Gray Fossil Site

Johnson City, Tennessee is not a major tourist destination and not an area that people typically go to unless they have a very specific reason for going there or are driving on I-81 between Knoxville, TN and Bristol, TN. East Tennessee State University which is located in Johnson City is also a very unassuming place that many people outside of the region have likely not heard of. But within this region sits the East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum and Visitor Center (what I will call the Gray Fossil Site from now on) (Wikipedia page)a small but impressive museum that opened its doors in 2007.

Before I get to the review of the museum let me provide a little context as to why this museum exists, and I should point out this is just a brief summary and in no way will incorporate all of the details (see a longer and more through history here on the museum's website). Sitting directly in front of the museum is Tennessee State Route 75 which makes a large arc in front of the museum, the reason for the arc and the museum are intertwined. In 2000 the state was doing road work to widen Route 75 and as anyone who has spent time in that are of the country knows there are plenty of little hills that have been cut to the the roads where they need to get to. During the widening of the road the construction workers stumbled across some fossilized remains so they called out a paleontologist to investigate. After an initial investigation Dr. Steven Wallace realized that the site was much bigger than just the small area where the road was being widened. The governor at the time Don Sundquist along with others in the state agreed that the area should be preserved so the road was moved around the site and a museum was built to house the fossils found at the site as well as to display some of the fossils and educate the public about what had been found.

Being a museum on the site of discovery makes understanding the geology of the area important. The site sits in the Ridge and Valley Geologic Providence of the United States, the basics of which I have covered before (see here and here). The Ridge and Valley is characterized by limestone based valleys surrounded by sandstone capped ridges. This site sits in one of the limestone valleys, which as I have discussed before (here and here) limestone is easily dissolved away. The dissolving of limestone, in this case, created a sinkhole during the Miocene, the age of most of the fossils in the site, which infilled with water and therefore attracted wildlife to the site. One of the most common finds at the site are tapirs which along with several other animal and plant fossils help indicate the area was heavily forested at the time. Another fossil that tells us a great deal about this portion of North America during the Miocene is the presence of alligators which indicate a much warmer environment that was is found in the region today.

The museum itself is much bigger than one might expect from the area and is quite well done inside. After walking into the main entrance and finding out why there are so few, non-avian, dinosaurs in Tennessee and none in the area there is a little seating area. This seating area has a short video presentation on the history of the site and the importance of the finds from the site. Around the video area is an amazing painting covering the wall depicting a more Miocene like environment. After watching the video the visitor then follows the path into the main display area. Here are wonderful displays of fossils that unlike the old static displays one typically thinks of with museums show an active scene. An alligator is jumping out and attacking a tapir while life continues on around them. Around the outer wall are many smaller fossils including plant fossils and animal teeth. Displays of these type of fossils were typically not put on in the museums of old but as these fossils are as important, if not more so, to the understanding of a site more and more museums are putting them on display as well. In this area you also find out about the discovery of a red panda (although from a different genus and species from the one in the link) from the site, there are now at least two known from the site, which is important to understanding the history of red pandas as well as being cool as well. The Miocene section also has multiple drawers and areas where visitors can learn more about the animals found at the site as well as what the site teaches us about the area at the time. Most of these are clearly aimed at children but that doesn't make them any less informative. The next area of the museum is a smaller area that talks about the Pleistocene of the area. While only a small amount of this comes from the site specifically much more is known from local cave sites as well as a continuing excavation of a Pleistocene sinkhole site from Saltville, Virginia. The last few rooms of the museum show what it is like to be a paleontologist, including the typical kids excavation station where kids can "dig out" fossil casts and an area that describes how a specimen is jacketed from the field and then put back together for display/continued research. The upstairs of the museum has a window that looks in on students, volunteers, and scientists who are in the process of preparing specimens for display/research from the field. There is also a window that looks in on the main reason for such a large museum, the massive collections room where specimens that have been cleaned and repaired are put into storage for future research. The room is huge and has many cabinets full of fossils that have been excavated from the area. After looking in on collections one can walk out on a short walkway that overlooks the actual site and can, during most summer days, see a field crew of students and volunteers doing an excavation of fossil remains and preserving all of the sediment in bags for future screening for potential remains that are too small to readily be noticed. The site is huge and goes down a fair distance into the sediment below which, along with continued expansion to eventually get the whole sinkhole within the property of the museum, will assure many more years of excavation and future research.

As I mentioned when I started the Gray Fossil Site is not something you will just stumble upon but I highly recommend it. The museum is large but is easy to stop through if you just happen to be heading through the region, maybe to catch a race in Bristol. I highly recommend it and it is a unique chance to learn about when alligators, tapirs, and even red pandas roamed eastern Tennessee and when the climate of the region was much different than what is experienced in the region today.

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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!

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Links to Dave Hone's posts are below the fold

Museum Visit #4

It had been a while since I had been to a museum so when one of my fellow graduate students suggested making a trip to Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum (Wikipedia article) I jumped on the opportunity. He had the option to make the trip a couple of months ago but had decided not to go but back then I had done some research on the museum which made the decision to go even easier when he asked. So early on the morning of May 14th a group of us set off from Lubbock, TX to take the hour and forty-five to two hour trip up to Canyon, TX to the museum.

This museum claims to be the largest history museum in the state of Texas and I would not doubt that it is for a second. This is a pretty impressive for a state that is as obsessed with its history as Texas is. The museum is deceivingly large looking small on the outside and located on the campus of West Texas A&M University in a fairly small town outside of Amarillo, TX. The main focus of the museum is on the Panhandle of Texas.

Walking into the museum you get a taste of what you are going to see in the lobby. There is a small display on Native Americans from the region a small paleontology section and a small display on history of European Settlers in the region. It cost about $10 to get in but it was well worth the price.

The first hall we walked through talked about the Native Americans that lived in the area. There were plenty of artifacts used by Native Americans to farm as well as gather and hold water and other important aspects to life. The exhibit was set up based on three aspects for living in the area, which for some reason I can't remember right now, but included things like food water and shelter, for this reason the Native American artifacts were scattered throughout the area. There is a very brief discussion on why farming is possible in the area, pumping water from the Ogallala Aquifer, and some of the harm we are doing to the aquifer by farming using it. While this historical portion is interesting it was actually the reason we went nor is it what I am going to focus on now.

Entering into the paleontology section you are greeted by a large mural with 3 casts in front of it. These represent the panhandle during the age of mammals, I am not sure specifically sorry you get the generic title there, and include a three-toed horse as well as a Gomphothere. There is then a quick summary of life through time starting in the Cambrian and moving through the Permian, in other words the Paleozoic. Each time section has fossils that represent organisms found during those time periods, most of these are small invertebrates and since these times are poorly represented or not represented at all in Texas they are just kind of glanced over. Entering into the Permian there are many fossils that have been found in not just Texas but in the panhandle.

Now is a good time to point out that many of the actual fossils in the museum from the panhandle were found during the 30's and 40's by Works Progress Administration (WPA) digs. These digs were "shovel-ready" jobs that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had promised just to give people jobs so they had money so they could spend said money to improve the economy. Many of these fossils came from nearby Palo Duro Canyon State Park (Wikipedia article, and tourist page) which is why they are stored in Canyon, TX. With as many Permian rocks as are in the State Park the Permian fossils are under represented. Part of this is because while Permian fossils are well known from the state they are actually very poorly represented in the Quartermaster Formation, the Permian aged rocks in the state park.

The Triassic fossils do not suffer the same fate. This is because the Triassic is represented by the Dockum Group which in the Panhandle has produced plenty of fossils and still does today, this is the work that the Museum of Texas Tech University Paleontology Division (MoTTU-P) focuses on. So there are plenty of phytosaurs and metoposaurs on display in the Panhandle-Plains Museum. The remainder of the Mesozoic is underrepresented in the Panhandle (there is some Cretaceous aged rock on the South to Southeastern edge of the caprock) so there are very few fossils on display from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They did have some sauropod fossils, likely casts, as well as a few other Mesozoic casts including the centerpiece of the paleontology wing a cast of Allosaurus. The one area that did anger me was they had the sauropod fossils labeled as "Brontosaurus", for those who don't know "Brontosaurs" has long since been synonomized with Apatosaurus (go type Brontosaurus into Wikipedia), this set out a minor moment of rage, the fact that the skull was of a Diplodocid didn't help much.

But a major portion of the Paleontology exhibit focused on the fossil mammals that had been found in the area. The panhandle is home to three North American Land Mammal Ages (NALMA); Clarendonian, Hemphillian, and Blancan. These were where many of the fossils were from and there was case after case of fossils from these ages. I can tell that the exhibit hadn't been updated in a while because many of the genus and species names are outdated and have been synonomized with others, I discuss this on the appropriate images in my Flickr set on the museum. I was impressed by this massive display of mammal fossils because this is not typically what you see at most museums but if this is what they have the most of why not. They also had a display talking about horse evolution something which is impressive for West Texas.

Moving on from the fossils there is a brief overview of the geology of Palo Duro Canyon, something which I am planning a post on since we went there right after the museum. There is then a display on windmills, if you really want to see something on that come down to Lubbock and go to the American Wind Power Center (Wikipedia article), and old cars. The second floor had lots of guns, up through the better part of the Cold War, then a discussion on oil drilling, saddles, and lots of art. The basement had a few hidden gems including taxidermy displays of animals that live or used to live in the area. We did not get to see Pioneer Town because it was being renovated.

Despite its few faults the museum is worth stopping by for anyone in the South Plains and if you are in the area for any reason it is worth stopping by. We got there around 10am and left the museum at 2pm so make sure to leave plenty of time. I also took over 600 pictures, mostly because I am a huge nerd, but make sure you are ready to take lots of pictures. I think the museum gets forgotten about by people who go to Palo Duro State Park but they should really take the time to go see the museum. Sorry this post ended up being so long but when I see a hidden gem I want to make sure other people notice it as well. All images included in the post were taken by the author and if you wish to see more you can go to my Flickr set on the museum or for pictures that include those from Palo Duro my Flickr set that includes both.



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Museum Visit #3

Last Friday, September 3, I finally made a trip to go actually walk around the Museum of Texas Tech University (MoTTU) (Official website, Wikipedia article). The museum was open late due to being a part of the First Friday Art Trail here in Lubbock. It was nice to walk around the museum again. The museum itself is small kind of what you would expect from a museum on a university campus, in case you didn't catch on it is at Texas Tech University. The museum has full time exhibits dedicated to Lubbock history, Mesozoic life, and African art. There are also several exhibits that get replaced off and on through out the year. One of these that is running for a little while deals with pterosaurs and one of my fellow graduate students telling me about this is actually why I went. I am primarily going to focus on the Paleontology hall with maybe a slight mention on the Pterosaur exhibit.

The Paleontology Hall talks about changes in life through time. Starting with a brief exhibit on some of the first dinosaurs and talking about what paleontology is. The exhibit continues into the Triassic. Lubbock and Texas Tech are a hotbed of research in the Triassic Period due to the proximity to the Triassic aged Dockum Group. There are casts of phytosaur skulls and a bigger exhibit with a cast of an aetosaur and Postosuchus kirkpatricki, which was originally found near the town of Post, TX (about 40 miles from Lubbock). There is also a small exhibit on the evolution of birds which includes the possible bird possible chimaera Protoavis texensis. There is also discussion of some of the dinosaurs out of Big Bend National Park (Park webpage, Wikipedia article) and then some talk of some of the early mammals found both in the Dockum as well as some from the K/T boundary of Big Bend National Park.

The pterosaur exhibit, which you will be able to view through November 7, was interesting. Dr. Sankar Chatterjee has recently been doing a heavy amount of research into pterosaurs so many of the exhibits are casts that are being worked on and studied down in the basement. The exhibit is well put together and sums up a lot of the current researching going on in the study of pterosaurs including questions of how they would have moved while on the ground as well as what is the use of the massive crests that many of the, especially later, pterosaurs posses.

Overall the Museum of Texas Tech University is worth the quick visit to go see if you are in Lubbock. Some of the areas such as the Lubbock history as well as the art exhibits will be worth seeing if you are interested in that. The museum is small so the museum really appreciates visitors from out of town but I wouldn't make a special trip to Lubbock to see it. It also needs a little updating in some areas but with as small a budget as the museum has it is very well done. If you are interested in Triassic aged organisms the MoTTU is one of the few museums that contains a large amount of Triassic fossils.

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Museum Visit #2

Yes I know I said that this one would be on the Museum of Texas Tech University but I haven't actually had the time to go through the museum yet so I will get back to that later.

So I was driving between San Antonio, TX and Baton Rouge, LA earlier this month. This drive is just a trip down I-10 which involves driving through Houston. So since I was driving through, and there was an exhibit that I wanted to see (more on that later), I decided I would stop at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

This is a large museum with many different portions to their exhibit but since I only had a few hours to spare I decided to focus mostly on the paleontology oriented exhibits since that is more what interests me. The main paleontology hall you walk into the standard dinosaur hall. This is what you expect to see dinosaur wise from most, a T-Rex a type of sauropod a Quetzalcoatlus (this is an interesting cast that I will discuss later) and a handful of other dinosaurs, but is still put together very well. Around the outside of this exhibit hall the exhibit shows many different fossils from different time periods and the exhibits tend to make sure to show fossils from the state of Texas.

Continuing around the exhibit you do find some mammals including a cast of an early lemur like primate jaw from Wyoming. There is also a good discussion on the evolution of the horse. Overall this is what you would expect from a mammal exhibit from a major museum, it is interesting but doesn't bring in the crowds.

I walked quickly through the Wiess Energy Hall and then I made it to the second level of the museum and walked through the gem and mineral hall and the malacology exhibit but didn't focus on either of these three due to lack of time but they are worth checking out if you go there. While on the second floor I noticed that the cast of the Quetzalcoatlus had different colored bones. There were some that were a grey to black color and were smooth in texture while there were others that were brown and looked more realistic in their texture. My best guess of what these changes in color mean is that the brown bones are casts that represent what has actually been found of Quetzalcoatlus and the rest is what we might expect to find in the future.

I then went to the exhibit that I really went there to see, the Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution exhibit. This is what I really wanted to go see since my current research is on a pterosaur sample that was found in the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany which is where all of these samples are from. The specimens on display here are amazing and you can see soft tissue in everything from the pterosaurs to the insects. The exhibit winds you though tons of fish and other organisms from the limestone and eventually you get to the highlight the Archaeopteryx. The exhibit does a great job of using Archaeopteryx to support the Theory of Evolution. It did such a good job I heard someone leaving clearly frustrated say, "I still don't believe we evolved 'cause of the big bang or anything." I think it put a clear ding in their armor of creationism. If you are in the Houston area go see this exhibit before it leaves town on September 6.

Having a little extra time, and not wanting to continue driving in the rain (it was a waste I got caught driving in the rain anyway), I decided to head into the Butterfly Center. I remember going here when I was a younger kid but they had updated the entrance now. You now get to see other insects before you walk in get the see the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis. They also try to teach kids that bugs aren't bad and they all do stuff that needs to be done so don't be afraid. The exhibit is well put together and the plants have grown since I was last there creating a much more foresty (is this even a word whatever I'm going with it) feel. The butterflies were all over the place which apparently they hadn't been earlier in the day but you can tell they are used to avoiding people they stayed away from anything that moves so you have to be very still to get them to land on you.

I normally wouldn't say anything about the gift shop but I don't think that I have ever been in a museum gift shop that big or one that sold that much fancy stuff, not what you would normally expect.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a great trip and as I said if you are in Houston before the Archaeopteryx exhibit ends go for sure. Make sure you have some time to spend because there are many different things to see and do here that make the experience worth the trip.

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Museum Visit

So about a week ago I was in Gainsville, FL home of the University of Florida. While there I took a couple of hours to visit the museum there, the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Let me start by saying that if you ever are in Gainsville it is worth a visit to the museum. It is fairly large, at least for a university museum, and contains a lot of different sections. The section that interests me, being a paleontologist, is the paleontology part. You start walking through a couple of small dioramas of early life but since there aren't much in the way of early fossils from Florida this is all kind of glanced over. You won't find much in the way of dinosaurs here, that is what happens when the state is underwater/doesn't exist for the entirety of the Mesozoic.

Then you walk into the main fossil hall which is quite impressive. Normally when you see fossil specimens in an exhibit hall they are entirely casts of the original bones so they can keep the actual specimens in the back where researchers have access to them. These exhibits here use actual fossils, if you look close at the specimens you will see that the individual elements have ID numbers on them that are given to the fossils when they are first prepared and put in collections. We were told that they sometimes have to go pull out fossils from the exhibits so people can do studying/analysis of them. The exhibit hall is full of specimens that you normally don't see in museums because most people are interested in dinosaurs.

While I was there they had what is called Can you Dig It going on. This is an event that geology department puts on every year apparently where they talk to the little kids about some fun stuff with geology. They had a volcano that they made explode every 30ish minutes and had a table on rocks and minerals. The vert paleo group had a table where they talked about Florida fossils as well as a few other topics. They also gave each kid that game an actual fossil, most likely ones that were either very common or had little significance. There was a little kid there holding her's and she looked ecstatic to just have one it was cute.


The final thing that I went to was the butterfly exhibit. This one of the few things that you have to pay to get into but it is well worth the price to get in. If you haven't ever been to an exhibit like this you are walking through a room that is filled with butterflies that fly all around you and you do have to watch your step. They also have some weaver birds and some other birds in their as well so it is always full of activity. There are plenty of flowers and the butterflies land on you if you stand still so it is enjoyable, and kids will love it.

I didn't have time to see the rest of the exhibits but you can find out more about them here, which shows just how large the museum is. It also appears that there are a lot of activities that the museum puts on, similar to the Can You Dig It activity I mentioned earlier. So if you live in or near the city of Gainsville, FL I recommend going if you get the chance and those of you that might be traveling through the area take a couple of hours to stop by and check out/support the science that goes on in Florida.

This finally brings me to something I blogged about earlier about supporting the push for a new museum for LSU (here). After seeing what used to be the museum that they have a University of Florida getting support allowed them to build a much larger and better museum that attracts all sorts of events. So continue to show your support for LSU to put in a new museum (here).

I plan on blogging about any museum visits that I do from now on, but I guess I should do the one here in Lubbock, the Museum of Texas Tech University, next.

Museum visits page

Build a Museum

I know I haven't posted in a little while school has taken up a lot of my free time as expected and yes I know Saturday is for football but since it is halftime in the Texas vs Oklahoma game, when did the Big 12 start playing defense, so I figured I would get a post in because this is something I have wanted to post about for a long time and keep forgetting about or being too busy. Ok that was a long sentence let me get to what I actually want to talk about.

So for anyone who has been to LSU knows that their Museum of Natural History is small and does not have much in the way of stuff on display. You might also know that they gave some of their stuffed animal collections to a store down I-10. Well there has been a campaign going on to help them build a museum, click here to learn more. This is something that needs to be done, and they are currently not asking for money just for public support. And public support for science is something that is hard to come by, see here and here. For people who don't know the current museum shows almost exclusively stuffed animals and most people in the state and region don't know how much in the way of fossils that LSU has. They have 70% of a Basilisaurs as well as a large collection of other mammals all of which have been found in the state of Louisiana. It would also help attract lots of large traveling exhibits like Sue. The state does not have a major natural history museum but it has plenty of natural history is it any wonder they are one of the worst when it comes to science standards. People especially kids learn the most from seeing these great organisms that once roamed this planet. So those of you be you from the state of Louisiana or not please support this attempt to build a museum in Baton Rouge on the LSU campus, maybe try contacting Mrs. Jindal because we know that Mr. Jindal doesn't support science.

Interesting way to handle this

So I was just cruising the internets tonight and came across the Wikipedia article on the Virginia Aquarium and having been to this aquarium before, given it was years ago, I figured I would cruise over to their website (found here). When I got to their website I see that they are going to open a new exhibit in about 56 days. So I decided I would check what all exhibits they currently have there, you have your standard sharks, seals, and turtles (among others) then I went to the new exhibit, found here, where I read this:

The Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center will unveil its spectacular $25 million renovation in 2009. Restless Planet is four immersive habitats, dozens of new exhibits and 110,000 gallons of new aquariums. The Aquarium’s original main exhibit gallery has been dramatically overhauled to represent Restless Planet, where we can see how diverse environments from Virginia’s past compare to similar environments still in existence today

Awesome I thought but they aren't really going to reference geologic time periods are they?

The Malaysian Peat Swamp, resembling Virginia during the Carboniferous period

Yes they are this is awesome and should be an interesting way to help kids see how the Earth and in particular Virginia have changed environments throughout the millions of years of earth's history.

They will have the Malaysian Peat Swamp (representing the Carboniferous), the Coastal Sahara Desert Habitat (representing the Silurian), the Red Sea Habitat (representing the rifts valleys of VA during the "Jurassic" I might lean toward Triassic since they are called the Triassic rift basins [sorry]), and the Indonesia’s Flores Island Habitat (representing the volcanic Precambrian [this might be a stretch but OK]).

Overall I hope that these end up being a good exhibit when it opens if there is anyone reading this who can get there when it opens let me know what it is like, hopefully I can get out there in the next few years but I doubt it.