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Words cannot describe how disappointed I am by this.
For those tuning in late to this serial: as a child, I was crazy about animals. Including dinosaurs and prehistoric megafauna. I did not turn this obsession into a career, as I actually took no biology courses in high school, and I am glad I stuck to theoretical patterns for other reasons, but I still have a pile of animal facts in the back of my brain, and love visiting natural history museums, (ethically run) zoos and aquariums, and suchlike. One of my cultivated eccentricities is a small collection of photos of Megatherium (giant ground sloth) skeletons particularly: I have one from the Field Museum in Chicago, one from the ROM in Toronto, and one from the Natural History Museum in London. Take me to a natural history museum, with a digital camera, and there will be a Facebook album of photos of dinosaur skeletons and critters of various sorts.
So I was looking forward to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, and my brother's biology minor made him on my side.
Alas, their dinosaur exhibit is under renovation, and there was only one Allosaurus skeleton cast in the front of the museum's second building, and the rest of the exhibit was all warded off. I took pictures around the screen anyway, until the guard yelled at me...that it would be better to look from another angle. I saw a sauropod and a Stegosaurus skeleton, and, too far away to take a picture, a preserved coelacanth, which my brother and I both agreed were awesome, and wished we could see up close. But, there was only a Megatherium cranium and jawbone, that I definitely did take a photo of to add to the collection, but I know they have the entire thing; why isn't my timing right this time?
They do have some really cool stuff. My favourite was the giant squid Architeuthis, both a preserved specimen under glass and a lifesize model; I can't wait to caption it once I take the pictures out. There was a mineral gallery including a wall of meteorite specimens, the ferrous, the stone, and the "sin clasification", which is intriguing. The most amazing was the basement room in which there were three walls solid of mounted bird and mammal specimens; no captioning, nothing, just specimens that they could not fit into an exhibition at this time, and I wandered through trying to identify them (the mammals, I could for a lot of them except the monkeys; the birds, not so much). And that is just 2% of the specimens in the museum's collection! I told my brother that if he did graduate studies in biology, he could actually go to museums and request to see the rest of the iceberg, all their collections that they have under wraps, which would be amazingly cool. Alas, my brother is not interested in graduate research; his ambitions wander between medical and military studies, as far as he tells me.
How do I feel about seeing so many animals, some of them rare, dead and mounted for us to gawk at?
Well, I know in at least London's Natural History Museum, and there may have been a sign similar in this one that my Spanish missed, that many of its specimens are very old, dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; part of the reason they are under glass is to slow their deterioration. Animals are no longer dying to be stuffed. When I see a beautiful animal, my thought is that it is amazing and we must not let it die out; in a sense, if others think like I do (and how many biologists were inspired by natural history museums?), one specimen dead long ago helps ensure the survival of its species.
In the gift shop, there was a plush ichthyosaur, and I wanted it So Bad. Alas, it was 18 euros, which I think is a little much for a plush toy...um, don't let me remember how much my spiny lizard from the Shedd Aquarium actually cost, it was to benefit conservation programs, I swear it was... But in the other building's gift shop, I fell for a little glyptodont, for a more reasonable price, and now I have a little plush glyptodont sitting by my hotel room bedside table, and it is adorable and fuzzy in its great-ancient-armadillo way. I benefactored conservation programs. I swear I did. (I swear benefactored is a word too.)
For those tuning in late to this serial: as a child, I was crazy about animals. Including dinosaurs and prehistoric megafauna. I did not turn this obsession into a career, as I actually took no biology courses in high school, and I am glad I stuck to theoretical patterns for other reasons, but I still have a pile of animal facts in the back of my brain, and love visiting natural history museums, (ethically run) zoos and aquariums, and suchlike. One of my cultivated eccentricities is a small collection of photos of Megatherium (giant ground sloth) skeletons particularly: I have one from the Field Museum in Chicago, one from the ROM in Toronto, and one from the Natural History Museum in London. Take me to a natural history museum, with a digital camera, and there will be a Facebook album of photos of dinosaur skeletons and critters of various sorts.
So I was looking forward to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, and my brother's biology minor made him on my side.
Alas, their dinosaur exhibit is under renovation, and there was only one Allosaurus skeleton cast in the front of the museum's second building, and the rest of the exhibit was all warded off. I took pictures around the screen anyway, until the guard yelled at me...that it would be better to look from another angle. I saw a sauropod and a Stegosaurus skeleton, and, too far away to take a picture, a preserved coelacanth, which my brother and I both agreed were awesome, and wished we could see up close. But, there was only a Megatherium cranium and jawbone, that I definitely did take a photo of to add to the collection, but I know they have the entire thing; why isn't my timing right this time?
They do have some really cool stuff. My favourite was the giant squid Architeuthis, both a preserved specimen under glass and a lifesize model; I can't wait to caption it once I take the pictures out. There was a mineral gallery including a wall of meteorite specimens, the ferrous, the stone, and the "sin clasification", which is intriguing. The most amazing was the basement room in which there were three walls solid of mounted bird and mammal specimens; no captioning, nothing, just specimens that they could not fit into an exhibition at this time, and I wandered through trying to identify them (the mammals, I could for a lot of them except the monkeys; the birds, not so much). And that is just 2% of the specimens in the museum's collection! I told my brother that if he did graduate studies in biology, he could actually go to museums and request to see the rest of the iceberg, all their collections that they have under wraps, which would be amazingly cool. Alas, my brother is not interested in graduate research; his ambitions wander between medical and military studies, as far as he tells me.
How do I feel about seeing so many animals, some of them rare, dead and mounted for us to gawk at?
Well, I know in at least London's Natural History Museum, and there may have been a sign similar in this one that my Spanish missed, that many of its specimens are very old, dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; part of the reason they are under glass is to slow their deterioration. Animals are no longer dying to be stuffed. When I see a beautiful animal, my thought is that it is amazing and we must not let it die out; in a sense, if others think like I do (and how many biologists were inspired by natural history museums?), one specimen dead long ago helps ensure the survival of its species.
In the gift shop, there was a plush ichthyosaur, and I wanted it So Bad. Alas, it was 18 euros, which I think is a little much for a plush toy...um, don't let me remember how much my spiny lizard from the Shedd Aquarium actually cost, it was to benefit conservation programs, I swear it was... But in the other building's gift shop, I fell for a little glyptodont, for a more reasonable price, and now I have a little plush glyptodont sitting by my hotel room bedside table, and it is adorable and fuzzy in its great-ancient-armadillo way. I benefactored conservation programs. I swear I did. (I swear benefactored is a word too.)
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From:
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Another part is to keep visitors from accidentally poisoning themselves. In that time period, taxidermy was done with arsenic.
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http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/exhibition.php?id=17
Will you be going to VETO in Hamilton or are you still in Spain at the time?
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The shoes will have to go without me. VETO, too, is out for me this year; I knew it from the beginning of spring so I didn't plan on it. I get three weeks of official vacation, and I've already spent a week at NASSLLI and two in Madrid, plus a banked day. I've got more banked time and suchlike, but I am going to use it strategically at later points in the autumn to pursue non-trivial interests; for now, good luck at VETO, etc., say hi to Zhz and Brock and all these people for me.