What was the thinking behind the choice of specimens to exhibit when the AMNH redid its fossil mammal halls a few years ago? My sense is that the whole vertebrate paleontology exhibt (whole fourth floor) was designed around the single theme of cladistics ("All the animals circled in blue are descended from a common ancestor with...," as the computer terminals say... annoyingly after the first ten or so times), so taxa like Uintatherium and Arsinoitherium whose placement on the tree was uncertain were just hidden.
Very annoying.
And have they brought out the Phenacodus mount (skeletal reconstruction by Osborn, based on a virtually complete articulated specimen!) that they displayed before the refurbishment but hid (because, I imagine in my paranoid state, the phylogenetic MESS of the "condylarths" didn't contribute to the cladistic lesson... even though a photo of Phenacodus appears on the Perissodactyl computer screen to illustrate some non-derived character state)?
Wouldn't want a live one to sneeze on me!
What was the thinking behind the choice of specimens to exhibit when the AMNH redid its fossil mammal halls a few years ago? My sense is that the whole vertebrate paleontology exhibt (whole fourth floor) was designed around the single theme of cladistics ("All the animals circled in blue are descended from a common ancestor with...," as the computer terminals say... annoyingly after the first ten or so times), so taxa like Uintatherium and Arsinoitherium whose placement on the tree was uncertain were just hidden.
Very annoying.
And have they brought out the Phenacodus mount (skeletal reconstruction by Osborn, based on a virtually complete articulated specimen!) that they displayed before the refurbishment but hid (because, I imagine in my paranoid state, the phylogenetic MESS of the "condylarths" didn't contribute to the cladistic lesson... even though a photo of Phenacodus appears on the Perissodactyl computer screen to illustrate some non-derived character state)?
Wow. I've never seen anything like this.