natural history

flickr thanks: jeanseyes

This Saturday, I finally took a trip to the American Museum of Natural History. I spent many minutes staring at the animal exhibits (especially some of the amazing horned-mammal displays), but the evolution-themed halls were the highlight of my trip. Walking through the halls was like striding through the phases of animalian history – the exhibits were set up to guide museum visitors from the development of basic vertebrae through the introduction of higher-level developments. My trip through evolution started in the Saurian times. An amazing T-Rex skeleton was posed next to an educational display discussing an old paleontological debate about whether T-Rex’s stood upright or leaned forward with their tail off the ground for balance. I think they leaned forward. Life feels much more awesome when you walk that way, snout forward and scanning for prey. I’m sure that’s how they would have chosen to evolve.

Next to the T-Rex was a tremendous Brachiosaurus skeleton. I don’t think that I could survive in the face of an angry Brachiosaurus. But it was amazing nonetheless to conjecture about what dinosaurian life may have been like.

In the next halls, there were mammoths, sabretooths, and other ancestral mammals. But what really stunned me were the giant ground sloth skeletons. I didn’t know anything about ground sloths – but I could see before me that they must have been imposing beasts. If I could have an animalian guardian, they for sure would be among my top three choices. There are very few animals as cool as dinosaurs – ground sloths and hippopotami are among the few.

Of course, we visited many other exhibits that day. I felt like for an afternoon I left the industrial, parochial sliver of life that is New York City. I felt like I took a stroll through the expanse of all time and space. I loved it!