Category Archives: dinosaurs

July 4, 2012 · 2:04 am

Extinct Monsters at NMNH

National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

The dinosaurs at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

Easily the best thing about living in the Washington, DC area is the plethora of free, public museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution. Tens of millions converge on the mall each year to this national center of learning, but for locals like myself, these museums are part of the backdrop of our lives. From field trips to rainy days to awkward first dates, the Smithsonian museums are an integral part of the DC experience. Still, I’d wager that I’ve spent more time at the museums than most residents, and the lion’s share of that time has been in the Paleobiology halls at the National Museum of Natural History.

When I was very young, my parents supported my interest in dinosaurs by taking me to the Museum at least monthly. Later, stopping at the Museum for a bit of quiet contemplation among the dinosaur mounts would prove irresistible whenever I was nearby. And over the course of two lengthy internships, I still occasionally took the long route across the Museum,  cutting through the Paleobiology hall to take another look at the abscess on the pelvis of the Camptosaurus, to check out something I’ve recently read about diplodocoid vertebrae for myself, or even to hear the all-too-familiar narration of the evolution of the horse one more time. In short, these galleries at NMNH have been and continue to be largely responsible for my life-long love of paleontology. They mean a lot to me.

It is no secret that NMNH has recently received a generous donation to renovate the Paleontology halls. The exhibits have changed incrementally over the course of my lifetime, including the remounting of at least three specimens and updated signage, but the exhibits are absolutely overdue for a major overhaul. In comparison to the NMNH’s new Ocean Hall and Hall of Human Origins, not to mention newer paleontology exhibits at peer institutions like CMNH and AMNH, the Paleobiology halls look quite tired. What’s more, the science of paleontology has exploded since the last major renovation in 1981, and there is tons of new information to cover.

It is an exciting time for the NMNH Paleobiology hall, but  looking into this exhibit’s past proves to be just as interesting. From the Smithsonian’s inheritance of fossils from government-funded expeditions of O.C. Marsh to the nationwide rush for dinosaur mounts in the early 20th century, to the dinosaur renaissance of the 1970s, the history of the Paleobiology hall mirrors the history of scientific and popular interest in prehistory over the past century. Many of the specimens in the hall have been on display longer than the NMNH building has existed, and seeing how their physical positioning and interpretation has changed over the years tells a fascinating story about the intersection of science, education and icons of American culture. In this series, I will attempt to tell that story as accurately as I can manage. Notable people and specimens will be introduced, and each iteration of the Paleobiology gallery will be explored.

A Road Map

Use this hub to explore the history of the NMNH Paleobiology halls. The following list will become links as the articles are completed.

Introduction

History of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian

The Marsh Dinosaurs, Part I

The Marsh Dinosaurs, Part II

Basilosaurus, Megaloceros, and Other Mammals

The Brachyceratops

Gilmore’s Diplodocus

Murals, Models and Dioramas

Selected References

“A Brief History.” Celebrating 100 Years. 2010. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Accessed July 2, 2012.<http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/brief_history.htm>

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

Gilmore, C.W. “The mounted skeleton of Triceratops prorsus.” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 29:433-435, 1905.

Gilmore, C.W. “On a newly mounted skeleton of Diplodocus in the United States National Museum.” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 81:1-21, 1932.

Gilmore, C.W. “A History of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology in the United States National Museum.” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 90: 1941.

“History of the Dinosaur Collection.” Dinosaurs. Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Accessed July 2, 2012. <http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/index.html>

Leave a comment

Filed under dinosaurs, Extinct Monsters, fossil mounts, history of science, mammals, museums, NMNH

Tagged as , ,

May 5, 2012 · 1:10 am

A brief history of mounted dinosaur skeletons

Mounted fossil skeletons, especially those of dinosaurs, are common at medium and large natural history museums. These mounts play a central role in the public’s perception of not only dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but of museums as well. However, just as dinosaurs are relatively new to science, fossil mounts have not always been a part of museums. The word dinosaur was coined in 1842 by British anatomist Richard Owen, based on a handful of fragmentary remains of large, extinct reptiles. Nevertheless, the study of dinosaurs did not start in earnest until 1865, when Joseph Leidy of Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences described Hadrosaurus, the first dinosaur found in the United States, and eventually, the first dinosaur skeleton to be mounted. The western frontier of North America proved to be a richer dinosaur hunting ground than Europe had been, and so vertebrate paleontology was among the first realms of science that American researchers could claim as their own.

The American fossil rush that followed came in two waves. In the 1870s, the field was dominated by the well-publicized but ultimately counterproductive feud between Othneil Charles Marsh of Yale and Edward Drinker Cope of the Academy of Natural Sciences. While these collectors amassed enormous collections of fossils for their respective institutions, their research remained largely out of the public eye.

1868 Hadrosaurus mount at the Academy of Natural Sciences. From http://www.naturalhistorymag.com.

The second wave came at the turn of the 20th century, and was intrinsically related to the rise of the large museums that sprang up in America’s cities at this time. The American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and other, similar institutions became involved in a fierce competition to find and display the largest dinosaur (Spalding 1993). At this point, the discipline of paleontology had been marginalized in American universities, in part because of a rising interest in experiment-driven “hard” sciences like molecular biology and physics, but also because the demands of space, labor and money required by paleontological research was prohibitive.

1905 Brontosaurus mount at AMNH. From Dinosaur Tracking.

Instead, paleontologists made their homes at the large natural history museums, which were backed by wealthy benefactors who were impressed by their collections of giant fossils. At the time, it was fashionable for wealthy businesspeople to donate extravagantly to cultural institutions, including museums, in the cities where they made their fortunes. To the benefactors, there was no doubt that paleontologists and their fossil specimens could draw larger crowds than a chemist or physicist ever could. Steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie is credited with conceiving of the idea to display a mounted dinosaur skeleton as the centerpiece of his new museum in Pittsburgh. Carnegie gave CMNH $10,000 to find a giant sauropod dinosaur, preferably just like the Apatosaurus (then called “Brontosaurus”) collected by Marsh 30 years earlier. Patrons of the other large museums followed suit, and by 1905 the Carnegie Museum, the American Museum and the Field Museum all had sauropod mounts on display, along with a menagerie of other dinosaurs and prehistoric animals.

Unfortunately, by modern standards these displays favored spectacle over good science. As mentioned, vertebrate fossils almost never found as complete skeletons, but as scattered and isolated elements. As such, the museum collectors were not racing to find a single, perfect skeleton, but to amass enough individual dinosaur bones to complete a mount. The early 20th century dinosaur mounts are typically composed of fossils found in rocks separated by hundreds of miles and millions of years in age. The collectors did not keep good records of where the fossils came from, so modern museum workers can only guess how many individual dinosaurs make up the mounts they have inherited. For example, the Stegosaurus at the Peabody Museum of Natural History is composed of at least five individuals, and researchers disagree whether the Giraffatitan  at Berlin’s Museum fur Naturkunde is made up of three or five different animals.

A preparator at AMNH assembles the “Brontosaurus” mount. From http://preparation.paleo.amnh.org/5/expeditions.

Additionally, the technicians that created the mounts were attempting something that had never been done before, and perhaps inevitably, poor choices were made during the construction process. Adam Hermann, lead fossil preparatory at the American Museum of Natural History during the early 20th century, used highly destructive techniques when creating fossil mounts. Fossils were connected to steel armatures by drilling screws and bolts directly into the bone, and broken bones and visible sections of the armature were hidden with liberal applications of plaster (Evander 2004). These practices turned out to be essentially irreversible, and modern workers are hesitant to attempt to dismantle old mounts for fear of destroying the fossils entirely.

The creation of the first fossil mounts was chiefly inspired by the vanity of museum benefactors, but their influence on audiences and their ability to draw crowds is undeniable. Although new dinosaur mounts have been constructed over the course of the 20th century, many, if not most, of the historic mounts remain on display, important not only as evidence of prehistoric life, but as icons of the history of science and museums in America.

References

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

Evander, Robert L. (2004.) “Armature Damage in a Mounted Specimen.” Presented at Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Conference, Bristol, U.K.

Leave a comment

Filed under dinosaurs, field work, fossil mounts, history of science, mammals, museums, reptiles, science communication

Tagged as , , ,

April 3, 2012 · 1:33 am

Their hands were everywhere: the Morrison Natural History Museum

Outside the Morrison Natural History Museum. Doesn’t look like much…

Last week, I had a fantastic experience at the Morrison Natural History Museum, a little gem tucked away in the tiny town of Morrison, Colorado, on the north side of Denver. Since its opening in 1985, the Museum has served as a local educational resource covering the region’s plentiful paleontological resources. According to its website, the Museum is primarily a teaching institution. An affiliated foundation raises funds to bring local students on field trips, in support of the Museum’s mission to nurture “an understanding of and respect for the deep past.” In keeping with this teaching institution, gentle touching of all the fossils and casts is encouraged. This policy, and the design choices that go with it, are what truly set the Morrison Museum exhibits apart.

Paleontologically-inclined people are of course familiar with the Morrison Formation, the sequence of Upper Jurassic beds that extends across much of the western United States. The formation, which extends some 600,000 square miles, was named for the town of Morrison, where fossils were first discovered in 1877. The Morrison formation is probably best known as the epicenter of the “bone wars” between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, who each led competing teams of fossil hunters across the region, attempting to best one another’s discoveries. Marsh and Cope were affiliated with the Peabody Museum in New Haven and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, respectively, so the fossils they collected all ended up back east. Indeed, while the Morrison region is among the most important and productive places for finding dinosaurs in the country, comparatively few of the treasures found there have remained in the region. The Morrison Natural History Museum therefore exists, at least in part, as a dedicated local repository and interpretative center for the region’s natural history.

The 1st floor Jurassic exhibit.

The Museum’s exhibit space is tiny, only 2000 square feet, but it is chock full of awesome. The exhibition consists of three main rooms, each one representing a geological time period. In the first floor Jurassic gallery, highlights include partial casts of Allosaurus and Apatosaurus,  the holotype of Stegosaurus, trackways attributed to Stegosaurus and a baby sauropod, and some original 19th century lithographic prints from Marsh’s monographs. For those interested in the history of paleontology, and of science in general, those prints are particularly fascinating.

Infant sauropod trackway with model of probable trackmaker.

Cretaceous and Cenozoic exhibits are found on the second floor. Most of the objects here are casts, most notably full skeletons of Platycarpus and Pteranodon, and skulls of Triceratops, Tylosaurus and a Columbian Mammoth. There are also a number of live animals on display, including a very charismatic monitor lizard thoughtfully placed next to its close relatives, the mosasaurs.

Original 19th century lithograph prints of fossil illustrations by Marsh’s team.

The signs and labels in the exhibit are noteworthy for their succinctness and clarity. It can be extremely challenging for writers of museum copy to provide appropriate depth of content without confusing, boring or alienating audiences with too much text. Overlong and unfocused labels are particularly common in small museums, where most of the copy is written by a single curator bent on sharing everything he or she knows about a topic. On the other end of the spectrum, larger, committee-designed exhibit labels can be too brief, too simple and too narrowly focused on the exhibit’s educational goals to be of much use to anybody. Happily, the Morrison Museum avoids both of these pitfalls. Labels are simple and attractive, but still informative and up-to-date. I was rather impressed by the economical way in which they addressed the most important topics in paleontology.

An example of a brief but content-rich label.

Obviously, the fossils and other objects on display are fantastic, and many, like the trackways, are quite unique. However, as mentioned above, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Museum is that touching of all the fossils and casts is encouraged.  Few objects are behind glass; everything is out in the open for people to touch and examine up close. There are many in the museum field who would be horrified by such an arrangement. When putting objects on exhibit, it is a given that they are considered consumable. No matter what precautions are taken, anything put on display will inevitably suffer damage. Of course, the flip side is that exhibit designers want to allow visitors to get as close to the objects as possible. The Morrison Museum has taken this to the extreme. The fossils, many one them irreplaceable holotype specimens, are fully exposed to accidental or intentional abuse by visitors. This is a very bold move on the part of the Museum, and it makes the point that the knowledge visitors can gain from full access to objects is more valuable that the objects themselves.

I won’t lie, my initial reaction upon seeing this exhibit layout was open-mouthed horror. But after spending some time in the space, I think the Morrison Museum may be on to something. This is a great way to tap into the multiple intelligences of visitors. Obviously, this system only works because the Museum’s attendance is on the low side (I would hate to see what the summer hordes at NMNH or AMNH would do if they were allowed to run wild among the mounts),  but given these circumstances I think the open-access approach is a great educational tool.

Overall, I was very pleased with my visit to the Morrison Museum. The volunteer staff knowledgable, passionate and helpful, the exhibits were excellent, and the handful of other visitors passing through (mostly young children) seemed genuinely engaged. The Museum is well worth a stop for anyone in the Denver area, and may well be a worthwhile model for other museums to follow.

3 Comments

Filed under dinosaurs, mammals, museums, paleoart, reptiles, reviews, science communication

Tagged as , , , , ,

Aside

Medullary Bone and the Dinosaur-Bird Link

One of the coolest lines of evidence that birds are extant dinosaurs is the presence of medullary bone in multiple dinosaur species. Medullary bone (hereafter referred to as MB, to avoid confusion with the medullary surface) is a temporary tissue that forms on the interior surfaces of the long bones of birds. MB is identified by unique collagen organization: it is both densely mineralized and strongly vascularized. This structure helps MB serve its purpose as a readily retrieved source of calcium for use in forming eggshells, and prevents incapacitating bone resorption during this process. Among extant animals, MB is only found in mature female birds in the process of producing eggs. Its creation is triggered by hormones during the onset of ovulation, and it disappears during the laying process. Among extant animals, MB is only known in birds. However, in 2005 Mary Schweitzer and colleagues reported their discovery of medullary bone in a Tyrannosaurus rex individual. Lee and Werning followed up on this research in 2007 by reporting MB in the theropod Allosaurus and the ornithopod Tenontosaurus.

Medullary bone in modern Gallus and fossil Tyrannosaurus. From http://www.abc.net.au/science.

Since MB is unique to reproductively active females, most popular coverage of dinosaur MB  has focused on its potential use for determining the sex and life stage of individual dinosaur specimens. We shouldn’t, however, lose sight of the fact that MB is an independent line of evidence supporting a close phylogenetic relationship between dinosaurs and birds. Nearly all paleontologists agree that the evidence that birds are dinosaurs is overwhelming, and MB is but a drop in the ocean of shared characters between birds and dinosaurs. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that few authors have attempted to challenge Schweitzer’s initial publication.

The only work I have found  that disputes Schweitzer and colleagues is the dissertation of Dr. Devon Quick  (.pdf link), in which Dr. Quick and Dr. John Ruben investigated the reliability of the methods used to recognize MB in the fossil record using extant animals. This is not, incidentally, the only work by Quick and Ruben challenging the dinosaur-bird connection. As a doe-eyed student, I’d like to take a shot at reviewing this paper. And since I’m posting it publicly, I of course welcome anyone who’d be so kind as to call me out for being wrong.

Quick and Ruben looked at cross-sections of the femora and tibiotarsi of a crocodilian (Alligator mississippiensis) and several birds. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the medullary surfaces of the tibiotarsi of  reproductively active birds displayed the highly contoured and floccular texture that is characteristic of MB. Likewise, the male and non-reproductively active female birds displayed smooth medullary surfaces. In this regard, Quick and Ruben are in agreement with previous work. However, the authors also reported that the medullary cavity of the alligator femur contained “material superficially similar to…avian medullary bone” (Quick and Ruben 2008). This material was limited to the immediate diaphyseal side of the metaphysis, making it much less extensive than what was observed in birds. Since the alligator individual used in the study was a juvenile male, it was almost certainly not producing reproductively-specific MB. From this observation, the authors conclude from these data that a floccular texture may indicate early-stage bone mineralization and is not a reliable indicator of MB.

Quick and Ruben’s results are unconvincing in part due to a weak experimental design. Their conclusions are dependent on observations gleaned from a single alligator specimen, which is not an adequate sample. The authors’ conclusions would carry more weight if they had looked at multiple individuals. It would also be beneficial to compare males, females, adults and juveniles. Ideally, additionally crocodilian species ought to be included in the study, as well. Schweitzer and colleagues carried out a similar investigation, in which they looked for evidence of MB in multiple alligators, including gravid females, males and juveniles (Schweitzer et al. 2007). Schweitzer and colleagues found no evidence of MB, even with estrogen stimulation, and their larger sample size allows their study to carry more weight than that of Quick and Ruben. Furthermore, although Quick and Ruben assert that that “histological aspects of Tyrannosaurus tissues that are supposedly consistent with an avian-style reproductive physiology were not analyzed carefully”, they did not look at the Tyrannosaurus material as part of their study. Accordingly, no evidence is provided that the structures the authors observed on their alligator were synonymous with those observed by Schweitzer and colleagues on Tyrannosaurus. Finally, Quick and Ruben’s observations are focused on the floccular texture used to identify MB, when in fact Schweitzer and colleagues used several other indicators, including extensive vascularization, to identify MB in Tyrannosaurus. It is notable that the structure, thickness and texture of MB in modern birds varies considerably based on the specifics of the animal’s reproductive biology and the size of the taxa. Given that Tyrannosaurus is several orders of magnitude larger than most extant birds, some structural difference is to be expected (wow, that sentence had some serious science snark).

Quick and Ruben suggest that the floccular texture on the alligator bone may be the result of early-stage mineralization, which would be consistent with the sub-adult status of the individual they used in the study. The authors go on to speculate that a similar explanation might account for the evidence of MB in Tyrannosaurus. Again, it would have been helpful if the authors had amassed more examples of sub-adult archosaurs undergoing skeletal mineralization, and compared them directly to the Tyrannosaurus material in question, rather than merely speculating. If the Tyrannosaurus was forming MB, this would be consistent with information from lines of arrested growth in Tyrannosaurus and other dinosaurs, which indicates that dinosaurs became reproductively active before reaching adult size.

Having reached the somewhat tenuous conclusion that texture is not a reliable indicator of MB, Quick and Ruben go on to argue that even if MB is present in dinosaurs, the fact that it has been reported in both saurischians and ornithiscians “offers no particular insight into the phylogenetic origins of birds.” On the contrary, MB is an independently observable feature that unites the crown group Dinosauria with Avialae, and therefore supports the consensus that Avialae is bracketed by Dinosauria. At the very least, MB suggests marked similarity in reproductive strategies employed by birds and dinosaurs. As demonstrated by Schweitzer and colleagues, MB is not known in crocodilians. Quick and Ruben freely admit this, which makes their statement that MB “may well be a plesiomorphic trait that first evolved in basal archosaurs” nonsensical (Quick and Ruben 2008). The authors could theoretically argue that MB production is primitive but was lost in modern crocodilians, but there is no evidence for this.

Overall, Quick and Ruben’s work is hindered by weak experimental design and vague, unsupported conclusions. Given that a similar but more rigorous study regarding MB in crocodilians has already been carried out by Schweitzer and colleagues, Quick and Ruben’s interpretations are not convincing. Even the broadest interpretation of the available evidence indicates that MB originated after the divergence of crocodilymorphs from the main archosaur line. The phylogeny postulated by Schweitzer and colleagues remains most tenable, in which MB originated in early dinosaurs, and was inherited by ornithiscians, tyrannosaurids and modern birds (Schweitzer et al. 2005).

References

Lee, A. H. and Werning, S. “Sexual maturity in growing dinosaurs does not fit reptilian growth models.” 2007. PNAS 105:2:582-587.

Quick, D. E. and Ruben, J. A. “Amniote bone structure and longbone histology in birds, alligators and the theropod Tyrannosaurus rex.” 2008. Oregon State University.

Schweitzer, M. H., Elsey, R. M., Dacke, C. G., Horner, J. R. and Lamm, E. T. “Do egg-laying crocodilian (Alligator mississippiensis) archosaurs form medullary bone?” 2007. Bone 40: 1152-1158.

Schweitzer, M. H., Wittmeyer, J. L. and Horner, J. R. “Gender-Specific Reproductive Tissue in Ratites and Tyrannosaurus rex.”2005. Science 308: 1456-1460.

Leave a comment

January 20, 2012 · 6:26 am
December 22, 2011 · 1:59 pm

Part 3: In Which Ben Gets to the Point

I’ve spent a couple posts raining hate on the media’s portrayal of science and  exuberantly praising science bloggers. I’d like to wrap this series up with a few suggestions for how the excellent science communication in blogs might be applied to other media, specifically museums. Science blogs currently reach a relatively small audience, but the strategies for science communication employed by bloggers can be utilized by media forms that attract far more people.

Museums occupy the lower middle range of visibility among science communication venues. America’s most-visited natural history museum, the National Museum of Natural History, had seven million visitors in 2009, a number which pales in comparison to the 431 million homes reached by the Discovery Channel, but which is considerably higher than the 500,000 2011 subscribers to Scientific American magazine. Nevertheless, museums require special recognition in that they are among the most trusted of media forms. 86% of Americans view museums as a trustworthy source of information, substantially higher than the number of Americans that trust books (61%), television (49%) or newspapers (41%). Since museums are blessed with such high public trust, the stakes are higher for museums to report information accurately.

The New Museums

The museum field has undergone a significant revolution since the 1970s, trading its traditionally academic leadership for an audience-focused and education-based model. This change is beneficial because museums are now beholden to serving the needs of the public, and are trying (and occasionally succeeding) to serve increasingly diverse audiences. Visitors are now seen as active participants in the learning process, rather than passive spectators. This new paradigm has, however, made museums vulnerable to the same pitfalls that plague other media forms. Some in the museum field have noted that concern for public interests has been in some cases led astray by devotion to entertainment. Many newer exhibits sacrifice scholarship and educational value for gimmicks and sensationalism, not unlike the practices in science journalism.

An additional hurdle facing museums is the difficulty of communicating science through objects. Museums are based around objects, but science is based on ideas and concepts. Traditionally, science exhibits would place a spotlight on spectacular objects, but would communicate very little information about why those objects are important and what scientists can learn from them. For example, a paleontology exhibit is typically centered on the enormous mounted skeletons of dinosaurs, but visitors can only learn so much from this kind of display. The audience will surely be impressed by the size of the skeletons, but will leave without understanding what those skeletons tell us about the age of the earth, the evolution and diversity of life, and the place of humans in the natural world. The lack of science in science museums is an oversight that has unfortunately stood the test of time, and museums would do well to reconsider their approach to science communication.

New Strategies

Museum workers are moving toward an audience-centered institutional mission, but have struggled to do so without resorting to the same non-educational sensationalism seen in attempts at science communication in other media. Science blogs, however, are achieving this goal right now: they foster dialogue between scientists and laypeople, without sacrificing intellectual substance.
One of the most important aspects of science blogs is that they introduce audiences to real people doing real science. Firstly, the public gains direct access to the scientific process, which instills appreciation in the reliability of scientific conclusions. Additionally, communicating with working scientists and seeing the work they do demythologizes the process of making knowledge. Science is shown as a tangible process that anybody can become involved with or contribute to. Putting a human face on the scientific process is a powerful tool for engaging the public, and one that some museums have already started using. For instance, as part of the “The Scientist is In” program at the National Museum of Natural History, staff curators set up shop in the exhibit halls, where they answer visitor questions and discuss their current research. This program has proved popular both among visitors and the scientists, who appreciate the opportunity to find out what their audiences are interested in. The implication from “The Scientist is In” and from science blogs is that the idea that scientists are universally poor communicators is false. Public education need not be the exclusive domain of education specialists, and many scientists are eager and willing to take part. Indeed, it is good practice to limit the number of layers of interpretation, as this often contributes to distortion of facts.

Another strong practice of science blogs is encouraging interaction from readers. Blog audiences enter gainful conversations with bloggers, and both parties benefit from this process. Museums can mimic this by inviting visitors to form and share their own conclusions. Process-focused science exhibits can show visitors what kinds of information scientists use to make interpretations, and then invite visitors to try it for themselves. For instance, an exhibit could use a variety of animal skeletons to demonstrate how scientists use indicators like gait and posture to determine how extinct animals may have behaved. The goal is to make the museum exhibit an interactive and intellectually involving experience. Involvement nurtures passion for content, which encourages repeat visits and deeper engagement. This is a new concept for museums, which have traditionally positioned themselves as institutions of intellectual authority. Unfortunately, there is little data on how to successfully integrate web-style discourse into a physical exhibit, because very few museums have tried it. Museums will have to be proactive in order to encourage substantive interaction with the exhibit content, or even among visitors. Some museums have successfully integrated user-generated content into exhibit spaces. For example, the “Playing with Science” exhibit at the London Science Museum invited visitors to place photographs of their own objects into the exhibit, alongside brief statements of the objects’ importance. However, something as simple as a comment board can also encourage visitors to respond intelligently to exhibit content.

Finally, museums should refocus content interpretation away from objects for their own sake and toward ideas. As stated previously, the public’s understanding of science is hindered by the media’s focus on encapsulated facts and discoveries, rather than broad, unifying concepts. Most scientific concepts are inherently logical and do not require specialized knowledge to understand if communicated properly. Evolution via natural selection is a good example. The concept that genetic variations within a population of organisms succeed or fail based on suitability to the present environment is easy to grasp, but a troublingly small percentage of the population is familiar with it. Even among visitors to natural history museums, who are more likely to accept evolution as true than the general population, less than a third are familiar with how natural selection works. Evolution is most important concept in biology and unifies the field. Therefore, it would not be difficult to integrate evolutionary concepts into virtually any exhibit on natural sciences. Communication of scientific concepts like evolution is more important for building science literacy than sharing scattered facts and impressive objects. Objects are excellent teaching tools, but are better when used as examples of underlying ideas.

Science communication in the media is at a tipping point. As the media has edged away from education and toward lowest-common-denominator entertaining, the public need for distinguishing reliable and unreliable information has increased. The misleading and inaccurate presentation of science in the media is woefully unhelpful for supporting an active and informed citizenry. Museums, with their high visibility and public trust, are well positioned to take steps toward reversing this trend. However, museum workers must first strike a balance between the sometimes conflicting goals of public appeal and accuracy. Science blogs are an excellent model for reliable, involving and applicable science communication, but they operate on a much smaller scale than museums. The challenge for museums, and any other media forms up to the challenge, will be to translate the strategies employed by blogs at the micro scale to large institutions.

Selected References

Diamond, Judy, and Margaret Evans. “Museums Teach Evolution.” Evolution. 61.6 (2007): 1500-1506.

Gregory, Jane, and Steve Miller. Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility. New York: Plenum Press, 1998.

MacFadden, Bruce J., Betty A. Dunckel, Shari Ellis, Lynn D. Dierking, Linda Abraham-Silver, Jim Kisiel and Judy Koke. “Natural History Museum Visitors’ Understanding of Evolution.” Bioscience. 57.10 (2007): 875-882.

McLean, Kathleen. “Museum Exhibitions and the Dynamics of Dialogue.” Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Ed. Gail Anderson. Lanham: Altamira, 2004. 193-211.

Simon, Nina. “Discourse in the Blogosphere: What Museums Can Learn from Web 2.0.” Museums and Social Issues. 2.2 (2007): 257-274.

Leave a comment

Filed under dinosaurs, museums, NMNH, science communication

Tagged as , , , ,

July 28, 2011 · 7:57 am

Jurassic Park is awesome and a milestone for paleontology…

…deal with it.

What follows was partially written several months ago and never finished. I dug it up again due to the resurgence of JP interest with Steven Spielberg’s announcement.

I was six years old when Jurassic Park came out. I was crazy about dinosaurs, but my parents had been told that the movie was way too scary for a kid my age. Since Aliens was already on my short list of favorite films at that point, this seems a moot point, but by the time my parents warmed up to taking me to see JP, it was at a second run theater. I don’t remember seeing it at the theater, but I do remember my endless viewings of my VHS copy, and the tattered box remembers too.

I still enjoy Jurassic Park immensely. It means a lot to me, but surprisingly, that feeling is not shared by the entirety of the paleontological community (as a student/intern, I put myself in a very broad definition of that collective). As an example, take a look at Dr. David Hone’s admittedly 3-year old post about the film. While Dr. Hone is generally positive, he expresses annoyance about the inaccurate portrayals of dinosaurs and paleontologists that have so firmly entrenched themselves in the public consciousness as a result of Jurassic Park. Similar complaints turn up from time to time on the Dinosaur Mailing List as well.

I, for one, have to disagree. When I’m chatting with people about vert paleo, something I genuinely enjoy, I’m thrilled when Jurassic Park enters the conversation. It’s such a genuinely entertaining movie that people remember it well, 18 years after it’s release. What’s more, it’s a movie that made many people think about what they were watching: what dinosaurs were like, and how we know what we do about them. This is an excellent jumping-off point for any discussion about paleontology, because it is a shared frame of reference. At work, I have become well acquainted with the fact that very few people understand Deep Time, or have ever given it any thought at all. But people know Jurassic Park, and I am very grateful for it as a starting point in the education process.

What’s more, we can complain all we like about what Jurassic Park got wrong, but I’m more impressed by how much it got right. Jurassic Park was the first widely disseminated look at believable dinosaurs, and it single-handedly brought post-Dinosaur Renaissance conceptions of dinosaurs to everyone.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, Jurassic Park is 18 years old now. It took awhile, but it seems to no longer be the go-to source of dinosaur knowledge for many Americans. The seemingly endless parade of shitty “documentaries” on cable TV, as well as fare like Dinosaur Train, are crowding Jurassic Park off its perch. And that is why I’m optimistic about the announcement of Jurassic Park 4. The original film was a fantastic resource not only for paleontology education, but science education in general. If a new sequel can match or approach that level of quality, then our job as educators will be much easier.

I also have a bunch of thoughts about Jurassic Park that I feel like sharing but don’t really have a place for above. Read on at your own risk.

  • One time when I was watching Jurassic Park with friends, somebody commented that Grant’s jaw dropping and staggering about at the sight of the Brachiosaurus was really bad acting. I beg to differ…I imagine I would do much the same thing.
  • The CGI dinosaurs get all the credit, but they are on screen for less than two minutes. Stan Winston’s flawless puppets and animatronics are the real stars of the show.
  • In fact, the dinosaurs as a whole don’t get much screen time. There’s barely a dinosaur to be seen for the first hour. Credit to Spielberg for great pacing and constructing fantastic set-piece sequences that get the most out of very few dinosaur scenes.
  • Grant’s dig site at the beginning of the film cracks me up. Putting aside the completely articulated skeleton for the moment, the rag-tag assortment of people present doesn’t make much sense, and the assortment of clutter in the trailer seems rather useless too.
  • Jurassic Park can (and has) be used as a basic introduction to cloning, genetics and chaos theory. Molecular biologists and mathematicians can nit-pick the movie as much or more as paleontologists can, but at the end of the day it’s an effective way to introduce the public to ideas they might not otherwise be exposed to.
  • It’s kind of funny that the idea of cloning was science fiction in the late 1980s when Michael Crichton wrote the book.
  • What was Gennaro asking Hammond about “auto-erotica?” What could that possibly mean besides what I think it means? Seriously, I would love an explanation.

Leave a comment

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

Tagged as , , , ,

April 26, 2011 · 9:08 am

The World’s Largest Dinosaurs (AMNH Part 1)

I spent the weekend in New York, and was able to spend a full day at the American Museum of Natural History. I’m a fan of New York, it’s just brimming with culture and has a neighborliness that one doesn’t see many other places. It had been much too long since I had been there, and even longer since I had been to AMNH. There’s a fair bit of brain dumping I’d like to accomplish on the topic of the museum, so I’ll probably  be posting thoughts on the  permanent paleobiology galleries and the mobile app fairly soon. For now, however, I really need to take a moment to gush about The World’s Largest Dinosaurs.

A typical dinosaur exhibit is based on the spectacle of the mounted skeletons. The curtain is raised on the strange and spectacularly large dinosaur bones, everybody oohs and ahhs, and that is all most/many visitors get out of it. Moreover, people leave (and probably came in with) the impression that paleontologists are people who dig up dinosaur bones and then put them on display. Such is not the case with The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, a new temporary exhibit at AMNH.

Life-size Mamenchisaurus. From http://gothamist.com.

The World’s Largest Dinosaurs is unique because it is not focused on skeletal mounts. There are no mounts to speak of in the gallery, and in fact, there are very few fossils on display at all. This exhibit provides a window into what vertebrate paleontologists do after they dig up the bones. Specifically, it is about sauropod biology. There has been a lot of really fascinating research into sauropod biology in the last 10-15 years, asking and answering questions such as, how did they carry all that weight? How did they reproduce? How did they get enough to eat? And of course, what’s the deal with those pneumatic bones? These questions are all explored in this exhibit.

A crappy image of an interactive display.

The layout of The World’s Largest Dinosaurs is very effective. Visitors are oriented in a narrow space that clearly lays out the topic at hand. Using skeletons of modern animals as comparisons, the questions that the very existence of sauropods raise are introduced to visitors (i.e., how did they get away with being so effin big?). Once the question is laid out, the exhibit opens up into a large space with many stations that address different research questions. The “ooh and ahh” factor is covered by a life-size model of a Mamenchisaurus in the center of the gallery, which doubles as a projection screen: animations of the circulatory, respritory and reproductive systems are displayed right on the model, accompanied by narration (see below).

Mamenchisaurus projection screen. From http://gothamist.com.

I was at AMNH on what turned out to be a very crowded day (no surprise, it was a rainy day on a holiday weekend), but I managed to get into the day’s earliest time slot, before it got too packed. When I was there at least, it was quiet enough for people to see the exhibits, and to get ahold of the interactives. As such, I observed people around me engaging with and understanding the material. Kids were working through the problems presented in the exhibit, despite the attempts of their parents to dumb down their experience and herd them through faster. The non-paleo people I were interested enough to read just about everything. Importantly, I heard no complaints that there weren’t many fossils on display. This is interesting, given how vocal some museum visitors can be about the exhibition of casts. Evidently, The World’s Largest Dinosaurs succeeded in entertaining and educating people without traditional mounted skeletons. I think this could potentially be a very big deal, and could cause museums to rethink the way paleontology exhibits are designed.

1 Comment

Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, museums, reviews, science communication

Tagged as , ,

March 12, 2011 · 5:27 am

Science, Art and Gregory Paul

Freelance paleoartist, researcher and author Gregory Paul has recently issued what amounts to a Cease and Desist to illustrators making use of his skeletal restorations of dinosaurs in paid projects. Paul argues that when other artists use his reconstructions,”often but not always the result is that other’s work possesses the ‘Greg Paul look”, and that this is a violation of copyright which has hindered his ability to secure commissions. Paul’s statement can be seen here, with  rebuttals here, and here. I would also encourage reading the thoughtful responses to the issue by artists and others in the paleontological community on the DML archives.

Torvosaurus by Gregory Paul. Image borrowed from http://www.kheper.net.

Gregory Paul is of course one of the most influential individuals working on dinosaurs today. His work, particularly in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, is probably the most frequently cited inspiration in my generation of paleophiles (perhaps because it isn’t cool to say Jurassic Park anymore). In particular, his series of intensively researched skeletal restorations (representing virtually every dinosaur known from sufficient material) are ubiquitous resources for paleontologists, and are a beloved resource among professional and hobbyist dinosaur artists. Even when his reconstructions are not directly utilized, the white-bones-on-black-outline presentation and one-foot-raised posture (see above) created by Paul have become an unofficial standard.

Now Paul is telling us that playtime is over. He has stated in no uncertain terms that creating dinosaur art based on his reconstructions without his consent and compensation is a copyright violation. The skeletal restorations require extensive research, travel to collections, original photography, and cross-scaling (which I won’t pretend to understand). Moreover, Paul has stated that other artists need to start doing the same, personally researching every dinosaur illustrated from the ground up, rather than relying disproportionately on his work.

I think Paul makes many fair points. In particular, the practice of producing uncredited Gregory Paul knockoffs at low prices is problematic, and his financial concerns are valid. Paul is in a (as far as I know) unique position among individuals producing quality paleontological restorations in that he does not have a university or museum position; his art is his business and livelihood, a fact which should be respected.

Giraffatitan and Ceratosaurus by Gregory Paul. Image borrowed from http://sodinossauros.blogspot.com.

Nevertheless, although I have complete sympathy for Paul’s predicament, I do have to take issue with some of his arguments, explained below.

1. I am concerned that Paul has framed the argument by defining paleoart as  a commercial commodity, and not as art or science. Everybody needs to make a living and romanticized ideals only get you so far, but science (and art) is all about sharing. By performing and publishing research, a scientist is providing her community and society with knowledge. Scientists continue to make new discoveries and continue to illustrate the many fascinating facets of the universe around us. As I see it, that is the point of science, but when you say, “this information that I discovered is mine, and only I can use it and built on it,” science becomes a business enterprise. We’ve already seen some of the complications of copyrighting genes. Do we really want to extend that to other fields? Paul’s situation is a little different because he is individually responsible for the majority of useful dinosaur skeletal restorations available. The principle, however, should be the same: when research is published, the knowledge gained from it becomes a shared commodity that others can learn from and expand on.

2. In his second rebuttal, Paul addresses the “slippery slope” that if skeletal drawings are off limits, than perhaps published photographs, measurements or even museum mounts could be as well. Paul argues that this is irrelevant because no scientist would object to others making use of their work when conducting further research. This seems like a completely inadequate excuse, because it gives Paul’s work special status that he is not extending to other researchers. The question remains that if one person objects to other scientists making use on their research, than what happens if others follow suit? The entire scientific process would grind to a halt.

3. Paul argues that he was key in establishing the “new look” of dinosaurs in the 1970s and 80s. What he means by “new look”, however, is not clear. Paul’s artwork and research was absolutely central in the transformation of our understanding of dinosaurs from slow, dim-witted monsters to active and socially complex animals (the work of Robert Bakker, John Ostrom, and, undeniably, the artists involved in Jurassic Park were also important). However, if Paul is attempting to claim some ownership of the fact that dinosaurs were, on the whole, fleet-footed and active animals, that seems as unreasonable as James Watson and Francis Crick claiming ownership of the fact that DNA is a double helix (oh wait…). If however, Paul is merely referring to the many artists who’s dinosaur depictions end up with the same emaciated, two-dimensional, dynamic-but-lifeless look of Paul’s, than this is a valid criticism. I hope to find clarification before jumping to conclusions about Paul trying to copyright scientific facts that he happens to have popularized.

Quetzalcoatlus and Daspletosaurus by Gregory Paul. Image borrowed from http://blogevolved.blogspot.com.

Finally, I found what I interpreted to be an attempt to discourage up-and-coming paleoartists from joining the field to be extremely off-putting.

If you are thinking that gee wiz doing your own technical research and restorations sure sounds like a pain in the butt, or may be beyond your knowledge base, and you don’t want to risk doing inaccurate restorations or do not think paying me a fee is workable, then there is another alternative. Perhaps it is better if you do something else. I know, it’s lots of fun illustrating dinosaurs. But if you cannot produce high quality, original paleorestorations is it really a good idea to be in the business? If you for example like the Greg Paul look do you really want to be underbidding me? Does not make sense when you mull it over.

I read this as “this is my field, you will never be as good as me, so don’t even try.” Well gee wiz Mr. Paul, isn’t that a nice thing to say to the legions of fans and admirers whose image of you ranges from “brilliant” to “godly.” Yes, Paul’s work is excellent, and few can duplicate it’s quality, but it doesn’t seem especially constructive to actively discourage others from working in the field.

This is a difficult issue, particularly because the economic factors probably have to weigh more heavily than ideological ones. I hope Mr. Paul’s statement gets wide circulation, and continues to inspire debate on what we should value about science.

11 Comments

Filed under dinosaurs, opinion, paleoart

Tagged as ,

February 23, 2011 · 11:23 pm

More Fun at the Carnegie Museum

I just have to share this picture, also from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (see previous post). While the “Dinosaurs in their Time” gallery is fantastic, this has to be one of the worst museum displays I’ve ever seen, as well as one of the most fascinating.

Leave a comment

Filed under CMNH, collections, education, exhibits, museums, opinion, theropods

Tagged as ,