| Fall 2006 |
"This is Allosaurus."
For those that know dinosaurs, Allosaurus needs no introduction. It remains one of the largest theropods of the Jurassic period yet known and is the most commonly discovered dinosaur in the vast region of dinosaur-bearing rock in the American Southwest, known as the Morrison Formation. Along with Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus has been embraced by popular culture as the quintessence of the carnivorous dinosaur, having its visage featured in numerous films and documentaries, including 100 Million Years BC alongside Raquel Welch and the recent Discovery Channel documentary, Walking With Dinosaurs.
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| Allosaurus fossil
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Allosaurus seemed to be positioned in a very awkward, bipedal fashion, with its tail on the ground—conjuring up images of the hokiness of Godzilla rather than the deft realism of Spielberg's tour de force, Jurassic Park. For all of the museum's modern emphasis, especially that of the "Explore Evolution" exhibits, Allosaurus seemed downright parochial.
"Well, it was assembled back in the 1980s," remarked John. "It would've been a huge undertaking to remake it." After a small pause, he continued, "But the main thing is that if Allosaurus wanted to stand up on its hind legs with its tail to the ground, it could've done that." John reminded me that, while Allosaurus certainly didn't walk in that manner, it was still an easily achieved posture. Moreover, the horizontal posture of dinosaurs has been overemphasized in recent years, and new research has concluded that dinosaurs in fact walked with their backs at a slight angle—not completely horizontal, not completely vertical. "Plus, if the Allosaurus were positioned completely horizontal, it wouldn't seem nearly as terrifying," John half-seriously added.
As we made our way to the Deinonychus exhibit a few feet over, I noticed something else that seemed strange. While we hadn't quite approached the exhibit yet, it would've been hard not to notice the illustration of Deinonychus with feathers displayed alongside not only the fossils of Deinonychus, but also an older illustration visibly lacking in feathers. "This first illustration that I did was done before they made the discovery of a dinosaur that had visible feathers in the fossil record, which was about '94 or '95," John remarked. "We knew that birds had most likely descended from dinosaurs, but the discovery of Archaeopteryx, sort of a smaller raptor with feathers, really changed everything."
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| Deinonychus fossil
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| Deinonychus illustration
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Following the discovery of the feathered Archaeopteryx and a Compsognathus found with feathers, which was initially mislabeled as Archaeopteryx, John decided to update his illustration of Deinonychus. "For a reference-point, I used a fossil of a juvenile Velociraptor, a dromaeosaurid like Deinonychus, that was found in China not too long ago. The fossil," he said, "showed sort of a bushy tail and there were feathers on the arms, so that's what I put in my illustration, but a lot of it is just conjectural, as there haven't been any real fossils found yet, at least of adult raptors. But again, the aging process may explain this."
For Deinonychus, art has played a special role in the reinterpretation of our understanding of its physiology. Along that same line, it has also served an important function in making the exhibit stand out—both to make it a more prominent second floor fixture, but also to encourage people to learn about the new theories of dinosaurs and their relationship to our modern day feathered Archosaurs—or birds. "We tried to use a peach background color to contrast with the dark color of the bones, so it would really catch people's eyes. Plus, we put it up on a platform, because otherwise, Deinonychus is really not that big, maybe about three or four feet tall, which isn't very impressive." John later added, "Now, I don't know if that's art, but there is some degree of showmanship involved."
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| Edmontosaurus
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This exhibit features a dinosaur named Edmontosaurus. In introducing me to this behemoth fossil, John explained that it had actually been recast because the original was done incorrectly. Moreover, the mural, painted along the wall as a contextual place marker for the huge entombed beast, is also fairly out-dated and features inaccurate depictions of plant-life.
"We actually had it checked for accuracy by a paleobotonist and based on the feedback we got, I put together a new version of the mural, which you can see on display in smaller size—the original is a huge Photoshop file, about 350 megabytes, which took me around 80 to 100 hours to make." He continued, "I used a combination of real photos from the Everglades for the sky-line and some of the water, some scans of paintings I had done of smaller creatures that are scattered throughout here, and Wacom tablet art, which allows you to draw onto a digital pad that transfers the image to the computer in real-time."
Pointing to the top-left area of the mural, which features a small tract of eroding land, John said, "Oh, here we actually used a piece from the old mural. The paleobotonist said we had most of the plant life fairly accurate in that area, but we redid the sedimentary layers near the water by using photos from stockyards here in Michigan, because the one in the old mural was just an inaccurate depiction of how sand and dirt erode."
After a short pause, John added, "Here's a funny story, though: If you look over here," indicating the presence of a nearby fossil of a very easily identifiable plant, "they've actually found evidence that the primary ground plant life that grew during this time was hemp, vines, and hops. Hemp, of course, being cannabis."
He added, "Unfortunately, I didn't add any cannabis plants into my mural, but when we eventually go ahead and replace the old one with it, I'll definitely have to go back and add some in. The same paleobotonist we had analyze the old mural, who works at the Denver Museum of Natural History, theorizes that the tetrahydrocannabinol found in cannabis, its active ingredient, was actually a defense mechanism that was used to ward off herbivore dinosaurs."
The last exhibit we stopped by before departing from the second floor was that of Dunkleosteus. The exhibit, featured inside an average-sized glass box, is aptly described as a big fish head. "Dunkleosteus was a prehistoric fish that actually inhabited the present-day Great Lakes region. Its head was mostly made out of bone, but the rest of its body was composed of cartilage, like a shark, so all we have are Dunkleosteus heads, but no bodies, since cartilage doesn't preserve."
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| One of the illustrations of a Dunkleosteus body
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Returning to the fourth floor, and coming back full circle, the museum seemed to take on a new meaning for me. While dinosaurs died off nearly 65 million years ago, they are still very much alive today. What we see now are fragments of a puzzle, a kaleidoscope of possibilities of what could have been. While we may never have complete answers to questions such as the nature of Allosaurus' posture, whether or not Deinonychus had feathers, what kind of plant-life Edmontosaurus thrived off of, or what Dunkleosteus' body looked like, our ability to question and investigate the past is anything but extinct.
The larger question from which these smaller ones ultimately stem is, of course, how did we get here? It is a controversial question dating back to classical antiquity, whether it's attributed to some sort of Pantheon or the Socratic method. It's also a very apt question to ask in a natural history museum; after all, the death of the dinosaur ushered in the age of the mammal. Regardless of how one chooses to answer that question, and perhaps there is no answer, our attempts to understand this dynamic world in which we play a very key part have been shaped by two significant, and some say disparate forces behind basic human understanding: art and science.
After my exploration of the museum and learning about all of the fascinating work that goes on behind the scenes, it's become apparent that these two philosophies—art, embodying the subjective and ephemeral, and science, the so-called rational and objective approach to understanding our world—are very much connected.
After Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates, the oracle responded negatively. Socrates, interpreting the oracle's message as a riddle, set out to find any man who may be considered wiser than he. After questioning the men of Athens on their knowledge of virtue and beauty, he came to the conclusion that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, compose their music, or invent new creations, but a kind of instinct or inspiration.
While science and rationality help us establish important boundaries and guidelines for questioning the world around us, the truly revolutionary ideas seem to be borne from the creative panache of humankind, some sort of gift of inspiration and imagination with unknown origins, whether that be using 3-D prototyping to give a mastodon a leg or to paint amazing and innovative new representations of the past through the gift of artistry. Thus, it would seem these two forces are anything but diametrically opposed. They are, in a very real sense, highly interconnected.
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