John Blackshoe Sends: Serendipity Natural History

A museum visit, beyond my ken. Humbling, it was. 

I love museums, and have visited many more than most people. Mostly history, art or technology focused. Because I am really interested in history, art and technology. As Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limits.”

We recently had some guests for several days, and on a whim decided to go visit the huge Natural History Museum of Utah. There was a special exhibit on Jane Goodall, the Brit lady who spent most of her life living amongst African chimpanzees and figuring out how they behave. A reasonably understandable objective, and I even read one of her early books, back when everyone else was reading it. The exhibit (by National Geographic) was really well done with all the latest multi-media technology. Living with monkeys is not my bag, and frankly seems a bit weird, but it was a fun exhibit.

Jane Goodall in Africa.
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But, wait, there’s more!

Rocks and minerals. Lots of pretty rocks and minerals, gems and crystals, precious stones, geodes and all that. Pretty to look at. Not intimidating at all.

Pretty rocks.
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And the bones. A big freaking room with warehouse shelving loaded with pallets of bones, some encased in plaster as received from the paleontologist digs, awaiting cleaning and removal of the overburden from a few centuries or millennia so that scientists can discover what’s there. Cool. These folks can be a bit eccentric and obsessive, but hey, it’s science.

 

Bone storage- the racks ride on tracks to fit many more into the room.
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Some folks go to work every day and pick dirt off old bones. And love their job(?)
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That is of course, related to Fred Flintstone’s man cave trophy room with the mounted skeletal heads of more than a dozen dinosaurs along a fifty foot wall. Actually, probably resin casts from the originals which weigh a LOT. Dang those things are BIG!

Fred Flintstone’s trophy wall.
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Now, as a kid (shortly after these critters went extinct) I was probably as fascinated by dinosaurs as the other kids, but lost interest and dinos had not pinged my radar again. Now, confronted by the full skeletal remains of dozens of the huge critters, I was only able to recognize the names of T-Rex and our home town favorite the Utahraptor, the largest of all raptors, which could kick T-rex’s butt. (“Utahraptor is a genus of large dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous period from around 135 to 130 million years ago in what is now the United States. Weight up to 2200 pounds and up to 23 feet long.- according to Wikipedia). I was glad no little kids were there asking me questions.

But, here is the guy who knows the questions, and the answers, in a short 2:30 video:

Click here to watch the video.

Well, besides the loot from the dinosaur grave robbers, the Museum has a great section with artifacts of the really, really early Americans of the west. People who lived without the internet, electric vehicles, grocery stores, central heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. Their baskets were recognizable as having modern descendants. Fashions were limited, with rabbit skins and feathers woven for winter attire. My wife was dismayed at the thought of people having such a limited foot wear selection of colors or styles. Some were vegetarian, which was Indian for “poor hunter” but some chased down critters for chow. Even then, they had sharp and pointy stuff to kill game, or each other as they feuded over water or hunting grounds. Some were artistically inclined, and made decorative objects for personal wear, or perhaps religious symbolism, and some also made graffiti which is now revered as “rock art” or petroglyphs. Okay, this was not my type of “history” but pre-historic stuff is close enough I was comfortable with that. Here are some shoes, roughly 800-1000 years old.

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Wandering into the next section, they got all geologic, with igneous, sedimentary and layers and eras with names I can neither spell, pronounce nor remember, but they were a really long time ago. It was enough to make me roll on the floor laughing hysterically at the thought of “man made climate change” being some sort of disruptor of The Creator’s evolutionary cycle with millions of years of evidence that the earth has been hot or cold, and areas once seabed are now dusty desert, but some dude with a gas lawn mower made it stop raining. I refrained from inappropriate levity, but inwardly chuckled at all the “experts” who clearly are seduced by the religious climate cult, not science. All that geology included a warning that when the tectonic plates go moving around, there will be earthquakes, even if a few hundred years apart. Looking at the calendar on your smart phone, you can see that many areas of the U.S. are overdue for a big shakeout, unless global warming does not kill us all first.

Some Utah rock layers.
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Another section was devoted to humans, like you and me! Well, they insist we are all really not quite the same, and got into all sort of hereditary and DNA related science. Now, the level of anatomy is something we can all grasp, but when that gets broken down to the cellular level, I just don’t get it. 

The exhibits were well done (I guess) on biology, cellular biology, Genetics, genomes, DNA and the like. I confess (again) that I know absolutely nothing at all about this, other than a vague notion it is sort of a road map of all the bits and pieces of the cells and therefore the body, and is used for things related to cancer research and treatments. Sorry, but this history major is totally lost in the outer fringes of scientific knowledge. I’m glad, even grateful, that some people find it fascinating and pursue it with vigor, and that they find miraculous ways to make our bodies work better or longer.

 (They have separate sections we did not have time to see which show contemporary Native American tribal culture, a botanical section on plants, and probably other stuff which will be new, if my wounded dignity recovers enough for a return visit.) 

So, yes, it was a fun and very educational visit, covering a much wider range of subjects than I expected. But, dang, it made me feel like I should be wearing a dunce cap and sent to the corner to read a book or something.

In my dotage, I can come back here to Sarge’s place among friends, comfortable in knowing my historical limits. I’m quite content to let others explore their areas of interest. I admire, even respect what others choose to do, But, as for me getting involved in some of that stuff any deeper than I have already seen, Rhett’s response to Miss Scarlett is fitting, because “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”