Vertebrate Paleontology curator Richard Cifelli sits under the lights during a Discovery Channel shoot in the collection

Vertebrate Paleontology curator Richard Cifelli sits under the lights during a Discovery Channel shoot in the collection

Last Friday the museum hosted a film crew working on a new program for the Discovery Channel. The show will focus on Prehistoric Predators, and one of the predators being showcased is Deinonychus, the little “kick-boxing” raptor showcased in our Coastal Cretaceous diorama.

Deinonychus was not a big dinosaur, but seems to have packed a powerful “punch.” Its name means “terrible claw,” after the wicked-looking cocked-back claw on its feet. Scientists think it likely hunted in packs, based on teeth and other remains of Deinonychus found among the remains of tenontosaurs. A grouping like that was found by our curator of vertebrate paleontology Rich Cifelli and his team down in southeastern Oklahoma: tenontosaurs with teeth of Deinonychus scattered among the remains and even embedded in the bone, plus the broken remains of one unfortunate Deinonychus that looks like it had an unfortunate encounter with a Tenontosaurus‘ powerful tail. It looks like they likely came at in groups and attacked feet-first, ripping with those mighty hind claws.

The crew interviewed Dr. Cifelli in the vert. paleo collection during the afternoon, and then spent hours Friday night lighting and shooting the exhibit.

This is a dim iPhone photo, but you get the idea. You can see Marc and the camera in the foreground. Brian, the lighting guy, is in the back, adjusting the pipe and drape backdrop behind the tenontosaur. On Marc's screen you can sort of see the shot.

This is a dim iPhone photo, but you get the idea. You can see Marc and the camera in the foreground. Brian, the lighting guy, is in the back, adjusting the pipe and drape backdrop behind the tenontosaur. On Marc's screen you can sort of see the shot.

The shoot turned out to be quite a to-do. The director wanted the mounted specimens to appear in a black-box type of environment, with no visible murals or diorama details. This meant that the crew, assisted by our own fossil preparator, Kyle Davies, had to climb into the diorama and use a pipe and drape set-up to mask off the entire back of the exhibit, then lay black fabric (okay, they were really table cloths lent to us by the events department) over every visible bit of ground form under the critters’ feet. The results were stunning. With help from some very dramatic lighting, the fossils take on a wonderful eerie and dangerous aspect. Kudos to Marc Miller, who was handling the lighting and camera work.

I’m not sure when the program will air. “Sometime next year” is the closest guess the crew could give me at this juncture, but we’ll keep you updated.

Meanwhile, I’m also working with another Discovery Channel team, providing images of Sauroposeidon proteles (the world’s tallest dinosaur and also an Oklahoma critter) for possible inclusion in yet another program on extreme dinosaurs. More about that in the future, as well.