Sam Noble Museum Blog

The ten Oklahoma students taking part in Paleo Expedition 2009 are out of the Utah field site now, and are on the road, somewhere between Albuquerque and Amarillo, headed back to Oklahoma and the museum for their final leg of the program. Over the next few days, they will be unpacking, cleaning gear, and teaming up to begin working on the final presentations that they will give for their families, museum staff and our friends in the local media on Saturday at noon.

They have had an amazing experience.  Rich Cifelli, the curator of vertebrate paleontology who accompanied the students in the field, described their site – on Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah –  as “one of the most remote locations in the contiguous 48 states.”  If you’d like to get an idea of what it looks like there (and I encourage you to do so), follow this link and take a look at the photo gallery on the Website of the Bureau of Land Management:  http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/grand_staircase-escalante/visitor_information/photo_gallery.html

I spoke with Larry Krutchfield, my public relations counterpart at the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, who had the pleasure of accompanying the students on some of their digs and hikes.  He was able to give me some insight into what it’s like to work out there.  Their location is indeed remote:  the visitor center seems to be about 3 hours away from Salt Lake City, and the site itself is 3 hours from the visitor center.  It’s hot, dry and barren, and at an elevation of about 7,500 feet. For us Okies – most of whom dwell at under 1,800 feet unless we live in the Panhandle – this feels like the Andes.  The air is thin and even moderate exercise can leave you breathless if you’re not used to the elevation.  Krutchfield admitted to taking some middle-aged pride at out-hiking the 17-year-old students under these circumstances.  But he has an unfair advantage in being acclimated to the altitude!

I’ll repost the link here to the story about our students that appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune.  Tomorrow afternoon the students will arrive back here at the museum and I’ll start trying to get their first-hand impressions to post here.

Salt Lake City Tribune Story:  (Don’t miss the photos)

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12655664

Sorry to be slow to post. So much has been going on with our students who have been out in the field in Utah! But sadly, I was moving this week, so I failed to document. I’ll catch up this week. In the meantime, here’s a link to a story on our fabulous Oklahoma students from the Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12655664

The 2009 Teen Volunteers, hamming it up with the museum bison.

Every summer the museum trains a team of teen volunteers to help out in the galleries.  These are kids aged 13 to 15 who give five hours a week, June 9 through July 10.  This year’s crop just completed their week of training with museum educators and you’ll start seeing them on the gallery floor next week.  They will be working the “gallery carts:” the stations in each permanent gallery that feature touchable specimens and activities.  They’ll also help out in the Discovery Room.  They are a great group of kids, and look forward to sharing their new knowledge with our visitors, so if you’re in the museum and see their tell-tale blue t-shirts, stop and see what they have to offer.

And while we’re talking about volunteers… let me sing their praises.  I’ve mentioned before in this blog the “bus wranglers” who help out with the huge groups of school kids who visit the museum.  But volunteers are present in every aspect of the museum’s work. There are nearly 200 of them on our active list at any time, and we couldn’t function without them.

In the public areas, volunteers sell tickets at the front desk, conduct Discovery Room programs, serve as docents in the galleries, lead tours, help out in the gift shop, and help with education programs and events.  Behind the scenes, volunteers are working in the vertebrate paleontology lab, picking dinosaur bones out of their rocky matrix.  They are updating labels on lizards in the herpetology collection, organizing records in the archaeology division, and a whole lot more.  Many of these folks are retired from scientific or academic careers.  There are two retired dentists putting their retired dental tools to work cleaning dinosaur bones, for example. We have retired petroleum engineers, geologists, professors, teachers. There’s an amazing host of knowledge walking around the building on any given day, lending their expertise and experience to the museum.

Chat with them next time you’re here. You’ll know them by their blue vests.  Say thanks.  We so appreciate their work!

I rescued a turtle on the way back to the museum after lunch today. It was a basic brown box turtle, bookin’ it across Imhoff near the creek. It’s amazing how fast those little guys can go when they’re motivated, and this one was highly motivated. Ahead: cool green grass, water and shelter. Underfoot: hot black asphalt cris-crossed with deadly, high-velocity mechanisms of roaring death!

I pulled over and tricker-trotted back down the side of the road in my heels and skirt, terrified the poor turtle would get crushed before I could get to it, but I got there in time, picked him up off the mean streets of Norman and carried him the rest of the way across the road. I put him down in some grass and wished him well.

There are few things about turtles I’ve learned from our curators here, for others like myself who are turtle rescuers, or who have kids who love turtles.

Turtle Tips:

When rescuing turtles, move FORWARD. It knows where it’s going, if you’re going to stop for it, pick it up and carry it on in the direction it was headed, not back the other way. If you carry it back, it will just turn around and head back into the road.

Keep them in their neighborhood. Box turtles usually stay within a familiar area. It can take a box turtle a long time, at a turtle pace, to familiarize itself with food sources in its territory. Turtles that are moved sometimes die before they can find sources of food.

Turtles are fascinating, peaceful critters for the most part. But avoid the temptation to bring your rescued turtle home. Turtles live a long long time, and your whim could lead to years and years of responsibility of feeding and housing it. Best to admire it and return it to its home territory.

A few years ago, we did a turtle feature on our newsletter’s Kids Page: here’s the link if you want to know a little more about Oklahoma turtles:
http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/kids/images/newsletter_pages/Summer_05_kids_page.pdf

Just as summer is beginning, October seems like a long, long way away, but I wanted to give anyone who’s interested a chance to follow this blog by nature artist Debby Kaspari.

Debby has done a lot of scientific illustrations for the museum, including the huge mural of a 40-foot elasmosaur for the Centennial Exhibition “Collecting Oklahoma” a couple of years ago. She is currently doing a whole series of drawings and paintings, as well as photography, video and audio recordings, for an exhibition that will go on view here at the museum in October. It will be called “Drawing the Mot Mot,” and will be a mix of scientific information about rainforest life and insight into the life of a field artist. Visitors will have the opportunity to see video of Debby doing her artwork in rainforests around South and Central America, learn about the plants, animals and ecosystems she is capturing on the page, and hear the sounds of various rainforest animals, especially birds.

The exhibit is still in development, and Debby is currently on a little research island in Panama, making drawings and collecting sound clips for the exhibit. Earlier in the year, she was in the Amazon. She blogs from her laptop about her experiences, and the blog is really rich and wonderful. She’s a fine writer, a wonderful artist, and peppers each entry wit photos, audio clips and video.

Visit and enjoy. It will whet your appetite for the exhibit come October!

http://drawingthemotmot.wordpress.com/

As if you didn’t already know that our museum is AWESOME… we recently received notification that we have, once again, been nominated for a gocitykids Nickelodeon Parents’ Picks award. This meant that parents have been posting positive comments about the museum on parentsconnect.com/local this past year.

Last year, we received the award, and we need your help to ensure that we receive it again! Go to parentsconnect.com/parentspicks and click on Oklahoma, then Oklahoma City, to vote for us!

I went up to the vertebrate paleontology lab this morning to borrow some acetone to clean tape stick-um off my scissors, and caught them making fiberglass molds of a dinosaur fibula. I went back to the office (with my un-sticky scissors) and grabbed my camera to catch the process.

There are a number of reasons why the museum makes casts of fossils. Often casts are made for display purposes, so that the original fossils can be kept on hand in the collection area for study. Sometimes the fossils are so heavy, it’s impractical to mount the original (as in the case of the giant Apatosaurus on display in the Hall of Ancient Life. A single leg bone of that big guy weighs between 300 and 500 pounds!). Sometimes casts are used in museum educational programs, so that kids can handle the bones and examine them from all angles.

In this case, the fossil in question shows evidence of a bone disease, and a graduate student wants to do a study on it that will involve “sectioning” the bone: cutting a very thin slice to examine the structure under a microscope. The process will, of necessity, damage the original. So Kyle Davies, the museum’s fossil preparator, and his team are making a replica in order to preserve the record of the original shape and size of the bone.

Kyle and a pair of volunteers on duty explained the process to me.

fiberglassCasts are made of a number of different materials, depending on how the specific cast will be used. Most small casts are made of a pourable polyurethane. Sometimes plaster is used, if surface detail is not as important. For larger casts, where weight and/or volume becomes an issue, are often “hollow cast” in fiberglass resin: a combination of glass fibers and polyester resin that is pressed into the two halves of the mold to make a hollow finished form.

That’s the process they were doing today. They had the mold all prepared, and were alternately laying in little bits of fiberglass fabric and then painting on a layer of resin to seal it down. The resin is “catalyzed,” and causes a chemical reaction with the fiberglass that fuses the two together to make a material that is stronger than either material would be alone.

The molds themselves are made of silicone rubber… the same stuff dentists use to make molds of your teeth. A clay dam is built up around the fossil, then the rubber is poured over it to make the negative mold: first one side, then the other. Larger molds are then mounted on a fiberglass base to give them added rigidity.

After the casts are made, the two halves are glued together and the edges smoothed, then the cast is painted to mimic the coloration of the original fossil.

And voilá! Phony Bones!

Students in "Meet the Dinosaurs" practice walking like theropods

Spring is Field Trip Season at the museum. Every morning the buses pull up out front and disgorge dozens of elementary and middle school children from schools in communities large and small all around central Oklahoma.

It’s one of the busiest times of the year for us. Though there are more overall visitors each day during the summer travel season, the field trip season seems busier because the kids tend to all arrive between 9:30 and 11 a.m., and they’re a lot louder and more excited than the family groups.

To help curb the chaos, we employ a group of fantastic, dedicated and, well, brave volunteers we affectionately refer to as “Bus Wranglers.”  These are the folks who – for no pay – stand out in front of the building and intercept the school groups as they arrive, before they are herded into the galleries. These hardy volunteers call the group to order and gently but firmly deliver to them The Rules:  No food or drink in the galleries, No running, No touching exhibits or climbing on railings.  They also provide The Law to the attending chaperones:  stay with your group, make sure they are following the rules… no fair congregating in the café and letting the kids go unsupervised. The Bus Wranglers are the museum’s advance guard. We sure couldn’t do it… or couldn’t do it as smoothly… without them.

Some of the school groups who visit the museum are there solely to explore the exhibits. But many also add on a classroom program with our education staff.  These programs are  held in one of the museum’s two classrooms and are taught by our education staff.  Classes are available in a whole range of subjects:  from Plains Indians history and culture to archaeology to dinosaurs.  But my personal favorite is one called “Meet the Dinosaurs.”

This is a creative discovery class for first-, second- and third-graders in which they use a bunch of interactive and role-playing activities to learn essential facts about dinosaurs.  Here’s the part I like:  The educator breaks the group up into three teams.  One team is the crocodilians, one is the ostriches, and one is the theropods.  Each team is instructed as to how their creature runs:  the crocodilians have to get down on all fours with their arms out and elbows bent in a sprawling posture. The ostriches are high-steppers with elbows up to make wings.  And the theropods run leaning forward to balance the weight of their imaginary tails, arms curled against their chest like claws.

Each group then makes a dash down the education hallway and is timed.  The exercise is designed to help the kids understand how adaptations like running on two legs helped some dinosaurs move more quickly. It also points out the similarity between dinosaurs and birds, their modern relatives.

But really, it’s just a hoot to watch.

The kids really get into dinosaur locomotion. The crocodiles wiggle and scramble, heedless of their knees and elbows. The ostriches prance, and the theropods run full tilt, often accompanied by enthusiastic roaring.  If this sight doesn’t brighten a not-so-great day, nothing will.

Forgive me for being slow in posting, but things are very busy around the museum in spring, and this spring, with my assistant, Krysten, on maternity leave, I’m even more busy than usual.

The past two days we have been up to our ears in the 7th annual Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair. This year was the biggest fair yet, with more than 800 young people participating, ranging in age from 4 to 18.

There is a sort of street fair atmosphere to the place when this event is taking place. Well, really it’s more like where street fair meets Pow Wow meets family reunion meets school awards ceremony. On top of the 400 - 500 kids there each day, there are teachers and parents, grandparents, judges and their friends and family, reporters from local and Native papers and television stations, dozens of volunteers, museum staff and graduate students. It is a multi-generational event.

Everyone loves the first day because the little kids perform that day, and they are very cute, all in their matching school T-shirts, or in their miniature versions of tribal dress. Some are fearless, some are terrified, all are adorable. The second day is more serious, with the older kids, grades 6 through 12, who seem to have more at stake. Some are really really nervous, and barely get through their performances. Some are cool as cucumbers.

Over the past seven years, I’ve seen several students grow up in the Fair. Kids who were too short to reach the microphone the first year are now coolly performing in the 8th and 9th grade categories.

It’s good to hear the languages, too. You hear elders speaking fluently, and the teachers and students who are not fluent, but learning, toss Native words into their conversation. Many of the emcees speak both in their Native language and in English as they make their announcements… the Choctaw, Cherokee or Euchee rolling off the tongue, with that sound that only Native American languages have. I don’t know what language I’m hearing, but I always know I’m hearing a Native American language, not an Asian or European or African tongue.

After seven years of the fair, some of the songs have become familiar. Some I know the sounds for, can almost sing along with. It makes me feel like part of something… even if only a little bit.

The language fair is central to the mission of the museum. Helping to preserve languages is every bit as vital as the fight against extinction of species. The fair is one of many lifelines hooked to our collective American culture that we hold on to and pull hard on, trying to make sure our children and their children will inherit the same rich, fascinating and diverse world that we did.

Makes you want to go learn a Native language, doesn’t it?

A view of the dermestid beetle exhibit in the new Orientation gallery.

Everyone loves to be a little grossed out. Come on, admit it. We all love to look at the creepy crawlies and feel the hair lift on the back of our arms. Kids especially love to be grossed out, but adults are also fascinated with the bizarre, the creepy and the icky.

Here’s an exhibit in the new Orientation gallery that will certainly fill the bill for those categories: a time-lapse video of a dermestid beetle colony devouring the flesh off of a small rodent skeleton.

You may or may not know that the museum employs several colonies of these flesh-eating beetles to help prepare animal skeletons for inclusion in the collections. The bugs can clean away flesh from tiny crevices in bone that human hands and tools can never reach. They do it quickly (a mouse carcass can be cleaned in a few days – a raccoon or possum in perhaps a week.) and thoroughly, without damaging the bones, and they work for room and board. Visitors to the “Bug Room” where the bugs work their magic are both fascinated and repelled by these tiny museum employees. But not everyone gets to go behind the scenes to view them at their work. This new exhibit brings the bugs to you.

Visitors can turn a knob to manipulate the time-lapse video. In a matter of a few seconds, the skinned and dried corpse of a rodent is nibbled away to clean bone before your very eyes! And to add to the overall virtual bug-room experience, the exhibit includes a feature that allows you to catch a whiff of what the bug room really smells like! Now that’s experiential!

Trust me, your kids will love it. (You will, too)