Pictures at an Exhibition

Ok, so I lied. I did go outside yesterday, despite the cold (max of 4 degrees celsius) and rain (that was nearly sleet/snow). For anyone interested, we are staying at a place called the Phillips Club, which is very nice and pretty centrally located in Manhattan.

I chilled for most of the morning, but headed out after lunch to go see the American Museum of Natural History, where we took a lot of pictures. So there's your title-song link. Tenuous, I know. The museum isn't all about rare animals being shot (though there was a fair bit of that). We actually spent most of our time in the fossil collections. I had a ball. It was like my Vertebrate Evolution course all over again, but this time I had actual examples (or at least well made copies) right there in front of me. Archaeopteryx, a fossil lizard with wings and feathers found in Germany, was particularly special for me to see. In a way its what started the whole evolution debate - it was the first major "missing link" found back in the 1800s after Darwin published his theories of natural selection and evolution. Similarly, the fossil Pterodactyls were very interesting. Some were only 10cm across, while there was an articulated wing hanging from the ceiling that was about 5 metres across. Apparently the largest Pterodactyls ever found were 12 metres in wingspan! Who knows how they took off, or flew? It was also pretty cool to see the other dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Allosaurs, Duck-billed Dinosaurs, etc.. all things I read about in my childhood but didn't get to see in real life (ok so they had/have a T-Rex skull at the Brisbane Museum but the rests were firsts). The next room was in some ways even more exciting. It had the stages of vertebrate evolution, backed up by fossil records. I won't go into the details here, but for me the highlights were a Lissamphibian skeleton (one of the very first animals to walk on land), various stages of fishes (from jawless through placoderms etc.) and reptiles. These are the kinds of fossils we definitely don't have easy access to back home, and I really appreciated being able to see first-hand so much evidence for evolution up close and personal.

As well as the fossil collections there were taxidermied specimens, mostly birds, and some exhibitions of American Indian artefacts. The bird displays from the New York area were interesting and informative (though sad for me, I hate seeing birds shot for science). The Passenger Pigeons were particularly poingnant. For those who don't know the story, the Passenger Pigeon used to be one of the most populous birds in the world. There was a single flock of over 2 billion birds living in the USA. There were so many that it took days for the flock to fly past a given point. That is until the Americans decided that this flock was a resource to be exploited. They made them into pies, they fed them to livestock. It took less than one generation to kill enough that the birds stopped breeding (it turns out they needed a critical mass in a flock before breeding would occur). Before too long they were extinct in the wild, and then finally completely extinct. For me this is the ultimate example of the impact of mans greed on the environment, and a good metaphor for what is happening with fossil fuels today.

There was also a large display on space/the universe, which was quite interesting. They had some meteorite cross-sections that were pretty cool, and a replica of the Mars lander which was interesting to see. All in all, it was a great way to spend an afternoon and I'm glad I went.