Field Museum of Natural History

[Viking Spawn]

[Viking Spawn]

[Viking Spawn]

[Viking Spawn]

FULL GALLERY:

https://picasaweb.google.com/VikingSpawn/FIELDMUSEUMOFNATURALHISTORY#

[suspsy]

Great photographs! I'd dearly love to go back there someday.

Labels for these photos would have be nice.

[Viking Spawn]

Thank you Suspsy! 

Right now I haven't labeled any of them... Yet.  That I will do on a later date when I have more time. 

[Halichoeres]

Guess you didn't stick around till after dark...the Brachiosaurus looks pretty good with all the Christmas lights on!

Also, if you happened to stop by the DNA lab between 11 and noon, you would've run into me answering questions.

[Viking Spawn]

Sorry we missed you Tim.  We didn't plan well and went on a whim.  One of the those spur of the moment decisions made between a father and son.  ROAD TRIP!

However, the rest of my family has never been there and is on their "to do" list for 2016 as is Burpee.

Next time, we'll get in touch when I know something is set in advance. 

BTW, you work for a fantastic museum! 

[Halichoeres]

Trips made on a whim are often the most fun! It is a pretty amazing place; I don't know how I could get much luckier.

[Halichoeres]

The Field Museum had changed a few things on my last visit. Here are a few that might be of interest here.

First, they've moved Sue into a new spot in the Evolving Planet exhibit, but it isn't quite finished so I didn't take any photos. But the gastralia are reunited with the rest of the skeleton, and the posture of the shoulders and arms is refined, so it's looking pretty good.

Where Sue had been standing there is now a cast of Patagotitan, the same one that stretches through multiple galleries at the American Museum in New York. Here's a shot of the head taken from the mezzanine level 5 or 6 meters up.



Above its tail fly several pterosaurs. The small ones appear to be Rhamphorhynchus and the large ones are Quetzalcoatlus.







Another Quetzalcoatlus stands guard at the entrance of the Evolving Planet exhibit:


A very imposing piece of art!

There is a room in Evolving Planet devoted to the Eocene Green River formation in the western US, but now they've added murals along the top, similar to the Charles R Knight murals that grace the other parts of the exhibit. I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know the artist behind these great new pieces.





Wyoming was a very different place 50 ma ago!


alligator, tapirs, turtles, palmettos


alligator, paddlefish



herrings and stingray


stingray and alligator gar relative


early acanthomorphs and herrings


gar, trionychid turtle, and what I think is a smelt


the big fish on the left (in the paintin) is an arowana relative. They used to be everywhere! The fossil is a gar.


a stem-bowfin, a mooneye relative, and some acanthomorphs

[ceratopsian]

The mezzanine makes a perfect viewing spot for Patagotitan and the pterosaurs. 

Re not knowing the mural artist: some museums don't seem to make much of giving information on palaeoartists they have used.  I remember asking who the artist was whose work was being prominently used in exhibits at the Natural History Museum in Oxford and the staff couldn't tell me.

[Halichoeres]

The mezzanine makes a perfect viewing spot for Patagotitan and the pterosaurs. 

Re not knowing the mural artist: some museums don't seem to make much of giving information on palaeoartists they have used.  I remember asking who the artist was whose work was being prominently used in exhibits at the Natural History Museum in Oxford and the staff couldn't tell me.

That's a real pity. I'll ask around, there might be somebody at the museum who knows.

[ceratopsian]

@Halichoeres:  I found out afterwards by hitting the internet but thank you!