Post by Sharon Faulkner on Apr 13, 2006 7:44:07 GMT -5
Behind the scenes
April 09, 2006
By Althea Peterson
You may have visited the many exhibits at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, but that is just one fraction of a greater part of research, discovery and exhibit preparation completed at the museum.
About 15,000 years of Native American history in Oklahoma, early marine life in Oklahoma’s Precambrian seas and the diverse plant and animal life found in Oklahoma’s natural landscapes all have exhibits at the Sam Noble museum. However, the finished result visitors see in museum galleries is the product of field work, laboratories and maintaining museum collections by 14 staff curators behind the scenes, two of whom are currently working in the Amazon, said Linda Coldwell, publications and promotions specialist with the museum.
Just as some of the bones on display are millions of years old, it can take quite a while to prepare these artifacts for exhibit, said Jeff Person, collection manager of vertebrate paleontology. “For every hour we spend in the field, it’s another 12 hours back in the lab,” Person said. “It’s very time-consuming work.”
Many parts of the collections on display have their own unique stories, but can’t be on permanent display because there are so many artifacts. One of these is a Sauroposeidon, found in Oklahoma in 1999. This is the tallest dinosaur, but when the bones from it were found, they could not find anymore than four neck vertebrae bones. “The curious thing is that this was all we found — these four vertebrae, ” Person said of the large connected bones. He said people have searched the area many times, but nothing has been found yet.
Another unique story took 50 years to tell. A group from the University of Arizona found a piece of a sloth bone in 1950 in an Arizona cave. In 2000 OU researchers searched the same cave and also found a piece of sloth bone. While Arizona researchers preserved their bone differently 50 years ago than OU researchers now, both groups were amazed to find the bone pieces fit perfectly together. “That tells you something about how caves work,” Person said. “Fifty years later, that fits together like a puzzle piece.”
Rich Cifelli, curator in the department of vertebrate paleontology, said the collection includes the tiniest dinosaur teeth to the largest mammoth bones, most of which come from Oklahoma, but also includes bones from the same types of species at different ages, showing how much animals grow during their lives. Findings also can show the history of species, such as a “long fish” that is now found in Africa and Australia, but during Permian times was found in Oklahoma. “This shows that in the geologic past they were a lot more widespread,” Cifelli said.
Some of the museum’s “staff” are not even people. Jennifer Holt, integrated pest management technician, oversees the museum’s tiniest workers — a group of dermestid beetles.
“They’re the museum’s most efficient workers,” Holt said.
These beetles scurry around bones in a large glass tank, covered by moist paper towels. Their job? Cleaning leftover meat left on the bones to prepare them for display. While these “workers” can finish smaller bird bones in a day, their current task, large alligator bones, will take much longer.
“There’s no way a person could clean off smaller bones without breaking them,” Holt said. “They can get into the tiniest little nooks and crannies that people cannot.”
However, these beetles are not in the main part of the museum, but a separate building, out of the collections areas. Some of the displays, such as the mammalogy collection, would provide a feast too hard to resist. “That would be a nightmare,” Holt said.
Not all of the museum’s behind the scenes tasks are intended for just future displays. Some of the collections have wider varieties of species from around the world. Amanda Person, ornithology collection manager, said the museum’s collection includes Ethiopian birds and birds from around the country in addition to Oklahoman birds. Amanda said this collection provides tools for research and even reference for artists.
Another collection, overseen by herpetology collection manager Chris Wolfe, includes many jars of lizards, frogs and snakes, some of which are preserved in regular canning jars of ethanol. One of the unique part of this collection is a “mummyized” alligator snapping turtle, found in southeast Oklahoma in 1948 that never decomposed. “I don’t know what happened to it,” Wolfe said. “Decomposition is a natural process, but something prevented that from happening.”
While parts of these collections may never go on display to the public, or may take years before being prepared, Coldwell said the museum curators and staff hope to give researchers artifacts and tools for the future. “Part of the mission of the museum is to preserve,” Coldwell said. “We can learn a lot about history by looking at what is preserved over time.”
www.normantranscript.com/localnews/local_story_099003516
April 09, 2006
By Althea Peterson
You may have visited the many exhibits at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, but that is just one fraction of a greater part of research, discovery and exhibit preparation completed at the museum.
About 15,000 years of Native American history in Oklahoma, early marine life in Oklahoma’s Precambrian seas and the diverse plant and animal life found in Oklahoma’s natural landscapes all have exhibits at the Sam Noble museum. However, the finished result visitors see in museum galleries is the product of field work, laboratories and maintaining museum collections by 14 staff curators behind the scenes, two of whom are currently working in the Amazon, said Linda Coldwell, publications and promotions specialist with the museum.
Just as some of the bones on display are millions of years old, it can take quite a while to prepare these artifacts for exhibit, said Jeff Person, collection manager of vertebrate paleontology. “For every hour we spend in the field, it’s another 12 hours back in the lab,” Person said. “It’s very time-consuming work.”
Many parts of the collections on display have their own unique stories, but can’t be on permanent display because there are so many artifacts. One of these is a Sauroposeidon, found in Oklahoma in 1999. This is the tallest dinosaur, but when the bones from it were found, they could not find anymore than four neck vertebrae bones. “The curious thing is that this was all we found — these four vertebrae, ” Person said of the large connected bones. He said people have searched the area many times, but nothing has been found yet.
Another unique story took 50 years to tell. A group from the University of Arizona found a piece of a sloth bone in 1950 in an Arizona cave. In 2000 OU researchers searched the same cave and also found a piece of sloth bone. While Arizona researchers preserved their bone differently 50 years ago than OU researchers now, both groups were amazed to find the bone pieces fit perfectly together. “That tells you something about how caves work,” Person said. “Fifty years later, that fits together like a puzzle piece.”
Rich Cifelli, curator in the department of vertebrate paleontology, said the collection includes the tiniest dinosaur teeth to the largest mammoth bones, most of which come from Oklahoma, but also includes bones from the same types of species at different ages, showing how much animals grow during their lives. Findings also can show the history of species, such as a “long fish” that is now found in Africa and Australia, but during Permian times was found in Oklahoma. “This shows that in the geologic past they were a lot more widespread,” Cifelli said.
Some of the museum’s “staff” are not even people. Jennifer Holt, integrated pest management technician, oversees the museum’s tiniest workers — a group of dermestid beetles.
“They’re the museum’s most efficient workers,” Holt said.
These beetles scurry around bones in a large glass tank, covered by moist paper towels. Their job? Cleaning leftover meat left on the bones to prepare them for display. While these “workers” can finish smaller bird bones in a day, their current task, large alligator bones, will take much longer.
“There’s no way a person could clean off smaller bones without breaking them,” Holt said. “They can get into the tiniest little nooks and crannies that people cannot.”
However, these beetles are not in the main part of the museum, but a separate building, out of the collections areas. Some of the displays, such as the mammalogy collection, would provide a feast too hard to resist. “That would be a nightmare,” Holt said.
Not all of the museum’s behind the scenes tasks are intended for just future displays. Some of the collections have wider varieties of species from around the world. Amanda Person, ornithology collection manager, said the museum’s collection includes Ethiopian birds and birds from around the country in addition to Oklahoman birds. Amanda said this collection provides tools for research and even reference for artists.
Another collection, overseen by herpetology collection manager Chris Wolfe, includes many jars of lizards, frogs and snakes, some of which are preserved in regular canning jars of ethanol. One of the unique part of this collection is a “mummyized” alligator snapping turtle, found in southeast Oklahoma in 1948 that never decomposed. “I don’t know what happened to it,” Wolfe said. “Decomposition is a natural process, but something prevented that from happening.”
While parts of these collections may never go on display to the public, or may take years before being prepared, Coldwell said the museum curators and staff hope to give researchers artifacts and tools for the future. “Part of the mission of the museum is to preserve,” Coldwell said. “We can learn a lot about history by looking at what is preserved over time.”
www.normantranscript.com/localnews/local_story_099003516