An Overview of Dinosaur Exhibits Part 6: The Carnegie Museum revisited

When you think of timeless fossil museums in the USA, you usually think of places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. You think of schools like Harvard, Yale, and Drexel. You think of places where they’re found like in Texas, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Colorado. When you think of the city of Pittsburgh, you think the highlands of western Pennsylvania as the Appalachians cut through the state towards New York. You think of the steel and the coal and the massive factories and sweating immigrants.  You would never connect Pittsburgh with a fossil museum.

Paleofest 2015 report

For the first time in my life, I was able to attend Paleofest on the weekend of March 14. Paleofest is an annual celebration and gathering of paleontology fans and experts at the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois. Paleontologists gather from all over the world to give talks, while children engage in interactive, educational play with museum docents and visiting scientists. I had been aware of this event for three years and especially wanted to go to last year’s event on the Cenozoic. This year it was all about the Triassic, a period of reptile diversity and evolution, and the emergence of the first mammals and dinosaurs as the ecosystems of the world revived from the Permian extinction.

The talks took place downstairs, in the main classroom of the museum below all the other exhibits. There was a substantial crowd, and I wasn’t the only representative from the Field Museum’s volunteers to attend. Only visitors wearing the event badges were allowed in, and I paid $85 for the full weekend.  The talks were attended by people of all ages, and both genders were well-represented. It was genuinely inspiring to see how diverse the appeal of paleontology is.

An overview of Dinosaur Exhibits part 6: Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Colorado is what you can consider a rich state for fossils.  Marine reptiles, prehistoric mammals, ice age megafauna, Jurassic dinosaurs and Cretaceous dinosaurs can all be found on both sides of the Rockies.  On the west side are the Museum of Western Colorado in Grand Junction and the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center in Canyon City.  On the other are  the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park and the subject of today’s article, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

An overview of Dinosaur Exhibits part 5: The Royal Ontario Museum

I have held off talking about this museum for a while now, as it has been nearly 15 years since I’ve been there last, and not only have I forgotten a great deal of it but also it has undergone extensive renovation in 2008.  Canada, like the USA, is rich in dinosaur fossil material, and sort of acts like Mongolia to China in terms of fossils-the hotbed of Cretaceous rock. British Colombia brought us the Cambrian explosion in the Burgess Shale, but for dinosaurs, Alberta and Saskatchewan are the real treasure trove. There’s really nothing like them outside of Montana and Wyoming to the south and Mongolia across the Pacific. Lambe, Brown, and the Sternbergs found a gold mine of Cretaceous fossils, one that is still being excavated today. 

Like the southern American West, while a lot of fossils are stored and studied nearby (in this case, the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller near Edmonton), a great deal have made it to the East. While the US fossils were shipped to Chicago, Pittsburg, Washington, New Haven, Philadelphia and Washington DC,  the Canadian fossils were sent to Toronto and Ottawa. The National Canadian Museum of Nature will be covered next in the series, but today we’re looking at the Royal Ontario Museum.

An Overview of Dinosaur Exhibits Part 4: The Carnegie Museum

Most times in which I hear about museums are in the context of a book or documentary. This week’s museum, however, I first learned from a series of toys.  I remember my first dinosaur toys being from the Funrise series of animal figures, and the Imperial Toys large toys. The best, however, I encountered in first grade. The classroom has a display of them, with an accompanying poster. The name was distinctive-“The Carnegie Collection”.  They were big enough to be detailed but not too big enough to effect play. They were beautiful, sculpted, and sturdy. They ranged from familiar animals like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops to more obscure animals like Maiasaura. 

An Overview of Dinosaur Exhibits Part Three: The Field Museum

I think everyone has their favorite place in the world, a place that just restores their life, a place tied up with countless memories. It can be a house or a park, or a stadium, or a school.  For me it was the Field Museum of Natural History on the East Side of Chicago near Grant Park. I can’t remember when I first went. It might have been in 1991, or even as a baby.  You see, when I lived in Chicago, you could go to the library and get passes for the Field Museum, Art Institute, Shedd Aquarium or the Adler Planetarium. My mother didn’t have a job at the time, so she would take me, my mother, and our two cousins to the museums and zoos of Chicago. 

An overview of dinosaur exhibits, part 2: American Museum of Natural History, New York

I haven’t seen every dinosaur museum in the country. I haven’t seen every dinosaur museum in the world. I’ve only seen a dozen or so. Still, I would still argue that the American Museum of Natural History in New York City sets the standard. New York has always been about bigger, better, shinier and more expensive in everything, and the museum is no exception.  New York is full of beautiful attractions: Central Park, the Met, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the Bronx zoo, and so on, but the one I insisted on seeing when I was in the area was the American Museum.

The museum is fairly distinctive-part brick, part glass, part neoclassical, with a statue of Theodore Roosevelt adorning one entrance. The interior is well lit and absolutely huge. There are 4 levels, not counting the basement with a parking lot and food court. The top floor is the one we’re looking at today-yes, the entire floor is dedicated to over a century of fossil finding. Since New York has always been a playground for the rich, the museum has been able to afford many an expedition, and many of the world’s top paleontologists. 

An overview of dinosaur exhibits, part 1: The 19th century universities

Since age 4, I’ve been a museum fanatic. I still have dreams about museums that exist only in my mind. Of course, the best museums are the natural history museums and their highlights are always the dinosaur exhibits. Dinosaurs are big business for these museums, so every natural history museum has a fossil exhibit of some sort. However, there’s more than one way to make a fossil exhibit, and not only does the format depend on the fossils involved,  but the artistic style, the fashion of the period, and the overall scheme of the curators.

I never go on vacation without seeing a dinosaur-if there is a museum, I will visit it. Some vacations I’ve based solely on museums. Still, I haven’t seen some in years, such as the Los Angeles Museum or Royal Ontario Museum, and since they have since been renovated I will omit them from the list. The following are a list of museums I’ve visited and the structure of their dinosaur exhibits, in the order of the age of the institution.