Yesterday I took John Wilkins to the Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight exhibit at the Arizona Natural History Museum. It was a wonderful opportunity to see 30+ fossils from China along with assorted models and recreations, particularly of Deinonychus (above, particularly cool), Therizinosaurus, Microraptor, Cryptovolans, Confuciusornis, Caudipteryx, and Shenzhouraptor. Some of the exhibit can be seen here [pdf] in a brochure by the Utah Dinosaur Museum. While John and I were a little puzzled at some of the statements on the accompanying descriptions, the exhibit overall comes highly recommended.
More like this
...make sure you check out the Darwin exhibit and the ant exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History.
One of the things that has puzzled me about natural history/science museums are the mineralogy exhibits. They really don't seem to be about anything other than "OOH! SHINY PEBBLE!" Mind you, they often have some very cool and shiny pebbles, but contrast them to paleontology exhibits.
The Science Museum of Minnesota recently developed an exhibit called "
One of the cool perks of being a scienceblogger and going to a meetup this year was the opportunity to go and see the Horse Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural His
If you haven't seen it yet I recommend last weeks Nova episode on PBS, "The Four-Winged Dinosaur". You can watch it online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/microraptor/program.html
If you could, tell John "hello" from me! Tell him also that if he wants to, he can look my brother (Eric) up in the Tuscon phonebook and say "G'day" for me, too!
Also, please send the good Dr. Wilkins back down under with a box or two of Wheat Thins and hopefully he can come visit me in Parramatta and share them. (Be sure he tries some anyway.)
(signed) marc