Fossil Museums

[Kitsune]

Curious about what Museums members of this board have been at with fossil exhibits which they enjoyed?

[Kanastrous]

Dinosaur National Monument, in Utah.

[RedImperator]

The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a world class fossil collection, ranging from Cambrian jawless fish to hominids, and including all the "brand name" dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals. It takes up the entire fourth floor of the building and is laid out in such a way that the visitor walks through the history of vertebrate life. That's not including the Barosaurus mother and baby and the Allosaurus in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Rotunda (the main entrance hall on Central Park West), or the ten story building full of fossils in storage (obviously, regular visitors can't see those).

[Jawawithagun]

Naturkundemuseum Berlin

[Majin Gojira]

I've been to a lot of Museums across the US.

I'm sort of a Dino-whore.

The one nearest to me is the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. It has a decent collection, IMO, but the stuffed/mounted animals have a larger presence than fossil vertebrates. It only has a few select dinosaurs, prehistoric reptiles and a few other creatures.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York indeed has a world class and epic-sized collection.

The Smithsonian Institute has a great collection as well, though it's been some time since I have been there.

Dinosaur State Park, Connecticut is a collection of fossil trackways and is housed rather well. I don't recall many skeletons, however. It does have a few pretty good diaoramas about of the trackway animals (speculation and such).

The Yale Peabody Museum was rather underwhelming due to poor lighting IMO. The Age of Reptiles Mural is fun to see in person, however--because it's like 10ft tall. The Collection itself is quite large, however.

The Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, however, wins. It's huge, well lit and beautiful. You've probably seen it a dozen times in a dozen documentaries, and it's even more impressive in person. The collection rivals that of the American Museum and the Smithsonian when I went there. That was one hell of a museum.

[Mayabird]

I rather liked my visit to the Field Museum in Chicago. The fossils were arranged in a long exhibit that went through the history of Earth, marking mass extinctions, major lifeforms during different ages, and finally ending at the big dinosaur exhibits. Well done and informative.

Also, they have Sue. I don't care if they really were scavengers or not; Tyrannosaurus rex is still huge, impressive, and generally awesome.

[RedImperator]

Also, they have Sue. I don't care if they really were scavengers or not; Tyrannosaurus rex is still huge, impressive, and generally awesome.

That scavenger nonsense is a bunch of shit anyway. I've never heard anybody explain who the apex predators of the Cretaceous were if the Tyrannosaurs were scavengers.

[Kitsune]

I am quite sure they would not pass over a free meal

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, you could have the itsy-bitsy velociraptors and other dromeosaurids act as the Big Game Hunters of the Cretaceous. Or the... other tyrannosaurids?

Is there any precedent of "scavengers" growing to preposterous sizes and becoming the largest carnivores of the period? Like, imagine vultures growing to be larger than lions or hyenas or something.

The notion that the T-Rex is too slow is a silly one, seeing as duckbilled dinosaurs and ceratopsians weren't exactly Cretaceous Kenyans. The lack of visual acuity is also not an indication for scavenging, since if the environment was all foresty, then visual range would've been limited.

[Solauren]

Modern theory on the T-Rex is they were pack hunters until they were adolscents / near adult hood, working with the parents. The young would chase the prey into ambush, and mommy and daddy would hit with a surprise attack and kill the pray.

They'd work in smaller packs once they hit adult hood until they had kids.

[Kitsune]

Is there any precedent of "scavengers" growing to preposterous sizes and becoming the largest carnivores of the period? Like, imagine vultures growing to be larger than lions or hyenas or something.

Well, Lions will gladly steal Cheetah kills...if you were a smaller raptor, would you argue with them?

One one point maybe, birds are raptors and the largest flying birds I believe are scavengers

[Shroom Man 777]

Is there any precedent of "scavengers" growing to preposterous sizes and becoming the largest carnivores of the period? Like, imagine vultures growing to be larger than lions or hyenas or something.

Well, Lions will gladly steal Cheetah kills...if you were a smaller raptor, would you argue with them?

But lions also hunt. An exclusive scavenger can't grow to obscene sizes, to the point where it becomes larger than the actual predators in the ecosystem.

One one point maybe, birds are raptors and the largest flying birds I believe are scavengers

Condors, sure. But they scavenge their meals from other larger (non-avian) carnivors. I mean, they might grow bigger than other birds, but they're still not the largest carnivores in the ecosystem as a whole. There are still (non-avian) predatory carnivores larger than them.

They're also birds. Birds that can fly. In the air. On their wings. They can cover extremely large areas of land by gliding and expending relatively little effort, so they can afford to cruise for long periods of time in search for corpses and felled meats to feed on.

Tyrannosaurus doesn't have that luxury. It has to walk, and that is more energy intensive than gliding on thermals. So, unlike the condors that can just shmuck around until they fly by a particularly tasty-looking decaying carcass, the T-Rex must refuel itself by going out and killing something to eat if it becomes too hungry.

[Kitsune]

Before you think I am insane, I am not saying that T-Rex did not hunt...what I am saying is that they might scavenge more than many might think.

Are there any numbers how much Lions scavenge vs hunt down themselves?

[RedImperator]

Well, you could have the itsy-bitsy velociraptors and other dromeosaurids act as the Big Game Hunters of the Cretaceous.

The dromeosaurids reached their greatest size sixty or so million years before the time Tyrannosaurus rex was alive. The raptors shrank while their ostensible prey grew.

Or the... other tyrannosaurids?

Every criticism of T-rex applies to the other tyrannosaurids, especially T-rex's contemporaries. Their anatomies were very similar.

[Shroom Man 777]

The dromeosaurids reached their greatest size sixty or so million years before the time Tyrannosaurus rex was alive. The raptors shrank while their ostensible prey grew.

I heard that Megaraptor isn't really a dromeosaurid.

The wikipedia article makes it look like a Baryonyx. And the article says that Baryonyx is a spinosaur. Man, when did that happen.

Every criticism of T-rex applies to the other tyrannosaurids, especially T-rex's contemporaries. Their anatomies were very similar.

Yeah, I was just poking fun at the scavenger theory. I mean, aside from T-Rex and its cousins, what else is there that hunts down the herbivores? T-Rex and Rex-related fossils have been dug up everywhere, even in China. If the Rexes were scavengers, then there would have to be a Mystery Predator, a predator that paleontologists have not found a single trace of evidence for.

Before you think I am insane, I am not saying that T-Rex did not hunt...what I am saying is that they might scavenge more than many might think.

Are there any numbers how much Lions scavenge vs hunt down themselves?

Lions are lazy fuckers and if they feel like it, they can steal kills from hyenas. Hunting is hard work, and I'm sure no self-respecting predator would pass off a chance for a free meal.

[Mayabird]

I am so sorry for accidentally hijacking the thread.

[Shroom Man 777]

Tyrannosaurus is so awesome.


You know, it really sucks that I have never been into any fossil museum. I mean, we don't even have any fossils here! It totally sucks.

So, yeah. The first thing I'm gonna do when I end up living in Americaland is to visit a goddamn fossil museum and take pictures of all sorts of awesome dead animals!

[As far as I know, it seems like only America has museums full of dinosaurs. Are there even any fossil museums in Asia?]

[Lusankya]

My state museum (back in Australia) has a bunch of opalised fossils. There's an entire plesiosaur that got turned into semi-precious stones. It's quite pretty, and very shiny. Apparently opalised fossils are relatively common in that part of the world.

Lions are lazy fuckers and if they feel like it, they can steal kills from hyenas. Hunting is hard work, and I'm sure no self-respecting predator would pass off a chance for a free meal.

I can vouch for that. I got a free meal today. It was awesome.

But to elaborate on your point, when a lion steals a hyena's food, that means the hyena has to go and kill something else. Similarly, if the T-rex was purely a scavenger, that would mean that there was likely something else about the same size killing almost twice as much as it needed to eat.

[Broomstick]

Well, hijacking this back to the original topic, one of my favorite fossil museums is one I'm sure you've never heard of, and most likely will never see. In fact, I can't remember the name of it.

There's a "rock shop" in Evanston, Illinois that sells things like semi-precious beads and geodes and books on geology and what not. In the basement they have a small museum, which customers can visit for free, with a wide range of prepared fossil specimens from the cambrian era forward. There's not as many as, say, the field museum, but you can get very close. There was also a bit on fossil preparation, and how to spot phony fossils that are sometimes sold to tourists.

So no, not a huge, world-class, famous museum, but a treasure trove in a suburban town. Sometimes you can find the neatest things where you least expect them.

[andrewgpaul]

Well, hijacking this back to the original topic, one of my favorite fossil museums is one I'm sure you've never heard of, and most likely will never see. In fact, I can't remember the name of it.

There's a "rock shop" in Evanston, Illinois that sells things like semi-precious beads and geodes and books on geology and what not.

This it: Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop?

(as an aside, I do find it odd that it's a "shop" and not a "store".)

[Kitsune]

The nearest one to me, according to their website is in North Carolina. It seems to be mostly fossilized shark teeth from the sounds of it.

[andrewgpaul]

Both the Natural History Museum in London and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow have displays of fossils amongst the exhibits. Glasgow also has the fossil grove in Victoria Park; the remains of a 300 million-year-old forest.I've not been in ages, but the fossilized treestumps are very impressive.

[Broomstick]

Well, hijacking this back to the original topic, one of my favorite fossil museums is one I'm sure you've never heard of, and most likely will never see. In fact, I can't remember the name of it.

There's a "rock shop" in Evanston, Illinois that sells things like semi-precious beads and geodes and books on geology and what not.

This it: Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop?

(as an aside, I do find it odd that it's a "shop" and not a "store".)

Yep, that's it (silly me, I forget how much stuff is on the internet sometimes).

Stores that sell stuff like that, for whatever reason, are frequently called "rock shops" as a category - in fact, I used the term myself, didn't I? Don't know how it got started, maybe it's just a US language quirk.

[Covenant]

I rather liked my visit to the Field Museum in Chicago. The fossils were arranged in a long exhibit that went through the history of Earth, marking mass extinctions, major lifeforms during different ages, and finally ending at the big dinosaur exhibits. Well done and informative.

Also, they have Sue. I don't care if they really were scavengers or not; Tyrannosaurus rex is still huge, impressive, and generally awesome.

We've also got some big plant-eaters, even in goddamn O'Hare. We like our Dinosaurs here!

[Broomstick]

Don't forget the Tully Monster! It's the Illinois state fossil, and known from the Mazon Creek formation if I recall correctly.

Alright, it's not a dino, and it's not that big, either, but c'mon, "Tully Monster" is a cool name.