Tag Archives: dinosaurs

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.

Charles Knight’s mural of the Agate Springs ecosystem. © Field Museum, CC BY-NC 4.0

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.

Carnegie and University Hills at Agate Springs National Monument. Photo by Neublar110, CC SA

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.

Menoceras fossils from Agate Springs on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. 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.

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.

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
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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Filed under AMNH, CMNH, collections, dinosaurs, DMNS, exhibits, field work, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, NMNH, ornithopods, sauropods, theropods, thyreophorans

Tagged as amnh, CMNH, dinosaur national monument, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, fossils, history of science, museums, NMNH, paleontology, ROM

March 8, 2017 · 5:03 pm

Jurassic Museum

Teaser image for Jurassic Park 5, via Colin Trevorrow/Universal.

Well, this is a doozy. Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow tweeted the above image this afternoon, which is a teaser for the upcoming “Jurassic World 2” (Jurassic Park 5?). The film doesn’t have an official title yet, but apparently they started shooting on February 23rd and are aiming for a June 2018 release.

The Victorian-style museum gallery piqued my interest immediately. Since this is the first promotional image they put out, it stands to reason that natural history exhibits might play a significant role in the film. Is this a flashback to a formative experience for a main character? Or is it a brief moment of quiet before Chris Pratt smashes through the wall riding a mutant cyborg T. rex? Both are probably equally likely at this point, but there are still a few things worth noting.

First, this scene is plainly referencing the century-old association in the public consciousness between museums and dinosaurs. When we think of museums, we think of dinosaurs, and vice versa. This is no accident – as I’ve discussed here on many occasions, dinosaurs (and their mounted skeletons in particular) played a central role in defining the modern museum at the start of the 20th century. The first Jurassic Park film played with this iconography in its classic finale, when the flesh-and-blood Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor literally obliterate a pair of skeletal mounts. In that case, the implication was clear: the living, cloned dinosaurs represent new technology and scientific progress smashing the old and obsolete incarnations of paleontology to bits.

Y’know, this scene. (Universal).

Is “Jurassic World 2” pushing a similar message, casting the iconography of a museum hall as a past doomed to extinction? Maybe. The Victorian design elements – wood paneled walls, skeletons on open pedestals in orderly rows – distinctly evoke museums of the past. You’d be hard pressed to find an exhibit that looks like that today. Perhaps the filmmakers are using the Victorian iconography to enhance the impression of dusty obsolescence. Or maybe the baby boomer producers are recreating the sort of museum they remember from their childhood. The primary counterpoint is that the mise en scène on display here is stately and impressive. That dramatically-lit ceratopsian skull looks formidable, not at all like something shrinking back into history.

Let’s talk about that ceratopsian skull for a hot sec. The other skeletons are (perhaps incredibly) reasonably accurate representations of identifiable dinosaurs. We’ve got a tyrannosaur, a hadrosaur, and a dromaeosaur on the left, and what looks like Euoplocephalus, Kosmoceratops, and Protoceratops on the right. The skull in the center stands out as the sole fanciful element in the scene. It looks like an oversized, exaggerated Triceratops, with extra-long, tapering brow horns and a frill studded with spikes. Jurassic World established fantasy dinosaurs as being part of the Jurassic Park universe, so it’s possible this represents some kind of new, fictitious hybrid.

Charles Knight’s 1897 Agathaumas painting. Source

However, I was immediately reminded of Charles Knight’s classic take on Agathaumas. E.D. Cope named Agathaumas sylvestris in 1872, based on a pelvis and a number of vertebrae discovered in southwest Wyoming. It was technically the first ceratopsian dinosaur to be named and described, but without a skull, Cope had little idea of what the animal looked like (today, it’s considered a synonym of Triceratops). Charles Knight depicted imagined the animal as a sort of spiny uber-Triceratops. His striking reconstruction was copied almost exactly for the Agathaumas that appeared in 1925’s The Lost World.

Triceratops and Agathaumas models, sculpted by Marcel Delgado and animated by Willis O’Brien. Source

It would be beyond awesome if the dramatic ceratopsian skull was meant to be a throwback or nod to the mythic Agathaumas. Or perhaps I’m reading too much in to it.

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, fossil mounts, marginocephalians, movies

Tagged as dinosaurs, fossils, jurassic world, museums

June 14, 2016 · 4:45 pm

Meeting the Titanosaur

The titanosaur doesn’t photograph well. It must be experienced. Photo by the author.

On January 15, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled the first new fossil mount to be added to their paleontology halls in 20 years. It is the reconstructed skeleton of an as-yet-unnamed titanosaur, an immense sauropod dinosaur that lived in Argentina during the mid-Cretaceous. The titanosaur is probably the most hyped-up fossil mount since Sue, at least in the United States (Sophie the Stegosaurus in the U.K. and Tristan the Tyrannosaurus in Germany received similar attention). This merits some discussion. The AMNH public relations staff pulled no punches in selling the titanosaur as a must-see exhibit. Huge advertisements appeared on buses and buildings around New York, including in Times Square. The legendary David Attenborough hosted a television special on the discovery of the fossils. Countless local and national news outlets were invited to the titanosaur’s unveiling earlier this year. But is this dinosaur really the find of the century?

Titanosaur was even advertised in times square. Source

One of the many titanosaur ads that showed up around New York City this past winter. Source

It depends. The titanosaur represents a species new to science, but it has not yet been formally published. The fossils were recovered in 2014 by José Luis Carballido and Diego Pol, paleontologists with the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum (the AMNH connection is that Pol was a doctoral student of Paleontology Division Chair Mark Norell). Bones from at least six individuals of the same species were found, together representing 70% of the skeleton. However, AMNH staff have mostly avoided calling this animal the biggest dinosaur ever.

Indeed, declaring any dinosaur species to be the largest is a fool’s errand. We’ve known for some time that South American titanosaurs, as a group, are probably the biggest land animals that ever lived. Unfortunately, these giants are typically represented by only a few isolated bones. For an animal to become fossilized, it needs to be buried shortly after death. But it takes a lot more dirt to cover a large animal than a small one. A flood or landslide big enough to completely cover a sauropod over a hundred feet long would be an exceedingly rare event. More often, these animals were picked apart by scavengers for some time before a few of the more durable bones were buried and fossilized. For example, Argentinosaurus is known from about ten percent of the skeleton, and Puertasaurus is known from just four vertebrae. Paleontologists can use better-known relatives to produce reasonable reconstructions from even these limited remains, but any length estimate is a ballpark figure. Even among related animals, proportions can vary significantly. Consider, for example, the very long tail of a green iguana as compared to the stubby tail of a Galapagos land iguana. Carballido and Pol’s find stands out among other titanosaurs because two-thirds of the skeleton is known. hen the description is published, it will undoubtedly shed new light on the skeletal anatomy of this group. Still, the missing parts mostly come from the neck and tail, which will probably preclude a precise estimate of the animal’s total length.

*This level of completeness is not entirely unprecedented. Dreadnoughtus, described in 2014, is also about 70% complete.

The titanosaur’s head and neck extend out of the room and into the corridor. Photo by the author.

We can’t say the AMNH titanosaur is absolutely the biggest known dinosaur, but what about the mount? At 122 feet, the reconstructed skeleton prepared by Research Casting International dwarfs AMNH’s resident sauropod, the 82-foot apatosaurine. It’s also a fair bit longer than the museum’s brain-breakingly huge blue whale model. AMNH is not the first museum to display a titanosaur, however. The Royal Ontario Museum has a 110-foot Futalognkosaurus, which the AMNH mount handily beats. But the new titanosaur is essentially the same size as the 123-foot Argentinosaurus at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History (duplicates also exist in Europe and South America). The difference, as mentioned, is that not a lot about Argentinosaurus is actually known, and the mount is almost entirely a sculpted reconstruction. By comparison, the AMNH titanosaur is largely composed of 3-D printed components based on scans of original fossils. “The biggest reconstructed skeleton of a reasonably well-known dinosaur” isn’t the catchiest headline, though.

Suffice it so say that on paper, the AMNH titanosaur isn’t a revolution for dinosaur science. When I went to see it last weekend, I expected to see a typical example of a well-studied group of dinosaurs. I was not prepared.

The closest I can find to a full-body photo of the titanosaur. Source

This bastard is BIG. I could go through a whole series of superlatives, but it’s impossible to describe the experience of sharing space with this magnificent skeleton. You cannot comprehend what a 122-foot dinosaur really is until you’ve experienced it. It helps that the titanosaur occupies a smallish, low-ceilinged room (a century ago, this was the infamous Hall of the Age of Man). It also helps that there are no long lines of sight into this space. You turn a corner and you are quite abruptly in the titanosaur’s presence. Regardless, the marketing line that was ubiquitous earlier this year – “everything else got a whole lot smaller” – rings unsettlingly true. Compared to the titanosaur, the mammoth and mastodon across the hall look like pipsqueaks. Even the AMNH blue whale, which usually requires a double-take, became a little easier to take in.

I’m no stranger to sauropods. I teach people about them at work all the time. But seeing the titanosaur in person was a revelation, and something I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the natural world. The titanosaur may not be the most important dinosaur discovery of our generation, but by giving it corporeal presence, AMNH created an incredible symbol. This is life at its limits, an embodiment of the incredible things the tetrapod body plan can do.

P.S.: If you’re concerned about the fate of the juvenile Barosaurus model that used to occupy this space, worry not. It now lives at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and will be on display at least through October of this year.

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Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, museums, sauropods

Tagged as amnh, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, natural history museums, paleontology, titanosaur

February 26, 2016 · 12:16 pm

AMNH dinosaurs in vintage cartoons

Today I happened upon a pair of wonderful vintage cartoons that simply must be shared. I found them in Edwin Colbert’s The Dinosaur Book: The Ruling Reptiles and Their Relatives, digitized here. The cartoons originally appeared in the New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post, respectively.

Original caption: “And here is my first dinosaur – makes me feel like a kid again every time I look at it.”

The cartoons plainly depict the “Brontosaurus” and “Trachodon” (now labeled Apatosaurus and Anatotitan) skeletons at the American Museum of Natural History, and as representations of these mounts, they aren’t bad. At the time of the cartoons’ initial publications in 1939 and 1940, these and dozens of other fossil mounts had been on display at AMNH for over 30 years. They were iconic New York attractions, and the museum had rightly earned itself a reputation as the place to see dinosaurs.

Original caption: “I don’t mind you boosting your home state, Conroy, but stop telling the children that’s a California jack rabbit!”

Perhaps it’s unwise to interpret these images too literally, but I can’t help but wonder which version of the AMNH fossil halls the cartoonists intended to depict. Since 1922, the famous mounts had been housed in Henry Osborn’s Great Hall of Dinosaurs, but during the 1930s the dinosaur exhibits underwent a significant expansion. The dinosaurs were reshuffled into two halls, one representing the Jurassic and one the Cretaceous.

The Great Hall of Dinosaurs as it appeared in the 1920s. Image courtesy of the AMNH Research Library.

The new Jurassic Hall opened around 1940. Photo from Dingus 1996.

The inclusion of a Stegosaurus with “Brontosaurus” and the ceratopsian skulls behind the “Trachodon” lead me to believe these are illustrations of the renovated halls, which would have been brand new at the time. But again, it’s just as likely that the cartoonists only intended to capture the general feel of these famous exhibits.

References

Colbert, E.H. 1945. The Dinosaur Book: The Ruling Reptiles and Their Relatives, 2nd Edition. New York, NY: The American Museum of Natural History/McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

Dingus, L. (1996). Next of Kin: Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

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Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, exhibits, fossil mounts, museums, ornithopods, paleoart, sauropods

Tagged as amnh, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, museum history, museums

January 7, 2016 · 2:23 pm

History of the Field Museum Fossil Halls – Part 1

The Field Museum of Natural History (variously known as the Field Colombian Museum and the Chicago Museum of Natural History) was founded by wealthy philanthropists in the wake of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It has since expanded into one of the largest natural history museums in the world, a destination attraction and a hub for ongoing research. What follows is a summary of the historic paleontology exhibits at the Field Museum – when and how they expanded and changed, when major specimens were added, and who spearheaded these efforts.

As with my previous overviews of fossil exhibits at AMNH and NMNH, please note that I will not be discussing field expeditions or research by museum staff in any detail, as these topics are well-explored elsewhere (see Paul Brinkman’s extensive work, for starters). My primary interest here is in the public-facing exhibits, and the people who created them.

Phase I: The Field Columbian Museum

The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago in 1893, principally as a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Lasting six months and attended by 27 million people, the Exposition was monumental in size and scope. Years before it even opened, there was talk about using the Exposition displays to seed a new museum, which would rival the great natural history museums in New York and Washington, DC. Eager to establish an enduring cultural attraction in their city, a group of wealthy Chicagoans – including Marshall Field, who donated an unprecedented $1 million – contributed the necessary funds to buy up many of the Exposition’s exhibits and found the Field Columbian Museum.

As the largest and most elegant of the 200 temporary buildings constructed for the Exposition, the Palace of Fine Arts became the Field Museum’s home. Frederick Skiff served as the first director, acting as an intermediary between the board of trustees and the new curatorial staff, who would manage the collections and assemble the exhibits. Skiff hired geologist Oliver Farrington to curate the earth science collections, a diverse mix of minerals, gems, meteorites, fossils, and fabricated displays purchased from the Henry Ward Natural Sciences Establishment. With thousands of specimens to catalog, Farrington was soon overwhelmed. He repeatedly asked Skiff to hire a paleontology specialist to support him, but the board (composed of the businessmen who founded the museum) was uninterested in paying more salaries or acquiring new specimens.

The model icthyosaur and thousands of fossils in cases were among the specimens purchased from the Ward Natural Sciences Establishment after the World’s Columbian Exposition. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

When the Field Columbian Museum opened on June 2nd, 1894, most the 5,000-piece fossil collection was on public display. In addition to the cases of as-yet unlabled invertebrates, plants, and other small fossils, the exhibit included several large reconstructions of prehistoric animals. As of opening day, a life reconstruction of a mammoth stood in the west court, while skeletons of Megaloceros, Scistopleurum, Megatherium, Hadrosaurus, and a uintathere stood in halls 35 and 36. With the exception of the Megaloceros, these were all replicas of mounts from other institutions. The Hadrosaurus in particular was woefully outdated, considered by contemporary scholars to have “long since ceased to have any value except as a historic attempt” (Beecher 1901).

After completing his catalog of the earth science collections in 1896, Farrington continued to lobby for a dedicated staff paleontologist. The board paid no attention until 1897, when the American Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History announced ambitious plans to scour the western interior for fossils. So began what Brinkman calls the second Jurassic dinosaur rush – a frenzied race among leading American museums to be the first to collect and mount a sauropod dinosaur. Not wanting to be left behind by peer institutions, the trustees approved the conditional hiring of Elmer Riggs to collect dinosaurs for the Field Museum.

Hadrosaurus cast on display at the Field Museum. Field Museum Photo Archives.

Hadrosaurus stands among other fossil casts in the Field Columbian Museum. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

Riggs and his classmate Barnum Brown cut their teeth in paleontology while studying under Samuel Wendell Williston at the University of Kansas. The two young men took part in an AMNH collecting expedition in 1896. Brown, who had quit his studies to work for the museum, quickly became a favorite at AMNH. Concerned about his own future, Riggs sent an unsolicited letter to Frederick Skiff, offering his skills as a fossil collector and preparator. The letter crossed Skiff’s desk at an opportune time, and in the summer of 1898 Riggs was paid a small stipend for a trial collecting trip with Farrington. The expedition was a success, and Riggs was hired as an Assistant Curator before the end of the year.

Riggs’ first three collecting seasons with the Field Museum were enormously successful. In addition to the holotype of Brachiosaurus, at the time the largest known dinosaur, Riggs collected a very-well-preserved back end of an Apatosaurus near Fruita, Colorado. Nevertheless, AMNH won the sauropod race when they completed their composite “Brontosaurus” mount in 1905. The Carnegie Museum had a Diplodocus on display in 1907, and was busy cranking out casts for European heads of state. While Riggs’ Apatosaurus was more complete than any single specimen the other museums had recovered, it was still only half a dinosaur. Riggs and Farrington repeatedly lobbied the board for funding to find more sauropod material with which to complete the skeleton, but the trustees had moved on to other things.

Riggs' Apatosaurus mount stood unfinished from 1908-1958. Photo from the Field Museum Library.

Riggs’ Apatosaurus mount stood unfinished from 1908-1958. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

Plans were afoot to move the Field Museum to a new lakefront campus. However, when legal issues halted progress on the new building, Riggs was granted permission to mount the partial Apatosaurus in hall 35. The plaster casts previously displayed in this space were discarded, and unfortunately are now lost to history. A gas furnace was installed on the museum grounds, which Riggs and his small team used to shape massive steel I-beams for use in the armature. The teetering sauropod hindquarters was unveiled in 1908, but if Riggs hoped that the museum administrators would want to complete the mount once they saw how absurd the incomplete skeleton looked, he was out of luck.

Indeed, the years that followed were among the most frustrating of Riggs’ career. He received no funding to collect fossils after 1910, and could only look on enviously at the thriving paleontology research and exhibit programs at AMNH and the Carnegie Museum. The institutions in New York and Pittsburgh were headed by paleontologists, and bankrolled by wealthy fossil enthusiasts like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. By comparison, the Field Museum was controlled by trustees with seemingly little interest in paleontology. Already paid less than the museum’s other curators, Farrington and Riggs were left with meager resources and little to do until the 1920s.

Phase II: Halls 37 and 38

The Palace of Fine Arts was intended to last six months, and after ten years it was in dire shape. The roof leaked constantly, putting exhibits and collections in danger, and fences had to be placed around the perimeter to protect visitors from falling brick. Before his death in 1906, Marshall Field worked with architect Daniel Burnham to design a new home for the museum. It took years to settle disputes over where to place the building, but ground was eventually broken off Lake Shore Drive in 1915. Completed in 1920, the new Field Museum of Natural History was a gleaming marble fortress, decorated inside and out with intricate neoclassical reliefs and statuary.

In the spirit of a classic cabinet of curiosity, some of the cases in Hall 37 contained over a thousand specimens apiece. Source

Exhibits and collections were transported by rail car, often without being removed from their display cases. Earth science exhibits found a new home on the west side of the upper level. Hall 37, an east-west facing gallery accessible directly off the west mezzanine, housed invertebrate and plant fossils. Hall 38, running north to south against the far west side of the building, contained vertebrate fossils. Although it was colloquially known as the “dinosaur hall”, this space never contained many dinosaurs. In the 1920s, the only dinosaurs to be found were the half-Apatosaurus, a Triceratops skull, an articulated “Morosaurus” (Camarasaurus) limb, and parts of Brachiosaurus. The bulk of the specimens on display were Cenozoic mammals, including horses, rhinos, camelids, and a mammoth and mastodon. There was also a life-sized “coal swamp” diorama behind a glass barrier, with large model insects suspended in flight.

This comparatively modest exhibit was expanded significantly between 1922 and 1927, when Elmer Riggs was once again able to collect fossils in the field. Thanks to a bequest from Marshall Field’s grandson, Riggs traveled to Alberta, Argentina, and Bolivia, securing many unique specimens along the way. These included several new species, like the marsupial cat Thylacosmilus and the predatory bird Andalgalornis. A colossal Megatherium Riggs recovered in Argentina was immediately mounted for display, and became one of the most memorable elements of Hall 38.

A postcard of the partial Apatosaurus at the south end of Hall 38. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

A postcard of the north end of Hall 38, featuring a South American giant sloth and other Cenozoic mammals.

Megatherium at the north end of Hall 38. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

Hall 38 also boasted a spectacular set of murals by Charles Knight. The undisputed master of paleontological reconstructions and wildlife art, Knight had a long working relationship with Henry Osborn, president of AMNH. Osborn had commissioned Knight to create many large and small paintings for his museum’s fossil exhibits, but the two frequently argued over Knight’s remuneration. For years, Osborn and Knight discussed a series of immense wall canvases illustrating the entire history of life. Osborn could never get the money together, however, and Knight refused to produce any concept sketches for fear that they would be turned over to a less-skilled artist. In 1926, the Field Museum’s board of trustees asked for a meeting with Knight about an identical project for their new fossil hall. The initial discussion did not go well, and Knight walked out when the trustees started making “suggestions” about the content, color, and composition of the proposed artwork. Knight was very talented, but also very particular. He gladly accepted anatomical expertise from scientists but would not suffer meddling with the artistic aspects of his work. Fortunately for both parties, Knight’s daughter/manager Lucy intervened, securing her father the biggest commission of his career.

Knight completed 28 murals for the Field Museum, the largest of them measuring 25 feet long and nine feet high. Subjects ranged from the Proterozoic primordial soup to an iconic standoff between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. These images were not only painstakingly researched reconstructions based on the latest fossil evidence, they were (and still are) gorgeous works of art in their own right. With Knight’s murals in place, the Field Museum finally had a world-class paleontology exhibit.

The mastodon in Hall 38, with fossil horses visible beyond. Image courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

Gorgo in Stanley Field Hall. Photo courtesy of Field Museum Photo Archives.

“Gorgosaurus” in the Stanley Field Hall. Photo courtesy of Field Museum Photo Archives.

Riggs retired in 1942, leaving paleontology at the Field Museum to the next generation, among them Eugene Richardson, Brian Patterson, and Orville Gilpin. In 1951, Richardson oversaw a thorough modernization of Hall 37. The number of specimens on display was drastically reduced, making room for more accessible explanations of the fossils and ten new dioramas of Paleozoic marine life. The resulting exhibit was one of the most comprehensive displays of fossil invertebrates in the world.

Although virtually no dinosaur research was done at the Field Museum between 1910 and the late 1990s, the 1950s saw the acquisition of two significant specimens for the benefit of the visiting public. In 1956, preparator Orville Gilpin assembled a Daspletosaurus (then called Gorgosaurus) for the central Stanley Field Hall. The skeleton was a surplus specimen from Barnum Brown’s years collecting along Alberta’s Red Deer River, and trustee Louis Ware spearheaded the effort to buy it from AMNH. Since the Daspletosaurus was acquired explicitly for display, Gilpin opted to skewer and otherwise permanently damage many of bones for the sake of an unobstructed, free-standing mount. In the mid 20th century, dinosaur fossils were thought of as display pieces first, and irreplaceable specimens second.

The newly-finished Apatosaurus serves as a backdrop for an educational video shoot. Source

Two years after installing the Daspletosaurus, Gilpin finally completed Riggs’ partial Apatosaurus in Hall 38. When Edward Holt announced that he had discovered the front half of a sauropod near Green River, Utah, the Field Museum purchased the rights to excavate and display the find. Gilpin added the new fossils to the existing mount without dismantling Riggs’ heavy-duty armature. Relabeled “Brontosaurus” and erroneously given a casted Camarasaurus skull, the refreshed sauropod debuted in April 1958 – half a century after Riggs started the project.

The next three decades saw occasional piecemeal additions to the fossil halls. For example, the University of Chicago donated its entire geology collection to the Field Museum in 1965. This included a unique assortment of Permian amphibians and synapsids from the red beds of central Texas, many of them holotypes. Field Museum preparators remounted several of these specimens and integrated them into the exhibits. Nevertheless, Hall 38 never received a complete overhaul, and by the late 1980s it was quite dated. Not only were the fossil mounts in stiff, tail-dragging poses, but the stilted label copy written by curators past did not meet modern expectations for natural history exhibits. Even the vibrant Charles Knight murals looked tired behind years of accumulated dust and dirt. In short, the Field Museum was long overdue for a total re-imaging of its paleontology displays.

Next time, we’ll take a look at the Field Museum’s fossil exhibits from the 1990s onward. Stay tuned!

References

Beecher, C.E. 1901. The reconstruction of a Cretaceous dinosaur, Claosaurus annectens Marsh. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. 11: 311-324.

Brinkman, P.D. 2000. Establishing Vertebrate Paleontology at Chicago’s Field Colombian Museum: 1893-1898. Archives of Natural History 27: 1: 81-114.

Brinkman, P.D. 2o10. The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the 20th Century. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Chicago Natural History Museum Bulletin. (March 1956). 27: 3.

Gilpin, O.L. 1959. A Freestanding Mount of Gorgosaurus. Curator 2: 2: 162-168.

Glut, D.F. 2001. Remembering the Field Museum’s Hall 38. Jurassic Classics: A Collection of Saurian Essays and Mesozoic Musings. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Lelièvre, M A. 2006. Evolving Planet: Constructing the Culture of Science at Chicago’s Field Museum. Anthropologica 48: 2: 293-296.

Milner, R. 2012. Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time. New York, NY: Abrams.

Tubitis, T.J. 2005. Revitalizing Life Over Time: A New Look for a Very Old Topic. In the Field 76: 2: 18.

Williams, P.M. 1968. The Burham Plan and the Field Museum. Bulletin of the Field Museum of Natural History 39: 5: 8-12.

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

Tagged as dinosaurs, Elmer Riggs, exhibits, field museum, fossil mounts, fossils, natural history museums, paleontology

December 11, 2015 · 2:25 pm

Was the Hawkins Hadrosaurus real?

Hadrosaurus at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Photo from Weishampel and Young 1996.

In the “Claosaurus” post earlier this week, I temporarily(?) lost my mind when I said that the Hadrosaurus Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins assembled for the Academy of Natural Sciences was 100% plaster reconstruction. Thanks to John Sime, among others, for pointing out that this was incorrect. As usual, the truth is more complicated, and therefore much more interesting.

The Hadrosaurus project began when Hakwins was commissioned to create a series of life-sized prehistoric animals for display in New York City’s central park, under the direction of Joseph Leidy. The exhibition was cancelled when Hawkins’ on-site workshop was burned down by vandals, but he was able to salvage the Hadrosaurus skeleton for display at the Academy in Philadelphia. This reconstruction was based on little more than two limbs and a handful of vertebrae. It was a well-reasoned attempt – and it drew huge crowds – but it wasn’t long before new dinosaur finds rendered it obsolete. In 1901, Charles Beecher wrote that the Hadrosaurus mount had “long since ceased to have any value or interest except as a historical attempt.” No longer considered informative, the original Hadrosaurus was probably dismantled around the start of the 20th century. At least three plaster copies were distributed to other museums, but these were also discarded long ago.

There is no question that Hawkins’ reconstruction doesn’t reflect our present understanding of this animal, so in that sense it isn’t “real.” Still, it is of historic interest whether Hawkins used the handful of original Hadrosaurus fossils in the mount itself, or whether the entire display was fabricated. There is precedent for both posibilities: John Peale mounted an original mastodon skeleton in 1802, but the Smithsonian’s first attempts at Basilosaurus and Triceratops (1895 and 1900 respectively) included no real fossils. This question was actually up for discussion as early as 1926. Responding to an inquiry from Peabody Museum paleontologist Richard Lull, Academy of Natural Sciences curator Witmer Stone wrote that the Hadrosaurus mount was a complete reproduction. When Lull followed up with William Matthew of the American Museum of Natural History, however, Matthew recalled that “some or all of the original bones were used.”

The two letters reproduced below are in the collection of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and are shared with permission.

Letter from Witmer Stone to Richard Lull, January 26, 1925. Courtesy of the Dept. of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Letter from William Matthew to Richard Lull, January 30, 1925. Courtesy of the Dept. of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

A look at the original Hadrosaurus fossils, now cataloged as ANSP 10005, suggests that Matthew was correct. At least a couple of the bones appear to bear drill holes, a tell-tale sign that they were once fastened to an armature. Likewise, in a photograph of the mount in Hawkins workshop, the elements that were actually recovered – the left leg*, part of the pelvis, and a scattering of vertebrae – appear to be darker in color. This suggests that these are the real bones, and the rest of the skeleton is plaster…unless Hawkins painted plaster casts to demonstrate which elements had been found.

*Note that the image below has been flipped horizontally for some reason. In the original, the left side of the skeleton is facing the camera.

Hadrosaurus in Hawkins’ studio. Image from Carpenter et al. 1994.

The answer to this little conundrum can be found in the official guidebook to the Academy of Natural Sciences, published in 1879. Apparently there were two versions of Hadrosaurus on display. The original 1868 mount did include the original fossils, but when the museum moved to a larger facility in 1876 (in part because of the spike in visitation caused by the Hadrosaurus exhibit) the mount was remade. The bones were not faring well in open air and were rapidly deteriorating, so they were retired to the collections and replaced with casts. Anyone who saw the Hadrosaurus before 1876 saw the fossils incorporated into the mount, and anyone who visited later saw a complete facsimile. Still, I’m pretty sure William Matthew was remembering incorrectly. He was born in 1871, so unless he was carefully observing the composition of the mount at age 5, he shouldn’t have seen the original version!

References

Beecher, C.E. 1901. The reconstruction of a Cretaceous dinosaur, Claosaurus annectens Marsh. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Vol. 11, pp. 311-324.

Carpenter, K., Madsen, J.H. and Lewis, L. 1994. Mounting of Fossil Vertebrate Skeletons. Vertebrate Paleontological Techniques, Vol. 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Prieto-Márquez, A., Weishampel D.B., and Horner J.R. 2006. The dinosaur Hadrosaurus foulkii, from the Campanian of the East Coast of North America, with a re-evaluation of the genus. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. Vol. 51, pp. 77-98.

Ruschenberger, W.S.W. and Tryon, G.W. 1879. Guide to the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: Academy of Natural Sciences.

Weishampel. D.B. and Young, L. 1996. Dinosaurs of the East Coast. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

AMNH 5027 at 100

In December 1915, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled the very first mounted Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, irrevocably cementing the image of the towering reptilian carnivore in the popular psyche. For a generation, AMNH was the only place in the world where one could see T. rex in person. Despite the tyrant king’s fame, old books emphasize the rarity of its fossils. The situation is very different today. In the last 30 years, the number of known Tyrannosaurus specimens has exploded. Once elusive, T. rex is now one of the best known meat-eating dinosaurs, and real and replica skeletons can be seen in museums around the world. The AMNH mount is no longer the only T. rex around, nor is it the biggest or most complete. It was, however, the first, and in a few weeks it will mark the 100th anniversary of its second life. Below is a partially recycled recap of this mount’s extraordinary journey.

AMNH 5027 in November 2015. Photo by the author.

The mount known as AMNH 5027 is actually a composite of material from two individuals. The first is the Tyrannosaurus rex holotype (originally AMNH 973, now CM 9380), which was discovered by Barnum Brown and Richard Lull during an AMNH expedition to Montana in 1902. The find consisted of little more than the pelvis, a single femur, one arm and shoulder, and fragmentary portions of the jaw and skull. Nevertheless, this was enough for AMNH director Henry Osborn to publish a brief description in 1905, as well as coin the species’ brilliantly evocative name. That same year, Adam Hermann prepared a plaster replica of the animal’s legs and pelvis, using Allosaurus fossils as reference when sculpting the missing lower legs and feet. This partial mount was initially displayed alongside the skeleton of a large ground bird, in order to accentuate the anatomical similarities.

Brown located a better Tyrannosaurus specimen in 1908. Apparently fearing poaching or scooping, Osborn wrote to Brown that he wished to “keep very quiet about this discovery, because I do not want to see a rush into the country where you are working.” After vanquishing many tons of horrific sandstone overburden, Brown returned to New York with what was at the time the most complete theropod specimen ever found. In addition to an “absolutely perfect” skull, the new find included most of the rib cage and spinal column, including the first half of the tail (Osborn 1916). Lowell Dingus would later describe this second specimen (the true AMNH 5027) as “a nasty old codger”, suffering from severe arthritis and possibly bone cancer. These pathologies were undoubtedly painful and probably debilitating.

Model of unrealized T. rex showdown mount from Osborn 1913.

Model of the unrealized T. rex showdown mount from Osborn 1913.

Osborn initially wanted to mount both Tyrannosaurus specimens facing off over a dead hadrosaur. He even commissioned E.S. Christman to sculpt wooden models which which to plan the scene (shown above). However, the structural limitations inherent to securing heavy fossils to a steel armature, as well as the inadequate amount of Tyrannosaurus fossils available, made such a sensational display impossible to achieve. Instead, the available fossils complemented one another remarkably well in the construction of a single mounted skeleton. Osborn noted this good fortune in 1916, but his statement that the two specimens were “exactly the same size” wasn’t quite accurate. The holotype is actually slightly larger and more robust than the 1908 specimen, and to this day the AMNH Tyrannosaurus mount has oversized legs.

The original Tyrannosaurus rex mount at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo from Dingus 1996.

The original Tyrannosaurus rex mount at AMNH. Note the original 1905 replica legs in the background. Photo from Dingus 1996.

Instead, Hermann’s team prepared a single Tyrannosaurus mount, combining the 1908 specimen with the reconstructed pelvis and legs based on the 1905 holotype. When the completed mount was unveiled in 1915, the media briefly lost their minds. In contemporary newspapers, the skeleton was called “the head of animal creation”, “the prize fighter of antiquity”, and “the absolute warlord of the earth”, among similarly hyperbolic proclamations. Even Osborn got in on the game, calling Tyrannosaurus “the most superb carnivorous mechanism among the terrestrial Vertebrata, in which raptorial destructive power and speed are combined.” With its tooth-laden jaws agape and a long, dragging lizard tail extending its length to over 40 feet, the Tyrannosaurus was akin to a mythical dragon, an impossible monster from a primordial world. This dragon, however, was real, albeit safely dead for 66 million years.

T. rex in the Cretaceous Hall, 1960. Image courtesy of the AMNH Research Library.

The AMNH’s claim to the world’s only mounted Tyrannosaurus skeleton ended in 1941, when the holotype was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The Pittsburgh museum’s hunch-backed reconstruction of the tyrant king was on display within a year. Although no longer the only T. rex on display, the AMNH mount certainly remained the most viewed as the 20th century progressed. It became an immutable symbol for the institution, visited again and again by generations of museum goers. Its likeness was even used as the iconic cover art of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

By the 1980s, however, a new wave of dinosaur research had conclusively demonstrated that these animals had been active and socially sophisticated. The AMNH fossil galleries had not been updated since the 1960s, and the upright, tail-dragging T. rex in particular was painfully outdated. AMNH had once been the center of American paleontology, but now its displays were lagging far behind newer museums.

Restoration of AMNH 5027 was completed nearly three years before the hall reopened. Photo from Dingus 1996.

Between 1987 and 1995, Lowell Dingus coordinated a comprehensive, $44 million renovation of the AMNH fossil exhibits. As part of the project, chief preparator Jeanne Kelly led the restoration and remounting of the most iconic specimens, Apatosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Of the two mounts, the Tyrannosaurus presented the bigger challenge. The fossils were especially fragile, and some elements, specifically the cervical vertebrae, had never been completely freed from the sandstone matrix. It took six people working for two months just to strip away the layers of shellac applied by the original preparators. All told, the team spent a year and a half dismantling, conserving, and rebuilding the T. rex.

Phil Fraley’s exhibit company constructed the new armature, which gave the tyrant king a more accurate horizontal posture. While the original mount was supported by obtrusive rods extending from the floor, the new version is actually suspended from the ceiling by a pair of barely-visible steel cables. Playing with Christman’s original wooden models, curators Gene Gaffney and Mark Norrell settled on a fairly conservative stalking pose, imbuing the mount with a level of dignity befitting this historic specimen. The restored AMNH 5027 was completed in 1992, but would not be unveiled to the public until the rest of the gallery was finished in 1995. Since that time, tens of millions of visitors have flocked to see this new interpretation of Tyrannosaurus. This is the skeleton that showed the world that dragons are real, and it is still holding court today.

References

Dingus, L. 1996. Next of Kin: Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Glut, D.F. 2008. Tyrannosaurus rex: A Century of Celebrity. Tyrannosaurus rex, The Tyrant King. Larson, Peter and Carpenter, Kenneth, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

McGinnis, H.J. 1982. Carnegie’s Dinosaurs: A Comprehensive Guide to Dinosaur Hall at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Institute. Pittsburgh, PA: The Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institute.

Norell, M, Gaffney, E, and Dingus, L. 1995. Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Osborn, H.F. 1906. Tyrannosaurus, Upper Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaur: Second Communication. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History vol. 22, pp. 281-296.

Osborn, H.F. 1913. Tyrannosaurus, Restoration and Model of the Skeleton. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History vol 32, pp. 9-12.

Osborn, H.F. 1916. Skeletal Adaptations of Ornitholestes, Struthiomimus, and Tyrannosaurus. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History vol 35, pp. 733-771.

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Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, theropods

Tagged as amnh, dinosaurs, exhibits, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, paleontology, Tyrannosaurus

October 2, 2015 · 2:14 pm

The Nation’s T. rex Revealed

The Nation’s T. rex was temporarily assembled in the RCI workshop for inspection by Smithsonian staff. Source

Yesterday, a press embargo lifted and the world got it’s first look at the pose the Nation’s T. rex will assume in the new fossil hall at the National Museum of Natural History. I don’t have much to add to the solid coverage at The Washington Post, NPR, and Smithsonian Magazine except holy crap, that’s awesome.

The photo above (by Nikki Kahn of The Washington Post) was taken when Smithsonian staff visited the Research Casting International workshop to inspect the mount’s progress. Located outside of Toronto, RCI is the industry leader in the art of creating mounted fossil skeletons, and their work is on display in museums all over the world. The Nation’s T. rex is one of 52 mounts the company will create for NMNH over the next three years.

Dr. Carrano gestures toward the awesomeness behind him. Source

The Nation’s T. rex (also known as Wankel Rex) is new to NMNH, but it is not a new specimen. It was discovered by Montana rancher Kathy Wankel in 1988 on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. The skeleton, which was for a time the most complete Tyrannosaurus known, was held in trust at the Museum of the Rockies until last April, when the Corps loaned the specimen to the Smithsonian for the next 50 years. This is the first time the original fossils have been displayed in a standing mount, but RCI has been producing casts of the specimen for years. Examples can be seen at the Great North Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and even the Google Campus.

The Smithsonian team inspecting every inch of the 2,000 pound mount included Curator of Dinosauria Matt Carrano, Exhibit Project Manager Siobhan Starrs, and Preparator Steve Jabo. The violent scene, with the Tyrannosaurus preparing to decapitate its Triceratops prey, was first suggested by Carrano over two years ago. The inspiration came from research by Denver Fowler and colleagues, which proposed that Tyrannosaurus regularly dismembered Triceratops by pulling the head off by the frill. The dynamic pose sets the Nation’s T. rex apart from the more “regal” stances other museums have chosen for their Tyrannosaurus mounts, and also reminds visitors that this animal was a living, acting being within its environment.

A 3-D printed model of the skeleton was used to plan the pose. Source

The exhibit team used a 3-D printed model of the skeleton to plan the pose. Source

The tyrant king’s prey is none other than a cast of Hatcher, NMNH’s resident Triceratops. This composite skeleton was the first mounted Triceratops ever exhibited, and it has been on display in one form or another since 1905. An updated reproduction of Hatcher can be seen right now in The Last American Dinosaurs, but apparently this will be its last hurrah. As Carrano put it, “Hatcher’s done its duty.” Even relegated to the role of food, however, Hatcher is still an impressive beast. The skeleton is nearly as long as the Nation’s T. rex, and noticeably bigger than the Triceratops mounts at other major U.S. museums.

Poor Hatcher knows nothing of his imminent demise at the claws of a 38-foot murderbird. Photo by the author.

The NMNH team had a few notes for RCI, both for the sake of accuracy and the sake of the exhibit. Carrano requested that the fibula be rotated slightly, while Starrs emphasized that the tail should be at least 10 feet off the ground, to prevent over-enthusiastic visitors from grabbing at it. The workshop visit was also an opportunity to explore how the mount would look among the other denizens of the National Fossil Hall. Hatcher and the Nation’s T. rex will be sharing space on the Creataceous platform with Edmontosaurus, Thescelosaurus, and the crocodile relative Champsosaurus, among others. Working out dynamic poses that also keep key lines of sight open is no easy task, and the gallery space needs to be planned down to the inch.

As is now industry standard, RCI’s armature is made up of intricate steel cradles that are custom fitted to hold each of the 150 real fossils in place. Unlike many historic mounts, no holes have been drilled in the bones and none of the delicate fossils are supporting the structure’s weight. Most bones can be removed individually, and with the right equipment, the entire mount can be assembled in just a few hours. As such, we can rest assured that this display will not only be incredibly cool, but the authentic 66 million-year-old fossils will be as safe as they could possibly be while on view for 7 million visitors per year.

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Filed under dinosaurs, exhibits, fossil mounts, marginocephalians, museums, NMNH, theropods

Tagged as dinosaurs, fossil mounts, museums, natural history museums, NMNH, paleontology, Smithsonian, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus

June 8, 2015 · 3:48 pm

A Trio of Tyrants

The frentic search for North American dinosaur fossils in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can be divided into three phases. First came O.C. Marsh and E.D Cope, whose infamous rivalry resulted in literal trainloads of fossil material and laid the groundwork for our present understanding of dinosaur diversity. Next, teams sponsored by the newly-formed American, Carnegie, and Field museums returned to the same hunting grounds in the western interior to secure display-worthy specimens for their great halls of exhibition. The final phase was smaller in scale but yielded dinosaur specimens so spectacularly complete that most have gone unmatched to this day.

This third fossil rush occurred not in the United States but in Canada, along the cliff-like banks of Alberta’s Red Deer River. Fossil hunting in this region was pioneered in the late 1800s by George Dawson, Joseph Tyrell, and Lawrence Lambe, all working for the Canadian Geological Survey. This success did not go unnoticed by the the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. In 1910, the museum mounted an expedition led by Barnum Brown to the Red Deer River. Rather ingeniously, Brown’s team acquired a pair of 30-foot floating barges, which were used as mobile platforms from which they could excavate the steep river banks. The barges also served as floating campsites and a handy means of transportation in a region without reliable roads.The adventurous Brown was already a media favorite, and the publicity surrounding his Alberta expeditions only increased when the team started bringing back fully articulated and nearly complete dinosaur skeletons (including several with skin impressions).

Under pressure from constituents concerned that the Americans were hauling away so much of their natural heritage, the Canadian government formed its own team of fossil collectors in 1912. The new Canadian Geological Survey team was headed by independent fossil hunter Charles H. Sternberg (a veteran collector who had once worked for Cope) and his sons George, Levi, and Charles Jr. The Canadian and American teams worked in the same region for the next five field seasons. Their rivalry was usually good-natured, but on more than one occasion Brown saw fit to grumble about the Sternbergs’ ethics (never mind that he was the one permanently removing fossils from their country of origin).

Three tyrannosaurs mounted in relief at AMNH. Image courtesy of the AMNH Research Library.

All of this is so much preamble for the actual topic of this post – three remarkable Gorgosaurus skeletons* collected near the Red Deer River during the Canadian fossil rush. All three were eventually mounted in relief by AMNH preparator Peter Kaisen, and for a time they were displayed together in the Hall of Fossil Reptiles. These specimens are on the short list of most complete large theropod dinosaurs ever discovered, and in their day they provided researchers an unprecedented look at the physiology of these amazing animals. Nearly a century later, the three mounts are virtually unchanged. Locked behind glass for decades and largely inaccessible to researchers, the mounts themselves are now relics of a fascinating transitional period in the history of dinosaur studies.

*AMNH also recovered a fourth tyrannosaur during this period – Gorgeous George the Daspletosaurus.

As usual, a brief explanation of nomenclature is required. William Matthew and Barnum Brown originally described these specimens as Gorgosaurus, a genus that Dale Russell sank into Albertosaurus in 1970. Most specialists no longer support this synonymization, but the specimens at AMNH are still labeled as Albertosaurus.

Gorgosaurus libratus – USNM 12814

A recent photo of USNM 12812 from the ongoing renovation of the national fossil hall. Source

USNM 12814 (originally designated AMNH 5248) was excavated by Brown’s company in 1913 and prepared for display in 1918. Kaisen elected to recreate the death pose in which the Gorgosaurus was found, with its head swept backward over its body. All told, the finished mount included a skull, a complete set of cervical and dorsal vertebrae, complete forelimbs, and a single femur – the pelvis and the rest of the hindlimbs were filled in with casts from other specimens. Since the skeleton was mounted in relief, Kaisen simply painted the tail onto the backdrop.

After at least a dozen years on display at AMNH, the Gorgosaurus was traded to the National Museum of Natural History as part of a complicated deal between the two museums. While surveying fossil collections throughout the United States, Brown realized that a single Barosaurus skeleton from Dinosaur National Monument had been divided among three different institutions. NMNH had the neck and part of one forelimb, the Carnegie Museum had the tail, and the University of Utah had the rest. Between 1929 and 1933, Brown arranged a series of trades in order to unify the Barosaurus at AMNH. The Smithsonian in particular drove a hard bargain – the museum had already invested $3400 in preparing their Barosaurus section, and paleontology staff wanted a good return for their investment. Brown’s initial offer was the fully prepared and mounted Gorgosaurus. Although AMNH valued the field and prep time spent on the fossils at $4573, it was at that point a duplicate specimen taking up valuable space in their increasingly crowded exhibit hall.

NMNH dinosaur specialist Charles Gilmore confided in Brown that he was okay with this trade, but fellow Smithsonian paleontologist Alexander Wetmore wasn’t sold. For years, NMNH staff had been trying to acquire one of the many Moropus specimens AMNH had collected at the Agate Fossil Beds in Nebraska. NMNH had offered a variety of specimens to trade, even sending AMNH a set of brontothere skulls at one point, but AMNH was adamant the Moropus fossils could only be exchanged for cash. Brown really wanted that Barosaurus neck, so in January of 1933, he finally relented and offered the Smithsonian a largely complete Moropus in addition to the Gorgosaurus. Not long after, the Gorgosaurus relief mount found its way into the Hall of Extinct Monsters at NMNH.

Gorgosaurus sp. – AMNH 5458

A technician (probably Kaisen) adjusts the steel strap holding the femur in place. Source

Brown’s team found their second Gorgosaurus near Steveville, Alberta in 1914. Complete save for the left leg, right arm, and parts of the rib cage and tail, the mount was ready for display in May of 1921. At 24 feet long and 14 feet high, this was by far the largest relief mount at the museum. In fact, it was too big to fit through the workshop doorway in one piece, so Kaisen constructed it in eight sections that were sealed together in the exhibit hall. Each section had its own wooden frame for support, and the bones themselves were held in place with steel straps. The skull, jaw, and left forearm could be removed for individual study. This was unusual for the period (most contemporary fossil mounts were designed to be permanent) and speaks volumes about this specimen’s unique scientific value.

This mount is particularly notable for its awkward running pose. Directly contradicting many narratives of early 20th century paleontology, Matthew and Brown envisioned Gorgosaurus as an animal that “walked and ran much like a gigantic bird.” The AMNH team posed this mount after studying photos of bipedally running lizards, particularly the western tiger lizard*. However, Matthew and Brown noted that the dinosaur’s limb proportions and range of motion more closely resemble a bird than a lizard, and adjusted the pose accordingly. They also advised a more conservative stride length to compensate for the animal’s considerable weight.

*Matthew and Brown do not provide a scientific name, and the common name “western tiger lizard” doesn’t seem to be used any more. Anyone know what it’s called today?

The final pose was a compromise between the elevated torso of a running lizard and the comparatively tight gait of a bird. It looks more than a little strange, but AMNH 5458 is certainly closer to our present understanding of theropod posture than most mounts of the era. Matthew and Brown’s interpretation of Gorgosaurus turned out to be ahead of its time. Some contemporary researchers, including Lawrence Lambe, declared the running pose to be highly improbable, and virtually all theropod mounts constructed over the next 60 years returned to the tail-dragging posture of the 1915 AMNH Tyrannosaurus.

Gorgosaurus “sternbergi” – AMNH 5664

Gorgosaurus “sternbergi” as it was discovered and originally mounted. Source

The most complete tyrannosaur from the Red Deer River was not collected by the AMNH party, but by the Sternbergs. The elder Charles Sternberg discovered the specimen in 1917, entirely intact save for the left arm and the very end of the tail. In fact, this was the most complete large theropod ever found in North America until it was surpassed by yet another Gorgosaurus, TCM 2001.89.1. Sternberg first attempted to sell the specimen to the British Museum. They weren’t interested, but AMNH was. In 1918, the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology bought the skeleton for $2000, thus completing the tyrannosaur trio.

Matthew and Brown described AMNH 5664 as a new species – Gorgosaurus sternbergi. In their 1921 publication, they describe the skull as longer and shallower than other Gorgosaurus specimens, with rounder orbits. However, Brown and Matthew recognized that these could be juvenile characteristics, noting as well that the unfused pelvic bones were an indication of immaturity. As early as 1970, this specimen was suspected to be a juvenile Gorgosaurus (or Albertosaurus) libratus.

Kaisen prepared the relief mount in 1921, this time assisted by Carl Sorenson. The photo above shows the original version of this mount, with the tail projecting straight back from the body. This was how Sternberg discovered the skeleton, and Kaisen wanted to keep the death pose intact. In the 1950s, the tail was “corrected” to make it drag on the ground. Although the display has not been altered since, the revised tail posture is now considered inaccurate. Indeed, the vertebrae apparently had to be angled unnaturally to make the dragging tail work at all.

AMNH 5027 was restored and remounted in 1995.

The Gorgosaurus plaque mounts hide behind Tyrannosaurus rex at AMNH. Photo by the author.

All three Gorgosaurus specimens were first displayed in the cramped quarters of the Hall of Fossil Reptiles (now the Hall of Primitive Mammals) with the rest of the growing AMNH dinosaur collection (USNM 12814 and the tail of AMNH 5664 are barely visible in this photo). 5458 and 5664 moved to the newly opened Great Hall of Dinosaurs in 1922. They flanked the gallery’s rear doorway for 70 years before being moved to the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs in 1994. Meanwhile, the Gorgosaurus transferred to the Smithsonian first appeared in the Hall of Extinct Monsters in the 1940s, displayed behind glass on the north wall. It switched to the south side in 1962, and moved about 30 feet up the wall in 1981, where it could only be properly seen from the mezzanine ramp.

Aside from the aforementioned alternation to AMNH 5664’s tail, the Red Deer River Gorgosaurus trio has not been modified since they were first built. This may well change in the not-to-distant future. The NMNH crew is hard at work on a thorough renovation of the national fossil hall, dismantling and restoring all of the classic dinosaur mounts. Meanwhile, the current AMNH paleontology exhibits are now 20 years old, and will soon be due for a similar overhaul. Both institutions will need to decide whether or not to free the Gorgosaurus specimens from their plaster substrate. This would be an extremely difficult process, but not impossible – Phil Fraley Productions recently rebuilt the Carnegie Museum’s Corythosaurus, Dryosaurus, and Camptosaurus as free-standing mounts. Dismantling the relief mounts would give a new generation of scientists access to these important specimens, and it would allow for the skeletons to be given more accurate poses. In addition, a standing Gorgosaurus mount alongside either museum’s Tyrannosaurus rex would be both informative and awesome.

Nevertheless, remaking these mounts would also destroy significant historical context. The carefully restored death pose of USNM 12812 seems like something worth preserving, and the AMNH specimens represent an important transitional period in the history of dinosaur science. In the past, museums have often taken a “science marches on” approach when updating aging displays, but in these mounts might be unique enough in their current form to be left as-is. What do you think?

References

Carr, T.D. (1999). Craniofacial Ontogeny in Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria, Coelurosauria). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19: 497-520.

Colbert, E.H. (1968). Men and Dinosaurs: The Search in Field and Laboratory. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

Gilmore, C.W. (1946). Notes on Recently Mounted Reptile Fossil Skeletons in the United States National Museum. Proceedings of the United States National Museum Vol. 96 No. 3196.

The Long Road to a Fossil Swap. Digging the Fossil Record, March 19, 2015. http://nmnh.typepad.com/smithsonian_fossils/2015/03/gorgosaurus-and-moropus.html

Matthew, W.D. and Brown, B. (1923). Preliminary Notices of Skeletons and Skulls of Deinodontidae from the Cretaceous of Alberta. American Museum Noviates 89: 1-10.

Russell, D. (1970). Tyrannosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of western Canada. National Museum of Natural Science Publications in Palaeontology 1: 1–34.

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Filed under AMNH, dinosaurs, field work, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, NMNH, reptiles, theropods

Tagged as Barnum Brown, C.H. Sternberg, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, natural history museums, NMNH, paleontology, Smithsonian

May 26, 2015 · 2:42 pm

Here Comes Jurassic World

A bucolic scene at the dinosaur zoo. Source

I was planning to be bitter and jaded about “Jurassic World”, but my excitement has gotten the better of me. I like much of what I’ve seen so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing the film next week. Moreover, the cultural endurance of the original “Jurassic Park”, now 22 years old, is incredible. When leading tours, I am regularly asked about the (largely fanciful) ground-penetrating radar shown in the movie. The word “dromaeosaur” results in blank faces, but if I call it a “raptor-type dinosaur, like in Jurassic Park,” I get knowing nods. These movies are the frame of reference for the public’s understanding of paleontology – not just how dinosaurs looked and behaved, but how scientists learn about them.

An important digression: we can’t give sole credit for Jurassic Park’s outsized role in popular culture to its dinosaurs and visual effects. I doubt the film would have the same lasting power without its memorable story and characters. Jurassic Park turned the classic lost world fantasy on its head, mixing it with a modern, tech-infused setting and a believable – albeit impossible – method for bringing dinosaurs back to life. The film raises concerns about the corporate commodification of GMOs that (whether reasonable or not) are at least as relevant today as they were in 1993. The entertaining and relatable way in which Jurassic Park broaches complex topics has not gone unnoticed by teachers. More than two decades later, the film is still being used to introduce subjects ranging from bioethics to complex mathematics.

Meanwhile, Jurassic Park features some of the most true-to-life scientist characters I’ve ever seen in a popular film (a very low bar, to be fair). Alan Grant has a quiet, thoughtful demeanor that reminds me of a number of colleagues and acquaintances. He usually thinks before he speaks or acts, but he also has a playful side that demonstrates the absolute joy he takes in discovering things about the world around him. Ian Malcolm, on the other hand, is what is known as an academic asshole. Like certain celebrity scientists, he’s a self-righteous jerk who may have some wisdom to impart, but chooses to do so in an insufferably arrogant and aggressive way. Scientists are as complex as anyone else, and it’s nice to be able to point to a movie that goes beyond the usual nerds in lab coats. Some more diversity among the principal cast would be better, but Jurassic Park is a move in the right direction.

A very reasonable reaction to encountering a living Triceratops.

A very reasonable reaction upon encountering a living Triceratops. Source

Back to my main point, the Jurassic Park films have had a meaningful and substantial impact on popular impressions of dinosaur science, and in this respect they should be taken seriously. A substantial amount of ink and pixels has been spilled regarding the accuracy (or lack thereof) of Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs for precisely this reason. Since the first Jurassic World trailer was released last fall, much of this conversation has revolved around the retrograde appearance of the new film’s saurian stars – rather than taking advantage of two decades of new science, the filmmakers stuck with the early 1990s designs. Experts have called this choice “lazy,” “a missed opportunity,” and “unbearably stupid in every conceivable way.” In response, die-hard Jurassic Park fans are rushing to the film’s defense. Many have explained away any deviations from real dinosaurs by pointing out that the cloned animals are genetic aberrations to some degree. Maddeningly, others have taken to questioning what experts truly know about extinct animals.

Misguided appeals to ignorance can be dismissed out of hand, but the “cloned aberrations” argument deserves attention, if only because it completely misses the point. The Jurassic Park series has always been viewed (and marketed) as credible science fiction. The filmmakers hired Jack Horner, probably the world’s best-known paleontologist, to vouch for the dinosaur designs of all four films. By the time the third movie came out, special effects genius Stan Winston (rest in peace) was claiming that they had “blurred the theatricality of movies with museum-type education,” and that “there’s something to be learned from watching these movies” (quotes from DVD featurette “The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park III”). Given statements like these, it’s important that anyone with a vested interest in natural history education be aware of the films’ content, and be prepared to call out inaccuracies as necessary.

Pictured: inaccuracy. Source

Nevertheless, I’d also like to direct some finger-wagging at those who seem excessively eager to tear down the Jurassic Park films in the name of education. Many otherwise reasonable adults care a great deal about these movies, and “classic” dinosaur depictions in general. Perhaps this is due to an association with childhood, or perhaps it’s a manifestation of “awesomebro” culture. Either way, my job and my passion is to communicate the amazing discoveries scientists are making about our world, but I also know that telling people the things they like are stupid and wrong isn’t a great way to win over hearts and minds. Rather than alienating and antagonizing potential learners, I’d prefer to make use of what the audience is bringing to the conversation. Jurassic Park is a wide-reaching frame of reference and a helpful starting point for conversations about what we know about past life and how we know it. As I’ve argued before, the ideal approach is to acknowledge the relevance of pop-cultural dinosaurs, while working to separate them in our audience’s minds from the real dinosaurs that we learn about by studying fossils.

As an educator, what I want out of Jurassic World is a good movie, full stop. A good movie is a memorable movie, one that inspires people to visit parks and museums and to read up on paleontology. In more substantive terms, the original Jurassic Park also brought forth a great deal of funding for new research and museum exhibits, simply by creating awareness that dinosaur science has popular appeal. So to director Colin Trevorrow and Jurassic World, I say bring it on. We’re ready for your inaccuracies, and we’re ready to turn them into great discussions.

PS: Please consider participating in the Jurassic World Challenge – match your movie ticket price with a donation to help fund paleontology research and outreach.

Tag Archives: dinosaurs

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AMNH dinosaurs in vintage cartoons

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Phase I: The Field Columbian Museum

Phase II: Halls 37 and 38

References

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AMNH 5027 at 100

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The Nation’s T. rex Revealed

A Trio of Tyrants

Gorgosaurus libratus – USNM 12814

Gorgosaurus sp. – AMNH 5458

Gorgosaurus “sternbergi” – AMNH 5664

References

Here Comes Jurassic World

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Tag Archives: dinosaurs

The setting

Dueling quarries

Playing nice

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

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Phase I: The Field Columbian Museum

Phase II: Halls 37 and 38

References

References

References

Gorgosaurus libratus – USNM 12814

Gorgosaurus sp. – AMNH 5458

Gorgosaurus “sternbergi” – AMNH 5664

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