes, dinosaurs too.
"The museum is competing with the best of its kind in Asia," says Pratueng, a lecturer at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University. "Besides the fossilised wood, we have specimens from various types of mammoths, the ancestors of elephants."
Doubling as a research centre, the museum has three spacious exhibition halls where the fossils get an injection of hi-tech life through simulations and multimedia.
Visitors take seats in a small theatre for a virtual journey to the very beginnings of time. The Big Bang is explained, and the terrestrial volcanic activity that follows shakes their chairs.
"The stimulation seats are fascinating for young visitors," says a museum staff member, "but we've found that the adults love them too."
The many examples of petrified wood are admirably displayed in their original landscape context. The process of trees becoming rock takes aeons, of course - the youngest "opalised wood" can be 800,000 years old, the oldest petrified timber 16 million years.
"When a tree falls and is buried in mineral-rich water, the organic cells are replaced by minerals like cobalt, copper, manganese and iron oxides," a guide explains. Yet the wood - whether from the trunk, bark or root - retains its appearance in every detail. Even the tree rings can still be seen.
The museum has more than 100 plant fossils that have been identified, many of them unearthed from the sandy banks of the Mool River.
During the Miocene Period, which lasted from 16 million to five million years ago, the province sported ever-expanding grasslands, teeming with huge herbivores, where there is now a mix of rainforest, cornfields and the occasional vineyard.
"The more we look at the sand banks, the more fossils we find," says the guide. "There are remains of creatures such as sabre-toothed cats, three-hoofed horses, mammoths and short-necked giraffes."
These fantastic beasts appear in the museum's second exhibition building, linked to the first by a man-made cave whose walls are adorned with specimens of ancient hyenas, crocodiles and other long-gone local wildlife.
The highlights in the second hall are the artificial skeleton and life-size sculpture of a four-tusked mammoth. But serious zoology buffs will be riveted to a showcase containing the actual remains of the ancient elephant. They appear alongside the skull of a modern elephant - albeit one that's 700,000 years old.
Dinosaurs lurk in the final exhibit hall. Here children of all ages will be excited to see the giant reptiles come to virtual life.
And finally, the grown-ups can look on with envy as youngsters get to play palaeo-prospector at an artificial fossil dig. They're given small brushes to dust away the earth and see what they can discover.
http://www.asianewsnet.net/arts.php?aid=11086
Tracking the Siamotyrannus
By Peter Janssen, dpa
Layers of sandstone dating back to the Jurassic era have been exposed in the Isan plateaus, which are a treasure trove of dinosaur remains
Isan, as Thailand's north-eastern region is known locally, is a hard sell for the tourism industry.
The countryside is typically flat and deforested, making it ideal for growing cash crops such as rice, tapioca and sugarcane but creating a scenery that elicits the same level of appreciation from tourists that the Corn Belt does in the mid-western United States.
However, the geographic history that created this rather tedious landscape makes it exciting for palaeontologists.
About 50 million years ago the Eurasian continental plate collided with the Indo-Australian plate to form the Himalayan mountain range in South Asia. In Southeast Asia, ripples from the same continental crash gave birth to the Korat and Sakorn Nakorn plateaus that comprise what is now Isan.
As a result of these fairly "recent" geological upheavals, layers of sandstone dating back to the Jurassic era have been exposed in the Isan plateaus that have turned it into a treasure trove of dinosaur remains.
Thailand's first dinosaur fossil was discovered in the Phu Wiang hills of Khon Kaen province, 370 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, in 1976 by Sutham Yaemniyom, an employee of the Department of Mineral Resources who was exploring for uranium.
The discovery eventually led to a joint Thai-French palaeontological expedition that in 1982 unearthed Thailand's first major dinosaur site, some 21 bones that turned into the Phuwianggosaurus sirindhornae, a new genus and species of sauropod that was 15 to 20 metres long.
The dinosaur derived its scientific tag from Phu Wiang and the name of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej's second daughter, princess Chakri Sirindhorn, who has demonstrated an interest in palaeontology.
Four other dinosaur species have been discovered in Phu Wiang, including Thailand's own version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the slightly smaller Siamotyrannus isanensis.
Thailand's Siamotyrannus was carbon dated at 130 million years, making it a predecessor of the T-Rex, only 100 million years old.
Also discovered at Phu Wiang were the remains of Siamosauraus suteethorni, a crocodile-looking creature and Compsognathus, the world's smallest dinosaur at an estimated 70 centimetres long, and the Ornithomimosaur, an ostrich-like dinosaur.
Two more new dinosaur species have since been discovered in Chaiyaphum province, including the Psittacosaurus sattayaraki, a parrot-billed dinosaur, and the Isanosaurus attavipachi, similar to the Puwianggosaurus.
Life-size replicas of these "Thai" dinosaurs can be viewed at the Phu Wiang Museum, situated 30 kilometres west of Khon Kaen city. Energetic tourists can also hike to the nine dinosaur digging sites at Phu Wiang, a national park since 1991.
The sites have been sensibly enclosed by cement bunkers to keep amateur palaeontologists and souvenir hunters away.
"Thai dinosaur bones have shown up for sale on E-Bay and at Bangkok's Chatuchak weekend market," said Wickanet Songtham, director of the Phu Wiang Museum.
Although dinosaur fossils are classified as state property, thefts from sites will go unpunished until Thailand passes a fossil protection act, which has been under consideration for three years.
While the Phu Wiang Museum boasts the kingdom's most famous fossil sites, the newly opened Sirindhorn Museum in neighbouring Kalasin province has usurped it as Thailand's prime dinosaur show piece and tourist attraction.
The Sirindhorn Museum, which had a soft opening in April 2007, was built by the Department of Mineral Resources with a 370 million baht (11 million dollars) budget. It is situated about 30 kilometres north of Kalasin town.
The museum's displays have been cleverly composed to explain how Thailand's dinosaurs fit into the bigger evolutionary picture.
There are collections of fossils, both from Thailand and elsewhere, models of dinosaur skeletons, and various video presentations accompanied by dual language (Thai and English) explanations.
The museum also houses Southeast Asia's largest collection of dinosaur bones with more than 800 pieces.
The new museum replaces an older one that was at the same location. It is close to the Phu Kum Khao dinosaur site where remains of seven Phuwianggosaurus sirindhornae were found.
Although the Sirindhorn Museum has started to attract local attention, it remains off the beaten track for most foreign tourists.
"Last year we had 210,000 visitors but during the first seven months of this year we've already had about 300,000," said Naramase Teerarangsigul, Sirindhorn Museum director. "But about 95 per cent of the visitors were Thais, and of the 5 per cent who were foreign most were foreign men married to Isan women."
Information Box:
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Destination: Phu Wiang Museum is 370 kilometres northeast of Bangkok, 30 kilometres west of Khon Kaen city. Sirindorn Museum is 430 kilometres northeast of Bangkok, 30 kilometres north of Kalasin city.
Getting There: Best to drive your own car. Alternatively, Thai Airways and Thai Air Asia flies to Khon Kaen Airport, and public buses are available to Kalasin. Khon Kaen is also reachable by train or tour buses.
Opening hours: Both Phu Wiang and Sirindorn dinosaur museum are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except Mondays.
May expire:
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