American Museum of Natural History
Event time and place: New York, NY 5:45 am- 7:00 pm
On November 11, I went to New York City to visit the American Museum of Natural History. I attended two different guided tours as well as going on a self-guided tour. Dr. Holtz and Dr. Merck both provided insightful information about the general field of paleontology and I walked around the Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals.
On my first tour of the museum, Dr. Merck spoke about clades and evolution. He discussed the evolution of limbs, the genetic mistake of jaws, and the fossils that are on display. The tour took place in the Hall of Vertebrates which displayed the evolution of limbs, jaws, and the openings in the palate. According to Dr. Merck, openings in the skull are used to relieve pressure when chewing. There was a model that we could touch to feel the holes in the palate as well as a reconstruction of the Dunkleostues. The setup of the hall is supposed to represent a cladogram to help the general public understand how the different organisms are related.
The second tour was given by Dr. Holtz in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs and focused more on the specialization and descendants of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs evolved differently to get access to new food resources, an example of this being a long neck to reach food that was higher up. In addition to this, the dinosaurs were also separated into carnivores and herbivores. When discussing the descendants of dinosaurs Dr. Holtz informed us that birds are lizard hipped dinosaurs.
While the layout of the Hall was intended to demonstrate a cladogram, Dr. Holtz and Merck both pointed out failures. In the Hall of Vertebrates, the turtles should have been in a separate room entirely from the coelacanths while in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus Rexes are more closely related to birds than meat eaters. While these are things that could be fixed, it would be very complicated and most likely require renovations to the museum itself.
The third tour of the day was a self-guided tour of the Hall of Gems and Minerals. In this exhibit, there were a variety of cases with information on the structure and composition of the gems. There were signs that explained the basics of the structure of the crystals as well as a large screen that showed what the elements were that formed the crystals. In addition to this, there was a large room with jewelry on display.
Overall, the information the halls had seemed to be at a middle school to high school level education because of the word choice. The signs did not use a lot of technical terms and sticks to simpler terminology. In addition to this, there were a lot of visuals to go with the text. There were a few interactive components of the displays, many of them in the Hall of Gems, that typically involved feeling objects. In the Hall of Vertebrates, there were fossils you could touch and a variety of gems or minerals to feel. To better improve this aspect of the museum, there could be things such as computers with controllers that let the viewer “explore” what the environment was like for the organisms on display.