Houston Museum of Natural Science

On my way home from Buenos Aires I had an eleven hour layover in Houston. Having just about exhausted the entertainment potential of the Houston airport on my nine hour layover on the way down, and feeling quite confident that there was no way I could stay awake the whole time if I stayed in the airport, I decided to venture in to Houston to poke around for the day. I managed to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Houston Zoo, which are both located in the immensely pleasant Hermann Park.

The museum has a nice dinosaur hall featuring this Tyrannosaurus about to maul an Edmontosaurus to death, a Diplodocus, and an impressive Quetzalcoatlus. The museum is building a new dinosaur exhibit, and although I was sad I did not get to see it (it opens this summer), it was good to see their current display.

I also really liked this detailed information panel that showed not only which bones were real, cast, or sculpted, but what specimens they were derived from.

Whatever your feelings on the oil industry, there is no doubt that geology plays a hugely important role in locating and extracting petroleum resources. It is fitting that the Houston museum would have a large and informative gallery on petroleum. To be honest, when I looked at the museum map and saw this, I was pretty sure it would be super boring, and my background is in geology and I like stratigraphy a lot. But lo! It was tons of fun! And there were a lot of people there enjoying themselves, too! The gallery starts with a lot of geology, then moves on to the engineering side of things. I thought the introductory exhibit on stratigraphy was pretty cool - different features on this big faux rock face lit up as the narrator discussed them.

There was a cool window display showing two geologists discussing life in remote field locations. This was a pretty neat trick, because the video of the two geologists was projected onto a nearly invisible piece of glass or plastic such that they looked like they were right in the diorama. Also there was a lady geologist, HOORAY!

And there was even a giant seismic reading printout! Where do you ever see this sort of thing? Next to this was a tank with a seismic air cannon that would go BANG! every few minutes. Not too much discussion of how this affects marine life.

If I had a criticism of the gallery, it was that there was not a whole lot of discussion of the dangers of petroleum exploration and extraction or the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels. But we hear about that in a lot of other places, and it was so refreshing to see the science on exhibit, that I guess I will forgive them for that.

Birds at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales

After finishing up with the dinosaur hall at the Buenos Aires natural history museum, I was pleasantly surprised to find more dinosaurs when I headed upstairs. I can't recall a time where I've actually seen dinosaurs in the bird gallery - often the dinosaur story ends with the origin of birds, but when the birds are on display it's usually more about extant bird diversity and conservation. So it was really nice to see the origin of birds explained right at the very beginning of this exhibit.

Right after the origin of birds we are treated to this display of extremes in bird skeletons, which really highlights the adaptations for particular lifestyles in different groups: the long, long wings of albatrosses, the oversized feet of raptorial birds, the hilariously gigantic heads of toucans and parrots, and the long legs and short arms of ostriches. They have also cleverly placed a hummingbird in front of the ostrich to highlight the great size range of extant birds.

Lots of museums have exhibits displaying birds of different habitats, but not as many include urban environments. I guess Argentina is also lucky for having such a wide array of interesting and colourful backyard birds, but I think this is something that could be done in a lot of museums. This is also particularly helpful for people who are just visiting the city who like to keep track of their birds, but don't get out into the countryside for the more 'exotic' species.

Fossils make an appearance yet again when we get to the function and diversity of feathers. There are casts of Sinosauropteryx, Microraptor, and Caudipteryx. Again, you don't often see a lot about the evolution of particular traits within exhibits featuring extant animals, so this was nice to see.

I love visiting the bird exhibits in most museums for the sheer 'ooh! cool! pretty!' factor, and there is certainly a lot of that here. But the weird and wonderful structures found in modern birds is organized such that you can learn a lot while still marveling at all the strangeness. For example, there are sections discussing how different colours are produced, how feathers on the body vary and what their functions are, and how feathers are modified to form display structures.

There's so much I love about this gallery that I could just go on and on. I'll finish here with a photo of the entrance to the museum, guarded by a pair of wise and watchful owls.

Dinosaurs at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales

After a little break over the holidays, let's finish up these Argentina posts, shall we? After my research visits to the Museo Carmen Funes, Museo Carlos Ameghino, and Museo de La Plata, it was nice to be able to visit the main natural history museum in Buenos Aires as just a tourist. If you're in Buenos Aires, it's well worth a visit.

The dinosaur hall is large and with a lot of Gondwanan dinosaurs you don't see very often. I particularly liked this sprinting Carnotaurus that fits nicely with Scott's recent paper on the tail of Carnotaurus.

Amargasaurus is one of my favourite sauropods. Who can resist those incredible cervical vertebrae? But even better is that this is one of the only dinosaurs I know of that is mounted in an egg-laying pose. It's really refreshing to see a variety of behaviours presented by skeletal mounts, and it is especially nice to see a herbivore doing something other than fleeing or eating.

Although a lot of this mount of Bonatitan is reconstructed, it is interesting to see such a small sauropod, and there was just something pleasing about the whole thing.

A bunch of early dinosaurs and dinosauromorphs are also featured, including a reconstructed Marasuchus, Hererrasaurus, and this Eoraptor.

Argentina of course has wonderful mammal fossils as well, and there was a great exhibit about the fossils found near Buenos Aires. I liked seeing this glyptodont without its carapace.

And who would have thought that ground sloths could be so dramatic?

There's also a really nice comparative osteology hall, with one of my favourite exhibits being this exploded crocodilian head.

This museum has one of the best bird galleries I've been to, so I'll save that for its own post, coming up next...

Old Man Winter

A diversion today before I finish my Argentina posts, since we did something really cool (cool! get it? ha!) yesterday.

We headed to Dinosaur Provincial Park to finish collecting a tyrannosaur that had been discovered in 2010 and largely excavated this summer. The specimen has a complete pelvis, but it was just too large a jacket to take out with people power alone. We enlisted the help of a helicopter to bring the jacket up to prairie level, and although we were a bit concerned about fog when we arrived it cleared up in plenty of time and the lift went off without a hitch.

The helicopter was able to set the jacket right into the flatbed truck and the pelvis is now at the university waiting to get prepped.

December in Alberta can be pretty chilly but it was a beautiful snowy day with hoarfrost coating all of the trees and grasses. The snow wasn't very deep but it did make it a bit challenging to descend into the badlands, as there were some steep and slippery spots and we had to watch out for semi-covered sinkholes. In the end it was a lovely crisp day to be outside, and very fine indeed to come home to a hot chocolate (with maybe a dash of Baileys for good measure).

Museo de La Plata

Those regal cats at the entrance to the Museo de La Plata aren't just any ol' big cats - look closely and you'll see that a pair of Smilodon greet you at this museum.

The Museo de La Plata is in a beautiful park and is a great old-school kind natural history museum, which I mean in the best of ways. Others have said it better before me, but natural history museums are at their best when they are full of natural history objects, and this museum delivers on that front. I was delighted to see a hall of marching skeletons and flying whales, which is one of my favourite ways that comparative osteology is showcased.

I liked the glass cases used to display the taxidermy mounts, since you could look at the animals from all sides.

In the fossil galleries, I was pleased to see this cast of a meiolaniid turtle! I love how much these guys look like ankylosaurs.

There was a mounted skeleton of the small ornithopod Gasparinisaura with this excellent life-size model next to it.

And there was a cast of the Carnegie Diplodocus in its own very nice gallery, along with some femora of the giant titanosaur Antarctosaurus.

Next up: the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales.

Museo Carlos Ameghino

From the Museo Carmen Funes I headed to the town of Cipoletti to visit the Museo Carlos Ameghino. This is the home of an unnamed ankylosaur collected from Argentina, and it was great to be able to check this material out for myself. Gondwanan ankylosaurs are relatively rare; in addition to this specimen, there's Minmi from Australia, fragmentary remains from New Zealand, and Antarctopelta from Antarctica.

The Museo Carlos Ameghino is a neat museum in an cool old house, and houses several holotypes of interesting taxa. The picture above is of Kritosaurus australis, which juusst fits in the room.

The abelisaurid theropods are a really interesting and weird group of theropods, with very reduced arms and strange tails. So it was great to see the skull of Abelisaurus, the namesake of the group, on display.

Just across from Abelisaurus is a cast of the skull of Carnotaurus, another abelisaurid theropod. Having the two skulls close together really highlights how weird Carnotaurus is, even compared to other members of its own group. The skull is so anteroposteriorly short!

That's all for Cipoletti. Next time we head to La Plata!

Museo Carmen Funes

After my Argentinian fieldwork finished up, the crew headed to Plaza Huincal, and the Museo Carmen Funes, home of the giant sauropod Argentinosaurus and the also giant theropod Mapusaurus. I thought I would share some photos of some perhaps less well known Argentinian dinosaurs displayed in their galleries.

The alvarezsaur Patagonykus runs away from the dromaeosaur Unenlagia.

Abelisaurid theropods had really, really reduced arms, with the best example being Carnotaurus (although you wouldn't know it from shows like Terra Nova). But another good example is Aucasaurus, which also had pretty tiny arms.

And I couldn't resist snapping this photo of the tail of Aucasaurus, showing those weird hooked transverse processes on the caudal vertebrae that Scott talked about in his last guest post.

And finally a little love for the little guys. Here's Anabisetia, a basal ornithopod known from four really nice specimens that I had the good fortune to study while I was there.

Next up, the Museo Carlos Ameghino!