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Home » Resources » COTA » Articles » Making The Museum: Part III

Making The Museum: Part III of IV

Written by: Bryan Klausmeyer
Graduating Class: 2009
Concentration: History

Fall 2006

The second floor of the museum, known as the "Hall of Evolution," is best described as the embodiment of a strange paradox. On the one hand, its exhibits feature, for the most part, the most ancient of creatures found in the museum. Yet, the so-called "Hall of Evolution" is also arguably the most "modern" of the floors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mastodon exhibit, appropriately located at the nexus of the second floor.

The male and female mastodons, fairly recent additions to the natural history museum, are the focal point of the second floor's exhibits.

   The mastodon exhibit, one of the newest features of the Ruthven, displays two full-bodied mastodons: one male and one female—the only display in the world featuring both mastodon sexes. The female, as John explained to me, was discovered and brought to the museum back in the 1940s. "80 percent of it is real bone," he said, explaining that museums nowadays are using less and less of real bones in exhibits. "It's not just because you have to drill holes into the bones and shove metal pipes into them to get the pieces to hold together, but also for weight reasons." John pointed to the head of the female mastodon, which is bisected by a large, vertical black pole, in contrast to the male mastodon, whose plastic bones are so lightweight that no kind of additional support is necessary. Thus, in one sense, this paradox between antiquity and modernity is figuratively represented in the fossils of the mastodons themselves, which act as time capsules that demonstrate the changing techniques for exhibit creation.

   But there are larger forces at work here. Comparing the changing techniques for mounting casts or bones, which in this case is representative of a mere sixty-year gap, seems almost meaningless when surrounded by fossils whose ages are recorded in the abbreviation "MYA," or, "millions of years ago."

   Perhaps more than anything, the most emblematic symbol of this curious contradiction is in the very nature of the fossils themselves. Despite my undying adoration for Jurassic Park, the actual unearthing of dinosaur bones is far less glamorous or straightforward. As John uncouthly states: "It's never like in Jurassic Park where you find a completely intact fossil on the surface of the ground and brush off little bits of sediment to uncover it. The whole thing is virtually never intact." He continued, "They usually come in with the s*** beat out of them. It's just a complete mess."

   Such, too, was the state of the male mastodon when recovered underneath a pile of rotting peat moss in the backyard of a farm house in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Not only that, but a crucial piece of the fossil, the back right leg, was completely missing.

   Enter 3-D digitization, modeling and rapid prototyping.

The back right leg fossil of the male mastodon, originally missing, was recreated using a 3-D prototype machine.

   Some say the digital age has driven a wedge between humans and the natural world, but in other respects it's helped us piece together our visions of the past. Using the back right leg of the female mastodon as a model, teams of researchers digitally scanned the bones and then, after producing the 3-D renders, used high-end rapid prototyping machines to meticulously splice together the bones in the same way you'd print out a research paper, only this process uses gypsum powder instead of ink and 3-D layering rather than a 2-D paper surface. Moreover, the process is far from quick, and each cross-section of a bone can take hours upon hours, but the final product makes it all worth it, as it's ultimately indistinguishable from the real thing.

   Except in one regard: the scientists and artists (the difference between which is becoming increasingly nebulous) responsible for the creation of the 'virtual leg' decided to leave the polygonal renders produced by the computer behind, rather than smoothing them out. This visual representation of the technological might of the so-called 'modern age' serves as a powerful reminder of the peculiar blend between the ancient world and our own. Moreover, the choice to represent an aesthetic differentiation in presenting the bone is a testament to a world in which the byproduct of a large, high-tech, digital machine is indistinguishable from that of an organic creature.

   A humbling realization.

   From a philosophical standpoint, perhaps it's no wonder they call this place the "Hall of Evolution." Not only does it depict the fragmented pieces of an ancient world, whose resemblance to our own exists solely in the abstract, but it also showcases the evolution of the human spirit. From piecing together mastodons by shoving metal pipes through their bones to engineering completely new ones through the power of computer technology, our own attempts to grasp a vision of the past, however remote, are a constantly evolving effort that try our will, puzzle our minds and at the end of the day leave us wanting more. This desire, this will to achieve, is what drives on progress, allowing for the "Hall of Evolution" to continue evolving.

Making the Museum: Part IV

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