Adventures in natural history

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Yesterday morning my wife, blue_micha, perrin_o_ravnos, Snoozewadler and I set off for NYC to go to the American Museum of Natural History.
It’s probably been 35-40 years since I was last there and I keep saying “Hey, we’re at the Met, 1/2 mile away from the Natural History museum, we should go over.” But, we always run out of time. So, this time, we made a special trip just for that museum.

On the way we passed some recent natural history where the tornadoes went through last month about 10 miles south of us.

I’m surprised that after a month they’ve still got the road sign up with 2x4’s, but at least it is back up.

We also stopped at a solar powered gas station in CT.


When we used to do the shows in Ansonia each summer, we stopped at that rest area quite often. Since then they have remodeled it and it is much nicer.


By 9:45 we were in NYC.

I thought the museum was at 91st, but it is at 81st. So there was a bit of U turns and going up and down this road.

But, we got there just as it opened.


We headed to the top and worked down. So were met with ancient carnivores.


The T-Rex always gets the good press, but I’ve always liked the Allosaurus better.


I have to admit, I was very happy to see these guys in with the dinosaurs.

I get so tired of hearing dinosaurs are extinct when they go pooping on my car all the time!

I do have to admit that the old ones are very tall and I’m glad they are no longer around to poop on my car.


They did have the skull of one that you could actually touch and pretend you were touching dino bone instead of the sweat of millions of museum goers.

So, I’m going to say I touched a dinosaur.

I’ve always liked these guys.


Look! Old relatives!


The museum is right in the middle of Manhattan next to central park. So, looking out the windows is sometimes almost as cool as the exhibits.


It is amazing how much armadillos have shrunk.


A bear!


My favorite is always the mammoth.


This map says they are all over places I’ve been, but I hardly ever see them.


I just can’t escape people in armor.


I think this fossil is great because it recorded all of the scales.


One of the things I really liked in the old dead things wing is they have several places where they have globes showing what the Earth was like at different times in the past.
But, at one point one of the globes was stolen.


So, if the Earth of 250 million years ago was stolen, who took it?
I suspect Daleks...
But, I didn’t see any.

They have several big halls of stuffed animals.


We finally noticed that as we walked through the museum, we were going away from the brain.

That is strange as I always thought museums were good for the brain, but, I guess not.

Maybe that’s why it looks to me like these birds are cannibalistic.


It was the 4th of July, so I had to take a picture of the eagle, right?


Then, I found it!
All the times I’ve said “I need to go and buy a better brain!” I’ve never known where to do it. Now, I do.


I hear this guy was in a movie. My wife said everyone was saying lines from the movie. I didn’t hear it.

(I did hear one woman tell a child that this was an example of Native Americans making use of natural resources. That did annoy me, but had nothing to do with movies.)

Last time I went to Ireland, I didn’t see anything like this.

It must the the “New” part.

It was easy to see where in the south pacific westerners had influence.


Nice shield though. Don’t think it will stop cannon.


I’m glad they call this a “Colossal Olmec Head”. It is a good description.


I thought about getting one of these calendars, but then remembered it would only be good for the next 17 1/2 months.


The last time I was at the museum, this version of the whale was fairly new. They said it was made around 1968, so I figure it must have been around 70 or so I saw it.


It is a big whale and takes up most of the gallery.

It also appears to block cellphone usage as this is where I tried to call the others to say lets meet for lunch. Good thing the museum had a free wifi network, I emailed them instead. (They also had a free iPad map that was very useful in getting around. It would find where you were on it and give directions.)

My wife likes bears.


To find a place to meet for lunch, we went to the main gift shop.


After lunch, clams.


And, mass extinctions.

It was a hall dedicated to the things that had gone extinct in the last 100 years of so.
Snoozewadler asked if that many things had really died out. I had to, sadly, inform him that this was only a fraction of it.

But, then we went to space.
To me, the space theater looked a lot like the space ships out of the Star Was prequels used by the trade federation.


One of the things I really like about this museum is they keep updating their exhibits as new things are discovered. This is very apparent in Space as the numbers for how old the universe is are removable or changeable as needed.



I also like the backside of the moon.


This is a picture of my wife taking a picture of people looking at a meteoroid.


I would only weigh 108 pounds on Mars, including all the stuff I haul around with me.


But, I’d weigh 3.8 trillion pounds on a neutron star.

I think I’ll pick Mars.

The planets were above us.


I couldn’t help it. I shouted “Perrin, look up! Uranus!”


Jupiter was there too, just hidden by the walkway.


By then we were getting tired. And, silly.


But, I did get to see Godzilla!

(I had not known they named underwater geothermal vents after Japanese monsters...)

I can’t see a Mars rover without thinking of this comic: http://xkcd.com/695/

Poor little rover. Sad.

We headed out before the fireworks crowd got big and the roads were still open.


For one I took the right parkway and made it onto route 15 in CT.


Remembering the old Ansonia trips, we stopped there for gas and Chinese food.


Just as the sun was setting, we got back to MA.


This seemed like an appropriate place to drop people off.


It was a good trip and we had a good time.
The museum is nice, but I like the other ones in NYC better. The Met is more different from the MFA than this one is from the Ecotarium or Boston Museum of Science. And, I’ve been to too many zoos and aquariums to really like the stuffed animals that much.
But, I’m still glad we went. It was a good time.