Cool stuff at my museum.

Today I wanted to share some of the cool stuff the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences does besides palaeontology!

My home is in the Nature Research Center, the new addition to the museum that opened in 2012 and which features a 3-story-tall globe on the outside! The globe is always an attention-getter, and most days when I'm walking to the bus there are people outside posing in front for pictures. It's a cool thing to have as the icon for the museum. It looks cool in the rare snow we get here, and moody at night.

But the globe isn't just a cool external feature, it's also an important part of the inside of the museum, as the Daily Planet Theatre. The inside of the globe forms a curved surface visible from all three floors, during which scenes from nature are projected for most of the day. Each day one of the scientist gives a special presentation on their research in this venue, and special guests speak here for events. This is where Lindsay and Susan debuted the Carolina Butcher last spring!

The first floor has this spectacular right whale skeleton, but it's not just any right whale - this one has an important scientific story to tell. If you look closely on the right mandible (on the left in this image), and towards the back, you will see a series of little circular divots. This whale's mandible was sampled in order to understand breaking stresses in whale jaws during ship strikes, the cause of death for this poor fellow. Research on this specific whale helped create new legislation for ship speeds in whale zones. I think it's an awesome example of real science making tangible benefits. It's a great way of linking research to a specimen and giving it a powerful narrative.

Within the Nature Research Center are five active research laboratories - Paleontology, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Genomics & Microbiology, Evolution, and Biodiversity. Our labs are part of the exhibit space and visitors to the museum can peer into the labs. Most of the labs have interesting displays in the windows and one of my favourites is the Biodiversity Lab's dermestid colony. They have bear skulls, deer skulls, coyote bits, and all kinds of things decomposing in full view, and at the moment there is a whole baby seal in there.

Not all of the animals are dead! The museum has a pretty extensive collection of live animals on exhibit, like this matamata turtle. Another really cool thing is the visible veterinary lab in the Nature Research Center, where you can see veterinarians caring for the museum's animals. And sometimes this includes surgery! There is always a bi crowd of people whenever the vet window is occupied. Most recently, the museum took in several cold-stunned sea turtles to rehabilitate.

One of my very favourite things in the whole museum besides the Paleo Lab is the Naturalist Center, basically a hands-on library of STUFF. All kinds of good stuff: bones, fur, feathers, specimens in plastic, stuff to look at under the microscope, field guides and anatomical diagrams. I've never really seen  something quite like this in any other museum. It's almost always busy, especially on the late nights on Thursdays, and kids LOVE IT and I think parents probably absorb some information too because everything's hands on.

The thing that gets the most attention is this awesome interactive table where you can take specimens from a specially designated shelf, stick them on, and then a computer somewhere recognizes the specimen and projects a whole bunch of interactive information onto the table. There is much swooping and swishing and it's one of the only touch screen info things I've seen people really use for more than 2 seconds. It's slick, it's cool, and you move a real object around in order to make it work. It's perfect. Here it is in action:

There's so much more that I can't possibly put everything in one post, but I hope this gives you a sense for the unique and interesting ways the museum incorporates real-time scientific research, hands-on and experiential learning, and cool narratives into its exhibits. Things are blended really well and it's no surprise that the museum is one of the most popular destinations in the region. Here's a dinosaur, thanks for sticking around!

Fossils in Disguise

As July progressed into August and we neared the end of our field season, it was time to start hauling blocks back to camp and closing down quarries. This is Suicide Hill, a spot I didn't work at very much but which contains lots of juvenile Eolambia. Lindsay has a great system for bringing large blocks back to camp with people-power only, since we cannot use vehicles at many of our sites. We strap them with ratchet straps to a backboard (or what everyone else was calling a sled, but it's a backboard guys! We were totally prepared for spinal injuries!). This way, 4-8 people can lift large jackets with relative ease and less potential for back injury. I think this jacket was somewhere over 500 pounds.

Closing down quarries also means Khai and Haviv and I got to haul gear back to camp, like pry bars and crack hammers and water jugs and all kinds of other heavy things. WHAT FUN.

We had started a new quarry called Mini Troll relatively late in the season after the sauropod site was largely completed. Lisa had found this spot last year and it looks like it contains a very nice small ornithischian, possibly something a bit like Orodromeus in general shape and size. It's not articulated, but it looks like a lot of it is in this little lens of sandstone.

Also, I found a TOOTH! Maybe from Siats?

Mini Troll kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we were starting to run out of time.

That meant we had a couple of nights where we ate dinner at the quarry to save time. Did you know that mayonnaise tastes great in leftover chili? (This is probably my favourite photo from the whole field season - what a great moment of collegiality and teamwork and friendship.)

Click to embiggen this sort of ok panorama of Mini Troll at about 9pm at night!

By the final morning, Mini Troll had gotten so big that we felt we couldn't really call it 'mini' anymore, and so while the site is still Mini Troll, the jacket was dubbed Megatron. We were finishing the final layers of plaster at about 8am on the last day.

Megatron weighed over 600 pounds and needed to go up this extremely steep hill without many footholds. I still can't believe we got it up successfully and with, ultimately, minimal hassle or terror. 

And that finishes off my overdue fieldwork posts! If you find yourself in Raleigh, come visit Megatron! He's hanging out in the window of the prep lab and Lindsay and Lisa just started to open it up a week or so ago. I think it's going to be pretty cool!

Fortunate Son

Elsewhere in the Mesozoic, parts of the field crew were working away at Cretaceous dinosaurs in the Mussentuchit Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation. In may we worked at Crystal Geyser Quarry, which is in the Yellow Cat Member of the same formation and is about 125 million years old, in a part of the Cretaceous called the Barremian. In contrast, the Mussentuchit Member is about 98 million years old, or Cenomanian in age. The Cedar Mountain Formation is a giant unit of rock, and the dinosaur faunas changed dramatically throughout!

The dinosaur fauna of the Mussentuchit is still poorly known, and we still don't know very much about the dinosaurs of the 'middle' Cretaceous compared to the Jurassic (like the Morrison Formation) or the Late Cretaceous (like my previous fieldwork in Alberta and Mongolia). There are still many new dinosaurs to be discovered here! This quarry has produced a new small iguanodontian, nicknamed Fortunate Son for the time being while we prepare its bones and until it is formally described.

The views from this quarry are terrible. Just awful.

The Fortunate Son quarry was about a 30-40 minute hike from camp and generally a very pleasant place to work. However, when the weather looks like this, you're probably going to get wet.

This particular thunderstorm was threatening us for a long time, but when the sky opened up it was worse than expected and an almost instantaneous drenching. Here we are hiding from the lightning! For extra bonus fun, we had to walk over the highest hill in the vicinity in order to return to camp, so we had to wait this one out for a long time until we thought it was safe. When we finally tried heading home, the slick wet mud made us very slow, and the lightning started again by the time we got to the top of the hill. GOOD TIMES. Lindsay also posted about our stormy weather at the Expedition Live blog!

  

Camp wasn't much drier!

Later that day, a second thunderstorm rolled through, throwing hail onto us like I haven't experienced before. Grape-sized hail came down for at least 15 minutes straight, so we figured we may as well try to get some free ice for our drinks.

Haviv made the best of the bad weather with some mud sculpting!

We also spent some time prospecting for new localities, although I didn't find anything particularly exciting. The strata here are much more deformed than what I'm used to, making for some steep hiking! The red rocks towards the bottom are Jurassic Morrison Formation, and the buff coloured rocks above are largely the Ruby Ranch Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation, with Mussentuchit Member rocks closer to the top.

Here's a kind of ok 180-panorama from the highest point I climbed to one day. Click to embiggen!

Next time, we meet a Decepticon.

Where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead.

I can't believe that it's been more than 2 months since we got back from our fieldwork in Utah and I'm only getting around to posting about it now, but I guess that means things have been hopping around here! We had spent a week at the Crystal Geyser Quarry earlier in May, but our main batch of fieldwork lasted for four weeks from mid July to mid August. We drove from North Carolina to near Emery, Utah, to set up camp and work in the Morrison and Cedar Mountain formations.

Camp was comfortable and cozy!

And there were some pretty nice views!

I spent the first few weeks managing a sauropod quarry in the Morrison Formation. Although the Jurassic is not the main focus of our lab's research projects, its a nice addition to the museum's collection, and if I recall correctly this is some of the most western outcrop of Morrison. I was usually joined by an enthusiastic set of students from NCSU's palaeontology field school taught by Lindsay Zanno. Thanks for being cool, students! And thanks for introducing me to Welcome to Night Vale, which is basically the best possible podcast to listen to while digging up a dinosaur in the desert where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

Most of our sites were within walking distance of camp, but it was a bumpy drive out to the sauropod quarry and back each day!

Here's what some of the block of diplodocid looked like early on - pretty hard to interpret!

And here's how it looked a little while later! Still hard to interpret, but this is probably part of the pelvis, and some sacral and caudal vertebrae. Last year a large block of articulated caudal vertebrae was taken out of the quarry from the area to the right in this picture.

Just when I thought we were mostly finished, I found this nice 'little' caudal vertebra from probably about the midpoint in the series.

Sauropod bones make for some pretty big blocks to collect. Here's Lindsay and the crew getting ready to plaster the top of this block, by stabilizing holes and cracks with some good old fashioned bentonite mud.

 

This was a new and interesting technique for me - building a ramp to move heavy specimens into the truck! We used dirt from the quarry to build a dirt ramp, then nailed some 1x2s to a piece of heavy duty plywood and set some iron rollers in the middle. Using a winch and some pry bars, we were able to roll the blocks up into the truck. A good method!

We also did some live presentations with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences from this quarry! Here's out little shrine to cellphones - a fortuitous spot with good reception. We rigged up a holder for the phone so that we could Skype with the museum into the Daily Planet theatre. We talked a bit about what we were doing, and the audience could ask us questions! I think about how much I would have loved to be able to talk to a palaeontologist at an actual dinosaur dig when I was little, and I'm continually amazed by what we're able to do with high tech gear and a little bit of ingenuity these days.

Here's what that looked like back in North Carolina! (Thanks Brian Malow for the photo!)

Next time: Cedar Mountain Formation shenanigans! And don't forget to take the blog readers survey, now with the chance to win your very own Galactic Coelacanth mug!

Mad-packed with all nine essential nutrimites to fortify your X-Zone!

EXTREME MAMMALS is here!

So extreme! X-treme! Even more extreme than Extreme Blu!

I might find the name a little 90s for my liking (although I guess that Clone High reference I just made is circa 2002), but this is a must-see exhibit that shows off a whole lot of cool animals you probably haven't heard of before. It's an awesome mix of fossils, casts, life restorations of extinct mammals, skeletons and taxidermy mounts of unusual modern mammals, nice graphics, and fun interactive stations. Here's a slice of highlights from the opening party I attended last Friday!

Giant rhino relative Indricotherium (Paraceratherium?) greets you as you enter the exhibit. Ancient rhino relatives are really cool and don't get enough love!

Uintatherium, a weirdly ornamented archaic Palaeocene mammal, and not one you see in too many museum exhibits.

And check out this sivathere skull - this is a giraffe relative!

The exhibit includes a nice diagram showing the changes that occurred between the earliest synapsids, like Dimetrodon, to modern mammals, and even talks about the concept of 'crown groups'.

This floofular Macrauchenia looks like something straight of Jim Henson's workshop. Macrauchenia is a South American hoofed mammal that's part of a larger group of hoofed mammals from that continent of confusing and uncertain ancestry - we'll see a few more later.

Lots of exhibits showcased particular features of mammal anatomy and showed convergences across clades. Here's Thylacoleo, the marsupial lion, with Thylacosmilus, the marsupial sabre-tooth in the background.

Speaking of teeth, this exhibit showcased extreme incisors - that's a narwhal skull in the back, and an extinct elephant called Platybelodon in the front.

And more weird teeth: the extinct giant marsupial Diprotodon.

Real mammoth hair!!!

Way back in the Eocene, things were a bit toastier than today, and Arctic Canada was a lush forest inhabited by Coryphodon. This guy is one of the earliest really big mammals that evolved after the K-Pg extinction, but doesn't have any close living relatives despite its hippo-like appearance.

One of the most spectacular specimens in the exhibit, this Scarrittia is a notoungulate, another of those weird South American hoofed mammals. It probably would have looked somewhat rhino-like when alive, but I'm always weirded out by the lack of a gap between the front teeth and the molars, like you see in things like cows and horses.

Bonus alive mammals! We got to meet several living animals during the opening festivities, including...

Jerry the binturong, from the Conservators Center.

Plus this shy armadillo...

...hungry sloth....

and curious bat-eared fox from the Flying Fox Conservation Fund!

Extreme Mammals is at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences until March 27, 2016, and is well worth a couple of visits! Have you seen Extreme Mammals on its tour? Tell me about it in the comments!

#MuseumWeek Retrospective!

Last week's #MuseumWeek tweetstorm was an awful lot of fun, especially following the #SciArt event just a few weeks earlier. I thought I'd share a couple of photos and thoughts for each day's theme – I didn't manage to post something for each day on Twitter, but I'll fill in some thoughts and photos here!

Day 1: Secrets

One of the nice things about working in the Paleontology & Geology Research Lab at the North Carolina Musuem of Natural Sciences is that "behind the scenes" is part of the scene. You can actually stare at me while I'm working away at my computer each day, if you desire to do such a thing. More interesting, probably, would be to watch our staff, students, and volunteers preparing fossils in the main lab space - secrets waiting to be revealed. But hey, whatever floats your boat!

If you're in Raleigh, stop by and say hi to Carnufex!

Day 2: Souvenirs

I am kind of a Stuff Person and also have a Thing for Museum Gift Shops. As such, I have loads of doodads from my various museum visits. One of the things I like picking up are postcards, especially those that have non-Tyrannosaurus dinosaurs featured on them. For a while, I had these up on my wall at my apartment in Edmonton. Those who have visited my UofA office will also be familiar with my embarassingly large collection of ankylosaur toys, or as I prefer to refer to them, 'scientific models for grown-ups'.

Recognize any museums from your own travels?

Day 3: Architecture

I had a lot of fun with this one on twitter because I LOVE interesting museum architecture. A couple of favourites:

Permian Hall at the Moscow Paleontological Museum:

...which also had custom door hinges, like plesiosaurs!

Dinosaur museum in an old castle in Lerici, Italy:

I wasn't sure about the ROM Crystal at first, but it's grown on me:

And I think the SECU Daily Planet at the NC Museum is pretty swell (on the inside, it's a theatre!):

Day 4: Inspiration

Some non-dinosaur stuff for inspiration day: I really like learning about Canadian art and its history, and one of my very favourite museums on the entire planet is the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. If you're in Vancouver, DO NOT MISS THAT MUSEUM. It's an emotional experience to step into the exhibits at this museum and be surrounded by so much creativity and history and skill. Here's a sample to sharpen your brain.

Day 5: Family

I'm lucky to have had great parents that fed my dinosaur obsession as a kid with trips to museums near and far. I'd love to dig out some photos from the before time, but for now, I'll leave this day for my own memories. What are some of your favourite museum memories from your childhood?

Day 6: Favourites

I like busy museums that are crammed full of stuff, especially when that takes the form of a Wall of Stuff or a Hall of Stuff. Here's a few of my favourites.

Hall of Stuff at the Museo de La Plata

Wall of Stuff at the Natural History Museum of LA County

Day 7: Pose

I don't like posting pictures of myself very much, so I'll just include one here to finish off: here's Pinacosaurus (nee "Syrmosaurus") at the museum in Moscow, with me for scale.

That's it for now! What did you share for Museum Week?