Tag Archives: museums

March 8, 2016 · 1:39 pm

History of the Field Museum Fossil Halls – Part 2

Start with History of the Field Museum Fossil Halls – Part 1.

Where we left off, the fossil exhibits in Halls 37 and 38 at the Field Museum of Natural History had gone for decades without more than piecemeal improvements. In the meantime, the field of paleontology – and our understanding of dinosaurs in particular – had progressed by leaps and bounds. What’s more, standards for natural history exhibits had changed. Cases of specimens with esoteric labels written by curators past were no longer enough. Visitors expected exhibits that were relatable and accessible for children as well as interested adults, and multimedia and interactive elements had become standard. This combined with ever-growing public interest in all things prehistoric gave Field Museum staff serious incentive to start with a clean slate.

Phase III: Life Over Time

The end of the old fossil halls came not with a bang but with a whimper. In 1990, specimens started disappearing and areas were roped off without warning. Hundreds of specimens were relocated to Halls 25, 26, and 29 on the other side of the second floor, where they would be part of the exhaustive new exhibit “Life Over Time.” Meanwhile, Halls 37 and 38 became the home of the pacific islands exhibit and Ruatepupuke II, the Maori Meeting House.

Remounted Daspletosaurus in Life Over Time, then labeled Albertosaurus. Photo courtesy of the Field Museum Photo Archives.

As the name suggests, Life Over Time was a chronological journey through the history of life, from its origins around four billion years ago up to the last ice ages. Paleobotanist Peter Crane chaired the Geology Department during the development period, and geologist and children’s education specialist Eric Gyllenhaall oversaw the contractors and in-house staff that created the the exhibit itself. In total, the project took five years and cost $7 million.

Gyllenhaal and the rest of the team conceived of Life Over Time as a directed experience. The space was shaped like a U, with switch-backing corridors flanking a more open dinosaur section in the middle. With the exception of a shortcut between the Carboniferous and the Mesozoic, visitors had no choice but to walk through the exhibit chronologically, viewing the displays in the order the designers mandated. Since visitors tend to be more focused and more likely to read signs early in the exhibit, the designers deliberately used the introductory rooms to cover the most unfamiliar concepts. Displays on the origins of life and the evolution of aerobic respiration made up the “homework” part of the exhibit. After that, visitors were set free in the Mesozoic section, where open sight lines allowed people to choose what they wished to view, and in what order. This served as a reward for putting up with the more challenging material early on. Ultimately, what set Life Over Time apart from its predecessors was the focus on ideas rather than specimens. The fossils were meant to illustrate broader concepts like adaptation, extinction, and biogeography, and were in some ways subordinate to the hands-on activities and multimedia displays.

This cast of the AMNH Triceratops was a new addition to Life Over Time. Photo by Gary Todd.

In Life Over Time, visitors circled the dinosaurs on an elevated ramp before visiting them at ground level. Photo by Erik Peterson.

The process of developing Life Over Time was an occasionally tense give-and-take between the research staff (who traditionally had the last word on exhibit content) and the administrators, exhibit specialists, and educators (who had greater influence this time around). Looking back, it would seem that the curators lost more of these fights than they won. Life Over Time ended up with a decidedly kitschy tone, and was full of overtly silly elements. The exhibit entrance featured carnival-style banners advertising “Primordial Ooze” and “Dunkleosteus: Jaws of Death.” Further on, a mannequin dressed as a game show host invited visitors to spin the “Wheel of Adaptation.” There were Dial-A-Dinosaur phones, which visitors could pick up and listen to first-person accounts of life as a dinosaur. An animatronic puppet show explained the switch from aerobic to anaerobic life. Video “weather reports” with CBS anchor Bill Kurtis updated visitors on climate change over time. There was even a ridable trilobite on a spring.

This carnival-like atmosphere is particularly distinctive when compared to the present fossil halls at the American Museum of Natural History, which were developed at the same time. AMNH project director Lowell Dingus rejected contemporary trends in exhibit design, which, in his view, were pitched to “the lowest common denominator of visitor intellect.” Wishing to challenge audiences to think about fossils the way scientists do, Dingus created a phylogeny-based exhibit that emphasized empiricism and rigorous anatomical analysis over idle speculation. While it was certainly not devoid of informative content, Life Over Time was designed for a much younger audience, with particular attention paid to the under-five set. This marked contrast between the New York and Chicago exhibits speaks volumes about the differing influence of the scientific staff at the two museums, as well as the institutions’ overall priorities at the time.

Postcard of the pelycosaur cluster in Life Over Time. These specimens were donated by the University of Chicago in the 1960s.

Happily, the Field Museum didn’t opt to replace its authentic mounted fossil skeletons with the roaring robots that were in vogue at the time. The classic fossil mounts were restored and rebuilt by Prehistoric Animal Structures, Inc., a Canadian company headed by Gilles Danis. A biologist by training and a veteran of the Royal Tyrell Museum, Danis led the process of disassembling, cleaning, and remaking the most significant mounts. The Apatosaurus, Daspletosaurus, and Megathierum were all given more accurate and active poses: the Daspletosaurus now crouched over its Lambeosaurus prey with its tail held aloft, while the giant sloth stretched to its full height against a replica tree. Although it was completely rebuilt, the Apatosaurus retained its dragging tail in the new exhibit – an unusual choice for a 1990s reconstruction.

In addition to the classic mounts, Life Over Time featured a partial Parasaurolophus and a new cast of the AMNH Triceratops. The most substantial addition was a complete Brachiosaurus reconstruction. This 40 foot tall mount combined casts taken from the material Elmer Riggs collected at the turn of the century with sculpted elements prepared by Stephen Godfry. Far too large for the second floor exhibit halls, the Brachiosaurus earned a place of honor in the central Stanley Field Hall. In order to comply with the fire code while allowing visitors to walk under the towering sauropod, the torso was extended by adding two extra dorsal vertebrae (for a total of twelve). In an amusing twist, newer research shows that this vertebrae count – and the mount’s stretch limo proportions – is probably correct.

The Brachiosaurus skeleton was tall enough to look over the second floor mezzanine. Source

Life Over Time opened to the public in June 1994 (the Brachiosaurus had been on display for a year prior). Nevertheless, it was the shortest-lived iteration of the Field Museum’s fossil displays, closing down after only ten years. Why didn’t it last? For one thing, the numerous interactive elements suffered more wear and tear than expected, and they broke frequently. Meanwhile, in-house evaluations showed that the exhibit’s intended messages were not coming across to most visitors. For example, Asma recalls a child frantically spinning the Wheel of Adaptation with all his might, completely oblivious to the information the display was meant to convey. Unfortunately, an interactive exhibit is not necessarily an educational one, and it can be very difficult to create a learning experience that accomplishes both goals.

Phase IV: Evolving Planet

There was one more reason the Field Museum needed to revisit its fossil displays: the sudden acquisition of Sue the Tyrannosaurus in 1997. The story of the four-way legal battle that preceded this has been told often (although not always fairly), so suffice it to say that few came out of that fight unscathed. The Field Museum entered the picture when landowner Maurice Williams, to whom the courts had awarded ownership of Sue, announced that the fossils would be placed on the auction block. Paleontologists initially worried that the priceless specimen would disappear into the hands of a wealthy collector, or end up in a crass display at a Las Vegas casino. Those fears were put to rest when the Field Museum won Sue with financial backing from McDonald’s and Disney. Including the auctioneer’s commission, the price was an astounding $8.36 million.

Some obscure theropod. Photo by the author.

The Field Museum committed to a summer 2000 unveiling of Sue’s mounted skeleton. However, most of the bones was still buried in rock and plaster. The fossils had to be prepared and stabilized before they could be studied, and they had to be studied before they could be mounted. Most of this work was done on-site, in view of the public. The armature itself was created by Phil Fraley Productions, the same exhibit company that rebuilt the AMNH Tyrannosaurus. Field Museum administrators decided that Sue would replace the Brachiosaurus in the Stanley Field Hall, even though the sauropod had only been on display for seven years. According to Exhibit Project Manager Janet Hong, Sue was such a monumental exhibit that it really deserved pride of place. Meanwhile, the Brachiosaurus was relocated to O’Hare International Airport, while a weather-proof duplicate was placed outside the museum.

Sue was revealed to the public on May 17, 2000 with the literal raising of a curtain. A week-long series of celebrations and press junkets introduced Sue to Chicago, and it has been one of the city’s biggest attractions every since. All the publicity paid off, at least in the short term: Field Museum attendance soared that year from 1.6 million to 2.4 million. 16 years later, Sue’s new identity as a Chicago landmark seems to have all but eclipsed the legal dispute that was its original source of fame. Hong likens Sue to Chicago’s David, and even former Field Museum President John McCarter feels that he underestimated what a force Sue would be for the city.

Map of Evolving Planet. Source

The acquisition of Sue created a strong public association between the Field Museum and dinosaur research. This was ironic, because while the museum had hosted a talented array of paleontologists over the years, it had never employed a dinosaur specialist. Even Elmer Riggs, who collected the museum’s iconic sauropods at the turn of the century, was more interested in mammal evolution. In 2001, the Field Museum began a concerted effort to expand its vertebrate paleontology program, and make a name for itself as a hub for dinosaur science. Among the new hires were fossil preparator Akiko Shinya and paleontologist Peter Makovicky, who immediately began organizing expeditions to grow the museum’s collection.

The new emphasis on paleontology research brought greater expectations for the Field Museum’s interpretive efforts, and Life Over Time wasn’t doing the job. The initial plan was to merely refresh the decade-old exhibits, but ambitions grew and the renovation snowballed into something much more substantial. Project Manager Todd Tubutis and Content Specialist Richard Kissel spent five years overseeing the development of Life Over Time’s replacement, eventually titled “Evolving Planet.”

Once we reach the Permian, the fossils can start to speak for themselves. Photo by the author.

Each section of Evolving Planet is differentiated by its own color palate and ambient audio. In the Permian, olive green walls and signs are accompanied by the sounds of a windswept desert. Photo by the author.

Yes, of course this series needs another picture of the Apatosaurus. Photo by the author.

While the new exhibit uses the same space and directed, U-shaped layout as its predecessor, the end result is virtually unrecognizable. The hokey parts of Life Over Time are gone, replaced by all-new signs, labels, and interactives. New specimens include original Parasaurolophus, Rapetosaurus, and Arctodus mounts, plus casts of Stegosaurus and Deinonychus, all prepared by Research Casting International. An entire room is dedicated to fossils from Utah’s Green River Formation, acquired on a recent Field Museum collecting expedition. Phlesh Bubble Studios provided a panoramic CGI reconstruction of the Burgess Shale Fauna, while Karen Carr produced 150 original paintings to supplement the classic Charles Knight murals. These, in turn, were restored by Parma Conservation and are contextualized as the historic masterpieces they are. Nevertheless, Evolving Planet has a few holdovers from Life Over Time. The existing dinosaur mounts were not moved or changed, and major set pieces like the walk-through Carboniferous swamp diorama remain in place.

Timeline moments and consistent iconography

Repeating iconography keeps visitors engaged in story of life on Earth. Photo by the author.

Karen Carr art fills in gaps in classic Knight pieces

New artwork by Karen Carr fills gaps left by the classic Charles Knight murals. Photo by the author.

The interpretation in Evolving Planet arose from three main objectives. First, the exhibit needed to highlight the Field Museum’s own collections and the work of its in-house research staff. Second, it had to contextualize Sue and the environment they lived in. Finally, it had to effectively explain the process of evolution, and the evidence for it. Life Over Time had faltered here, and with the influence of the anti-science lobby increasing, it was crucial to get it right. Tubutis and Kissel accomplished this in part by facilitating closer collaboration between the exhibit designers and research staff. Evolving Planet weaves the evidence for evolution into all aspects of the displays. The first thing visitors see is the thesis of the exhibit – “everything that has ever lived is connected through and is the result of evolution” – printed on an otherwise blank wall. Moving forward, visitors learn how evolution via natural selection works, and how we know. Along the way, common misconceptions, such as the idea that lineages improve over time, or that evolution is “just a theory”, are proactively addressed and corrected.

The visual design of Evolving Planet deserves particular mention. The new exhibit subtly but effectively uses repeating iconography to guide visitors through the story being told. Every geological period is associated with a specific color scheme and soundscape, making visitors’ progression from one stage to another obvious and distinct. “Timeline Moments” at the beginning of each section update visitors on their progress, and ensure that they expect to see something new and different up ahead. Special symbols remind visitors of recurring themes, such as mass extinctions (or even the repeated evolution of saber-teeth). Lastly, variations in font and text size are cleverly employed to call attention to key words and phrases.

old riggs mounts, new sloth, charles knight

A new pose and context for Megatherium, along with historic Riggs mounts and Knight artwork. Photo by the author.

Evolving Planet opened on March 10, 2006. A decade later, this award-winning exhibition remains a favorite with scientists and educators alike. As Cleveland Museum of Natural History Educator Ashley Hall explains:

Evolving Planet is my all-time favorite museum exhibit. It is not only rich with some of the world’s best known fossil specimens, but provides label copy for visitors of all learning levels. You can visit multiple times and still learn something new. Museums provide visitors with unique settings for learning, and it is a museum’s job not to short-change, dumb down, or simplify information. Evolving Planet hits the nail on the head.

From its clear-as-day thesis to its poignant finish (a counter showing the number of species going extinct daily), Evolving Planet is ambitious but uncommonly relatable. It places familiar dinosaurs and mammoths in a broader evolutionary context, introducing visitors to the true breadth of deep time. And yet, the exhibit is also remarkable for its restraint. It doesn’t overwhelm casual visitors with specimens and facts, but instead sticks to a handful of broadly-applicable themes.

The Field Museum’s paleontology program spent its early years playing catch-up to peer institutions. While other American natural history museums were conducting yearly fossil-collecting expeditions and building collections of one-of-a-kind specimens, the Field Museum’s founding paleontologists struggled for basic resources and recognition within their institution. Today, the department’s public showroom is what Kissell describes as “one of, if not the, most comprehensive explanations of the history of life on Earth in any museum.” It would seem that the Field Museum has found its voice in the pantheon of great natural history museums.

Many thanks to Ashley Hall, Olivier Rieppel, Bill Simpson, and Devin Myers for sharing their time, expertise, and experiences when I was writing this post. Any factual errors are, of course, my own.

References

Asma, S.T. 2001. Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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

Fiffer, S. 2000. Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. rex ever Found. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.

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

Lee, B.M. 2005. The Business of Dinosaurs: The Chicago Field Museum’s Nonprofit Enterprise. Unpublished thesis, George Washington University.

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.

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Filed under dinosaurs, education, exhibits, FMNH, fossil mounts, history of science, paleoart

Tagged as exhibits, field museum, fossil mounts, museums, natural history museums, paleoart, paleontology, science communication

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

February 1, 2016 · 1:28 pm

Clash of the Texas Fossil Exhibits: PMNS

Life Then and Now at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. Photo by the author.

In a recent interview at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, artist Brian Engh provided one of the best definitions of paleontology I’ve ever seen:

Paleontology is really just animals and plants doing animal and plant stuff, then dying and getting buried and all that stuff stacking up for unfathomable expanses of time.

This is how paleontology is portrayed in Life Then and Now, the fossil hall at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. The exhibit clearly and cohesively portrays the world of the past as a collection of living ecosystems, and highlights both the fossil evidence and the means by which scientists interpret it. This is in stark contrast to the Morian Hall of Paleontology in Houston, which I found to emphasize style over substance. In the last post, I critiqued the Morian Hall’s art gallery format, arguing that it discouraged understanding and ultimately diminished the meaning and reality of the specimens on display. I was pleased that this discussion sparked lively conversations here and on twitter, but now it’s only fair that I follow up with an example of what I actually like to see in a natural history exhibit.

The mid-Cretaceous, by land and by sea. Photo by the author.

The purpose of any exhibit structure is to provide meaning and context for objects – to help visitors see them as more than neat things to look at. It’s the museum’s job to give visitors the intellectual tools to contextualize displayed objects in a more sophisticated way. In terms of aesthetics and overall layout, this is clearly what the designers of Life Then and Now had in mind. The exhibit occupies a large, open, and well-lit space, with long sight lines around the room. There is a set of clear, over-arching themes, with individual stories playing back into the primary learning goals. Vignettes have large, informative headings that can be seen and understood on the move, but there is also plenty of detailed content for visitors who care to look more closely. Multimedia and interactives are deployed intelligently – they don’t exist for their own sake but cover content in novel and interesting ways.

All this serves to make the exhibit useful for visitors of a variety of ages and interest levels. For one thing, visitors are encouraged to engage with content at their own pace. They can see what the exhibit has to offer as soon as they enter the space, they can view specimens in whatever order interests them, and they always have a good idea of how much they’ve seen and how much there is left. Nevertheless, the core messages are never lost, even for fly-by visitors. Most every display refers back to the exhibit’s key themes, and the main idea behind every vignette is visible from a distance. Meanwhile, the needs of advanced visitors are not forgotten. Specimens are not in cramped corners or obscured by dramatic lighting, but out in the open and visible from numerous angles.

One benefit of an open layout is that it encourages comparison. For example, why are these two megaherbivores shaped so differently? Photo by the author.

More specifically, the primary theme of Life Then and Now is that life of the past was not a pageant show of monsters but a set of living communities that operated under the same constraints that drive the evolution of plants and animals today. This is communicated by pairing fossil specimens with modern counterparts. Below, Pachyrhinosaurus and an extant moose both sport elaborate headgear used for competition and display. Elsewhere, extinct and extant animals illustrate intercontinental migration, herd living, adaptations for harsh climates, predator-and-prey arms races, and niche partitioning. Along the way, the process and mechanisms for evolution are brought up again and again. This hammers home the point that life is never static and always responding to environmental pressures, while simultaneously demonstrating that there is evidence for evolution everywhere you look. This is quite different from the Morian Hall, where I felt that the role of evolution in producing the variety of life on display was not made especially clear. The only thing missing from this presentation is a time axis. I wish the exhibit put more emphasis on the enormous expanses of time between the various fossil specimens on display, but I suppose it can be difficult to cover every angle.

Visitors can see the main message of this vignette from a distance, or look more closely to find out more. Photo by the author.

Many, if not most of the vignettes also include the names and faces of the scientists involved in the discovery and interpretation of the specimens on display. This personalized approach matters for several reasons. It reminds visitors that science is a process, not a set of facts. It illustrates that there is more to a museum than its exhibits, and that the institution’s most important and unique resource is the in-house research staff who use the collections to create new knowledge. Finally, since the Perot Museum is generally pitched for younger visitors, it’s critical to show that science is done by real and diverse people, not caricatures in lab coats or pith helmets. A human face goes a long way toward making the process of doing science relatable (and for kids, something to aspire to).

Other important stories are told around the perimeter of the exhibit space. Near the entrance, a remarkably concise display covers the definition of a fossil and brings order to the diversity of life on Earth. This is accomplished with a series of stacked boxes printed on the wall. The largest boxes are labeled Trace Fossils and Body Fossils. Within Body Fossils, there are Plants, Invertebrates, and Vertebrates. Within Vertebrates, there are Fish and Amniotes, and within Amniotes there are Synapsids and Reptiles. So it continues, eventually illustrating that dinosaur bones are only a small part of the huge range of living things that are found as fossils. Since visitor research has shown that cladograms are often counter-intuitive to non-specialists, it’s nice to see an attractive and accessible alternative.

Colorful, stacked boxes offer a more accessible alternative to a cladogram. Photo by the author.

In another corner, there is a small display devoted to dinosaurs in popular culture. While some might call this a waste of space, I think it’s helpful to draw contrasts between popular images of dinosaurs and the real animals that were part of the history of life on our planet. This display acknowledges the relevance of roadside statues and Jurassic Park while plainly separating them from the rest of the science-driven exhibit.

Quite possibly the best part of Life Then and Now (well, aside from the Alamosaurus – sauropods upstage everything) is the Rose Hall of Birds on the mezzanine level. It’s remarkable enough that the bird displays merge seamlessly with (and are in fact a part of) the dinosaur exhibit. But the Hall of Birds goes further, covering flight adaptations like unidirectional airflow and pneumatic bones, and how they first evolved for different reasons in dinosaurs. This is content that I wasn’t introduced to until grad school, but it’s all explained succinctly here, in language that is probably accessible to interested elementary school students. For some reason, this exhibit also includes digitized versions of bird-related literature dating back to the middle ages. It’s wonderful to see historic natural history acknowledged and celebrated in this context!

Bird evolution explained. Photo by the author.

While Life Then and Now is barely half the size of the Morian Hall, I think it provides a much richer educational experience. While the exhibit certainly doesn’t reject what visitors expect to see (fighting dinosaurs!), it uses preconceptions and existing knowledge to make a series of important points about biology and evolution. As such, it’s an ideal blend of fun and science, visually attractive but built from the ground up on solid evidence. I can’t recommend it enough.

If any readers have visited the Perot Museum and/or HMNS, what did you think? Please don’t hesitate to weigh in!

Clash of the Texas Fossil Exhibits: HMNS

A standing Quetzalcoatlus skeleton is a sight to behold, but is that enough? Photo by the author.

Last week, I checked two major fossil exhibits off my must-see list – the Morian Hall of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and Life Then and Now at the Perot Museum in Dallas. Although both exhibits opened the same year and cover the same basic subject matter, they are radically different in terms of aesthetics, design, and interpretation. Life Then and Now is unabashedly excellent and pretty much embodies everything I called a Good Thing in my series on paleontology exhibit design. I’ll be sure to discuss it in detail later on. Nevertheless, I’m itching to write about the HMNS exhibit first because it’s—in a word—weird. The Morian Hall essentially rejects the last quarter century of conventional wisdom in developing fossil displays, and for that matter, science exhibits of any kind.

The Morian Hall occupies a brand-new 36,000 square foot addition to HMNS, apparently the largest in the museum’s history. The first thing I noticed walking into the exhibit was that the space doesn’t look like any other science exhibit I’ve seen, past or present. Instead, it strongly resembles a contemporary art gallery, and this fossils-as-art aesthetic permeates every aspect of the exhibit design. Specimens are displayed against stark white backgrounds, with smaller fossils in austere wall cases and larger mounted skeletons on angular, minimalist platforms. Most objects are displayed individually, with lots of negative space between them. Interpretive labels, where present, are small and out of the way (and the text is all in Helvetica, because of course it is). There are no interactive components of any kind—no movies, no computer terminals, not even question-and-answer flip-up panels. The exhibit is defined by its own absence, the structural elements and labels fading into the background with the intent that nothing distract from the specimens themselves.

The HMNS paleontology exhibit looks and feels like a contemporary art gallery. Photo by the author.

For the benefit of those outside the museum field, I should clarify that for myself and many others trained in science and history museums, art museums are basically opposite world. In an art museum, objects are collected and displayed for their own sake. Each artwork is considered independently beautiful and thought-provoking, and curators often strive to reduce interpretation to the bare minimum. Some museums have gone so far as to forgo labels entirely, so that objects can be enjoyed and contemplated simply as they are. Not coincidentally, art museums have a reputation as being “highbrow” establishments that attract and cater to a relatively narrow group of people. People who do not fit the traditional definition of art museum visitor sometimes find these institutions irrelevant or even unwelcoming (more on that in a moment). This summation is hardly universal, but I would argue that the participatory, audience-centered art museum experiences created by Nina Simon and others are an exception that proves the rule.

Natural history museums are different. Collections of biological specimens are valuable because of what they represent collectively. These collections are physical representations of our knowledge of biodiversity, and we could never hope to understand, much less protect, the natural world without them. Each individual specimen is not necessarily interesting or even rare, but it matters because it is part of a larger story. It represents something greater, be it a species, a habitat, or an evolutionary trend. Likewise, modern natural history exhibits aren’t about the objects on display, but rather the big ideas those objects illustrate. Since the mid-2oth century, designers have sought to create exhibits that are accessible and meaningful learning experiences for the widest possible audience, and natural history museums are generally considered family-friendly destinations.

You can tell Robert Bakker was involved because everyone is rearing. Photo by the author.

There is much to like in the Morian Hall of Paleontology. For one thing, the range of animals on display is incredible. I cherished the opportunity to stand in the presence of a standing Quetzalcoatlus, a Sivatherium, a gorgonopsid, and many other taxa rarely seen in museums. Other specimens are straight-up miracles of preservation and preparation, including a number of Eocene crabs from Italy. I also enjoyed that many of the mounts were in especially dynamic poses, and often interacting with one another. With fossil mount tableaus placed up high as well as at eye level, there was always incentive to look around and take in every detail.

Nevertheless, the art gallery aesthetic raised a number of red flags for me. To start, the minimalist design means that interpretation takes a serious hit. Although the exhibit is arranged chronologically, there are many routes through the space and the correct path is not especially clear. Meanwhile, there are no large headings that can be seen on the move—visitors need to go out of their way to read the small and often verbose text. All this means that the Morian Hall is an essentially context-free experience. Visitors are all but encouraged to view the exhibit as a parade of cool monsters, rather than considering the geological, climatic, and evolutionary processes that produced that diversity. There is an incredible, interrelated web of life through time on display in the Morian Hall, but I fear that most visitors are not being given the tools to recognize it. By decontextualizing the specimens, the exhibit unfortunately removes their meaning, and ultimately their reality*.

*Incidentally, most of the mounted skeletons are casts. This is quite alright, but I was very disappointed that they were not identified as such on accompanying labels.

This double-helix trilobite growth series is gorgeous—but what does it communicate, exactly? Photo by the author.

What’s more, the idealized, formal purity of the exhibit design echoes a darker era in the history of museums. It’s no secret that many of the landmark museums we know today were born out of 19th century imperialism. Colonial domination was achieved not only with military power, but through academia. When colonial powers took over another nation, they brought their archaeologists, naturalists, and ethnographers along to take control of the world’s understanding of that place, its environment, and its people. Museums were used to house and display natural and cultural relics of conquered nations, and to disseminate western scientists’ interpretation of these objects. Even today, it is all too common to see ethnographic objects displayed in austere exhibit spaces much like the Morian Hall of Paleontology. These displays erase the objects’ original cultural meaning. Dinosaurs don’t care about being silenced, of course, but it’s odd that HMNS would choose to bring back such loaded visual rhetoric.

Pretty ammonites with donor names prominently displayed send the wrong message. Photo by the author.

My final concern with the art gallery format is the implication that fossils have monetary value. Fossils are priceless pieces of natural heritage, and they cannot be valued because they’re irreplaceable. While there is a thriving commercial market for rare fossils, a plurality of paleontologists do not engage with private dealers. Buying and selling significant fossils for private use is explicitly forbidden under the ethics statement of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and it is institutional policy at many museums that staff never discuss the monetary value of fossil specimens.

The art world has its own rules and standards. The price tags of famous pieces, including what a museum paid to acquire them, are widely known. Private collectors are celebrated, even revered. In fact, it is common to see exhibits built around a particular individual’s collection. These exhibits are not about an artist or period but the fact that somebody purchased these objects, and has given (or merely loaned) them to the museum. Two rooms in the Morian Hall are actually just that: otherwise unrelated specimens displayed together because they were donated by a specific collector. By displaying specimens with the same visual language as art objects, the Morian Hall undermines the message that fossils should not be for sale. Not only is the private fossil trade legitimized, it communicates that the primary value of fossils is their aesthetic appeal. Like the lack of contextual signage, this serves to obscure the specimens’ scientific meaning. Fossils are precious remains of real organisms, clues about ecosystems from long ago and the making of the world as we know it today. But that information is only available if they are publicly accessible, not sitting on someone’s mantelpiece.

A truly remarkable fossil mount tableau, in which a mastodon flings a human hunter while a mammoth is driven off a “cliff” in the background. Photo by the author.

Now hold on (regular readers might be saying), haven’t I argued repeatedly that fossil mounts should be considered works of art? Absolutely, and that is part of why I was taken aback by this exhibit. The difference is that while the Morian Hall displays fossils the way art is traditionally exhibited, it does not interpret them like art. When I call fossil mounts works of art, I mean that they have authorship and context. They have encoded and decoded meaning, as well as relationships with their viewers, creators, host institutions, and ultimately, the animals they represent. Calling something art is opening it up to discussion and deconstruction. The HMNS exhibits do the opposite.

For the last few decades, natural history museums have been opening windows onto the process of creating knowledge. Modern exhibits seek to show how scientists draw conclusions from evidence, and invite visitors to do the same. In the Morian Hall, those windows are closed. Specimens are meant to be seen as they are, reducing the experience to only the object and the viewer. But there is no “as they are” for fossils. Thousands of hours of fossil preparation and mount construction aside, every display in that exhibit is the result of literally centuries of research into geology, anatomy, and animal behavior. These are representations of real animals, but they also represent the cumulative interpretive work of a great many people. The display simply isn’t complete without their stories.

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

Tagged as anthropology, exhibits, fossil mounts, fossil trade, fossils, museums, natural history museums, paleoart, science communication

December 17, 2015 · 9:22 am

Envisioning the Ice Age at NMNH

The neanderthal burial diorama. Image from Ice Age Mammals and the Age of Man, 1974.

On September 13, 1974, the Hall of Ice Age Mammals and the Rise of Man opened in Hall 6 at the National Museum of Natural History. Part of the “third wave” of NMNH exhibits, the Ice Age Hall was the result of interdisciplinary collaboration and a new drive to create more accessible, visitor-centric museum experiences. Specifically, the exhibit was a response to increasing pressure for museums to become destination attractions, valuing visitors’ desire to be entertained above anything else. The Ice Age Hall was meant to prove that good science and the intrinsic value of specimens could, in fact, be applied in a way that would appeal to contemporary audiences. The curators, designers, educators, and artists involved with the project saw it as an important departure from old methodologies, and expected it to be a template for future exhibits. This transition did not necessarily come easily, but for 40 years the results spoke for themselves.

The Hall of Quaternary Vertebrates

Large fossil mounts in the short-lived Pleistocene Hall. Images courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Despite the fanfare accompanying the Ice Age Hall’s opening, NMNH regulars would be forgiven for noticing that much of the exhibit looked familiar. Just four years earlier, this same space saw the opening of the brand-new Hall of Quaternary Vertebrates. This was the fifth and final phase of a thorough re-imagining of the museum’s fossil displays that began in 1959. Under the guidance of exhibit designer Ann Karras, the loose arrangement of specimens that had characterized the east wing for half a century was replaced with a directed narrative of the biological and geological history of the Earth.

This new direction was motivated by complementary revolutions in the museum field and in paleontology. Museum workers shrugged off their “cabinet of curiosity” roots and embraced education-oriented exhibits. Designers began to envision the routes visitors would travel through an exhibit space, and consider how objects on display could contribute to holistic stories. Meanwhile, paleontologists moved their field away from purely descriptive natural history, exploring instead how the fossil record could inform our understanding of evolution and ecology. At NMNH, this change in ideology inspired paleontologists to break away from the Geology Department and form their own Department of Paleobiology. The common thread between both transitions was a focus on connections – bringing new meaning and relevance to disparate parts by placing them in a common narrative.

Piano wire barely visible. Photo from Marsh 2014.

Two dire wolves posed over a horse. This display didn’t make it into the Ice Age Hall. Source

As Curator of Paleontology, C.L. Gazin oversaw most of the east wing modernization and designed the Tertiary Mammals exhibit in Hall 4 himself. Gazin retired in 1970, however, so responsibility for the unfinished Quaternary exhibit in Hall 6 went to new hire Clayton Ray, the Assistant Curator of Cenozoic Mammals. To fill out the Quaternary Hall, Ray arranged a number of trades with other museums. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County provided a saber toothed cat, two dire wolves, and the sheep-sized sloth Paramylodon (USNM 15164) from the La Brea tar pits, while the American Museum of Natural History was able to spare a bison “mummy” (USNM 26387) and a taxidermied musk ox. Ray also selected a complete set of mammoth bones from the AMNH collections, which were found during a gold mining operation near Fairbanks, Alaska. The bones were collected individually and belonged to an unknown number of individuals (they may well represent multiple species), but they were sufficient for preparator Leroy Glenn to construct a complete mounted skeleton.

Ray placed the new mammoth (USNM 23792) alongside the Michigan mastodon (USNM 8204), which had been on display since 1904. The mammoth was so tall that it had less than an inch of clearance with the ceiling. The other big draw in the Quaternary Hall was a pair of never-before-exhibited giant sloths (USNM 20867 and USNM 20872) assembled from material Gazin collected in Panama. Referred to as “megatheres” at the time, these sloths are actually Eremotherium, and they are composites of at least eight individuals. The giant sloths were positioned back-to-back on a central platform, accentuated by an illuminated opening in the ceiling. All four giant mammal skeletons were supplemented with 1/5th scale life restorations created by staff artist Vernon Rickman. Exhibits specialist Lucius Lomax came up with the idea to display the fossil mounts behind piano wire, stretched from the floor to the ceiling and arranged in rows. The Eremotherium platform alone required 500 strands – or about 6000 feet – of wire.

A New Vision

The composite mammoth looms over other specimens along the right wall of the Ice Age Hall. Photo by the author.

Neither NMNH staff nor museum visitors were overjoyed with the Quaternary Hall as it stood in 1970. The piano wire Lomax had installed was a frequent cause for complaint: visitors would constantly pluck at the strings and occasionally break them. The wires also ruined photos. Automatic lenses would focus on the wire, so when visitors got their vacation pictures developed they would end up with a bunch of images of vertical strands with darkness beyond them. Nevertheless, the piano wire was really just a scapegoat for deep-seated disagreements over content between paleontology curators and exhibit designers. This apparently unsolvable clash of personalities contributed to the hall being closed indefinitely after just a couple years.

Paleontologist Porter Kier became Director of NMNH in 1973, and one of his first moves was to assemble a new team to reinvent the Quaternary Hall. Paleobotanist Leo Hickey, geologists Robert Emery and Thomas Simkin, and anthropologist William Fitzhugh conceived of an interdisciplinary exhibit that would explore the ice ages from multiple perspectives. Continental glaciation, the evolution and extinction of large mammals, and the rise of humans would all be presented in a single, holistic story. In what was at the time a novel development, the curators worked with Elaine Anderson and other “conceptualizers/writers” from the Office of Exhibits. The scientists conceived of the main ideas and ensured factual accuracy, but the Office of Exhibits ultimately wrote the label copy and oversaw the construction of the exhibition.

A statue of an archaeologist at work was a popular part of the exhibit. Image from Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man, 1974.

To accommodate new content, the existing Quaternary Hall layout had to be completely gutted and replaced. Although Clayton Ray was conspicuously absent from the exhibit team, most of the modern and fossil animal specimens he had gathered were reused in different locations. The center of the exhibit became an enclosed theater with a video presentation about the advance and retreat of North American glaciers. The north end of the hall was overtaken by human evolution displays. Replica skulls and full-body illustrations showed the progression of hominids from australopithicines to modern humans, amusingly represented by a hippie. Vernon Rickman returned to create a life-sized diorama depicting a neanderthal burial ceremony. While directly based on excavations at Regourdou Cave in France, the scene was also inspired by the much-publicized Shanidar Cave site in Iraq, where neanderthals allegedly laid their dead to rest on a bed of freshly picked flowers. Finally, a cast of an engraved mammoth tusk, based on a 25,000 year old original from the Czech Republic, was added to the south entrance. This piece was meant to tie the exhibit’s narrative together, symbolizing “man’s emergence in the ice age as a dominant influence on other animals and his environment” (Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man, 1974).

Vernon Rickman works on neanderthal models in 1973. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

The Ice Age Hall was completed remarkably quickly. Kier pulled the team together in early 1974 and the new displays were designed, written, and fabricated by September. At least internally, a great deal of excitement accompanied the reopening of Hall 6. The Ice Age Hall was a serious departure from how exhibit work had traditionally been done at NMNH, but it also represented an attempt by the museum to stand its ground in the face of pressure to delve into “edutainment.” This was a trial run at developing a visitor-focused but science-driven exhibit, and everyone involved was anxious to see how the public would react.

Legacy of the Exhibit

Eremotherium today. Photo by the author.

Few visitors can help but stop in their tracks at the sight of the Eremotherium pair. Photo by the author.

In 1978, Robert Wolf and Barbara Tymitz published a “naturalistic/responsive” evaluation of the Ice Age Hall. Their groundbreaking and oft-cited methodology involved interviewing visitors and surreptitiously tracking them through the gallery space, seeking to understand how museumgoers were using and interpreting the “complex set of stimuli” presented by the exhibit. This document, and especially the taxonomy of visitor types it describes, may well have influenced the museum field more than the Ice Age Hall itself.

According to Wolf and Tymitz, the Ice Age Hall was largely successful. Visitors generally remembered the major topics under discussion, and frequently left more curious about natural history than when they entered. They also noticed the difference in layout from the rest of the museum, describing it as easier to navigate and understand. Not surprisingly, the mammoth, mastodon, Eremotherium, and neanderthal burial were the most popular and most photographed objects. In comparison, the carved mammoth tusk at the front of the hall recieved surprisingly little attention. This object was intended to be tie the entire exhibit together, but most people ignored it entirely. Likewise, the separation of North and South American animals via an architectural “land bridge” was completely lost on visitors. Wolf and Tymitz observed that visitors entering from the south paid more attention to the fossil mounts, while visitors entering from the north were drawn to the glacier theater. A lesson about the importance of sight lines and traffic flow lies therein.

Paramylodon and Smilodon from the La Brea tar pits. Take a good look at the sloth, because it won’t be returning in 2019. Photo by the author.

After 40 years, not every element of the Hall of Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man aged gracefully. Most obviously, the androcentric title and frequent use of the word “man” to describe humans throughout the label copy comes across as painfully dated. Displays that warned of another period of global cooling were removed (or at least stopped being lit) when anthropogenic warming emerged as a crucial public policy concern. The multimedia demonstration of continental glaciation was shut down by the early 2000s, and the human evolution corner was boarded up once the Hall of Human Origins opened in 2010. While the neanderthal diorama remained on display, recent research has shown that the affectionate burial it depicts is probably a misinterpretation. Ironically, the gradual removal of geology and anthropology components effectively turned the Ice Age Hall into the straightforward menagerie of Pleistocene animals that Ray initially envisioned.

The Ice Age Hall closed along with the rest of the NMNH fossil displays in April 2014. When the east wing reopens, many of the specimens will return restored and remounted, but in a different location. Since the new National Fossil Hall will be arranged in reverse chronological order, Hall 8 itself will house displays on the origins of life and an expanded FossiLab. Still, the Ice Age Hall experiment continues to leave its mark on the museum. The collaborative workflow and sharing of responsibilities between curators, educators, and exhibit specialists pioneered in the development of this exhibit remains standard practice today. The result has been ever more effective displays, providing solid scientific content to the widest possible audience.

References

Eschelman, R.E., Emry, R.J., Domning, D.P. and Bohaska, D.J. (2002). Biography and Bibliography of Clayton Edward Ray. Cenozoic Mammals of Land and Sea: Tributes to the Career of Clayon E. Ray. Emry, R.J., ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology.

Lay, M. (2013). Major Activities of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology During the 1960s. http://paleobiology.si.edu/history/lay1960s.html

Marsh, D.E. (2014). From Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: An ethnography of fossil exhibits production at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. http://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/50177

Sepkoski, D. (2012). Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Smithsonian Institution. (1974). Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man. Washington, DC: Elephant Press.

Wolf, R.L. and Tymitz, B.L. (1978). Whatever Happened to the Giant Wombat: An Investigation of the Impact of the Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man Exhibit. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Yochelson, E. (1985). The National Museum of Natural History: 75 Years in the Natural History Building. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

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Filed under anthropology, education, exhibits, Extinct Monsters, fossil mounts, history of science, mammals, museums, NMNH, science communication

Tagged as anthropology, exhibits, Extinct Monsters, fossil mounts, mammals, museums, natural history museums, NMNH, paleontology, science communication, Smithsonian

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.

Beecher’s “Claosaurus”

Readers are likely aware that the Hadrosaurus Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins created for the Academy of Natural Sciences was the first mounted dinosaur skeleton. It is less widely known, however, that this Hadrosaurus was a plaster facsimile, ~~which included none of the actual fossils that inspired it~~. (edit: not quite, see comments). The title of first dinosaur mount composed of original fossils belongs to the Belgian Iguanodon assembled by Louis Dollo in 1891 (I should probably write about this eventually, but Fernanda Castano has an excellent account at Letters From Gondwana). So what was the first real fossil dinosaur mount on this side of the Atlantic? Glad you asked – that would be none other than the 1901 Edmontosaurus at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

The PMNH Edmontosaurus with Deinonychus and Centrosaurus. Photo by the author.

There are plenty of Edmontosaurus skeletons on display today, but the Yale mount is noteworthy because of its remarkably modern appearance. While the Hawkins Hadrosaurus and Dollo Iguanodon were upright tail-draggers, the Edmontosaurus could be mistaken for a mount constructed in the last quarter century. Its raised tail, horizontal posture, and energetic gait all reflect current thinking about dinosaur posture and locomotion. And yet, it was built at the turn of the century, back when paleontologists supposedly all thought of dinosaurs as lethargic lizards.

The Hawkins Hadrosarus and Dollo Iguanodon. Photos from

The Hawkins Hadrosarus and Dollo Iguanodon. Images from Paper Dinosaurs.

The scientist behind this mount was Charles Beecher. Born in Pennsylvania, Beecher studied at the University of Michigan before taking an Assistant of Paleontology position at Yale in 1888. He completed his PhD under Marsh, who apparently thought highly of him (and Marsh didn’t think highly of many people). Although his preferred research subjects were Paleozoic invertebrates, Beecher could be counted on to help prepare his mentor’s vast collection of dinosaur fossils, when needed. When Marsh died in 1899, Beecher succeeded him as the head of the Peabody Museum, and set himself the task of mounting one of the institution’s best dinosaur specimens for display.

Beecher selected YPM VP 2182 as the Peabody Museum’s first fossil mount because it was nearly complete and mostly articulated. Known to Marsh and Beecher as “Claosaurus” annectens*, this Edmontosaurus skeleton was collected in Wyoming by John Bell Hatcher (because of course it was). Beecher and assisting preparator Hugh Gibb attempted to preserve the fossils within their original matrix as much as possible. Since the specimen was somewhat laterally compressed, Beecher kept the right side mostly in situ and built up the left in high relief. The head and neck were technically never removed from their matrix block, but since the head was found curved under the body it had to be rotated into its life position. All told, only the right ribs, the corocoids, the final two-thirds of the tail, and some of the vertebral processes were reconstructed. No attempt was made to restore the ossified dorsal tendons, which were poorly preserved on this specimen.

Beecher’s Edmontosaurus, ca. 1917. Source

The complete mount is 13 feet tall and 29 feet long, its tail extending past the edge of the 27 foot slab. For a few years, it was the largest fossil mount ever built. The slab itself is made up of original matrix blocks sealed together with a manufactured surface created from plaster, resin, and ground Laramie Formation sandstone. It was assembled in four pieces secured to wooden frames. These were designed to be separated and moved with relative ease, although PMNH staff have yet to try.

According to Beecher, he imbued the Edmontosaurus with its lively pose in order to preserve the in situ orientation of the pelvis and left femur. It is worth quoting Beecher’s 1901 description of the mount in full:

“It is intended that this huge specimen should convey to the observer the impression of the rapid rush of a Mesozoic brute. The head is thrown up and turned outward. The jaws are slightly separated. The forearms are balancing the sway of the shoulders. The left hind leg is at the end of the forward stride and bears the entire weight of the animal. The right foot has completed a step and has just left the ground preparatory to the forward swing. The ponderous and powerful tail is lifted free and doubly curved so as to balance the weight and compensate for the swaying of the body and legs. The whole expression is one of action and the spectator with little effort may endow this creature with many of its living attributes.”

Much like the AMNH Gorgosaurus, the Yale Edmontosaurus demonstrates that early 20th century paleontologists’ supposed aversion to energetic and agile dinosaurs has been grossly overstated. Beecher saw Edmontosaurus as a powerful, active animal, and actually criticized the earlier reconstructions by Hawkins and Dollo. He correctly pointed out that the back-swept ischia of ornithopod dinosaurs would not allow room for the drooping tails they had reconstructed, and also noted that fossilized dinosaur trackways never show the mark of a dragging tail.

Edmontosaurus as presently displayed in the Great Hall of Dinosaurs. Source

Beecher died suddenly in January of 1904, and the Edmontosaurus display ended up being one of his final professional accomplishments. Despite the relative dearth of dinosaur material available at the time, Beecher’s careful and impartial study of the available evidence allowed him to reconstruct this animal in a way that is still considered accurate 114 years later. Beecher’s work shows us that old research isn’t necessarily outmoded. Good science can come from any age and any source, if one only takes the time to look.

*Today, the genus Claosaurus is reserved for Claosaurus agilis from Kansas. The referred species annectens has since been placed in Thespesius, Trachodon, Anatosaurus, and now Edmontosaurus.

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.

Jackson, R.T. 1904. Charles Emerson Beecher. The American Naturalist. Vol 38, No. 450.

Marsh, Othniel C. 1892. Restorations of Claosaurus and Ceratosaurus. American Journal of Science. Vol. 44, pp. 343-349.

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Filed under dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, ornithopods, PMNH, reptiles

Tagged as Charles Beecher, Edmontosaurus, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, natural history museums, paleontology

November 20, 2015 · 1:57 pm

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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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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September 16, 2015 · 10:23 am

See the Elephant

Fenykovi elephant at the National Museum of Natural History, September 2014. Photo by the author.

National Museum of Natural History rotunda, September 2014. Photo by the author.

The iconic Fénykövi elephant, the centerpiece of the National Museum of Natural History rotunda since 1959, received an update last week in the form of a new interpretive platform. Like the Barosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History and Máximo at the Field Museum, this African bush elephant is the first object most NMNH visitors see upon entering. With its ears forward and its trunk raised, the elephant stands over 13 feet tall—larger than any elephant known to be living today. But in spite of its inspiring presence as the symbol of the museum, this elephant has a problematic history that NMNH has long struggled to interpret.

Hungarian-born Josef J. Fénykövi shot the elephant in Angola in 1955. Fénykövi owned a ranch in the west African nation (at the time a Portuguese colony), where he spent several months each year hunting wildlife. After discovering the existence of an unusually large bull elephant in 1954, Fénykövi returned the following year equipped to track and kill what was thought to be the biggest land animal on the planet. Fénykövi and his team of guides located the giant elephant on November 13th, and eventually downed it after a full-day chase*. A truck filled with salt was required to keep the hide fresh during the hundred-mile journey from the kill site to the nearest train station in Kuito. Rather than keep the trophy for himself, Fénykövi decided to donate the animal to a museum. He offered it to the London Natural History Museum first, but the process was taking too long for his taste so he gave the elephant to the Smithsonian, instead. Later, an old-fashioned slug from a flintlock pistol found embedded in the elephant’s leg provided reason to believe the animal had been nearly 100 years old when Fénykövi killed it.

*Fénykövi’s account gives the impression that the guides did most of the work. They tracked the elephant’s prints and spoor on foot while Fénykövi followed in a jeep, and a man named Mario fired the shots that actually finished off the animal.

The acquisition and subsequent exhibition of the Fénykövi elephant at NMNH gives us a great deal to unpack. The collection of animals for public display has fallen sharply out of favor over the past century. In the late 1800s, little worlds behind glass populated by taxidermy animals provided the increasingly urban public a window into the natural world they felt they had left behind. But even in Fénykövi’s day, popular opinion was beginning to turn against the practice. For most, this aversion to taxidermy begins and ends with the unpleasantness of being confronted with a dead animal. Some scholars rightly call attention to the imperialism and exoticism inherent in collecting animals from far-flung lands. This criticism is especially apt for Fénykövi—his story contains more than a whiff of imperialist entitlement.

The Fénykövi Elephant in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives..

The fact that the elephant was killed as a trophy complicates matters still further. It’s one thing for a museum to display an animal that was sacrificed for science—to better understand its biology or to contribute to a record of biodiversity. Displaying a trophy is quite another. While a typical museum taxidermy display represents the life of an animal, a trophy mount celebrates that animal’s death. As Poliquin explains, “trophies arouse negative reactions not simply because they are evidence that a human killed an animal…they are evidence of a human’s desire to kill an animal” (Poliquin 2010, 152). Indeed, it is arguably impossible to fully separate a trophy mount from the narrative of the creature’s demise.

For Fénykövi, the meaning of the elephant is obvious. It represented a specific, triumphant event in his life, an attempt to communicate something about himself through the death of animal. NMNH staff have faced the much greater challenge of interpreting Fénykövi’s trophy for the millions of visitors that enter the rotunda every year. For 60 years, they have struggled to present this animal, selfishly killed by a wealthy colonial, in a way that matched the museum’s conservation-oriented mission.

The elephant’s original context unfortunately left something to be desired. The traditional, circular pedestal in the center of the NMNH rotunda did not effectively distance the specimen from it’s origin as a trophy, and the museum was occasionally criticized for complicity with big-game hunting and the colonial agenda. Nevertheless, the elephant did eventually earn an identity as a symbol for the museum, largely separate from the man who killed it. Credit for this accomplishment goes to William Brown and Norman Deaton, who prepared and mounted the hide over sixteen months. Brown and Deaton managed to imbue this dead skin over a wood-and-plaster frame with an astonishing amount of life and character. The elephant holds court in the four-story rotunda, exuding confidence and power over its domain. It’s an unforgettable sight, and it almost makes one forget that this animal is only there because it lost a fight.

The 1999 habitat diorama platform—my favorite iteration. Source

Still, it was clear by the 1990s that while the elephant was there to stay, it needed to be more thoughtfully contextualized. In 1999, NMNH replaced the old pedestal with a large, open diorama of the Angolan savanna, which brought the elephant three feet higher off the ground. The project was completed entirely by in-house staff, and was funded in part by a donation from Kenneth Behring (a big-game hunter, among other things). In the revised display, the elephant was the focal point of a story that encompassed every department at the museum. A jackal and an assortment of birds (a lilac-breasted roller, a carmine bee eater, and a white-backed vulture) joined the elephant on the platform, while Angolan grasses and trees completed the scene. Ants, flies, and dung beetles (pushing dung balls cast from examples collected at the National Zoo) abounded. A tin can implied to have been tied to a tree by a local herder represented Anthropology, and bones of the extinct proboscidian Palaeoloxodon recki covered Paleobiology. In short, this display elegantly introduced visitors to everything the museum has to offer, while reinforcing the breadth and significance of natural history collections.

The elephant’s platform has now been rebuilt once again. The elephant stands at the same height and at the same angle, but the footprint of the base has been cut back significantly. The savanna diorama is gone, replaced with a straight-edged marble pedestal. Light and dark marble stripes reflect the rotunda’s classic architecture, particularly the columns in front of each of the main halls. The compass rose on the rotunda floor, hidden since the elephant was first installed in 1959, is visible once again. It grounds the elephant display nicely, especially when viewed from the second floor. Finally, the new elephant platform now includes an information desk. It seems sensible to incorporate a bit of functionality into the display, and fortunately this addition does not noticeably detract from exhibit’s overall aesthetics.

The Fénykövi elephant from above. Photo by the author.

The interdisciplinary interpretation has been removed*, replaced by displays that focus on elephant behavior and the omnipresent threat of poaching. In fact, the only objects on display besides the elephant itself are three ivory sculptures that were seized by customs. The inclusion of these sculptures is a little strange, since it reinforces that ivory products are actually very pretty. Hopefully the adjacent message that elephant poaching has tripled since 1998—and that an elephant is killed for its tusks every 15 minutes—will be enough to convince visitors that it isn’t worth it.

*The one exception is a graphic that places modern elephants in their evolutionary and temporal context, featuring nearly photo-real artwork by Mauricio Anton.

To its credit, the new display banishes Fénykövi from the elephant’s story—I didn’t see his name mentioned once. While I don’t think it’s possible (or more to the point, appropriate) to completely erase this specimen’s problematic history, it’s encouraging that it has taken on a second life as a cherished ambassador for its threatened species. I can think of no better outcome for an animal that was killed as a trophy.

What do you think of the new display? Which version do you like best?

References

Haraway, D. (1985). Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936. Social Text 11:20-64.

Love, S. (1997). Curators as Agents of Change: An Insect Zoo for the Nineties. Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Poliquin, R. (2010). The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Smithsonian Institution. (2010). Explore Our Collections: Fénykövi Elephant. http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/Fenykovi_elephant.html

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