“Inspire wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds.” – Mission statement, Los Angeles Natural History Museum.
With years of new research and discoveries and technological advancements in both exhibition and fossil preservation on its side, the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (NHM) opened the doors to their newly revamped, re-stocked Dinosaur Hall on July 16, 2011. The opening is part of what the Natural History Museum is referring to as NHM Next, a 7-year evolution to reinvent itself as a 21st Century Museum to deliver on its mission. The Hall took 2 long years of production and around 50 years of planning. At 14,000 square feet, it’s twice the size of its former self and is a permanent collection of over 300 fossils and 20 complete mounts of dinosaurs and sea creatures—that’s a lot of dinosaur!
Sometime after wanting to be an astronaut but before deciding I was really meant to be an MTV Veejay, I had my career hopes set in Paleontology, the study of prehistoric life. More specifically, I wanted to raid the land for dinosaur specimens; un-sheath their pre-historic fossilized remains from the earth’s crust and re-construct them; maybe even name a species after myself. Not long after I fruitlessly dug up almost an entire foot of dirt from the park that separated my residential street from the highway adjacent to the LAX, however, I concluded that I had missed the boat on dinosaur discovery and that if there really was a Caninoraptor, it had already been found and named something less awesome.
Learning about dinosaurs as elementary school students is something we all remember well into our adulthood. Our dinosaur lessons generally occur sometime after mom and dad reveal the great Santa Claus farce so part of it just seems too fantastical to be true. The concept of ‘millions of years ago’ and the sheer enormity of these super-sized terrestrial monsters— I mean, fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice... But then, as cautious young skeptics, we visit our nearby history museum.
first encounters
That monumental visit for me was to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (NHM) and it happened sometime circa 1987 when the dinosaur exhibit had but a few dinosaur skeletons mounted. Then, the collection was merely a small assemblage of casts and real fossils among which was a T.rex skull that was just that: a skull. As for mounts, there was the Carnotaurus (Carno-whaaaat??)
Par for the course among dinosaur exhibits in that era, the aim of the former dinosaur hall was to provide a showcase of a time way back when. Despite its lack of grandeur, the impact of my dinosaur field trip was incredible. I was in awe that could only be experienced upon seeing something really really old and really really huge. Yet I was left with the same feeling I had when I couldn’t find a single bone in the park across the street. All that’s cool about Dinosaurs seemed to have already been discovered.
forget what you ‘know’ about Dinosaurs
The newly revamped Dinosaur Hall invites you to take a closer look at the world that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. Vibrant murals provide a backdrop to a gang of skeleton mounts creating a vibe of what dinosaur life might have been like. Stepping into the hall bears an impact that I definitely don’t remember experiencing as a child at a time in which science was presented more or less as static information. Immediately upon entering, my frame of reference was invaded by a question that is clearly marked on the gallery wall: “What was their world like?” Cues such as these force the visitor into the mindset of the paleontologist whose job, in essence, is to do that very thing: ask questions and explore their answers. And there is no end to discovery in the 2 halls. Visual aids, both digital and analog, supply an endless wealth of information.
To inspire wonder is NHM’s gift. The exhibit’s thought-provoking properties are purely by design. It’s no coincidence that your journey through the Hall begins face-to-face with the never-before-displayed Triceratops, its massive horned-head leading the way as it appears to be bearing down on you. Its 25-foot long skeleton is displayed on a custom steel mount that wraps around every fossil piece like an orthodontic retainer. New technology has allowed for this method of mounting skeletons. With these new pliable devices, the dinosaurs can be re-positioned in a variety of ways, making them come alive on their barrier-free platforms.
The journey through the collection is accompanied by a generously informative spread of kiosks and digital interactive aids that urges sightseers to press on further into the meat of the subject matter. My museum companion—friend and NHM employee, Sr. Media Technician Chris Weisbart—walked me through the museum’s 2-year process of creating an exhibit that exploits technological advancements alongside the newest discoveries in paleontology, which were largely conducted by NHM’s own Dinosaur Institute. For him, the past couple of months have been a blur, spending 7 days a week helping the museum get ready to open the Hall. But if he was at all burned out, it was masked by an impenetrable layer of enthusiasm.
The 2-foot long Fruitadens haagarorum is the smallest dinosaur in the new Dinosaur Hall at L.A.’s Natural History museum. It stands just below the largest specimen of the exhibit, the Mamenchisaurus.
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brush off your old digging tools.
The exhibit aims to please the curious mind, emphasizing the subject and study of dinosaurs from an academic standpoint as well as just observational. Of course, it would seem to suffice just to be able to gawk at the restructured remains of our millions-of-years-extinct predecessors; to be able to get up so close without any barrier and to gaze up at an unobstructed view of the undercarriage of a T.rex, its neck stretched right over your head so you can stare up towards its gaping jaw. This all reflects the intentions of Dr. Luis Chappe, the exhibit’s curator, to bring visitors closer than ever to the real specimens.
But the real goal of the Dinosaur Hall is clear throughout the variety of multi-media displays, information boards, murals, preserved fossil bed displays, even the strategic assembly of the T.rex Growth Series. It is to inspire minds to seek out the world of scientific exploration. The NHM wants the public to not just say ‘woah, look at that’ but to ask questions: What is that? What was its world like? What did it eat? How did its species disappear? They know there is a whole world of could-be paleontolgists who may have given up on their backyard digs or perhaps succumbed to the doubt that there might be little left out there to explore. The Dinosaur Hall goes through great lengths to assure that there are a great number of new, exciting discoveries still in the making today. So far as we know today, there is still very much more to learn.
Art Director at Eat.Sleep.Work. and Editor-in-Chief of Solid Magazine. Unofficial 'Mayor of El Segundo', Chrissie hails from the South Bay and only like to leave Los Angeles if she's going somewhere tropical. Follow on Twitter @theChrissie
