Our little theropod friend Traumador the Tyrannosaur is asking for submissions for this month's Boneyard carnival. And he's asking for our favourite museums. If you haven't come up with something, why not make a quick post about your favourite or local museum?
Now, the Natural History Museum in London will forever be very special. Architecturally it is my favourite museum and always will remain so. It was the first museum I ever visited, it was where my father bought my first dinosaur toy, it was where I worked on my first dinosaur specimen, and it was where I studied for my MRes. In the early 1990s, when it opened, the dinosaur hall was an amazing feat of exhibition design. But it has remained unchanged since then, with inaccurate reconstructions, specimens that cannot easily be seen from more than a couple of angles (let alone actually get to them), and excessive space devoted to cartoons and toys.
So it was wonderful to visit the new dinosaur hall at the Carnegie Museum.
It was redone just over a year ago, and retitled "Dinosaurs In Their Time", to show the species that existed at the same time. So rather than looking at dinosaurs separated by more than 100 million years across the aisle, we are taken through the Triassic period and into one enormous room where Diplodocus and Apatosaurus are locked in a permanent staring contest:
And then it's through to the Cretaceous, where two Tyrannosaurus rex squabble over a kill:
This is what dinosaur exhibits should be - in fact all fossil exhibits. The displays that stick in my mind are the ones that show dinosaurs as lively, energetic active members of the ecosystem. Droopy tails are a turn-off. Only being able to see a fossil from one aspect is a turn-off. Using animatronics when a static skeleton would be far more elegant and informative is a turn-off.
A few years ago, Paul and I went to a special staff and members shopping evening at the NHM. For about five minutes, he and I were the only people in the main hall, looking up at the famous Diplodocus carnegii skeleton. He said rather wistfully: "I look at that and I see a pile of bones, but you look at that and see a living, breathing dinosaur".
I think, at the Carnegie Museum, Paul saw living, breathing dinosaurs too.
Now, the Natural History Museum in London will forever be very special. Architecturally it is my favourite museum and always will remain so. It was the first museum I ever visited, it was where my father bought my first dinosaur toy, it was where I worked on my first dinosaur specimen, and it was where I studied for my MRes. In the early 1990s, when it opened, the dinosaur hall was an amazing feat of exhibition design. But it has remained unchanged since then, with inaccurate reconstructions, specimens that cannot easily be seen from more than a couple of angles (let alone actually get to them), and excessive space devoted to cartoons and toys.
So it was wonderful to visit the new dinosaur hall at the Carnegie Museum.
It was redone just over a year ago, and retitled "Dinosaurs In Their Time", to show the species that existed at the same time. So rather than looking at dinosaurs separated by more than 100 million years across the aisle, we are taken through the Triassic period and into one enormous room where Diplodocus and Apatosaurus are locked in a permanent staring contest:
And then it's through to the Cretaceous, where two Tyrannosaurus rex squabble over a kill:
This is what dinosaur exhibits should be - in fact all fossil exhibits. The displays that stick in my mind are the ones that show dinosaurs as lively, energetic active members of the ecosystem. Droopy tails are a turn-off. Only being able to see a fossil from one aspect is a turn-off. Using animatronics when a static skeleton would be far more elegant and informative is a turn-off.
A few years ago, Paul and I went to a special staff and members shopping evening at the NHM. For about five minutes, he and I were the only people in the main hall, looking up at the famous Diplodocus carnegii skeleton. He said rather wistfully: "I look at that and I see a pile of bones, but you look at that and see a living, breathing dinosaur".
I think, at the Carnegie Museum, Paul saw living, breathing dinosaurs too.
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