Location: American Museum of Natural History - New York
Date: November 16, 2024
I first attended Dr. Holtz’s tour of the fossil halls, which is physically organized in order by evolution. When I learned about this, I thought it was really interesting as it helps contextualize all of the exhibits and connects them in a cool and coherent way. One highlight from the fossil halls was learning about how gut contents of certain organisms could help identify previously undiscovered species. Usually, researchers depend on finding the animal itself to learn about it, so discovering it inside of another organism was intriguing to me. Another highlight came from learning about how long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs gradually grew larger over time because of increased rainfall leading to the growth of plants and trees. It was interesting to hear about how changes in environmental factors force animals in turn to adapt to their new environment. While the features of the exhibits were mostly very accurate, Dr. Holtz told us to disregard the nameplates for some of the dinosaurs. A fix for this is simple, as they could just update the names that aren’t deemed to be accurate.
Next, I went on Dr. Fletcher’s tour, observing many of the different preserved organisms. I thought it was interesting how different organisms require different techniques to preserve them, with there being benefits and drawbacks for each method. The see-through technique as shown in the image was used on many different kinds of fish, which distinctly has the benefit of being friendly towards more delicate specimens and also allowing observers to easily differentiate between species as their insides can be seen in full. Coral, on the other hand, was dried out and displayed separately, due to it being more suitable in that case. Dry preservation was used for many different species like birds, butterflies, spiders, etc. The main advantage here is being able to observe the color detail of the specimen to a much higher degree than in wet preservation, as was used with the toads inside of the jars. While wet preservation has the drawback of losing pigment, it can often preserve the entire skeleton and DNA of an organism. All kinds of preservation techniques have their merit when it comes to studying different aspects of the species, like the butterflies being easily distinguishable because of their vastly different colors and patterns. However, when collecting specimens, you should be very careful and be aware of the state of the species you are collecting to ensure that you aren’t threatening that species in a meaningful way.
After that, I went with Dr. Merck to see the non-dinosaur fossil exhibits. One highlight here was seeing the timeline as to how organisms adapted and evolved, following the path of the exhibits to see ancient, extinct water organisms and how they adapted features over time to allow their successors to travel onto land and become more recognizable creatures today. It was cool to see how every small and seemingly insignificant change would serve some purpose over several millions of years and accumulate to create entirely new species. A second highlight from Dr. Merck’s tour was seeing that despite the many obvious differences between pterosaurs and humans, the one that stood out to me was how their shoulder and pelvic structure functions entirely differently from that of humans. While humans rely on their legs to support their weight, pterosaurs do not, and rather focus more on supporting their large wings at the shoulder, while humans just have shoulders not dedicated to carrying too much weight. I found this fundamental “flip” of the body to be interesting, but it makes sense considering the different methods of travel prioritized for each species. One potential outdated element of this part of the museum is the placement of the turtles, as recent molecular studies are putting into question whether turtles are relatives of the archosaur. This is a recent discovery with very strong scientific evidence, but updating the exhibit’s placement inside the museum might not be as practical.
This year’s space show, Worlds Beyond Earth, explored the Solar System and the components of it. It explored what exactly is required to sustain life on a planet, and why other similar places in our solar system do not contain life like Earth does. I’m not sure how precise the measurements were on screen, but the special effects were very immersive. One piece of information that stuck out to me was that Venus does not generate a magnetic field, which I did not know. I thought this was very notable, as not only does a magnetic field change the way our planet operates, but it also allowed many notable discoveries in history, so it’s interesting to think about how these discoveries would’ve been made if life existed on Venus instead of Earth.
Overall, the American Museum of Natural History was a very educational experience for me, and I feel like people regardless of mobility could enjoy the museum just as much. This is because of the numerous elevators and ramps available throughout the museum, which allowed for high accessibility, and I noticed that wherever there were stairs in an exhibit, there would always be a stair-less alternative nearby. There were also QR codes scattered throughout with different languages which would allow people from all over the world to be able to understand the layout of the museum better, which is a very convenient addition. And to those with limited technological access, there were plenty of options for them as well, with plenty of physical indicators that lowered the need to access a virtual map. This helped me especially when searching for the food court, as there were helpful indicators on the ground to lead me there.
