On the weekend of April 7th through the 9th, Earth Life and Time students embarked on a voyage to the city of New York. That Saturday, upon arriving at the American Museum of Natural History the scholars toured the Fossil Vertebrate Halls and the Darwin Exhibit, led by Dr. Holtz.

The advantage to a museum display that is categorized by time and environment would be that a good picture is drawn of the types of species of animals that lived together and competed for resources at the same time. An idea of the evolution of animals or the state of the geologic earth (e.g. Ice Age) at that time is an important tool in understanding the world’s past. However, the American Museum of Natural History is organized in alternative ways. The Vertebrate Fossil hall is set up to establish a 3D cladogram, or branching chart which shows the evolutionary characteristics and common ancestry of organisms throughout history. On the floor of the museum lines are drawn, displaying branches from the cladogram that lead to evolutionary features and traits that each organism in that particular section possesses.

The Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit was a lot of fun because Dr. Holtz explained to the group how the wrong legs were on the dinosaur, and that in reality, the T. rex had slender long legs with long tubular bones in their feet. The Tyrannosaurus rex was a carnivore that lived in 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. Interestingly, I know that the T. rex had tiny, practically useless arms but I was unaware that they were still much stronger than any human arm today and probably only had two fingers on each hand. The Hadrosaur exhibit displays duck-billed herbivores. They lived around 100 million years ago and there are about two main types, the true Hadrosaurs and the Lambeosaurs. These dinosaurs spread out onto all continents and evolved to various diverse organisms. Finally the third exhibit that I liked was the Ornithischian dinosaurs, most especially the Stegosaurus who lived about 140 million years ago. It is interesting to note that the baby Stegosaurus is the only one ever found, and that if you think about it, all fossils are dead dinosaurs and that the youth must have died in such a way that it’s body remained preserved (and not torn apart by other animals).

The Darwin exhibit takes its visitors through the life of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory. I found three objects or more precisely tools that were a major part of his life. The first is the rock hammer which he used as an indispensable tool for breaking up sedimentary rock samples. This is a significant tool because Charles Darwin considered himself a geologist and not a biologist. The second object was the HMS Beagle ship and the voyage in general. Darwin went as the ship’s naturalist, and it was on this trip around most of the world that introduced him to the Galapagos Islands. On the ship he carried with him a Bible, a pistol, and a cosh. The Bible is important because Darwin originally had planned on being a clergyman and the pistol and cosh were kept for self defense against ship raids and pirates. Finally the third object is a clinometer, which is a tool used for measuring angels and elevations that Darwin needed for geological observations. Again this tool is significant to his research because Charles was a geologist. I think the museum did a very good job in this temporary exhibit and that a person who was generally unfamiliar with the contributions and life of Charles Darwin would come out knowing more about evolutionary biology and his theories. My favorite part of that room was in the very back there was a display of orchards of different species. I thought these flowers were beautiful and so interesting that I spent most of my time in that section observing the various types.

There are many benefits to visiting a museum to observe and study dead animals rather than visiting a zoo to see them alive. First of all, there are many extinct animals that you cannot see when going to a zoo. Also it is very cost-effective to have dead animals as opposed to live animals because you don’t have to medically treat them or feed them. A lot more dead stuffed animals can fit inside a museum rather than the number of live animals inside a zoo.

On a tour of the Hall of Primates I found the Gibbons display. The gibbons inhabit south eastern Asia and adjacent islands, their arms are extremely long and their nails are more or less keeled and narrow. They have small ischial callosities and more hair than great apes. The males are not especially different looking than the females of the species. They can walk on two feet, are agile, and acrobatic. In the Frank M. Chapman Hall of North American Birds, I visited the display featuring ducks. In the one window, there was a marsh duck, a greater snow goose, and sea ducks. The snow geese stop at marshes near cap tourmente near Quebec and then move south in the winter towards Virginia. The types of sea ducks in winter are the eiders, scoters, mergansers, and others that ride out the roughest winter gales. The final exhibit I visited in the American Museum of Natural History was the New York State Mammals. I learned that there are over 50 species of mammals in New York. They are not brightly colored and can easily hide from predators. Some of the species are the bobcat, the lynx, the black bear, the big coyote, the red fox, the gray fox, the fisher, the mink, the short-tailed weasel, the long tailed weasel, the otter, the eastern skunk, the raccoon, the rabbit, the deer, the rat, the beaver, the squirrel, the porcupine, the mole, and the bat. The complete elimination of bison, elk, woodland caribou, timber wolves, and cougars has unfortunately occurred in the state of New York.