Event name: Excursion at the American Museum of Natural History
Event time and place: November 22nd, 2025 in New York City
During an off-campus class activity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, we divided our time into three parts: first, the Dr. Holtz’s guided tour of the exhibit “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,”; second, Dr. Fletcher’s tour “Concerning the Collections Core”; and finally, a self-guided visit through the Hall of Human Origins. Each section of the museum was a different world in terms of scientific communication, which aided our understanding of how scientists piece together such ancient events and also how museums present complicated topics to the general public.
The Holtz exhibit focused on the asteroid impact 66 million years ago and showed not only the earth before the impact but also the drastic changes after it. The first part of the hall presented the major dinosaur groups that lived at that time, as well as various marine creatures, plants, birds, insects, and other organisms that made up ancient ecosystems. Towards the end of the exhibit, a brief film narrated how the meteorite hit Earth and caused environmental destruction that wiped out about 75 percent of all species. There were two displays, in particular, that helped in getting this message across prominently. One had a triceratops in the center and the other species were arranged around the trees and plants to show predator-prey relationships and ecological context. The other display depicted a mosasaurus hunting another marine reptile, and it was accompanied by the things that the visitors could touch, like a tooth and reconstructed skin, to help them get physical associations with the animals they were viewing. As the exhibit moved from life before the impact to the aftermath, the areas that were color-coded changed from green to red to yellow, thus illustrating the change from flourishing ecosystems to those that had died and then subsequently recovered. The final part used the event to talk about the present and future times by showing how Earth got better over millions of years and pointing out the species that are alive now because ecosystems had rebuilt themselves. It used blue color to symbolize renewal, and the suggestion was that the study of previous global disasters could help the human race to be ready for any such events in the future.
The next guided tour, which was under the leadership of Dr. Fletcher, was all about the behind-the-scenes of the creation, storage, and usage of natural history collections focusing on research. We observed various types of specimens, and simultaneously, we learned about the modes of collection and preservation used by the scientists. Insects or small vertebrates were in some cases trapped by field traps or nets, and then they were preserved in ethanol or mounted on pins. The skeletons were taken from the sites of digs, after that, they were cleaned, and finally, they were put in places where the conditions were controlled so that they would not get damaged. With the help of an example specimen, we talked about how the different samples stored in the natural history collections could become the source of information for the changes in morphology, genetics, ecology, and species distribution after a long time of the specimens being collected. The itinerary also touched on the consideration of morality in research such as the requirement of permits, the effect of the source on the living populations, and cultural or environmental sensitivity. By this, it was stressed that museum collections are not merely for the visual pleasure of the audience but are scientific archives that have been there for a long time and support research in progress.
For the self-guided portion of the visit, I went to the Hall of Human Origins. The hall was set up in such a way that it would take the visitor through the human evolutionary narrative, starting with the current species and going back in time. The entrance was decorated with three skeletons—a chimpanzee, a Neanderthal, and a modern human—which were used to point out the similarities and differences in anatomy among the closest relatives. To the sides of the entrance were the living apes and their gradual changes across species were obvious. Moving further into the hall, it turned to early hominins and ancient human relatives, comprising areas which showed genetic similarities between chimps and modern humans and a phylogenetic tree indicating the major branches of life. One presentation included the fossil fragments of the early human relative called Little Foot, which were arranged in such a way as to resemble a full body plan. A good number of the items had the information about their origin included, for instance, the Neanderthals from the Neander Valley in Germany and more skulls from places such as France, Iraq, and Italy. The exhibit offered thorough details about the age, the place, and the importance of the specimens, and I did not think that any necessary part was missing. The well-planned hall made it simple to grasp how minute evolutionary changes over time had led to humans of today.
In short, the trip showed the ways museums use story arcs, scientific proof, and careful planning to help visitors grasp topics such as mass extinctions, evolution, and the scientific value of preserved specimens. We could see through these three parts of the museum how first events are the main factors for the life of today and how scientists are doing their best to keep and interpret nature.