Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

paleontology

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Where to Look for Fossils

Amy Henrici
Vertebrate Paleontology Collections Manager Amy Henrici in the field.

As I travelled west from Pittsburgh to meet Carnegie Museum of Natural Hisotry Vertebrate Fossil Collection Manager Amy Henrici for a frog fossil hunting expedition in eastern Nevada, the same question was asked by each of my airplane seat mates.

“How do you know where to look for fossils?“

For the sites we planned to visit the answer was simple. Earlier written reports by geologists mapping rock formations and mineral deposits noted the occasion occurrence of fossils in certain rock layers.

Fossil searches involved locating and visiting sites where such rock layers are exposed on the surface, and then examining fragments that have eroded from these outcrops.The full process, which might stretch over decades, is an example of how published findings allow one branch of science to serve another.

As a geologist friend takes great pleasure in explaining, “Geologists let paleontologists know where fossils are in the multitude rock layers of Earth’s history, in time and in place.”

Patrick McShea is a museum educator who is traveling through Nevada with Vertebrate Paleontology Collections Manager Amy Henrici to search for frog fossils. He frequently blogs about his experiences.

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Moving Day for Jane the T-Rex

Jane without head or tail

It was moving week for our juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex Jane! She’s been living in the spine of our museum for quite sometime, but this week she was moved just a few hundred feet away into our brand new gift store, where she’ll be the center of attention.

Staff carefully disassembled Jane by removing her skull, tail, and ribcage before they wheeled her stand to it’s new location and reassembled her.

The gift store is currently undergoing renovations and will reopen later this month with three new exhibits.

the finished reconstructed T-Rex

Jane sitting pretty in her new home. 

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A Dino in a ‘Death Pose’

Camarasaurus dinosaur skeleton

This immature Camarasaurus’ uncomfortable stance isn’t caused by a crick in his long neck. It was discovered in what paleontologists call the “death pose.” Many dinosaur skeletons like this one are found with their neck arching back dramatically towards the tail. This specimen in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their Time is displayed almost exactly as it was discovered.

The death pose may have been caused by the dinosaur’s final thrashing movements before it died. Scientists note that this pose is only seen in animals with high metabolic rates, suggesting that dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus may have been active creatures.

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From Antarctica to Pittsburgh

Last week, several tons of fossils arrived at Carnegie Museum of Natural History from Antarctica, where our paleontologist and principal dinosaur research Matt Lamanna led the AP3 Expedition this spring. The fossils traveled by boat from Antarctica to Chile to the United States, where they were then trucked across the country to our museum.

In the coming weeks, our staff will begin carefully unpacking these specimens and studying them.

To read more about the expedition, visit our expedition blog.

 

Lamanna and Dan Pickering, a scientific preparator, open one package containing the largest fossil in the shipment.
A box with fossils collected from Vega Island in Antarctica.

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Bones in the Basement

Bones on a shelf

by Hayley Pontia
If you thought there were a lot of bones on display in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, think again. Many of the 22 million objects and scientific specimens in the museum’s collection are kept in storage and used for scientific research.

Amy Henrici, Collection Manager for Vertebrate Paleontology, manages the Vertebrate Paleontology collection, which houses fossils that span through 465 million years of prehistoric history. It is the fourth largest collection in the country and includes 79,464 catalogued specimens: 80 percent are mammals, 11 percent fish, 5 percent reptiles (including 690 dinosaur fossils), 3 percent amphibians, and .5 percent birds.

Most of the dinosaur specimens are archived in the Big Bone Room and the Little Bone Room. Contrary to popular belief, the description of these rooms is in relation to the space available, not the size of the bones.

Little bone room door

Hayley Pontia is the marketing assistant at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a student at the University of Pittsburgh. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences of working at the museum.