Zoos, aquaria, and natural history museums all showcase amazing biological diversity in their exhibits, but after years of visiting both kinds of institutions across the globe, I’ve noticed that zoos emphasize different messages than natural history museums. Natural history museums are great at telling the story of evolution, and explaining the science behind evolutionary biology, through exhibits based on palaeontology and biodiversity. Museums do a great job of explaining the role of extinction in shaping diversity in the past, and modern exhibit renewals are often doing a great job of linking changes in Earth’s history to the changes we see around us today.
Museums and Zoos
Rhinos and dinos and whales, oh my!
A few weeks ago I took a road trip down to visit the smaller Arbour sibling who is currently based at the University of Washington, and we made a point of visiting the Burke Museum on campus. The museum is about to be on the move, so in a couple of years this post will be out of date – despite it getting some shiny new digs in the near future, it’s still a pretty impressive museum for a university campus, and it has some unique treasures! Let’s get to it!
Superb Lemur Sunday
On this most hallowed of Super Bowl Sundays, I watched some lemurs instead of football.
Lemurs are very busy at all times!
Cool stuff at my museum.
Today I wanted to share some of the cool stuff the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences does besides palaeontology!
Heroes in a half shell
In my continued quest to betray my dinosaurian research roots, I went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to look at turtles! And what turtles they were – this is the skull of Ninjemys (the ninja turtle!), a giant meiolaniid turtle from Australia. Meiolaniids are the best turtles you’ve never heard of and it’s a crying shame that they don’t feature more prominently in prehistoric popular media.
How to look at dinosaurs in a museum
I’ve been traipsing around North America a lot lately for a fresh burst of museum visits, which got me to thinking about the things I need to do in order to do research in museum collections. I thought I’d share some advice about visiting museum collections – consider this a mix of tips for beginners and experienced collections researchers alike. Obviously this advice is geared towards palaeontological research, but I bet it’s applicable to many other fields as well, and it would be interesting to hear about differences! Also beware, this post is more text-heavy than usual for me!
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Ankylosaurs all the way down
After the SVP meeting in Dallas, I spent a couple of days working on Texan ankylosaurs at the Ft Worth Museum of Science and History, and at the collections at Southern Methodist University. It was nice to see a bit of Texas outside of downtown Dallas, so here’s a few shots from my visit to Ft Worth!
This Way to the Dinosaurs
Welcome to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science! The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting’s welcome reception was held here last week. This museum is trying out some interesting and different exhibition ideas that I haven’t seen too often elsewhere, so let’s take a look at some highlights.
Mad-packed with all nine essential nutrimites to fortify your X-Zone!
So extreme! X-treme! Even more extreme than Extreme Blu!
I might find the name a little 90s for my liking (although I guess that Clone High reference I just made is circa 2002), but this is a must-see exhibit that shows off a whole lot of cool animals you probably haven’t heard of before. It’s an awesome mix of fossils, casts, life restorations of extinct mammals, skeletons and taxidermy mounts of unusual modern mammals, nice graphics, and fun interactive stations. Here’s a slice of highlights from the opening party I attended last Friday!
Evolving Planet
Today we embark on an adventure, an adventure through time and space (but not outer space or inner space, just regular space). Welcome, to the Evolving Planet.
pseudoplocephalus 