Carnegie Museum of Natural History

See I told you I would put a real post together before I posted another video. I am also changing the way I do these, since I now have a separate page linking to all of the museum posts I figured I would start just titling the museum posts the name of the museum. So I guess if you were confused this would be under the old title scheme Museum Visit #5. Enough with the housekeeping stuff lets move on to the actual review.

Let me start by saying that while I may have included several images in this post [image to right is of Dippy outside the museum, obviously it had snowed, and as always all images are by the author ask for permission if you wish to use them] if you head over to Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings blog he has several posts dedicated to the museum, I will link to all of them at the bottom of the post, so make sure you head over there and be warned there may be more added over the next few days/weeks. Needing to look at some other specimens for my research I had contacted Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM) (Wikipedia page) to get a chance to look at some of their specimens. Once I had finished my research I took some time too look through the museum itself but as my time was short, and I wanted to beat rush hour home, I did a quicker trip through the museum than I normally would have. With that said this is the museum I grew up going to, being from the Pittsburgh region, so I know a lot of the permanent exhibits really well, and I spent plenty of time in the dinosaur hall anyway.

This history of this museum is the history of Pittsburgh in a nutshell. The museum is located in the Oakland region of the city sandwiched between two of the local colleges, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and has several other colleges close by. The museum building actually houses two museums, the museum of natural history and the museum of art (Wikipedia page), and a branch of the Carnegie Library (Wikipedia page) system for the city. The building and the 3 main things in it were gifted to the city by, shockingly, Andrew Carnegie who had basically built the city through his steel industry and wanted, or as he felt needed, to give back to the people of the city so he gifted the museum and a huge library system to the city to pay it back. The fossils within the great dinosaur hall Carnegie had bought specifically to fill the hall with what, at the time, were the great new finds of prehistoric beasts coming out of the western U.S.. While he did not acquire as many as the American Museum of Natural History (Wikipedia page) in New York or the Smithsonian (Wikipedia page) in Washington, D.C. he managed to have a great many finds come to Pittsburgh. Many of these finds were completely new genus and species and one Apatosaurus louisae was named after Carnegie's wife while one dinosaur was named after him as well, Diplodocus carnegii. The museum was amazing when it was first finished and it represented the wealth that was the city and the power that it held when steel was made there. Very little changed in the museum for many years and as jobs and influence moved from the cities the dinosaurs in the hall continued to look more and more out of date as they were set up in a way that we thought dinosaurs were during the early to middle 20th century. During the late 1990's and early 2000's thanks in part to growing influence of the medical field, a lot coming out of Pitt, and a growth in technology, a lot of which came out of CMU, the region started to see renewed growth in jobs and people. Around the same time CM decided their dinosaurs were out of date and set off on a multi-year project to update them. This meant closing the dinosaur hall down and remaking the whole thing. I remember seeing the dinosaurs in the old style and was upset when they said they were going to close the hall down but seeing the finished project it was well worth it [Image to the left and above of the new hall]. You can see why I said the history of the museum follow that of the city pretty well though now hopefully, also that was far longer than I wanted it to be whoops.

Walking into the museum you get the feel that you are walking back in time, not quite to the time of the dinosaurs but at least to the time of Andrew Carnegie, the marble that surrounds the interior of the natural history entrance is impressive and shortly after paying admission there are many open rooms that have artifacts from Ancient Greece and Rome. This was early 20th century decadence at its best in a museum for the people. The cost to get in is not cheap, $17.95 for an adult, but trust me it is worth it, I should note that if you are a member or a member of several other museums you can get in for cheaper or even free. Now you are going to have to walk past the gift shop and unless you want to carry around your gift with you all day I would try to hold off till the end of the day, although they do have plenty of fun/cool stuff in there.

I am going to treat the museum as unidirectional and in reality there are plenty of ways to explore the museum and you can explore it however you want but the museum is kind of set up to be viewed in the way I am going about it [Image at right is of the fighting T. rex's]. Continuing forward you will enter into a smaller hall, this one gives you a very basic primer of geology. There are displays talking about such varied things as oil and natural gas, this was built before the big natural gas push in the northeast as well, to coal as well as just talking about general rock types and fossils. There are also several displays talking about the local geology and why the local geography is the way it is. The coolest thing in this room is the "elevator", I forget what their name for it is, that "takes you under the museum" to see the rocks. While it takes you down the guide talks about the geology of the area and about more general geologic situations such as it getting warmer the further down you go. The final thing you might notice as you walk out is a display of the what the area looked like during the Pennsylvanian, it was swampy, and includes some of the plants and animals known from that time period, this was also put together before the discovery of Fedexia striegeli so that is not included.

As you move on you may be tempted to speed ahead into the dinosaur hall but those doors are there for a reason, turn right to go see the impressive mineral collection. This also used to be not as well put together but when they redid the dinosaur hall they redid this as well. I don't know if it is as large as the one at the Houston Museum but it is put together in a more modern way and just seems a little more interesting. The problem with it is that it is just too big and I doubt many kids are going to have the patience to walk though/look at all of the mineral after all they just saw a glimpse of the dinosaurs. One more thing to see before you enter the dinosaur hall is right across from the minerals is a large glass faced room. If you are lucky you may be able to catch paleontologists in there working on dinosaur bones so it is pretty cool especially for the budding paleontologists in your group.

Walking into the dinosaur hall is an experience in and of itself [Image to left is of the doors to the entrance to the dinosaur hall with a Herrerasaurus in front of it]. We have all seen museums that are dark and dingy and all they have on display are the dinosaur fossils themselves. Walking into CM's dinosaur hall you are immediately hit with how bright it is, most of which is done with skylights in the roof. On the walls are vast paintings making the skeletons on display part of the ecosystem from which they came. The room is divided up into the three periods that made up the Mesozoic. In the Triassic portion a phytosaur, Redondasaurus bermani, skeleton on display hunts or is at least annoyed by a small group of early theropod dinosaurs, Coelophysis bauri, representing animals found in the Chinle Group of New Mexico and Arizona, although this is about the same age as the Dockum in West Texas. There is also a display on the more "local" Triassic finds from the rift basins of the east coast from North Carolina up through Connecticut which you can read more about in a book I reviewed in the past. Many of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic section were unearthed in what is now Dinosaur National Monument (Wikipedia page) so there is a display on that. The museum then shows its classic sauropods against a beautiful background that includes some rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs and in a display that includes footprints. There is also in this section a small collection of fossils from Solnhofen Formation of Germany which were donated to the museum by Bayet in 1903. Finally you enter the Cretaceous which consists of 2 Tyrannosaurus rexs fighting over a kill while a Quetzalcoatlus flies overhead. Finally there is a smaller room that shows off some of the Cretaceous interior seaway animals that have been found from places like the Niobrara of Kansas. From here there is a stairwell to go up and view the exhibits from above which is well worth taking the time to do as this is a view you typically don't get a most museums. There are lots of smaller displays which I did not talk about, sorry I could keep going for a while, but I did want to mention two other things. Most of the big displays have computer monitors that you can touch and find out more information. One of the things you can learn is just how much of the skeleton you are looking at is real and you will find that most of the skeletons on display are mostly real which is pretty cool to see. The other thing I wanted to point out is that if a specimen was the first of its species to be named it is known as a type specimen and these are displayed prominently throughout the hall whenever there is a type specimen on display, and trust me there are a lot of them.

Moving from the dinosaur hall we next move onto the Cenozoic area [Image at right is of the ground sloth Paramylodon harlani]. This area is one of the few areas of the museum itself that I have complaints about. Maybe it is because my wife studies prehistoric mammals or maybe it is just my love of all things paleontology but I find this area to be a little disappointing. There are only a few specimens on display although the main ones separate from the kids area are very well done. There is a little area where kids can "dig" for fossils and while I love this idea the way they set up a lot of the mammal fossils around the outer edge can make them hard to get to or see. This is especially true if the pit is closed or if there are kids digging in the pit and you don't want to risk stepping on them. I think this is the area that needs to currently be redone the most move the specimens out where they can better be displayed and seen also bring up some more fossils from collections so we can get a more diverse showing. This is a time that most people forget about and there were plenty of interesting animals that lived then too so lets show them off as well.

The next exhibit area is upstairs and consists of stuffed/taxidermied animals from all around the world. These are really well done and while they show there age in that a museum built today probably wouldn't have as many they are in really good shape. The animals are also not just lifeless animals but have realistic backgrounds to where they come from, again complete with footprints, and seem to be really alive now. There are plenty of animals from Africa and North America primarily but a few Asian and South American animals also make an appearance. Prior to the Pittsburgh Zoo (Wikipedia page), which is great as well, becoming as good as it is this would likely have been the only place people would have seen animals in their more natural environment. When originally built the zoo was nothing more than steel cages and concrete floors, and trust me it has come a long way from that, so the animals in no way looked natural or at home but you could see that at the museum.

There are two other main exhibits that are worth checking out but I won't go into too much detail here. There is an exhibit on Ancient Egypt which has some cool displays and specimens from there. There is also an exhibit on some of the native people from closer to the Arctic Circle. This is probably the only place I have been to that has an exhibit on them so it is interesting to compare with the more southern Native Americans. The final thing to check out is a little explore area. This area has lots of things for kids to do and gives them a chance to learn about science and to touch things like animals pelts and the like.

I love this museum but I am sure I am a little biased. It is definitely worth the price of admission and you will spend the better part of the day there. If you have some time you admission will also get you a chance to go see the art museum, and you might want to because you are also likely paying for parking which can be expensive but kind of has to be to discourage people from parking there for work/school. My only complaint about the museum itself is the size/set up of the Cenozoic mammal portion but I do have one other complaint so hear me out. The museum does have a little restaurant area, which is nice considering some museums like Panhandle Plains don't even have one at all and the one in Houston is just a McDonald's, but the food overall is sub-par and expensive for what you get. Although I will recommend that you get the dinosaur smiley cookies they are from Eat 'n Park which is a local chain that has great cookies so these are just as good plus they are dinosaur shaped what's not to love!

Museum visits page

Links to Dave Hone's posts are below the fold


Links to Dave Hone's posts on the Carnegie Museum (oldest at the top newest at the bottom) I know there are a lot but he took better pictures than I did and includes lots of interesting tidbits about each fossil, also if you aren't already you should be following his blog anyway:
Pittsburgh day 2
Cargenie dinosaurs [sic]
A pair of giants
Solnhofen wall
An outstanding Stegosaurus
Carnegie Tyrannosaurus pt 1
Carnegie Tyrannosaurus pt 2: a second adult rex
Carnegie Tyrannosaurus pt 3: dentary
Carnegie Tyrannosaurus pt 4: Jane
Small but beautiful (and tasty)
A young Camarasaurus
Late to the party – Apatosaurus cervicals
I call the big one ‘Bitey’
A nice Nyctosaurus
Reaching out
Quetzalcoatlus
Camplognathoides
Herrerasaurus
Redondasaurus (and not Leptosuchus)
The horse (of course)
Quarry Map
On screen
What is what and where
Reconstructing Fedexia
Psittacosaurus again
Protoceratops
Triceratops
Ceratopsian crests II
Pachycephalosaurus
Pachycephalosaur heads
Western Interior Seaway
Models on show
Carnegie dinosaur murals
Carnegie mural pterosaurs
Taxidermic magnificence
C is for Collect
Charge!
Another Allosaurus
Ceratosaurus and Dryosaurus
Dryosaurus skull
A look into the lab
From the grave to the cradle
Jane’s pathology
Corythosaurus
Hadrosaur crests
An oviraptorosaur
Sauropodan flotsam
Camarasaurus cranium
Sauropod gauges