April 12, 2024 · 7:33 pm

Review: the new Peabody Museum

Tylosaurus and Archelon skeletons soar overhead in the Peabody Museum’s brand-new lobby. Photo by the author.

For decades, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (YPM) was a museum frozen in time, with no comprehensive updates to its paleontology halls since the 1950s. Then, around 2010, serious discussions began about overhauling the dinosaur and fossil mammal exhibits. Fundraising started in 2015, and in 2018, the museum announced that it had received a $160 million donation—enough to renovate not just the paleontology halls, but the entire museum. YPM closed its doors at the beginning of 2020, and on March 26 of this year, it reopened to the public once again.

Technically, this is a soft opening. The third floor—which houses the museum’s classic taxidermy dioramas—has not yet opened, and a scattering of cases around the museum are empty as of this writing. Still, there is plenty to see: during the renovation, YPM gained a new, multi-story lobby (connecting the museum to the academic building next door), as well as new collections facilities, classrooms, and 50% more exhibit space. And most importantly, the paleontology halls are open and just about complete.

A Geosternbergia cast demonstrates its quad-launching technique in the museum’s entryway. Photo by the author.

The remaking of the YPM exhibitions was a collaborative effort between internal staff (led by Kailen Rogers, Chris Norris, Susan Butts, Jacques Gauthier, and others) and two outside design firms—Centerbrook Architects and Planners provided the high-level design of museum and surrounding area , while Reich + Petch worked on specific exhibit elements and graphic design.

I spent a few hours at YPM last week, and the new halls were absolutely worth the wait. What I found most striking is that the paleontology halls feel at once new and familiar. The dimensions of the dinosaur and fossil mammal halls (officially, the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs and A World of Change) remain identical, and they are still anchored by Rudolph Zallinger’s magnificent fresco murals—The Age of Reptiles and The Age of Mammals. Charles Beecher’s relief mounted Edmontosaurus was left in place, and the overall layout and flow of the spaces have not been radically altered. On the other hand, white walls and new windows and skylights have transformed what had been fairly gloomy spaces into bright, open expanses. There are dozens of new specimens on display, in addition to plenty of returning ones. And a third gallery has been added to the paleontology wing: called The Human Footprint, this space explores how humans have interacted with the natural world over the past hundred thousand years or so.

The remounted Stegosaurus looks back toward Zallinger’s Age of Reptiles. Photo by the author.

The primary themes of the paleontology exhibits are displayed at the entrance to Burke Hall: “life affects the environment and the environment affects life” and “extinctions change everything.” Much like Deep Time at the National Museum of Natural History, YPM’s exhibits emphasize that the evolution of life on Earth did not occur in a vacuum, but as part of a continuously changing global system. This narrative does have a time axis—visitors follow along from the Edicaran to the present day—but the precise devisions of geologic time are often de-emphasized in favor of the broad environmental transitions that triggered evolutionary innovations.

This presentation of the evolution of life compliments the existing Zallinger murals. Painted between 1942 and 1967, these are among the most iconic images of prehistoric life ever created. Although some of the animal reconstructions are outdated, Zallinger was in other ways ahead of his time. Rather than giving the geologic periods hard borders, he artfully wove the sections together so that each one fades imperceptibly into the next. The viewer can see that the flora, fauna, and climate are changing over time, but it’s a gradient, not a ladder. Incidentally, it was not a given that the Zallinger murals would be preserved. Great credit is due to the YPM team for not only retaining the murals, but utilizing them as a key part of the new exhibition’s narrative.

Brontosaurus reclaims its place as the centerpiece of the dinosaur hall. Photo by the author.

One clear advantage of a wall-to-wall renovation is that the exhibits are much better organized than before. In the old dinosaur hall, visitors encountered an essentially random succession of displays: from modern sea turtles to Triassic trees and from a Cretaceous mosasaur to a Quaternary mastodon. Now, the displays run chronologically, and more or less in sync with the Zallinger mural. Visitors can follow the history of life in the sea on the west side of the hall, and the history of terrestrial life on the east side. I also suspect that placing Brontosaurus and a brontothere as central anchors in their respective halls was a deliberate choice.

A very large Megacerops stands on a central platform in the reimagined Cenozoic hall. Photo by the author.

Research Casting International remounted several historic skeletons with characteristic artistry and skill. I will have a separate article about the mounted skeletons sometime soon, but the remounts are Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Deinonychus, Archelon, Moropus, Megaloceros, a mastodon, and a dodo. Brand new mounted skeletons include Tylosaurus, Poposaurus, and a Geosternbergia family of four (plus a few secret mounts outside the neighboring Marsh Auditorium). At least fifteen existing mounts have returned. As Postdoctoral Fellow Advait Jukar explained to me, the goal for the mounted skeletons was to portray “living, breathing animals, rather than looking like they’re posing for a portrait.” For example, the aggressive rutting posture of the Irish elk was directly inspired by the classic bull moose diorama at the American Museum of Natural History.

Mounted skeletons aside, there are some really extraordinary fossils in these halls. Some of the specimens that caught my eye include a geode bird egg with an embryonic skeleton inside, the bizzare Arsinotherium from Egypt’s Fayum region, a Nothrotheriops with patches of hair and skin, and the early Jurassic dinosaurs Podokosaurus and Anchisaurus.

Remounted Irish elk and mastodon in the Human Footprint gallery. Photo by the author.

While many of the fossils speak for themselves, the halls are also populated with several new models and replications, which imbue the extinct species on display with life and personality. The towering Gastornis created by Blue Rhino Studio is the clear standout—I like that it looks like its gazing longingly back toward the Mesozoic dinosaurs in the adjacent hall. Other highlights include a slab of Edicaran weirdos and the mammal Rapenomamus attacking a Psittacosaurus at the feet of Brontosaurus (I would have liked to see a baby sauropod as the prey, but maybe that would be too much for squeamish visitors).

Meanwhile, the YPM team made some selective forays into the realm of media and digital interactives. Most (possibly all?) of these take the form of slideshows on large touchscreens. These are an effective way to condense a lot of information into a limited space, and allow for some visitor choice in what topics interest them. I thought an interactive where visitors could explore the propagation of horses, humans, and tomatoes around the world was particularly well done.

Gastornis is a highlight of the Cenozoic Hall. Photo by the author.

I would expect an institution like Yale to be protective of its legacy and history, so I was surprised to find a prominently placed rebuke of superstar 19th century paleontologist O.C. Marsh in the dinosaur hall. As Advait described it, this is an “and” statement: Marsh was instrumental in shaping our understanding of prehistory and evolution and he collected from Native land without permission, looted graves, and was academically dishonest.

The call-out of Marsh wasn’t the only unexpectedly progressive element in the new exhibits. A brontothere fossil is interpreted with a poem by a trans teenager, which criticizes imperialistic scientists for imposing their way of knowing upon the world. Elsewhere, a display of fossils from the Santa Fe Formation in Argentina is accompanied by printed labels solely in Spanish—perhaps a statement about whose voices should be heard when interpreting the natural heritage of a given region. Natural History Conservator Mariana di Giacomo told me that these displays are part of an effort to include a wider range of perspectives in YPM exhibits. Other examples include musings from artist Ray Troll on being a “highly motivated fish” and psychologist Eli Lobowitz’s take on why kids love dinosaurs.

Deinonychus and Poposaurus are the largest saurian carnivores on display. Photo by the author.

My critiques of the new paleontology halls are pretty limited. There are more typos and inconsistencies in the labels than there ought to be, particularly in the age ranges given for certain specimens. I overheard multiple visitors concluding that the Edmontosaurus skeleton was a T. rex, and I suspect an image of Tyrannosaurus placed in front of the Edmontosaurus is to blame. In one area, the writer uses terms like “stem reptile,” “early stem land egglayer,” and “stem amniote” as common names for various species. Even with some specialized knowledge I don’t understand what distinction they were trying to make, and I can’t imagine those terms are helpful for most visitors.

The most pervasive issue is the inconsistent quality of 2-D life reconstructions used on graphics throughout the halls. With a few exceptions, it appears that the exhibition’s creators used whatever images were available, including stock renders and illustrations pulled from Wikipedia. For many people (especially children) unaccustomed to interpreting bones, life reconstructions can be more meaningful than the actual fossils. It’s worth budgeting for original, quality artwork whenever possible. Put that $41 billion Yale endowment to use!

A graphic with a particularly uninspired illustration from a stock image provider. Photo by the author.

Speaking of Yale’s effectively bottomless pockets, the best news about the new YPM is that it’s 100% free. This is an excellent precedent to set: there’s no better way to welcome a broader audience and remove barriers from engagement with science than doing away with admission fees. I hope other museums follow YPM’s lead on this front and work to free themselves from reliance on admission income.

More on fossils at the Peabody soon!

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, fossil mounts, mammals, museums, opinion, paleoart, reviews, science communication, YPM

January 20, 2024 · 10:57 am

No, the Hall of Human Origins doesn’t downplay climate change

The south-facing entrance to the Hall of Human Origins. Photo by the author.

As covered in the previous post, the National Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Human Origins, which opened in 2010, is an exceptionally well-conceived and well-crafted exhibition. In certain circles, however, there has been a persistent strain of criticism that I feel like I would be remiss not to address.

Shortly after the Hall of Human Origins opened, articles in the New Yorker and ThinkProgress called attention to the fact that the exhibition was created with $15 million from David Koch (the full title of the exhibition is the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins). Koch, who died in 2019, and his brother Charles are probably best known as billionaires who support a range of libertarian causes, including right-wing political candidates and climate change deniers. Their fortune comes from Koch Industries, a massive energy (read: oil) and manufacturing conglomerate.

David Koch bankrolled socially and environmentally destructive policies for decades, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that few individuals have left such a damaging anti-science legacy. But credit where it’s due: the Koch Foundation has also supported museums, public broadcasting, and other institutions associated with education and the arts. Many of these contributions are related to Koch’s personal interest in fossils, especially dinosaurs and human ancestors.

The Humans Change the World sub-section. Photo by the author.

In a ThinkProgress piece published a few months after the Hall of Human Origins opened, author Joe Romm suggested that the exhibition’s creators downplayed the seriousness of anthropogenic climate change at Koch’s behest. According to Romm, the hall’s “huge flaw is that it leaves visitors with the distinct impression that human-caused global warming is no big deal.” Additional articles in ThinkProgress, Hyperallergic, and Equinox made similar accusations. Each article zeroed in on a recurring theme in the exhibition’s text: that hominin evolution was driven in part by a need to adapt to a changing climate. As Ryan Little put it in Hyperallergic, the exhibition “craftily insinuates that fluctuating climates, whenever, wherever, and however they occur, are a source of astonishing human ingenuity, while also managing to suggest…that in the grand geological scheme of things, climate change is no big deal.”

There is absolutely a conversation to be had about the pros and cons of museums accepting money from problematic sources (NMNH caught heat a few years earlier when it accepted funding and specimen donations from Kenneth Behring). And there is always cause to be vigilant about corporate interests making their way into public institutions. Nevertheless, a recent re-visit to the Hall of Human Origins has convinced me that any critics suggesting that the exhibition downplays climate change—or that Koch had any influence over its content—are fundamentally misguided.

One of multiple graphic panels describing present-day climate change, why it’s happening, and how we know. Photo by the author.

There are two issues in play here. First, I think the authors are missing the bigger evolutionary picture. There is nothing new or untested about the concept of a connection between the changing Earth and the evolution of life on it (that is, interaction between the geosphere and biosphere). Examples are seemingly innumerable. Hoofed mammals evolved long legs for running and large, grazing teeth when grasslands replaced forests in the Miocene. Radiations of new species evolved when North and South America collided, allowing animals access to new habitats. Dire wolves got smaller when the climate got colder and food was harder to come by. And that’s just in the last 30 million years. Why wouldn’t human ancestors evolve in response to a changing environment, when it’s been a primary driver of evolution throughout our planet’s history?

The second issue is that it’s plainly incorrect to say that the Hall of Human Origins does not address recent anthropogenic climate change, or clearly state its cause. There is an entire 1,500 square foot sub-gallery called “Humans Change the World,” which investigates how garbage, livestock, habitat destruction, and yes, carbon dioxide emissions are damaging the planet. The famous hockey stick graph of global temperature, with its spike in the last century, appears at least three times, including at the exhibition’s south-facing entrance. The exhibition states, repeatedly, that “the global climate is warming as a result of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases generated by human activities.”

A media piece with the caption, “We’ve produced so much CO2 that we’ve warmed the planet.” Photo by the author.

It would be difficult for a visitor to explore the Hall of Human Origins and miss the references to anthropogenic climate change. It would be even more difficult to conclude that the exhibition is somehow putting a positive spin on it—the images of belching smokestacks and piles of garbage are not subtle. And yet, that is exactly what multiple authors have alleged, as recently as 2019. This is fascinating to me, because it speaks to the power of the narratives visitors bring with them to any museum experience.

In the previous post, I mentioned an evaluation of the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution at AMNH, which found that visitors were imposing teleologic narratives onto the exhibition, in spite of deliberate efforts to counteract this. Visitors expected evolution to be a linear, progressive process, and they unwittingly interpreted what they’re seeing in a way that matched those expectations. Perhaps a similar phenomenon is occurring in the Hall of Human Origins. Many of us are used to seeing Koch’s name associated with aggressive lobbying against climate change mitigation. In that context, the narrative that an exhibition bearing his name would have a similar message is compelling, even sensible. But it isn’t borne out by the actual content on display.

At the heart of the Deep Time exhibition, a theater demonstrates how humans are causing unprecedented change to the planet, while also highlighting potential solutions. Photo by the author.

Again, it’s reasonable to be wary of corporate interests making their way into public institutions. Perhaps museums that accept funding from questionable sources have a responsibility to go above and beyond in assuring their audiences that those funding sources are not influencing exhibition content (or anything else they produce).

To their credit, this seems to be something NMNH has taken very seriously. As discussed, the Hall of Human Origins devotes considerable floorspace to the message that climate change is an unavoidable part of humanity’s legacy. And in 2019, the museum went even further. The massive paleontology exhibition known as Deep Time was also funded in part by the Koch Foundation, and bears David Koch’s name. Here, a central overlook (visible from everywhere in the hall) is devoted to the message that human industrial activity is warming the climate, and that this change comes with dire consequences. Even more so than in the Hall of Human Origins, this statement is presented in clear, matter-of-fact language. The centrality of this location and its proximity to the dinosaurs makes the climate narrative unmissable.

As the third most-visited museum in the world (behind the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay), NMNH is uniquely situated to reach audiences that may never have seen the evidence for climate change presented in a clear, non-political context. They have clearly risen to the occasion, and I just think they deserve some credit for it.

References

Elbein, A. 2014. The right’s dinosaur fetish: Why the Koch brothers are obsessed with paleontology. Salon.

Levinthal, D. 2015. Spreading the free-market gospel: What’s new and interesting about the Koch brothers approach to funding academics. The Atlantic.

Scott, M. and Giusti, E. 2013. Designing Human Evolution Exhibitions: Insights from Exhibitions and Audiences. Museums and Social Issues 1:1:49–68

Sideris, L. 2019. The Last Biped Standing? Climate Change and Evolutionary Exceptionalism at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins. Equinox Publishing.

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Filed under anthropology, Deep Time, education, exhibits, mammals, museums, NMNH, opinion, science communication

January 12, 2024 · 7:28 pm

The Hall of Human Origins, 14 years later

A bronze Homo heidelbergensis  figure crouches over a hearth, offering visitors a piece of meat. Photo by the author.

I don’t know how well you remember the twenty-aughts, but it was a high point for conflict over teaching evolution in the United States. Thanks to lobbying by the Discovery Institute and others, denial of evolution had become an ideological litmus test for conservatives. Organized strategies to impose religious fundamentalism on public school classrooms cropped up nationwide, and these efforts were taken to court on multiple occasions. It was in the midst of all this that the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) developed and opened its Hall of Human Origins—in sight of Capitol Hill, no less.

In this politically charged climate, one might imagine an exhibition about human evolution would need to be highly didactic, or even combative. But rather than taking an antagonistic stance, the Hall of Human Origins leads with a question: what does it mean to be human? The exhibition presents fossil evidence for how the human species came to be, but also invites visitors to make connections with their own lives and experiences. Fourteen years out from the hall’s March 17, 2010 opening, it’s instructive to look back at the exhibition’s development. How did this visitor-centric interpretive approach come to be, and how has the museum’s audience responded to the exhibition? And in hindsight, would the exhibition’s creators do anything differently?

Origins

More than 50 million visitors have passed through the Hall of Human Origins, but lead curator Rick Potts jokes that about a million of those visits should probably be attributed to him. Indeed, the exhibition and its unique interpretive approach have been on his mind for decades. He first formulated the question “what does it mean to be human?” when teaching anthropology courses at Yale in the early 1980s. The question always inspired a great discussion, and Potts thought it might make an interesting basis for an exhibit about human evolution.

Potts pitched his idea for a human evolution exhibition immediately upon taking a position at NMNH in 1985. Smithsonian secretary Robert Adams liked the concept, but progress on the exhibition stalled within a few years. It was difficult to get any major exhibition off the ground at NMNH during the 80s and 90s because of the lack of consistent leadership. With eleven permanent and acting directors between 1981 and 2003, there was no way to build up momentum for big, multi-year projects. Eventually, Cristián Samper settled into a comparatively lengthy directorship (2003–2012), and greenlit the human evolution exhibition under the working title, What Does it Mean to be Human?

An L-shaped, 15,000 square foot space (which previously contained parts of the North American Mammals and Native American Cultures exhibitions) was designated the future home of the Hall of Human Origins. The core project team began meeting regularly in 2007. Kathleen Gordon was the exhibition developer and Junko Chinen was project manager. Briana Pobiner, Jennifer Clark, and Matt Tocheri joined Potts as in-house scientific advisors. As with most permanent exhibitions at NMNH over the past 25 years, content was developed internally while the 3-D and graphic design was produced in collaboration with the Toronto-based design firm Reich + Petch.

Organization

Map of the Hall of Human Origins. From humanorigins.si.edu.

One of the team’s first tasks was to articulate what an exhibition based around a question would actually be about. The objective was to welcome visitors’ perspectives, but the hall itself couldn’t be a blank canvas. Exploring ways in which the exhibition could address varied perspectives led to some dead ends. One early idea was to feature a section about creation stories from around the world. But while the intention was to be inclusive and respectful of visitors coming to the exhibition from religious backgrounds, the section came across as a straw man, set up in order to be knocked down by the scientific perspective taken by the rest of the exhibition. Choosing which creation stories to include was also a problem, as was the use of terms like “story” and “myth” in the first place.

Instead, the team decided to fill out the exhibition with potential answers to a variation on the central question: What makes us human? Walking upright. Making tools. Living in social groups. Communicating with symbols. Creative expression. These are all valid answers. And crucially, they are potentially meaningful to everyone, regardless of whether the visitor is approaching the question from a more scientific perspective, or a more spiritual one. The exhibition presents the evidence for how and when each of these traits evolved, but leaves it up to the visitor to decide which they feel is most important to their humanity. By encouraging each visitor to take part in the process of making meaning, the exhibition implicitly rejects the prevailing perspective that there are only two ways to view the origins of humanity, and that those perspectives are mutually exclusive.

Organizing the exhibition around “things that make us human” also helped the team discourage the misconception that evolution is progressive or teleological. Visitors are often predisposed to think of evolution like a ladder, where each stage is a more advanced, improved form of what came before. An evaluation of the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History found that many visitors viewing the dioramas saw a progression from the small, dark-skinned Homo erectus to the tall, white Neanderthals. The exhibition’s designers had specifically tried to avoid this by arranging the dioramas cyclically, and by including labels explaining that evolution does not have a preordained direction or goal—populations merely adapt to maximize their success in the present environment. Nevertheless, preconceived ideas are powerful, and even these mitigative efforts were apparently not enough. In contrast, the NMNH Hall of Human Origins is not strictly chronological, nor does it focus on one hominin species at a time. This reduces the temptation to plot each display onto a directional axis. It also helps that the hall runs in two directions, and can be entered from either end.

Design

Overview of Hall of Human Origins. Photo by the author.

The design of the Hall of Human Origins feels respectful, even reverent. A palette of tans, browns, and other earth tones keep the space from looking garish, and evokes the importance of exploring the deep ancestry of our species. A core design element is a wall of densely-packed horizontal layers, a refrence to the stratigraphic context in which fossils are found. The wall is punctuated by larger-than-life relief sculptures, each one related to one of the key attributes of humanity covered by the exhibition. For example, a hominin with a spear facing an elephant represents how tool use opened up new food sources.

For Briana Pobiner, it was particularly important that the hall’s design put a human face on science. Many people think of science as something cold and distant, but warm up to it when they get to know the individuals behind it. To that end, the exhibition includes three “snapshots in time”—interactive media installations where a scientist on screen (one of which is Pobiner herself) guides visitors through a particular archaeological puzzle. The hall also includes 24 “how do we know” graphics. Each one includes a photo of a scientist in some way affiliated with the Human Origins Program and who contributed to the exhibition content, with a first-person account of how scientists interpret evidence and reach a conclusion. Pobiner says that teachers are particularly fond of these, and sometimes ask students on field trips to find all of them.

One ring to rule them all. Photo by the author.

The Hall of Human Origins includes nearly 300 objects. Most are casts, as hominin fossils are typically held in their countries of origin. There are a couple dozen originals, however, including archaeological artifacts and a Neanderthal skeleton from Shanidar Cave, in Iraq. This individual was one of several excavated in the 1950s during a collaborative project between the Smithsonian and the Iraqi Director General of Antiquities. The Iraqi government permitted this single skeleton to be held at NMNH, and it remains the only Neanderthal in the western hemisphere. Among the replicas on display is a partial skeleton of Homo floresiensis. Often called “the Hobbit” by its discoverers, this species was brand new to science when the exhibition was under development. Pobiner clued me in to an easter egg I had missed for fourteen years: the Hobbit has a gold ring on its finger.

Reconstructions

Bronze figures of a Neanderthal woman and child. Photo by the author.

Many natural history exhibits have the advantage of large, iconic objects that grab visitor attention, like sauropods, elephants, or whales. But hominin fossils are small, often fragmentary, and difficult to interpret. They wouldn’t be able to carry an exhibition for non-specialists on their own. In order to visualize the lives of past hominins, the team turned to paleoartist John Gurche.

The Hall of Human Origins was not Gurche’s first project with the Smithsonian. Between 1980 and 1985, he painted the iconic Tower of Time for the (now retired) Fossils: History of Life exhibition, as well as a backdrop for a lungfish diorama and a series of fossil horse reconstructions. This also wasn’t his first foray into reconstructing extinct hominins. Among many other projects, Gurche was briefly attached to Potts’s first attempt to get a human evolution exhibition off the ground, and he produced a life-sized model of Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 1996.

For the Hall of Human Origins, Gurche created a new Lucy diorama, eight full-color busts, and five bronze figures with landforms. The busts are astonishingly life-like. Each one was sculpted in clay over a replica skull—first the muscle, then the skin. These sculptures were molded in fiberglass and cast in a silicone mix that could be tinted with different skin tones. The eyeballs are acrylic, and required a painstaking 30-step process to create. Finally, the hairs (hundreds of thousands per bust) were punched in one at a time. “If people react to your sculptures by feeling a little creeped out because they sense a living presence there,” Gurche wrote, “you know you’ve done well.”

A promotional image of Gurche’s eight hominin busts. From humanorigins.si.edu.

Gurche began the bronzes in a similar way, sculpting their anatomy layer by layer over a posed cast skeleton. Choosing the behavior to depict for each species was a major point of discussion for the exhibition team. Each figure needed to capture the essence of that species, while also representing a recognizable aspect of the human experience. It was decided early that Paranthropus boisei and Homo erectus should be subtly interacting, since they coexisted in Tanzania and Kenya. In the final exhibition, the Homo erectus is looking warily at Paranthropus as she carries a dead gazelle back to her family. Homo floresiensis is shown being knocked over by an unseen predator, highlighting the species’ vulnerability. And the Neanderthal woman is showing a child how to make clothing by perforating a hide with an awl and clamping it in her teeth. No detail was too small—for example, the Neanderthal woman is squatting because many Neanderthals have ankle joint wear similar to modern populations that spend a lot of time squatting.

Response

In spite of large headers proclaiming it “treasured remains” of “a real Neanderthal,” this display receives less attention than the development team would like. Photo by the author.

In the years since the Hall of Human Origins opened, the team that created it has gotten a good idea of which aspects are working, and which are not. The bronzes are extremely popular, both as photo ops and as interactive experiences. A display doesn’t need a button or a lever to be interactive—the bronzes are practically crying out to be touched. The fact that they share space with visitors—rather than being captured behind glass—forces people to confront them, size them up, and consider how they are like and unlike themselves. I’m particularly enchanted by the Homo heidelbergensis (top of the page), who appears to be calling visitors to interact by offering a piece of meat. The bronze figures are also toddler magnets. Even at a non-verbal age, children are drawn to them. Museum Educator Margery Gordon recalls there was some internal concern about nudity, but ultimately few, if any, visitors complained.

By timing and tracking visitors, NMNH staff have determined that the “Morphing Station” photo booth is the most popular element in the exhibition. This interactive media piece takes photos of visitors and overlays them onto the face of one of the eight busts, showing what each person might look like as a member of another species. This concept was actually proposed by the science team, and the Reich + Petch designers were surprised that they wanted something so frivolous. But in fact, the photo booth perfectly matched the team’s goal to center each visitor and encourage them to engage with their evolutionary past on their own terms.

Meanwhile, the real Neanderthal skeleton has proven to be the biggest challenge for capturing visitor attention. The development team placed it in the center of the exhibition, and hoped that it would be a must-see focal point. However, conservation requirements mean that the Neanderthal case is dimly lit, and each bone is individually packed in cushioning foam. Hard to see and harder to interpret, the disarticulated skeleton continues to be overlooked by a majority of visitors. The team has re-designed the graphics and lighting around the Neanderthal multiple times in an effort to communicate that this is a rare chance to see a real skeleton.

The educational efforts undertaken with the Hall of Human Origins did not end in 2010. A Broader Social Impacts Committee, with a rotating membership of scientists, clergy, teachers, and others, was formed in 2009 and continues to meet. In-gallery and online talks about how the study of human evolution intersects with social issues are held regularly. A 1200 square foot version of the exhibition travels to libraries, community centers, and even seminaries. And Pobiner continues to work with educators to create better tools for teaching students about evolution. Persistence, it seems, is key in ensuring the exhibition’s content continues to reach new audiences.

When the Hall of Human Origins began development, about 40% of Americans agreed that humans developed over millions of years from other forms of life. This number hadn’t meaningfully changed since Gallup and other polling organizations began asking the question in the early 1980s. But in the last decade, that number has climbed to 55%. Miller and colleagues suggest that this change is related to declining religious affiliation. It’s also possible that agenda-setting right wing lobbyists have moved on to other anti-science projects, like climate change denial and rejection of vaccines. Whether this trend continues remains to be seen, but if more people are indeed open to exploring where our species came from, then there is more need than ever for experiences like the Hall of Human Origins.

Many thanks to Human Origins Education Program Specialist Briana Pobiner and Curator of Biological Anthropology Rick Potts for speaking with me as I was writing this article. Opinions and any factual errors are my own.

References

Gurche, J. 2013. Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Miller, J.D., Scott, E.C., Huffaker, J.S. 2021. Public acceptance of evolution in the United States, 1985–2020. Public Understanding of Science 31:2.

Pobiner, B. 2016. Accepting, understanding, teaching, and learning (human) evolution: Obstacles and opportunities. American Journal of Biological Anthropology. 159:61:232–274

Potts, R. 2010. Presenting Human Evolution to the Public: The Smithsonian’s Hall of Human Origins. Anthronotes 31:1

Scott, M. and Giusti, E. 2013. Designing Human Evolution Exhibitions: Insights from Exhibitions and Audiences. Museums and Social Issues 1:1:49–68

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Filed under education, exhibits, mammals, museums, NMNH, paleoart, science communication

October 18, 2023 · 5:13 pm

When were the Field Museum fossil mounts created?

So, I have a confession to make. In January of this year, I started working on an in-depth article about the Hall of Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History. It was going to cover everything: John Gurche’s sculptures, the design and narrative of the gallery, the challenges of opening an exhibition about human evolution on the National Mall, and even the misguided accusations that the hall contains climate change denial. It’s a great story, and I really want to write it up. So I’m giving myself a public ultimatum: it has to be done before the end of the year.

In the meantime, I’d like to share something I whipped up for social media (I’m primarily on BlueSky these days, if anyone’s looking for me). The annotated photos below show the year that each of these fossil mounts at the Field Museum first went on display. A complete list of currently-displayed mounts and their debut years is at the end of the post.

“Ungulate row” in the current Evolving Planet exhibition. Photo by John Weinstein, modified from original.

I find this interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s a reminder of the age of many museum exhibits. Multiple generations have come to see these fossils—a few of them predate the current Field Museum building by decades. But these dates are also a succinct recounting of the history of vertebrate paleontology at the Field. The oldest mounts—the mastodon and Irish elk—were leftovers from the Field Columbian Exposition, and presumably were purchased from the Ward’s Natural Science catalog.

The Ice Age menagerie in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

After that, a couple of dinosaurs join the fray. These were the result of Elmer Riggs’ first expeditions for the Field Museum. He was hired specifically to collect dinosaurs that could match the displays at AMNH and elsewhere, after all. Riggs’ real interest was in mammals, however, and by the 1910s we see that his department is exclusively mounting North American fossil mammals for display. In 1925, we begin to see the results of the Captain Marshall Field Expeditions (1923–1927) on display, as South American animals like Glyptodon and Aglaocetus join the exhibits.

Around 1948, the University of Chicago’s Museum of Geology closed down, and turned its collections over to the Field Museum. The University of Chicago had a particularly strong collection of Permian animals from Texas and South Africa, and there was an immediate flurry of activity to get those on display at the Field. A few of the University specimens went on exhibit as-is, but many (including Bradysaurus and Aulacephalodon) were disassembled and remounted by Orville Gilpin and others.

The dinosaur hall in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

After 1960, there was an extremely long period in which no new fossil mounts were added to the exhibits. The fossil halls languished without update until the end of the 20th century, with the opening of Life Over Time. Up until that point, the Field Museum had very few dinosaurs on display, but Life Over Time made dinosaurs its centerpiece. A growing popular interest in dinosaurs during the late 1980s, not to mention a certain 1993 movie, was probably the cause. Since that time, nearly all the new additions to the fossil exhibits have been dinosaurs. And with the exception of Arctodus in 2006, there have been no additions to the ranks of mounted mammal skeletons since the doldrums began in 1960.

That’s it for now, but let’s see about that Human Origins article before the end of the year!

Name (Common Name)TypeYear Installed (Updated)
Megaloceros giganteus (Irish elk)Mounted skeleton1895
Mammut americanum (mastodon)Mounted skeleton1895
Triceratops horridus (ceratopsian)Skull1905
Apatosaurus sp. (sauropod)Mounted skeleton1907 (1957, 1994)
Oxydactylus longipes (camel)Mounted skeleton1916
Dinictis felina (nimravid)Mounted skeleton1916
Smilodon fatalis (saber-toothed cat)Mounted skeleton1917 (1935, 1941)*
Ursus speleaus (cave bear)Mounted skeleton1917
Megacerops sp. (brontothere)Mounted skeleton1920
Mammuthus columbi (Columbian mammoth)Mounted skeleton1923
Aglaocetus moreni (baleen whale)Skull1925
Glyptodon clavipes (glyptodont)Mounted skeleton1926
Pronothrotherium typicum (ground sloth)Mounted skeleton1931
Mesohippus bairdi (horse)Mounted skeleton1931
Megatherium americanum (ground sloth)Mounted skeleton1935 (1994)
Paramylodon harlani (ground sloth)Mounted skeleton1935 (1941)
Barylambda faberi (pantodont)Mounted skeleton1936
Moropus cooki (chalicothere)Mounted skeleton1938
Equus simplicidens (horse)Mounted skeleton1938
Bison antiquus (bison)Mounted skeleton1940
Castoroides ohioensis (beaver)Mounted skeleton (cast)1940
Andalgalornis ferox (terror bird)Mounted skeleton1940
Menoceras arikarense (rhino)Bone bed1941
Teleoceras major (rhino)Mounted skeleton1942
Pliohippus sp. (horse)Mounted skeleton1944
Homalodotherium cunninghami (notoungulate)Mounted skeleton1948
Captorhinus aguti (early reptile)Mounted skeleton1948
Diasparactus zenos (amphibian)Mounted skeleton1949
Cacops aspidephorus (amphibian)Mounted skeleton1949
Seymouria sanjuanensis (amphibian)Mounted skeleton1949
Acheloma cumminsi (amphibian)Mounted skeleton1949
Eryops megacephalus (amphibian)Mounted skeleton1949
Labidosaurus hamatus (early reptile)Mounted skeleton1949
Bradysaurus baini (pareiasaur)Mounted skeleton1950
Sphenacodon ferox (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1950
Ophiacodon mirus (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1951
Dimetrodon grandis (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1951
Varanops brevirostris (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1952
Aulacephalodon peavoti (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1952
Edaphosaurus pogonias (early synapsid)Mounted skeleton1953
Protoceratops andrewsi (ceratopsian)Mounted skeleton1954
Daspletosaurus torosus (tyrannosaur)Mounted skeleton1958 (1994)
Lambeosaurus lambei (hadrosaur)In situ skeleton1958
Dunkleosteus terrelli (placoderm)Skull (cast)1958
Eohippus sp. (horse)Mounted skeleton (cast)1960
Brachiosaurus altithorax (sauropod)Mounted skeleton (cast)1993 (2001)
Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis (early dinosaur)Mounted skeleton (cast)1994
Pteranodon sp. (pterosaur) x3Mounted skeleton (cast)1994
Triceratops horridus (ceratopsian)Mounted skeleton (cast)1994
Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus (hadrosaur)Mounted skeleton1994 (2006)
Tyrannosaurus rex (SUE)Mounted skeleton2000 (2018)
Deinonychus antirrhopus (dromaeosaur)Mounted skeleton (cast)2006
Buitreraptor gonzalezorum (dromaeosaur)Mounted skeleton (cast)2006
Stegosaurus stenops (stegosaur)Mounted skeleton (cast)2006
Maiasaura peeblesorum juvenile (hadrosaur)Mounted skeleton2006
Rapetosaurus krausei juvenile (titanosaur)Mounted skeleton2006
Notharctus tenebrosus (primate)Mounted skeleton (cast)2006
Arctodus simus (short-faced bear)Mounted skeleton2006
Asilosaurus kongwe (dinosaur relative)Mounted skeleton (cast)2013
Patagotitan mayorum (Máximo)Mounted skeleton (cast)2018
Parringtonia gracilis (crocodile relative)Mounted skeleton (cast)2019
Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (Sobek)Mounted skeleton (cast)2023

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, FMNH, fossil mounts, history of science, mammals, museums

July 17, 2023 · 6:21 pm

Is it real?

O. megalodon jaws a the American Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

You’ve probably seen the gaping jaws of Otodus megalodon (or “megalodon,” as it is colloquially known) in a natural history museum. Perhaps they’re set on the ground where they can frame a group photo, or maybe they’re suspended from the ceiling so you can imagine the rest of the shark rocketing toward you. In any case, every one of these O. megalodon jaws is a sculpted model with real (or cast) teeth embedded in it. Fossil jaws like this have never been found. Nor do scientists expect to ever find intact O. megalodon jaws—shark skeletons are made of cartilage, meaning they lack the mineral content and endurance of bone. Some fossilized shark skeletons are known, but they tend to be from smaller varieties. In the case of O. megalodon, we mostly just have teeth.

Why would a museum display a model of something that has never been found? Because paleontologists are quite confident that a real O. megalodon jaw would look just like this. For one thing, the general shape of modern lamniform shark jaws isn’t especially variable. Comparisons with modern sharks also allow scientists to determine where a fossil tooth fits into the mouth—in the front, to the side, or toward the back. There simply isn’t that much room for guesswork in the reconstruction, at least as far as the jaws are concerned.

I’ve been thinking about the accusation of “fake” again, as it pertains to fossil exhibitions (this is hardly new territory for this blog). One often hears from dissatisfied members of the public that the fossil skeletons on display at any given museum are fake—sometimes with the accusation that the real bones are “hidden” or “in storage” but occasionally with the conspiratorial angle that the creatures on display have been partially or fully invented. Museum workers do their best to explain: casts are exact copies made from molds of original fossils. Fossil skeletons are usually incomplete, but we can substitute casts from other individuals or mirror parts from the opposite side of the body. Plenty of mounted skeletons are made of original fossils, and at bigger museums, most of them are. And so forth.

Thalassomedon casts in pursuit of fish at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Photo by the author.

And yet, the cry of “fake” isn’t exactly wrong, either. Many displays contain some amount of sculpted material. In the case of the ubiquitous meg jaws, most of the object by volume is reconstruction. Lukas Rieppel cheekily describes early 20th century dinosaur mounts as “mixed media sculptures, having been cobbled together from a large number of disparate elements that include plaster, steel, and paint, in addition to fossilized bone.” He’s right, and what’s more, even complete skeletons don’t come out of the ground assembled on metal armatures.

So here’s my take: calling fossil mounts fake isn’t wrong, but it also isn’t relevant. The point of the O. megalodon jaws at the start of this post isn’t to show you the real fossil teeth—they’re kind of hard to see suspended fifteen feet off the ground. No, the point is to give the extinct shark that left those teeth behind form, life, and context. The visual and visceral experience of a 10-foot mouth rushing down at you provides a better understanding of what O. megalodon was all about then a case of teeth laid flat in a case ever could.

SUE in the Field Museum’s Evolving Planet exhibition. Photo by the author.

The same applies to just about any mounted fossil skeleton you’ve ever seen, whether it includes original material or is entirely cast. The purpose of these displays isn’t to show fossils as they were found. These are works of installation art, custom built for the space and in dialogue with their surroundings, including with visitors themselves. Take SUE the T. rex in their 2018 gallery on the Field Museum’s second floor. When SUE was in the cavernous, half-acre expanse of Stanley Field Hall, visitors often remarked that SUE looked small. In order to emphasize SUE’s size in the new space, the designers hid the skeleton behind a scrim wall. Instead of first seeing SUE from several hundred feet away, visitors don’t meet the T. rex until it’s looming over them, and they feel quite small in comparison. The T. rex skeleton and the space around it were arranged and composed in order to invoke a precise emotional response.

Often, the display evokes a specific hypothesis. The rearing Barosaurus in the AMNH rotunda is a classic example. We don’t know for sure whether Barosaurus could rear up on its back legs, or whether it would defend its offspring from a charging Allosaurus. But this is the story the exhibit’s creators chose to tell, using articulated fossil casts as their medium. In short, a display like this lets visitors without a detailed background in skeletal anatomy and animal behavior see the fossils the way that scientists do.

Bison diorama at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Photo by the author.

It’s worth drawing a comparison between mounted fossil skeletons and the other iconic natural history display, the taxidermy diorama. Imagine looking at this exquisite diorama of a rolling bison at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and dismissing it because it’s not real. The bison is, for the most part, a fabrication: it’s mostly clay or foam by volume, and it’s built over a wood and metal armature. It has no bones, muscle, blood, or viscera, and the only original part, the hide, has been treated with an assortment of preservatives. Meanwhile, the grass may well be paper or fabric, the background landscape is a painting, and the warmth from the sun is an electric light. This diorama is almost completely fake, but to say so is to entirely miss the point. If physical reality is all that matters, this display has nothing to offer that you can’t get from a leather sofa.

A well-made taxidermy diorama uses artificial materials to evoke the attitude, behavior, context, and essence of a living animal. A reconstructed fossil skeleton does precisely the same thing (although it is limited to the part of the extinct animal that we know best). So the next time someone dismisses a fossil exhibit as “fake,” try reframing the conversation. The reality of these displays doesn’t come from the material they’re made from, it comes from the combined knowledge and skill of preparators, artists, and scientists.

References

Rieppel, L. 2019. Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Poliquin, R. 2012. The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Filed under AMNH, art history, DMNS, exhibits, fish, FMNH, fossil mounts, museums, opinion, paleoart

June 14, 2023 · 1:52 pm

Dinosaurs of the Field Museum – Part 2

In the previous “quick bite” post, I introduced the dinosaurs on display at the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) that were collected in the early 20th century. This time, we’ll take a look at some of the dinosaurs collected and first displayed “in living memory”—that is to say, in the last three decades or so. I’ve skipped a few that either don’t have much available provenance (like the juvenile Maiasaura) or don’t have a very interesting story (like the off-the-shelf Deinonychus cast).

In comparing the early and more recent dinosaur installations at FMNH, it is immediately apparent that the latter group covers a much wider geographical range. The older mounted skeletons were all recovered in the western United States and Canada, while the new batch comes from all over the world, especially the global south. Local scientists were usually involved in the research, and in most cases the original fossils remained in or were ultimately returned to their countries of origin.

Tyrannosaurus rex (PR 2081)

SUE in Stanley Field Hall, ca. 2015. Photo by the author.

As one of the world’s most thoroughly-researched and best-known dinosaurs, SUE the T. rex scarcely requires an introduction. SUE is the most complete adult Tyrannosaurus ever found, with 90% of the skeleton intact. Approximately 30 years old at the time of their death, SUE is also the eldest T. rex known, and within the margin of error for the title of largest. 

SUE was discovered in 1990 by Sue Hendrickson on ranchland near Faith, South Dakota. At the time, Hendrickson was working with the Black Hills Institute, a private company that specializes in collecting and exhibiting fossils. BHI’s claim to the fossil became the subject of a legal battle involving landowner Maurice Williams, the Cheyenne River Tribal Council, and the US Department of the Interior. With little legal precedent for ownership disputes over fossils, it took until 1995 for the District Court to award Williams the skeleton. Williams announced that he would put SUE on the auction block, and paleontologists initially worried that the priceless specimen would disappear into the hands of a wealthy collector. Those fears were put to rest in 1997 when FMNH won SUE with financial backing from McDonald’s and Disney. 

SUE has ruled this dedicated hall in Evolving Planet since December 2018. Photo © Field Museum.

The museum wasted no time making the most of the celebrity specimen. The preparation team expanded to twelve people, who spent 35,000 hours over the next three years extracting SUE’s skeleton from the rock. Chris Brochu was brought on board to write a detailed monograph, which is still a definitive source on Tyrannosaurus rex anatomy. Meanwhile, Phil Fraley built the metal armature upon which the skeleton would be mounted. SUE debuted in FMNH’s cavernous Stanley Field Hall on May 17, 2000 with the dropping of a curtain.

SUE held court in Stanley Field Hall for nearly 20 years, but in 2018 it was time for a change. That year, SUE was relocated to a new, 6,500 square foot gallery within the Evolving Planet exhibition. In contrast with the neoclassical expanse of Stanley Field Hall, this “private suite” gives the T. rex some much-needed context. SUE is now situated in an immersive reconstruction of the waterlogged forests of Late Cretaceous South Dakota. The mounted skeleton itself received an update, overseen by Pete Makovicky, Tom Cullen, and Bill Simpson. Garth Dallman and colleagues from Research Casting International (RCI) modified the original mount to correct a range of issues, like the articulation of the right knee and the position of the shoulders. SUE was also reunited with their gastralia—the rib-like bones that were embedded in the belly muscles.

Cryolophosaurus ellioti (PR 1821)

Cryolophosaurus partial skull in the Antarctic Dinosaurs exhibition. Photo by the author.

Excavating fossils is challenging in the best of conditions, but add the treacherous climate of Antarctica to the mix and it becomes a truly astounding feat. In 1991, William Hammer of Augustana College led a team that discovered and excavated the first Antarctic dinosaur to be named and described: the moose-sized theropod Cryolophosaurus. While bad weather prevented them from excavating the entire skeleton, Hammer and colleagues managed to collect the rear portion of the skull and jaw, as well as parts of the pelvis and hind limbs. The specimens were given to FMNH, the largest fossil repository near Hammer’s institution.

Cryolophosaurus cast in the Antarctic Dinosaurs exhibition. Photo © Field Museum

Hammer returned to the Cryolophosaurus site in 2010, joined by Nate Smith, Josh Matthews, and FMNH’s Pete Makovicky. Working in minus 15 F conditions, the team excavated more of the holotype skeleton. Some overlapping bones, including a second braincase, clarified that at least two individuals were present in the quarry.

For many years, Cryolophosaurus had only a minor role in FMNH exhibitions. In Evolving Planet, it is represented only by a cast of the partial skull. In 2018, however, the museum debuted Antarctic Dinosaurs, a traveling exhibition all about the 2010 expedition. Cryolophosaurus is the star of the show: most of the holotype is displayed in a series of cases, alongside a complete standing cast created by RCI. While other museums have displayed Cryolophosaurus reconstructions, the Antarctic Dinosaurs cast is more up-to-date in many respects—for instance, it’s narrow skull more closely resembles Dilophosaurus than Allosaurus.

Rapetosaurus krausei (PR 2209)

Juvenile Rapetosaurus in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

It’s hard to imagine now, but as recently as the mid-1990s, very little was known about titanosaurs. These Cretaceous sauropods were mostly known from isolated bones, and it wasn’t even clear if they were more closely related to diplodocoids like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus or to macronarians like Camarasaurus and Brachiosaurus. That changed in 2001, when Kristina Curry Rogers and Catherine Forster published the first description of Rapetosaurus krausei.

The new genus and species was based on fossils collected a few years earlier on a Mahajanga Basin Project expedition in northwest Madagascar. Organized by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the local Universite d’Antananarivo, the Mahajanga Basin Project has been exploring fossil outcrops in this region since 1993. The project has been tremendously successful, yielding numerous new species and revolutionizing our understanding of vertebrate evolution in the southern hemisphere.

Rogers and Forster designated one of two adult Rapetosaurus skulls as the holotype, but most of our information about this animal comes from a 15-foot, 75% complete juvenile skeleton. To this day, this fossil is the most complete titanosaur ever found, and the only titanosaur known from both a skull and the majority of its postcranial skeleton. From their high-set eyes to their ludicrously wide bodies, much of what is known about the shape of titanosaurs comes from this specimen. Details of this skeleton also helped confirm that titanosaurs are macronarian sauropods.

As one of the funders of the MBP expeditions, the Field Museum became the repository for the juvenile Rapetosaurus skeleton. The fossil was mounted for display in 2006, when the paleontology halls were refreshed and retitled as Evolving Planet.

Buitreraptor gonzalezorum (MPCA 245 and others)

Buitreraptor cast under construction—note the unrestored skull cast being used as a placeholder. Many thanks to Matthew Aaron Brown for sharing this photo.

Fossils of Buitreraptor, a goose-sized dromaeosaur, were first collected in Patagonia, Argentina in 2004. The Field Museum’s Pete Makovicky was joined by Sebastián Apesteguia and Federico Agnolín in describing the new dinosaur the following year. Buitreraptor is notable for being the oldest known South American dromaeosaur (about 98 million years old), and for being one of the most completely known unlagiine dromaeosaurs—bizarre creatures with exceptionally long and narrow snouts. The holotype specimen was prepared at FMNH before being returned to the Museo Provincial de Cipolletti Carlos Ameghino in Río Negro, Argentina.

Finished Buitreraptor cast in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

The Evolving Planet team did not originally intend to include Buitreraptor, but as the exhibition neared completion it was noted that the bird evolution display—which only featured Deinonychus and a pair of small models—looked a little sparse. With most of the hall already installed and the opening just months away, preparators Connie Van Beek, Matthew Aaron Brown, and Jim Holstein were tapped to create a mounted cast of Buitreraptor. The preparators first built a prototype by wiring together available casts of the original fossils. They then moved on to the final version, which involved reconstructing the missing extremities (arms, feet, and ribs) and creating a “re-inflated” version of the specimen’s crushed skull. The entire project was completed in less than two months.

Patagotitan mayorum (MPEF 2400 and others)

Field Museum and Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio staff worked together to assemble Máximo in May 2018. Photo by the author.

In 2017, plans took shape to reimagine Stanley Field Hall, as has happened several times since the current FMNH building opened in 1921. Part of the plan was to relocate SUE to a dedicated gallery in Evolving Planet, but what could take the place of the star T. rex? The museum found their answer in Patagotitan, a recently discovered titanosaur that is a contender for the world’s largest dinosaur.

Patagotitan mayorum was discovered on the Mayo family farm near La Flecha, Argentina in 2010. Between 2012 and 2014, Diego Pol and colleagues at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio (MEF) excavated the find, which turned out to be a bone bed of six individuals. The new genus and species was named and published in 2018.

The FMNH cast is actually the second Patagotitan display in the United States. In 2015 (before the animal had a name), the American Museum of Natural History commissioned RCI to create a cast for the Wallach Orientation Center, part of the loop of fossil halls on the New York museum’s 4th floor. By placing Patagotitan in a relatively small space, the AMNH designers emphasized the sauropod’s great size. Standing in a slightly crouched pose with its head extending into an adjacent hall, the mount overwhelms the space.

Máximo has plenty of room to spread out in Stanley Field Hall. Photo by the author.

In contrast, the FMNH Patagotitan—nicknamed Máximo—has room to spread out. In the half-acre, four story expanse of Stanley Field Hall, visitors can stand at a reasonable distance and take in the 122-foot skeleton all at once. They can also look Máximo in the eye socket from the upper level balcony. Rather than work with RCI on the project, FMNH commissioned the mount from MEF directly. It was designed and built in Trelew, Argentina, and shipped to Chicago via cargo ship. The installation took four days in May 2018. The process didn’t go entirely without a hitch—under the skylight in Stanley Field Hall, the original paint job on the cast bones looked like raw meat. But even with the need for an emergency repaint of the entire skeleton, Máximo was completed on time and has been greeting FMNH visitors ever since.

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (FSAC-KK-11888)

The Prehistoric Minds team prepares to add legs to Spinosaurus. Photo by the author.

The Field Museum’s newest dinosaur debuted just two weeks ago as of this writing (and is, in fact, why I’ve been sitting on this post for months). Postdoctoral researcher Matteo Fabbri approached the Exhibitions department in Fall 2022 with the prospect of acquiring a Spinosaurus cast. Less than a year later, that cast has joined Patagotitan in Stanley Field Hall, suspended twelve feet off the floor in a swimming pose.

Thanks to its dragon-like shape and star turn in Jurassic Park III, Spinosaurus is a very popular dinosaur, but until recently it has been quite poorly known. The 1912 holotype specimen—consisting of a partial jaw, several dorsal vertebrae, and a few other odds and ends—was inadvertently destroyed in the bombing of Munich during World War II. It wasn’t until 2008 that another skeleton was found in southern Morocco. The new specimen revealed that Spinosaurus was even weirder than previously thought: not only did it have an elongated, crocodile-like skull and a sail on its back, it also had a long body, short legs, and a newt-like tail fin.

Spinosaurus hangs 12 feet above the floor. Photo by the author.

Very few Spinosaurus casts have ever been displayed. One was made for the retired Spinosaurus: Lost Giant of the Cretaceous traveling exhibit. Another appeared in last year’s The Big Eight: Dinosaur Revelation in Hong Kong. But as far as I can tell, the only other permanent Spinosaurus skeleton on display is at Japan’s Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History. That makes the FMNH cast the only mount of its kind in the western hemisphere. 

It’s also the most up-to-date Spinosaurus on display. As part of the team that has been studying Spinosaurus for the last 15 years, Fabbri ensured that cervical vertebrae collected at the original discovery site just six months ago were incorporated into the mount. All told, about 50% of the skeleton is cast from the Morocco specimen, while the rest is reconstructed. 

Like Máximo, the Spinosaurus was built overseas. Simone Maganuco and colleagues constructed the skeleton in Italy, then traveled with it to Chicago to help with the installation. The lightweight cast—which only weighs 700 pounds—was hanging in its permanent position after just ten hours of work.

Press coverage of the installation (with appearances from a certain overenthusiastic nerd) can be seen here and here.

References

Brochu, C.A. 2003. Osteology of Tyrannosaurus rex: Insights from a nearly complete skeleton and high-resolution computed tomographic analysis of the skull. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22:1–138.

Curry Rogers, K., Forster, C.A. 2001. The last of the dinosaur titans: a new sauropod from Madagascar. Nature 412:6746:530–534.

Hammer, W.R. and Hickerson, W.J. 1994. A Crested Theropod Dinosaur from Antarctica. Science 264: 828–830.

Grande, L. 2017. Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Ibrahim, N., Maganuco, S., Dal Sasso, C., Fabbri, M., Auditore, M., Binedellini, G., Martill, D.M., Zourhi, S., Matterelli, D., Unwin, D.M., Wiemann, J., Bonadonna, D., Amane, A., Jakubczak, J., Joger, U., Lauder, G.V., and Pierce, S.E. 2020. Tail-propelled aquatic locomotion in a theropod dinosaur. Nature 581(7806):1–4.

Makovicky, P.J., Apesteguía, S., and Agnolín, F.L. 2005. The earliest dromaeosaurid theropod from South America. Nature 437: 1007–1011.

Smith, N.D., Makovicky, P.J., Hammer, W.R., and Currie, P.J. 2007. Osteology of Cryolophosaurus ellioti from the Early Jurassic of Antarctica and implications for early theropod evolution. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 151: 377–421.

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Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, exhibits, FMNH, fossil mounts, museums, sauropods, theropods

January 27, 2023 · 4:39 pm

Dinosaurs of the Field Museum — Part 1

About a year ago, I wrote this post about the dinosaurs of the London Natural History Museum, admittedly in a bit of a hurry. The post has proven very popular, which leads me to conclude there’s interest in more “quick bite” articles about the specimens on display at various museums. I’ll see about putting together more of these in the future.

For now, I’ll start close to home, with the dinosaurs on display at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH). This entry is about the most notable specimens that were acquired outside the living memory of current staff. I’ll follow up with an article about more recent acquisitions sometime soon. It’s important to note that while I’m focusing on dinosaurs here, the real meat of the Field Museum’s vertebrate paleontology collection is in its Cenozoic holdings. Those too will need to be a topic for another time.

Brachiosaurus altithorax (P 25107)

Menke poses with the Brachiosaurus humerus, unwittingly creating an image that every subsequent sauropod worker is obligated to recreate. Photo © Field Museum.

The first dinosaur discovered by Field Museum paleontologists was nothing less than the biggest land animal known at the time. On July 4, 1900, the museum’s first paleontologist Elmer Riggs and his assistant H.W. Menke came upon a set of enormous bones in western Colorado. Riggs—who was specifically hired two years earlier to find dinosaurs for the nascent museum—named the new dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax in 1903. The individual bones were set in display cabinets (left image, below) around the same time. Comprising about 25% of the skeleton, Riggs did not consider the find complete enough to assemble into a standing mount. Nevertheless, the museum commissioned a replica Brachiosaurus skeleton about 90 years later, basing the missing pieces on the related Giraffatitan.

New Brachiosaurus fossils have proven elusive. While several individual bones have been found, the holotype collected by Riggs and Menke remains the most complete example of this famous dinosaur.

“Apatosaurus” sp. (P 25112 and P 27021)

The Field Museum’s “Apatosaurus” is a composite of two sauropod specimens, collected 40 years apart. Photos © Field Museum.

Riggs and Menke found another sauropod in western Colorado in 1900, and returned the following year to excavate it. This time, they had the back two-thirds of an apatosaurine sauropod, complete save for the distal portions of the limbs and tail. As museum leaders were unwilling to fund a search for more sauropod material, Riggs mounted the partial skeleton in 1908 (left image, above). 

The sauropod remained in this unfinished state until the 1950s, when preparator Orville Gilpin arranged to acquire another incomplete sauropod. Gilpin had excavated the specimen with Jim Quinn near Moab, Utah in 1941, and knew that it was a perfect complement to the skeleton on display. Long-time museum president Stanley Field (nephew of founder Marshall Field) had repeatedly resisted requests from the paleontology staff to complete the mount, but allegedly relented after overhearing a visitor ask which side of the half-dinosaur was the front. Gilpin built an armature for the neck and shoulders of the newly acquired specimen (right image, above), and finished the mount with casts of Apatosaurus forelimbs and a Camarasaurus skull from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The Field Museum finally had a complete sauropod on display, which was unveiled at the April 1958 Members’ Night. 

“Apatosaurus” as it is currently displayed in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

In 1992, the composite sauropod was dismantled and relocated to the new Life Over Time exhibition on the other side of the building. The museum hired Prehistoric Animal Structures, Inc.—a now-shuttered company specializing in mounting fossil skeletons—to do the work. The updated sauropod debuted in 1994, now posed as though looking at visitors on a nearby elevated walkway. The sauropod remained in place when Life Over Time became Evolving Planet in 2006, though with the walkway gone it now appears to be admiring the Charles Knight murals on the wall.

A note on nomenclature: Riggs identified this skeleton as Apatosaurus, but the label was changed to Brontosaurus in the mid-20th century, when Apatosaurus fell out of common parlance. The name Apatosaurus returned to labels in 1994. However the most recent word on this specimen—from Tschopp et. al 2015—is that it’s not Apatosaurus nor Brontosaurus, but likely another, yet unnamed taxon.

Triceratops horridus (P 12003)

The skull of FMNH P 12003 as it is currently displayed in the SUE gallery. Photo by the author.

In 1904, Riggs moved on from the Jurassic-aged rocks of Colorado to the Cretaceous of Carter County, Montana. Today, this part of southeast Montana is lousy with paleontologists. There’s even an annual shindig for field crews held at the Carter County Museum in Ekalaka. However, Riggs’ expedition was among the first to visit the region from a large museum. The most significant find of the summer was a Triceratops skull and partial skeleton from just west of the Chalk Buttes.

The skull was prepared by 1905 and has been in every iteration of the Field Museum’s paleontology halls. The unusually thick brow horns were recently confirmed to be real bone, but it’s possible that they were originally from another, larger specimen (edit: There is real bone inside the horns, but they are padded with a lot of plaster reconstruction—see comments). The remainder of the skeleton remains in storage.

Gorgosaurus libratus (PR 2211)

Elmer the Gorgosaurus as it was last displayed, in 2017’s Specimens: Unlocking the Secrets of Life. Photo by the author.

Most collecting was paused during World War I, but shortly after the war, Marshall Field III funded new expeditions in all four of the Field Museum’s major research areas (Zoology, Botany, Geology, and Anthropology). Riggs led three of these expeditions, one to Alberta and two to Argentina and Bolivia. Riggs saw the 1922 Alberta trip as something of a practice run, since he hadn’t been in the field in years, and some on his team had never done fieldwork at all. 

Still, the crew was serious about bringing in fossils. Riggs decided to go to the Red Deer River region of Alberta, a place where his former colleague and classmate Barnum Brown had unearthed numerous near-complete dinosaurs for the American Museum of Natural History. Riggs also hired fossil hunter George F. Sternberg, who already knew the area well, to join him on the 14-week expedition.

After returning from Alberta, Riggs was busy getting ready for the upcoming expeditions to South America, and most of the field jackets remained unopened for years, or even decades. One jacket lingered until 1999, when the large team of preparators assembled to prep SUE the T. rex decided to crack it open. 

Inside, they found the virtually complete hips, hindlimbs, and tail of a four-year-old Gorgosaurus, which they named Elmer. Riggs’ notes indicated that the skull ought to have been present, but the preparators only found a few teeth. Further investigation revealed that the partial skull had been in its own jacket with a different number, and that it had been loaned to the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s. The Berkeley scientists had subsequently lost the fossil, but (fortunately) made a cast of it, which was later returned to the Field Museum. 

Elmer was included in the touring exhibition Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries, and most recently in 2017’s Specimens: Unlocking the Secrets of Life. It is currently off exhibit.

Lambeosaurus lambei (PR 380)

Lambeosaurus under prep in 1955. Photo © Field Museum.

According to Riggs, the “prize find” of the 1922 Alberta expedition was a Lambeosaurus found by Sternberg. Even in the field, it was clear that the skeleton was completely intact, save for the head, part of the neck, and the tip of the tail. Sternberg’s field notes indicate that the weathered side included a number of large skin impressions. The Lambeosaurus was jacketed and excavated in eight sections, totaling about three tons of rock and fossil.

Like Elmer the Gorgosaurus, the Lambeosaurus was left unprepared while Field Museum preparators focused on the fossils from South America. In 1947, the University of Chicago closed its geology museum and donated its collections to the Field Museum, pushing the Alberta fossils even further down the queue. Stanley Kuczek finally prepared the Lambeosaurus in 1954, when it was slated to be paired with Daspletosaurus in a new display (more below).

Kuczek prepared only the unweathered (face-down in the field) side of the skeleton, so the skin impressions Sternberg reported are still embedded in the matrix under the fossil. A Lambeosaurus skull from the University of Chicago collection (UC 1479) was used to complete the display. Sternberg’s Lambeosaurus remains the most complete non-bird dinosaur at the Field Museum, and a (perhaps unsung) highlight of the collection.

Daspletosaurus torosus (PR 308)

Nathan Cochran recently rediscovered the original “Gorgosaurus” and Lambeosaurus label, as seen in this image. Check it out here. Photo © Field Museum.

The Field Museum’s Daspletosaurus, sometimes called “Gorgeous George,” was collected by Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History in 1914. It came from the same region of Alberta that Riggs and company would visit eight years later. At the time, the partial skeleton was considered an example of Gorgosaurus, of which the New York museum already had three. In 1955, Field Museum board member Louis Ware offered to buy the American Museum’s spare tyrannosaur, and soon the fossil was on its way to Chicago.

Orville Gilpin mounted the skeleton—which has been known as Daspletosaurus since 1999—for display. He elected to create a completely free-standing mount, with no visible armature. This required drilling through each of the vertebrae to thread a steel pipe through, as well as splitting the right femur. These destructive practices would never be undertaken today, but in the mid 20th century, dinosaurs were seen as display pieces first and scientific specimens second.

Daspletosaurus in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

Like the “Apatosaurus,” Gorgeous George was revealed to the public during Members’ Night. The skeleton was placed at the south end of the museum’s central Stanley Field Hall, standing over Sternberg’s Lambeosaurus as though it had just brought down the herbivore. In 1992, Prehistoric Animal Structures, Inc. remounted the Daspletosaurus in a more accurate horizontal posture, once again poised over its Lambeosaurus prey. The real skull has never been mounted on the skeleton, but it is currently on display near the museum’s east entrance.

Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus (P 27393)

Parasaurolophus in Evolving Planet. Photo by the author.

The Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus holotype was found by Charles Sternberg (father of George) in 1923, near Fruitland, New Mexico. It made it to the Field Museum through a series of exchanges, but was not prepared until the 1950s. John Ostrom published a description of the skeleton and partial skull in 1961, noting that it was nearly identical to Parasaurolophus walkeri from Alberta, except for the crest on the back of its head. While P. walkeri has a long, backward-projecting crest, the New Mexico species has a short crest that curves downward.

The Parasaurolophus was first exhibited in 1994, as part of Life Over Time. The 70% complete skeleton was mounted directly to a wall, with illustrations of the missing bones behind it. Ten years later, Research Casting International was brought in to turn the Parasaurolophus into a complete standing mount. Like most modern mounts, the armature is designed so that each bone can be removed individually for study or conservation. Captured in a graceful walking pose, the Parasaurolophus is—in my opinion—the most elegant and evocative dinosaur mount at the Field Museum.

References

Brinkman, P. 2000. Establishing vertebrate paleontology at Chicago’s Field Columbian Museum, 1893–1898. Archives of Natural History 27:81–114.

Brinkman, P. 2010. The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the 20th Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brinkman, P. 2013. Red Deer River shakedown: a history of the Captain Marshall Field paleontological expedition to Alberta, 1922, and its aftermath. Earth Sciences History 32:2:204-234. 

Erickson, G.M, Makovicky, P.J., Currie, P.J., Norell, M.A., Yerby, S.A., and Brochu, C.A. 2004. Gigantism and life history parameters of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Nature 430:722–775.

Forster, C.A. 1996. Species resolution in Triceratops: cladistic and morphometric approaches. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 16:2:259–270.

Gilpin, O. 1959. A free-standing mount of Gorgosaurus. Curator: The Museum Journal 2:2:162–168.

Ostrom, J.H. 1961. A new species of hadrosaurian dinosaur from the Cretaceous of New Mexico. Journal of Paleontology 35:3:575–577.

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, field work, FMNH, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, ornithopods, sauropods, theropods

December 18, 2022 · 3:47 pm

Ernestine lives!

A scaffold of foreboding surrounds the Brachiosaurus cast. Photo by the author.

Earlier this year, the Brachiosaurus cast skeleton that stood on the Field Museum’s northwest terrace was retired. On display for 23 years (and 23 brutal Chicago winters), the replica was suffering from a rusting armature and extensive cracking. Deemed structurally unsound, it was dismantled the week of June 12. Though we lament the loss of the long-necked sentinel over DuSable Lake Shore Drive, the legacy of Brachiosaurus—the Field Museum’s first dinosaur—lives on.

The story of Brachiosaurus begins with the museum’s founding, nearly 130 years ago. The Field Columbian Museum opened in Chicago on June 2, 1894 as a permanent home for the collection assembled at the previous year’s World Columbian Exposition. While the collection boasted thousands of zoological, botanical, anthropological, and geological objects, it had but a single dinosaur: a replica skeleton of Hadrosaurus. Based on the original at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, the model was badly out of date by the 1890s. Oliver Farrington, the Field’s original geology curator, considered it an embarrassment and petitioned director Frederick Skiff to hire a vertebrate paleontology specialist to collect better material. Skiff passed the request on the board, but was denied—with a building full of uncataloged specimens, they saw no need to obtain anything new.

The board changed their minds in 1898, when the Carnegie Museum and American Museum of Natural History announced plans to find sauropod dinosaurs for display. The resume of Elmer Riggs, a recent University of Kansas graduate with ample fossil hunting experience, happened to be on Skiff’s desk, and so Riggs was hired to collect dinosaurs for the museum.

The Brachiosaurus site in summer 1900. This excavation was particularly well-documented, thanks to Menke’s long-exposure, plate glass photographs. Photo © Field Museum, CC BY-NC.

In 1900, Riggs was prospecting near Grand Junction, Colorado with assistant Harold William Menke and camp cook Victor Dames. Their quarry was an exhibit-worthy specimen of Brontosaurus, the largest known dinosaur at that time. On July 4, Menke made a promising find: a giant limb bone that was the right size to be a Brontosaurus femur. The group began excavating and eventually revealed additional limb bones, nine-foot ribs, an articulated series of dorsal vertebrae, the sacrum, and a scattering of other bones. The course-grained, pebbly matrix suggested burial in a fast-moving river, which probably swept away the missing parts. All told, they had about 25% of a skeleton—not enough to mount for display but still worth collecting.

Once the fossils were back at the museum and undergoing preparation, Riggs confirmed something he had probably suspected in the field. Menke’s six-foot, seven-inch limb bone wasn’t a femur, it was a humerus. The humerus of Brontosaurus was well under five feet, so this animal was substantially larger. With his 1903 publication introducing Brachiosaurus altithorax to the world, Riggs emphasized its record size—and encouraged the press to make a meal of it.

Brachiosaurus was a win for the Field Museum: the first newly described dinosaur to come out of the nascent institution was also the biggest ever (a title Brachiosaurus would hold for the better part of the century). But while many of the individual bones were put on display in 1908, the holotype wasn’t complete enough to assemble into a standing mount. Instead, another find from Riggs’ 1900 Colorado expedition—the Fruita Apatosaurus—became the museum’s first mounted sauropod.

When the Field Museum was exploring the idea to create a complete replica Brachiosaurus, an unknown staffer (“M”) drew up this illustration to show how much would need to be reconstructed. This image is stitched together from multiple scans.

It would be almost ninety years before the museum revisited the prospect of putting Brachiosaurus on display. In the early 1990s, the Exhibitions department was hard at work remaking its paleontology halls from the ground up. This project would eventually open as Life Over Time in 1994, but in the meantime it was agreed that a showstopping symbol was needed outside the exhibit proper.

That showstopper could only be Brachiosaurus. The Field Museum hired Prehistoric Animal Structures, Inc.—a now-shuttered company specializing in mounted fossil skeletons—to make it happen. Commonly abbreviated as PAST, the company was founded by Gilles Danis, who previously created many of the Royal Tyrell Museum’s opening day exhibitions.

Fortunately for Danis and his team, there was more Brachiosaurus (and Brachiosaurus adjacent) fossil material to work with then in Riggs’ day. A handful of specimens referred to Brachiosaurus altithorax (mostly individual bones) had since turned up in the western United States, but the bulk of information came from a pair of Tanzanian skeletons. In 1914, German paleontologist Warner Janensch determined that these specimens were a second species of Brachiosaurus—Brachiosaurus brancai. More recently, the Tanzanian brachiosaur has been moved to its own genus, and is now known as Giraffatitan brancai. While there are a number of key differences, Giraffatitan and Brachiosaurus are one another’s closest known relatives, making the former a reasonable reference for the unknown parts of the latter.

Ernestine the Brachiosaurus in Stanley Field Hall. Photo © Field Museum.

To reconstruct Brachiosaurus for the Field Museum, the PAST crew started by taking molds of the Brachiosaurus holotype bones. Next, Danis and Donna Sloan traveled to the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, where the Giraffatitan fossils are housed. While they were not allowed to make casts, Danis and Sloan took extensive measurements. Stephen Godfrey used this information to sculpt the missing parts of Brachiosaurus, including the head, neck, tail, and feet.

A few adjustments were made along the way. First, the PAST crew inflated the limb bones slightly, so that the steel armature would fit inside. Second, the museum wanted visitors to be able to walk under the Brachiosaurus, but its torso wasn’t quite long enough to meet the minimum fire egress requirements. PAST solved the problem by quietly duplicating two of the vertebrae in the dorsal series. In an amusing twist, these stretch-limo proportions may have inadvertently been correct. Danis named the finished replica Ernestine, because “Ernestine is an awkward name and Brachiosaurus is an awkward-looking thing.”

Ernestine the Brachiosaurus has stood in the United terminal at O’Hare since 1999. Photo by the author.

On June 29, 1993 (a Tuesday), Danis, three PAST crew members, and six Field Museum staffers assembled Ernestine in the museum’s central Stanley Field Hall. Reporters from the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune were present to document the construction (scans of these articles are at the end of this post). Seven hours later, Brachiosaurus was complete, on its feet for the first time in 152 million years. At 41 feet tall, the replica skeleton was tall enough to peer over the second floor mezzanine and into the entrance to Life Over Time.

By coincidence, Ernestine’s debut was less than three weeks after the release of Jurassic Park—which happened to feature a Brachiosaurus in an iconic opening scene. The film quickly became the highest-grossing of all time, and launched a global wave of dino-mania. While he was busy finishing up and installing the Brachiosaurus, Danis was fielding calls left and right for his services. Even hotels were inquiring about putting dinosaur skeletons in their parking lots. His response? “If they can put up the cash for them, we’ll put them up!”

The outdoor Brachiosaurus on a rare sunny day. Photo by the author.

Ernestine’s stint in Stanley Field Hall wound up being short-lived. The Field Museum acquired SUE the Tyrannosaurus in 1997, and the mounted skeleton took the sauropod’s place in May 2000. Ernestine was relocated to O’Hare International Airport, where it remains today. Meanwhile, the museum commissioned a second Brachiosaurus replica to be displayed outdoors. Made from durable, all-weather plastic resin, the outdoor Brachiosaurus stood on the northwest terrace for the next 23 years. Notably, it outlasted SUE’s time in Stanley Field Hall: the Tyrannosaurus was relocated to its own gallery in 2018, and a cast of the Argentinian sauropod Patagotitan now occupies the Field Museum’s central space.

The Brachiosaurus display in the Field Museum’s Science Hub includes parts of the holotype, a replica skull, and more. Photo by the author.

Now that the outdoor Brachiosaurus replica has been retired, it’s fair to ask what’s next for the Field Museum’s first dinosaur. Ernestine will remain at the airport for the foreseeable future, but plans for the northwest terrace have not yet solidified. In the meantime, a popup exhibit rhapsodizing Brachiosaurus recently opened in the Science Hub—a rotating exhibit space where interpreters are always present. I was happy to write the labels for this display, which tells the story of Brachiosaurus from its discovery to the removal of the outdoor skeleton (in far fewer words than this post). The exhibit includes the sculpted skull of the outdoor Brachiosaurus and parts of the holotype—including the tail vertebrae, which haven’t been on public view since the 1920s. Be sure to stop by if you’re in the area, but be quick: Science Hub exhibits typically last only six months or so.

References

Brinkman, P.D. 2010. The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL.

Engh, B. 2020. We Found a Brachiosaurus.

Riggs, E.S. 1903. Brachiosaurus: The Largest Known Dinosaur. American Journal of Science 4:15:299-306.

Simpson, W. 2022. Pers. comm.

Taylor, M.P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janesch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29:3:787-806.

Taylor, M.P. 2014. Giles Danis of PAST on the Chicago Brachiosaurus mount.

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, field work, FMNH, fossil mounts, history of science, movies, museums, reptiles, sauropods

December 12, 2022 · 4:43 pm

Spinosaurus, aquatic animals, and jargon

Two weeks ago, another volley was fired in the ongoing Spinosaurus wars. Long known only from remains that were destroyed during World War II, this North African dinosaur has been the subject of numerous scientific publications over the last decade thanks to a newly discovered partial skeleton, which was first described in 2014. With its long, narrow snout, daschund-like hind limbs, and a six-foot ornamental sail on its back, Spinosaurus was an extreme and unusual dinosaur, and it’s easy to see why it’s of such interest to paleontologists, laypeople, and children alike. 

Reconstructed Spinosaurus skeleton at the Hong Kong Science Center. Photo by Hong Kong Tourism Board

Nevertheless, the profound weirdness of Spinosaurus has also made it contentious. What was this animal doing that necessitated the evolution of such bizarre features? Paleontologists agree that it was a specialized fish-eater, as evidenced by its long snout, straight, conical teeth, and nostrils high up on its head (enabling it to breath while keeping its mouth submerged). But while some authors (e.g. Hone and Holtz 2020) imagine Spinosaurus as a heron-like animal, snatching fish from the shallows while wading or standing on the shore, others (e.g. Ibrahim et al. 2020) see evidence for a creature that was at home in the water, swimming after its prey. Naturally, there is also a full gradient of options between the extremes.

The newest publication, by Paul Sereno and colleagues, ground-truths some details of Spinosaurus anatomy. The authors compared parts like the feet and the tail vertebrae to modern animals, and also employed a digital model of Spinosaurus to virtually test its buoyancy and stability in water. Their primary conclusion: largely due to the tall sail on its back, Spinosaurus would have struggled to swim in deep water. 

This is valuable data that helps refine our understanding of Spinosaurus, specifically by constraining the list of ways it could have obtained its fishy prey. Sereno and colleagues argue that Spinosaurus didn’t dive or pursue fish in open water, but their results don’t preclude the possibility that it spent most of its time around water or even in the water (indeed, there is still ample evidence that it did). 

I hope it’s clear that I have no qualm with the content of the paper itself. Instead, what drove me to start hacking at my keyboard today was the title: “Spinosaurus is not an aquatic dinosaur.” Within the paper, Sereno and colleagues define an “aquatic” animal as one “adapted for life primarily, or solely, in water with severely reduced functional capacity on land.” Bony fish, whales, penguins, and sea turtles are provided as examples. The authors go on to clarify that crocodiles and waterfowl do not meet the criteria for aquatic life. Hippos, sea otters, and pond turtles would also not qualify as aquatic based on this definition. The authors provide the term “semiaquatic” to cover these sorts of animals, and ultimately conclude that Spinosaurus itself was semiaquatic. 

Hippos spend most of their time fully or nearly submerged, but by the definition in Sereno et al. 2022, they are not aquatic. Photo by cloudzilla, CC BY.

I would argue that this use of the word aquatic is counterintuitive to all but the most dedicated specialists, and that its use in the title obfuscates the authors’ own conclusions. The definition of aquatic in common parlance is “of, in, or pertaining to water.” A hippo, for example, would be uncontroversially considered aquatic by most people, since it spends much of its time nearly or fully submerged. Therefore, I find no fault with the legions of people who saw the title and inferred that the authors were arguing that Spinosaurus did not spend time in or near water at all. Some might say that people ought to read the paper before drawing conclusions, but the title should be the first step on that journey. It certainly shouldn’t misrepresent the contents of the paper. This paper could have just as easily been titled “Spinosaurus was a semiaquatic dinosaur” and there would be no confusion. 

I don’t mean to call out this paper specifically, and I certainly don’t think the habits and habitat of Spinosaurus are of crucial public interest. However, I do see this paper’s title as emblematic of a bad habit among specialists, scientific or otherwise. It’s an insistence on using a technical definition for a word or phrase, even if that word or phrase is widely understood to mean something else. 

In a 2011 paper about barriers to public understanding of climate change, Somerville and Hassol provided a list of terms that have scientific meanings that are distinct from their popular meanings (below). Later, a crowd-sourced spreadsheet expanded the list. A case in point: for biologists, a mutation refers to any change in a gene. But for most English speakers, a mutation is inherently negative, and can have deadly consequences (or makes things really big really fast). A correct context for mutation is critical to understanding what evolution is, and how it works.

Table of frequently misunderstood scientific terms from Somerville and Hassol 2011.

In a particularly consequential example, the World Health Organization and other authorities avoided calling the COVID-19 virus “airborne” for well over a year. Why? In part, because they were adhering to a definition of airborne that excludes particles above a certain size, or which haven’t been demonstrated to linger in the air for a certain amount of time. A virus can be in the air, but not be technically airborne. Of course, anyone who isn’t an infectious disease expert would reasonably—but incorrectly—conclude that a virus that is “not airborne”  isn’t transmitted by breathing. Many factors contributed to the failure to contain COVID-19, but the use of counterintuitive jargon in messaging for a wide audience certainly did not help.

There is, I suppose, a certain nobility in declaring that “words have meaning,” and attempting to lead by example in their use. Likewise, there are certain words that have no common alternative, and must be introduced in order to communicate (synapsid and multituberculate come to mind). But new ideas stick better when they are built on existing knowledge—replacing ideas your audience already has is much harder. If you think the science you are communicating is important and worth knowing, why not meet your audience where they already are? Attention spans are short, so we need to use the limited attention we get wisely.

References

Fabbri, M., Navalón, G., Benson, R.B.J., Pol, D., O’Connor, J., Bhullar, B.S., Erickson, G.S., Norell, M.A., Orkney, A., Lamanna, M.C., Zouhri, S., Becker, J., Emke, A., Dal Sasso, C., Maganuco, S., Auditore, M., and Ibrahim, N. 2022. Subaqueous foraging among carnivorous dinosaurs. Nature 603:852–857.

Hone, D.W.E. and Holtz, Jr., T.R. 2021. Evaluating the ecology of Spinosaurus: Shoreline generalist or aquatic pursuit specialist? Palaeonologica Electronica 24(1):a03.

Ibrahim, N., Maganuco, S., Dal Sasso, C., Fabbri, M., Auditore, M., Bindellini, G., Martill, D.M., Zouhri, S., Mattarelli, D.A., Unwin, D.M., Weimann, J., Bonadonna, D., Amane, A., Jacubczak, J., Joger, U., Lauder, G.V., and Pierce, S.E. Tail-propelled aquatic locomotion in a theropod dinosaur. Nature 581:67–70.

Lewis, D. 2022. Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne. Nature News Feature, April 6, 2022.

Sereno, P.C., Myhrvold, N., Henderson, D.M., Fish, F.E., Vidal, D., Baumgart, S.L., Keillor, T.M., Formoso, K.K., and Conroy, L.L. 2022. Spinosaurus is not an aquatic dinosaur. eLife11:380092.

Somerville, R.C.J. and Hassol, S.J. 2011. Communicating the science of climate change. Physics Today 64:10:48.

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Filed under dinosaurs, education, opinion, science communication, theropods

June 12, 2022 · 9:06 pm

Rhinos too thick: Fossils and flattery at Agate Springs

“No progress at all. Rhinos too thick.”

So wrote American Museum of Natural History fossil collector Albert Thomson in his September 1917 field notes. At that point, Thomson been collecting mammal fossils at Agate Springs nearly every year since 1907—and was still finding rhino bones in such abundance that they formed a seemingly impenetrable layer.

Located in northwest Nebraska and dating to about 22 million years ago, the Agate Springs bone bed is an aggregation of fossilized animals on an astonishing scale. Like the Carnegie quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, it provides a snapshot of an ecosystem at a moment in geologic time. But while a high estimate of the individual dinosaurs represented at Carnegie Quarry is in the hundreds, the main bone bed at Agate Springs may well contain tens of thousands of animals. The vast majority of fossils come from the tapir-sized rhino Menoceras, scrambled and packed together in a layer up to two feet thick. Moropus, Daeodon, and an assortment of other hoofed animals and small carnivores have also been found. These animals may have gathered during a drought and succumbed to thirst or disease, before the returning rains rapidly buried their remains. It’s also possible that the bone bed represents a mass drowning during a flash food. Since different parts of the site vary in density, Agate Springs likely represents multiple mortality events over a number of years.

IMG_1185

Tableau of cast fossil skeletons at the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument visitor center. Photo by the author.

Today, less than 30% of the Agate Springs bone bed has been excavated, but not for a lack of effort. Teams from a half dozen museums visited the site between 1900 and 1925, with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM), the University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM), and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) establishing large-scale excavations and returning year after year. As we shall see, the relationships between these teams were not always amicable, making this period at Agate Springs a window into the preoccupations of museum workers at the turn of the century. Agate Springs also illustrates how east coast paleontologists interacted with and relied on local people, defending their social capital as jealously as any fossil deposit. Finally, museums’ interest in Agate Springs in the mid 20th century exemplifies how exhibitions had evolved during the intervening period.

The setting

Agate Springs is unceded Sioux territory, occupied by settlers after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. James Cook purchased the treeless tract of rolling hills from his father-in-law in 1887, naming it Agate Springs after the rocky banks of the nearby Niobrara River. James and Kate Cook established a ranch where they raised horses and cattle, and Agate Springs became a popular stop for travelers on their way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The Cooks were aware of bones weathering out of the hills as far back as 1885, when the land was still owned by Kate’s father. James knew that scientists were on the lookout for fossils in the region—by one account he worked for O.C. Marsh as a translator in 1874. Once the ranch was established, he began writing to museums, including UNSM in Lincoln and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, inviting them to visit Agate Springs. A UNSM party led by Erwin Barbour was the first to drop by, spending a night at the Cook homestead in July 1892. Chiefly concerned with collecting “devil’s corkscrews” (ancient beaver burrows) north of the Niobrara, Barbour sent his student F.C. Kenyon to check out the bones Cook promised in the nearby hills. Kenyon collected as much as he could carry, but his report apparently did not excite Barbour, and the UNSM party moved on.

It would be twelve years before another paleontologist visited Agate Springs. Olaf Peterson of the Carnegie Museum stopped by the ranch in early August of 1904, at the end of a tumultuous field season in western Nebraska. Peterson had received a telegram on July 4 that his brother-in-law, boss, and mentor John Bell Hatcher had died of typhoid. Peterson intended to cut the season short, but Carnegie Museum director William Holland denied the request, writing in no uncertain terms that Peterson was to continue his work in Nebraska. Later in July, Peterson fell ill himself, and spent several days recovering in Fort Robinson. Suffice it to say, Peterson was not in the best of moods when he arrived at Agate Springs.

Nevertheless, the outcrops Peterson saw at Agate Springs revitalized his spirit. Accounts differ on what part of the site Cook showed him (this will be important shortly), but when he returned east two weeks later he was raving about a quarry with “ten skulls within a six-foot radius.” In Pittsburgh, Peterson and Holland began drawing up plans for an ambitious excavation the following year. In their view, they had staked a claim to the site: just like contemporary gold and oil prospectors, turn-of-the-century paleontologists lived by the rule of “dibs.” For the museum crowd, being the first scientist to “discover” a quarry meant an entitlement to control the site and the resources it produced. This included both the physical fossils and the privilege to describe and interpret those fossils—controlling the site meant controlling scientific knowledge.

Dueling quarries

Cook either didn’t know about such customs, or didn’t care. To his credit, Cook was never interested in monetizing the fossils at Agate Springs. By all accounts, he simply wanted to share with the world the knowledge that the bone bed represented. He was concerned that it was so expansive that no single team could uncover all its secrets. On May 26, 1905, Cook wrote to Barbour, inviting him to share in the bounty he had shown Peterson the previous summer, explaining that it was “so large that [the Carnegie team] could not work it out in years, so there is plenty of material for other parties to work with.”

On other occasions, Barbour had taken a cautious stance when corresponding with landowners. In this case, however, he could barely contain the enthusiasm in his reply. In a single letter, Barbour reminded Cook that UNSM had visited 12 years before and therefore should have collecting rights, asked Cook to place a literal flag on the site claiming it for the University of Nebraska, offered to hire Cook’s 18 year-old son Harold as a field assistant, and appealed to Cook’s state pride by listing the out-of-state institutions that were removing Nebraska’s fossil heritage each year.

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Carnegie Hill and University Hill today. Photo by the author.

That summer, Peterson and Barbour opened quarries on two neighboring buttes at Agate Springs, which came to be known as Carnegie Hill and University Hill. While the two parties were cordial neighbors, letters exchanged by Holland, Barbour, and Cook demonstrate that the museum directors were uncomfortable with the situation. Holland repeatedly wrote to Cook, claiming that his team was more skilled than Barbour’s and warning that it would be bad for science if the fossils and geological data were split between two institutions. Harold Cook didn’t appreciate Holland’s condescending tone. In a note to his father pinned to one of the letters, he wrote that “a letter of this kind is the work of a pinheaded, egotistical, educated fool.”

The Carnegie and UNSM teams returned to Agate Springs in 1906, but spent the summer of 1907 elsewhere. The elder Cook took the opportunity to invite yet more paleontologists, and teams from AMNH, the Yale Peabody Museum, and Amherst College showed up to collect fossils.

Meanwhile, Holland began a campaign to wrest control of the site by any means necessary. He became particularly focused on the narrative of who discovered the bone bed. According to Holland, Cook had shown Peterson the smaller, less dense site that would be come to be known as Quarry A. Peterson then went prospecting on his own and found the primary bone bed that straddled the two buttes. Holland went on to argue that regardless of who first saw the fossils, Peterson earned credit for the discovery because he was the first trained scientist on the scene, and therefore the first individual to correctly identify the age and identity of the animal remains.

Cook rejected Holland’s retelling of the events of August 1904, insisting that he had known of the bone bed for years before he showed it to Peterson. In many ways, the two men were talking past each other. Cook found Holland’s insistence on claiming the discovery for Peterson nonsensical and disrespectful—he knew his own land, and he was the one who invited the paleontologists in the first place. Holland, on the other hand, was staking a claim among his fellow academics. He needed to demonstrate that the Carnegie Museum had been at Agate Springs first, so that other institutions would yield to his authority to interpret and publish on the fossils.

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Harold Cook’s homestead cabin, recently fixed up and painted. Photo by the author.

Late in 1907, Holland visited the Cooks’ ranch in person for the first time. He offered to buy the fossil-bearing land outright, doubtlessly planning to block the other museums from accessing it. At this point, James Cook made the awkward discovery that Carnegie Hill and University Hill were actually just outside his official holdings, in the public domain. Holland moved to purchase the land, but Harold Cook beat him to it, building a cabin and filing a homestead claim in March 1908. In their gentlemanly rancher way, the Cooks told Holland to get lost, and the Carnegie Museum left Agate Springs for good.

Playing nice

While Holland had managed to sour his relationship with a remarkably welcoming and accommodating landowner, Barbour did the opposite. In letters to Cook, he regularly acknowledged the rancher as the discoverer of the site. He visited the Cooks frequently and employed Harold in the UNSM quarry, training the younger Cook into a formidable fossil prospector and anatomist. Soon Harold was studying at the University of Nebraska under Barbour, and a few years later, Harold and Barbour’s daughter Elinor were married. Barbour also named a few species after the Cooks, including Moropus cooki.

AMNH director Henry Osborn and field manager Albert Thomson had a similarly positive relationship with the Cooks. The New York museum took over Carnegie Quarry in 1908, and Osborn visited several times to express his gratitude. Like Barbour, he paid Harold for his time, labor, and expertise. Later, Osborn invited Harold to work at AMNH during the off-season. In return, AMNH was permitted to collect at Agate Springs for nearly two decades. Thomson returned almost every year through 1923, and the museum accumulated so many Menoceras and Moropus fossils that it began selling and trading them to other institutions.

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Menoceras and Moropus slab at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

The reward for staying in the Cooks’ good graces was clear. UNSM and AMNH paleontologists gained access to the Agate Spring quarries for many years, accumulating large collections. They earned accolades from publications, public interest from the skeletons they placed on exhibit, and even monetary rewards from selling the excess specimens. Meanwhile, the Carnegie Museum was shut out after their first few seasons of collecting because Holland was, if not outright hostile to the Cooks, unable to communicate effectively with the ranchers. For American paleontologists at the turn of the century, social capital was a critical resource. Positive relationships with landowners and other individuals in the fossil-rich western states earned them access to land, information about the terrain, and networks of eyes on the ground, any of which might lead them to the next important quarry.

You get a rhino block, and you get a rhino block…

The scale and intensity of the Agate Springs excavations decreased after 1910, and in the early 20s, Thompson and the AMNH crew closed up shop, believing they had found examples of every species that could be found. By that time, the site’s value for museums had shifted. Rather than being a bonanza of specimens to collect, categorize, and publish on, Agate Springs had become a place to quickly and easily obtain display-worthy fossils. As Hunt puts it, the site was a “storehouse of good exhibit materials, to be tapped when needed by museums wishing to mount a rhino or two.”

Today, Agate Springs fossils—acquired in the field or via trade—are on display at large and small museums all over North America. Many of these are mounted skeletons of rhinos, camels, and Moropus, but there is also a particular abundance of large, incompletely prepared slabs, which provide viewers with a small window into the Agate Springs bone bed. Because of the sheer density of bones, the early 20th century excavation teams quickly stopped jacketing fossils individually, and instead began preparing out large blocks, typically four to six feet across. The blocks were hardened with shellac, and reinforced with wood planks around their borders. Pulleys and cranes were required to lift the largest blocks out of the quarries. In the early years, the intention was to fully excavate these blocks at their respective museums. It’s not clear which museum first placed a complete block on exhibit, but the idea proved popular. Many later visitors to Agate Springs, from James Gidley of the National Museum of Natural History in 1909 to Elmer Riggs of the Field Museum of Natural History in 1940, came with the express purpose of collecting intact slabs for display.

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Menoceras slab on display at the Field Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

The popularity of fossil blocks from Agate Springs coincides with a shift in philosophy toward exhibitions at natural history museums. While early 20th century exhibits were catalogs of life, emphasizing the breadth of the museum’s collection, by the 1920s and 30s many museums had begun moving toward narrative exhibits. Displays were intended to communicate ideas, and objects served as illustrations of those ideas. The fossil blocks from Agate Springs were ready-made illustrations of a number of paleontology concepts, from the process of taphonomy to the task of excavation millions of years later. Most have remained on display to this day, a fact that James Cook would undoubtably be pleased with.

An incomplete list of museums in possession of Agate Springs blocks follows. Do you know of others? Please leave a comment!

  • Carnegie Museum of Natural History
  • American Museum of Natural History
  • University of Nebraska State Museum
  • Field Museum of Natural History
  • National Museum of Natural History
  • Royal Ontario Museum
  • Denver Museum of Nature and Science
  • Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
  • Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology
  • University of Wyoming Geological Museum
  • South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
  • Wesleyan University Geology Museum
  • University of Austin Texas Memorial Museum
  • University of Michigan Museum of Natural History
  • Science Museum of Minnesota
  • Fort Robinson State Park Trailside Museum

References

Agate Fossil Beds: Official National Park Handbook. Washington, DC: National Park Service.

Hunt, R.M. 1984. The Agate Hills: History of Paleontological Excavations, 1904-1925. 

Vetter, J. 2008. Cowboys, Scientists, and Fossils: The Field Site and Local Collaboration in the American West. Isis 99:2:273-303.

Skinner, M.F., Skinner, S.M., Gooris, R.J. 1977. Stratigraphy and Biostratigraphy of Late Cenozoic Deposits in Central Sioux County, Western Nebraska. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 158:5:265-370.

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