Carnegie Museum of Natural History
One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Photo by Debra Wilson
This stunning mineral is the most recent specimen to be exhibited in Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. It is a 4.6 cm color-zoned bowtie spray of fluorapophyllite perched on top of a stilbite coated quartz stalactite from the Ahmadnagar district in India.
By Patrick McShea
Among the joys of working as a museum educator are times when the traditional learning flow reverses. A memorable example occurred a few years ago during a writing exercise for high school students participating in the Allegheny College Creek Connections program.
Each student had been studying a stream near their school. My task was to motivate them to share their findings and impressions through writing.
I asked participants to write the name of their stream in the sentence: “________ ________ is far older than the road that shares its valley.” Then they had three minutes to compose the next narrative line.
A Butler County student had less work time than her peers, owing to the fifteen-letter Indian name “Connoquenessing” for the creek waters bordering her school’s campus.
Still, when she later recited a sentence that beautifully referenced horse-drawn wagons and steam locomotives
to note differences in travel time between creek valley towns during the previous two centuries, I involuntarily said aloud, “I wish I wrote that sentence.”
Patrick McShea works in the Education and Visitor Experience department of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.
Away from the public eye, scientists at Carnegie Museum of Natural History have access to more than 200,000 jarred, labeled, and perfectly preserved specimens stored in The Alcohol House.
The three-story storage room has been a part of the museum for more than 100 years and is a herpetologist’s dream. It boasts about 65,000 salamanders, 54,000 frogs, 29,500 snakes, 29,500
turtles, and 30,500 lizards, all preserved in ethyl alcohol.
A past curator of the Alcohol House, C. J. McCoy, said the room is like “a three-way hybrid between a pickle warehouse, a reference library, and a mail-order establishment.”
Scientists use the specimens for their research, and can compare the size, shape, and extremities of reptiles and amphibians from 100 years ago with those found today and identify new species.
AP3: Antarctica Peninsula Paleontology Project
February 29–March 6, 2016Project G-182-N (PI Matt Lamanna)
The team completed several of its research objectives and continued to make progress towards others during week three. At the Sandwich Bluff locality on Vega Island, scientists discovered four new fossil plant sites, found additional Cretaceous fish and bird material, and prepared a plesiosaur (long-necked marine reptile) shoulder girdle for extraction.
All of these specimens were recovered from the Upper Cretaceous Sandwich Bluff Member of the López de Bertodano Formation. At approximately 70 million years in age, this rock unit dates to only a few million years prior to the infamous mass extinction that ended the Mesozoic era, or Age of Dinosaurs.
Geologists Eric Roberts and Zubair Jinnah completed their stratigraphic and sedimentological study of the sections of the Snow Hill Island and López de Bertodano formations exposed on the southwestern flank of Sandwich Bluff, an area that, due to its steepness, elevation, and snow cover, has been nicknamed ‘K2’ after that well-known Himalayan peak. They sampled the middle and upper levels of the Sandwich Bluff Member for aragonitic fossil invertebrate shells to be used in strontium isotope geochronological analyses.
Scientists also continued to conduct helicopter-supported reconnaissance visits to other areas of the James Ross Basin, identifying two previously undocumented Cretaceous exposures that were targeted for future investigation.
Inclement weather forced many members of the team to return to their ship, the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer, for two days during week three. They spent the time refining strategies for the remainder of the field season, updating the project’s blog and social media pages, and studying fossils that had already been collected.
1) G-182-N paleontologists Abby West (left) and Steve Salisbury (center) collect a plesiosaur shoulder girdle co-discovered by Salisbury with ASC Marine Technician Julia Carlton (right). Photo by Matt Lamanna.
2) G-182-N geologists Zubair Jinnah (foreground) and Eric Roberts study the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the ‘K2’ section on Vega Island. Photo by Pat O’Connor.
3.) G-182-N paleontologist Kerin Claeson searches for fossils in the ‘Fish Horizon’ near the K–Pg boundary on Seymour Island. Claeson and other G-182-N personnel have collected dozens of partial to nearly complete fish skeletons from the ‘Fish Horizon’ to date, the analysis of which promises to inform understanding of the K–Pg mass extinction in the southern high latitudes. Photo by Meng Jin.
Matt Lamanna is a paleontologist and the principal dinosaur researcher at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Matt and his team of researchers blog frequently from Antarctica while on expedition at antarticdinos.org.
Museum staff was hard at work last week stuffing more than 4,000 eggs for the annual Egg-cellent Egg Hunt on March 26. The first 600 children to participate will be able to follow clues around the museum that will lead to the treats! This event will be from noon-4 p.m. and is designed for children 3–10 years old.
Visitors to our Hall of North American Wildlife are currently able to watch artists transform a previously blank wall into an intricate and scientifically accurate mural that depicts a tranquil stream running through a forest that’s transitioning from summer to fall.
After several weeks of work our artists have gone from outlines to details, and are currently adding finishing elements such as native wildlife to the scene.
Artists say the project is nearing completion. To see earlier photos of the project, click here.
