Continuing with the Scooby Doo theme here I get to update one of the most exciting stories that has happened since my time here. You remember my last lament of the missing murals? Well guess what isn’t “missing” anymore!
This all started with a mammoth butt.
Some time back (2 years!) I began a project at our natural history museum to scan, digitize, archive, collect all of the images and negatives that were in our Vertebrate Paleontology collection. Thousands of images later a couple things really stand out: The importance of the WPA in the growth of out collections (see WPAleontology) and a couple of large paintings had disappeared since the late 30s and early 40s.
Continue reading Scooby Doo & the Missing Paleontology Murals
It is amazing what you can do with an extra half-day off. This is half of the emergent specializations set, the other being Anthropology and Paleoanthropology. In this case it covers the development of paleontology from natural philosophy, through the interested gentleman scholar/statesman/parson through to its full professionalization in the beginning of the 20th century. There is no delineation of what comes from which book this week as they mostly say the same things, they only structure the order somewhat differently or go into farther in one life or another.
They exist, and the one I am going to tell you about here is positively amazing on both counts.
Turns out Hugh Hudson has a new film out that focuses on the discovery of the prehistoric cave paintings in Altamira. If you aren’t familiar with the discovery, the Cliff Notes version is an 8 year old girl named Maria led her father Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola to a cave which held amazing paleolithic paintings of bison among other wonders; scientific debates ensue.
Continue reading Prehistory and Paleolithic Pop Culture*Thanks and/or blame for this goes to Tom Luczycki
Hey look! A paleo entry on an supposedly paleontologically themed page! How novel.
Continue reading Glyptodos and Glyptodonts*Since the beginning of the year I have been involved in a project of more or less my own design. I have been digitizing and curating a collection of photos at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History here at OU. They are mostly records of paleontology projects undertaken at some point with WPA funds. Some were already working before the WPA projects, others were opened with the funding, others still were either, neither, or both.
In the year since I posted last, I have not only outfitted an more than modest sized traveling museum and finished a second MA, but was able to squeeze in a few shows for students as well. The greatest highlight to share is that in a couple weeks I will be presenting Paleo Porch at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Conference in Berlin, Germany. My abstract was accepted in the “Education and Outreach” session which is all poster format, but I will be going to discuss not only the outreach with traveling artifacts (in this case casts) but also how successful using the humanities to teach science outreach can be.
Continue reading One Year OnThe Indiegogo campaign has come to an end. The perks and goodies have been mailed, and the money transfer has been “initiated.” The Paypal donations have already cleared and that is what I purchased the perks, the cases, and paid for the shipping with. There was enough to put in a quick order for a few pieces before they disappeared. The Carnotaurus was discontinued with only 3 left in stock, so I wanted to act quickly. They also offer damaged skulls for a fraction (about 1/3) of the regular price. So, I ordered one of each that they offered. At most it would just be a little gluing. I will highlight the first shipment for the Paleo Porch Mini Mobile Museum:
Continue reading DinoSkullsThe first of my large cases came in last night. Trying to figure out how to make a museum mobile isn’t terribly difficult, but finding things that you can use to actually do it isn’t terrible easy. After searching the internet and countless hours of review grazing and product specs reading I decided to give this one a shot. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, so I resigned to have it in my ebay watch list all summer, and wait. Finally went on sale this past week, for a $100 and FREE shipping which when compared to Amazon’s and others $25 shipping was part of the deal.
Continue reading Gearing Up
