New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

      This post has been a while coming (I visited it all the way back in February!), but I'm excited to finally present my review of Albuquerque's New Mexico Museum of Natural History!!! I've had the photos on my computer for months now, but this blog post kept falling by the wayside for one reason or another. Which is a travesty, because I have to say, this is probably one of my all time favorite museums that I have ever visited! I have quite a few photos to go through, so for organization's sake I'll stick to highlights in this post and then maybe put up pictures of interesting specifics in a later post.

     The front of the museum is graced by these two beauties squaring off against each other: a generic albertosaurine tyrannosaur and a Pentaceratops, both metal sculptures by Dave Thomas. Both depict dinosaurs known from New Mexico. The albertosaur has since been more precisely identified, and is now known as Bistahieversor, or the "Bisti Beast".

"Alberta", the tyrannosaurid

"Spike", the Pentaceratops

     Walking inside the museum, the first thing you see is this nice Coelophysis sculpture next to the admission desk. I would've looked very poorly on the museum had this little guy not been featured in some fashion, as it's the star of perhaps the most famous paleontological find in all New Mexico! A quarry at Ghost Ranch has yielded hundreds upon hundreds of specimens all tangled together a mass grave. While they appear to have died in a flooding event, a sense of mystery still hangs over the site, as nobody can satisfactorily explain why so many individuals of a single species clustered together so densely. One would expect to find equal proportions of other animals from the area, such as lizards, mammals, and other such things, but it's just Coelophysis all the way down.

I can't find a credit, so I assume Dave Thomas also sculpted this.

This block full of Coelophysis appears further inside the museum, but I thought I'd include it here for reference.

     As you walk into the main space of the museum, you come across Stan the T-rex on your left. "Stan" is a very well-preserved specimen (surpassed only by "Sue") discovered by the Black Hills Institute which has been molded, copied, and sold to many museum worldwide. If that T-rex skeleton you're looking at isn't made of real bone, chances are it's a cast of Stan. It was nice to run into him here! I'm not sure if I'm crazy about that pose though; it looks like he's scrambling to get onto his feet after you surprised him from a nap.

"Just gimme a sec! If only I could do a proper push-up..."

     The rest of the downstairs consists mostly of boring non-dinosaur stuff, so upstairs we go! I really, really appreciated and enjoyed the set-up of the paleontology exhibits. It's arranged as a sort of "walk through time" display, with each major section numbered so you know which direction to go, starting with the beginning of the earth on through the Paleozoic. Highlights here include the phytosaur vs dicynodont mount.

Or Not-a-croc vs Not-a-pig, if you prefer.

     I was thinking of saving this for the future odds & ends post, but I love comparitive anatomy exhibits so much that I just had to share this Wall of Phytosaurs as one of the chief highlights of the Paleozoic section. These sorts of displays really help to emphasize the diversity of life on earth, and to drive home the idea that maybe similar looking creatures aren't necessarily so same-y after all. How does a phytosaur differ from a crocodile you (probably didn't) ask? Well, if I were going to boil it down to a single layperson-friendly feature, you can see here that the nostrils sit above the eyes on the forehead in a whale-like fashion, as opposed to the tip of the snout as in modern crocs.

(Not A) Croc Cabinet

     Now on to the dinosaurs! The next leg of the museum's "walk through time" takes us to the Jurassic Period, with two of its largest residents taking center stage. The starts are the skeletal mounts of a Saurophaganax chasing down an enormous sauropod once known and here labeled as Seismosaurus halli, though it has since been referred to another genus, becoming instead Diplodocus hallorum. D. hallorum was once hailed as the longest dinosaur of all time, though it has since ceded that title to Supersaurus. Incidentally, the titles of longest, tallest and heaviest dinosaur are each individually held by completely separate dinosaurs, so if you ever hear somebody simply refer to "the biggest" dinosaur, make sure to pay attention to which measurement they're actually talking about. Saurophaganax is a bit easier, as there don't appear to have been any Jurassic meat eaters that approached in scale by any measurement (though it's still plenty smaller than "Seismosaurus"!). You can just see a Stegosaurus on the right, but I'll save that for a later post.

Someone's bitting off more than he can chew...

     If I may draw your attention to the mural behind the skeleton, I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that it was painted by none other than famed paleoartist Ely Kish. She's not my favorite paleoartist, but she's still pretty handy with a brush, and it was fun seeing it in person.
     To the left of this hall's main attraction stood this massive Brachiosaurus forelimb. It was conveniently placed so that one can stand next to it for a picture, which I did of course. Fun fact! Brachiosaurus means "arm-lizard", in reference to the fact that it's forelimbs are much longer than it hindlimbs, in a reversal of the usual dinosaur body plan, giving the creature's body a distinct sloping back.

It's always arm day with Brachiosarus

     Next up on our walk through time, we come to the Cretaceous seashore, represented by this lovely atrium and wonderful diorama. There forested area houses several dinosaur models hiding amongst the shrubs, and opposite in the "water" sits a mosasaur, a hesperornith (a prehistoric diving bird) and some ammonites swimming alongside each other. It's fun exploring the area to see what you can find! I found the skeleton of the "Bisti Beast" in here, though I forgot to take a picture. There's also a little tidepool exhibit with some live critters inside which they presumably open up for field trips to play with.

A little "cave" on the left lets you look up trough a burrow into the diroama

Just "offshore" lurks a mosasaur, looking to snag the real chicken of the sea

     The paucity of prehistoric mammals and other Cenezoic creatures was the only part of the walk through time that I felt was somewhat lacking, though I did appreciate seeing a mammoth right next to a mastodon skull so you could easily compare them (hint: it's all about the teeth). Comparative anatomy for the win again! I am very unhappy however to discover that I somehow forgot to take pictures of a lovely Gastornis skeleton and a nice mural of the various stages of horse evolution. Oh well! Perhaps next time.

Mammoth and Mastodon skulls, for comparison. The Mastodon had its tusks removed to save space.

A sabertooth cat menaces the poor pachyderms.

     That's all for now! The museum contains tons of smaller specimens which I didn't cover here, as well as several whole non-paleontology themed areas I didn't even have time to visit. I'll write up another blog post soon to cover the stuff I did take pictures of later.
     If you're ever in Albuquerque, NM, be sure to stop by the natural history museum! It's well worth your time, and easily one of the best museums I've been to so far. (Extra points for having the single best-stocked gift shop I've ever seen in my life!) I'm sure there's plenty I missed; was on a tight time schedule on my last visit and had to cut my visit shorter than I would have liked. I really hope I get the chance to go back myself someday!