Wednesday, May 15, 2013

A Day at the Museum

Today's visit to the American Natural History Museum was my first time seeing dinosaur bones.

I was as excited as a child to see the dinosaurs- they've been a life-long love of mine. But besides the dinosaurs, we got an exclusive tour of the museum's upper floors, where they house over 900 shelves and lockers of specimens, pinned, taxidermied, and otherwise preserved. I never realized that the museum has thousands of employees; many scientists included. The sheer breadth of the institution was astounding. 


Tyrannosaurus, apatosaurus, australopithecus, oh my! My thrills and chills began with the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins- an exceptionally designed overview of human evolution, complete with skulls, dioramas, and interactive exhibits. It's one thing to read about human origins, but to see the men and women of the earlier species, tearing into a piece of meat, or confronting a wild beast really illustrated the lives of these very ancient people. 


The fourth floor was completely dedicated to the development of species, covering vertebrate origins, mammals, and dinosaurs. Walking through the halls, you literally trace the development of vertebrates on earth, starting with coelacanths and early jawed fish, the exhibition continued through tiktaalik (a personal favorite of mine) and even early marine dinosaurs and pterosaurs! 


I was treated to so many of my inner-scientist pleasures, remembering how, graduating from high school, I had aspired to be an evolutionary geneticist. I saw so many dinosaurs, some I had never heard of, and squealed like a little boy. 

-Jamieson Riling






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