Traveling Trilobites...

Truby the Trilobite (Travis' cousin from Trumansburg) traveled to Maine with
Paula Mikkelsen to visit Paula's mother on her 93rd birthday. While there,
Truby met several of her distant cousins (the Lobster sisters), and admired
the Maine state tree, the White Pine. Next, Truby and
Paula will travel to the Isle of Shoals off the coast of Maine, where Paula
will help teach Marine Biodiversity at Shoals Marine Lab. More adventures to
come...



Truby with the Lobster sisters!

Truby with the Maine state tree - the White Pine!

Do you have your 2009 Ithaca Fest button?

You do -- great!!! You get $1 off admission today, May 30 and tomorrow, May 31 at the Museum of the Earth! We're open 'til 5 both days!

We hope to see you there!

Life's candy and the suns a ball of butter...

Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade!

There were clouds, but no rain for this years Ithaca Festival parade!

Every year the Museum of the Earth takes part in this community wide initiative. It's a wonderful way to connect with our friends and make new ones in our community. The Ithaca Festival takes place today, Friday, May 29 and concludes on Sunday, May 31. If you are near by, come join in the festivities. If you have an Ithaca Festival button you get $1 off admission to Museum of the Earth on May 29, 30 and 31!

Our float this year was themed around our summer exhibition, A Forest Journey, which opens on June 2oth. Our cracker jack exhibits team created a really great float that had a 6 foot tall tree as its center piece. The folks in our education department made the costumes which consisted of trees, an acorn, a rabbit, and a squirrel. We even had some volunteers that created their own costumes. What do you think of that bird? :)

Like everything we do, it's a team effort!



Here we are in action:



Here are some short videos:

Fossil of the Week

Petrified wood is a type of fossil. Coming from the Greek word petro meaning “rock” or “stone,” therefore “petrified wood” literally means “wood turned to stone.”

Imagine a forest long ago: A tree gets knocked down and washed into a watery environment, such as a swamp. The wood becomes saturated, filling all the cells and holes between them with water. Meanwhile, the wood is becoming buried under mud, silt, ash or even other plants. The water absorbed in the wood contains dissolved minerals such as silica. The dissolved minerals begin to precipitate into crystals, like quartz. What is left buried in sedimentary rocks, in the detailed shape of the tree is what we know as “petrified wood.”

This process, called petrifaction, can preserve much of the original detail of the wood. Tree rings, wood grain, and even the original cell structure can often be seen in samples of petrified wood.

Text by Sarah Chicone and Eric Chapman

Right Whale #2030

Many of you who have visited the Museum of the Earth have stood underneath Right Whale #2030, have looked up at its soaring skeleton, and like me have read and re-read this whales amazing story. Today, The New York Times has a great audio segment on the Right Whale. There are some great photos with audio by Cornelia Dean.

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Multimedia from NYTimes.com:

A Slow Comeback for the Right Whale
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/17/science/20090317-whale-audioss/index.html

Cornelia Dean describes how conservationists are working to sustain and increase North Atlantic right whale populations.

Who We Are - Alicia Reynolds

Alicia is the Director of Museum Operations at the Museum of the Earth. Her job is to oversee everything that goes on within the Museum walls -- She does facility rentals, helps our Exhibits department install and tear down exhibits, she works to ensure that every visitor to the Museum has a fantastic time, and countless other things that no one ever sees! Meet Alicia:

Did You Know?

Did you know that the Museum is on Twitter and Facebook?

Are you following The California Academy of Sciences, the Whale from the American Museum of Natural History, or even the Sam Noble Museum in Oklahoma? If so, why not follow Cecil, the Museum of the Earth mascot!

Cecil will help to keep you informed about upcoming events at the Museum, interesting news items, and share some of his witty observations from his days spent standing guard in the Museum plaza!

We can be found here: CecilAtMotE!

Are you on Facebook? Consider becoming a fan of the Museum of the Earth: Click here! You will find events, photos, videos, and much more!

Fossil of the Week

Horsetails (also known as bottle or scouring rushes) are a group of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. They date back to the Late Devonian (375 million years ago); only one genus (Equisetum) survives today. Their presence in the fossil record indicates a humid to wet habitat such as along rivers and lakes.The stems of horsetails are hollow, distinctively segmented and bamboo-like in appearance, and are adorned with vertical ribs. The branches and leaves are borne in whorls attached to the stem at nodes. The leaves can be borne directly on the stem or on delicate side branches identical in structure to the main stem. Fossil horsetails, unlike their modern cousins, were medium-sized trees, growing to more than 30 meters (100 feet) in height. They were common components of coal swamps of the Carboniferous Period.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen, Photo courtesy J. Casciano

Lights, Camera, Action...

Museum of the Earth played host to a film crew from Cornell University's CyberTower series.

CyberTower is a series of on-demand videos featuring lecturers from Cornell University. These videos are free and available to anyone with an internet connection.

Today's shoot was being led by Allen MacNeil, Senior Lecturer at Cornell University on the topic of evolution and Charles Darwin. Here is a photo from today's shoot:



(From the right, Dr. Warren Allmon and Allen MacNeil.)

Did you know?

Seismology @ PRI

An earthquake sends waves of energy through the earth. There are two types of waves: body waves and surface waves. Body waves travel through the earth and surface waves travel along the surface of the earth. The waves are picked up by special sensors called seismometers. PRI has seismometers located on a concrete pier in our Seismology Room. The motion created by the Earth’s waves moves a magnet over a coil. As the magnet moves back and forth over the coil, the coil generates a voltage. Each time the magnet swings one direction and then reverses, the voltage reverses. The voltage pattern created is sent to the seismograph as an electrical signal. The signal causes the pen to move back and forth. The motion of the pen on the paper is the same pattern as the waves sensed by the seismometer.

We are able to track earthquakes in real time. Below is the readout of the seismic activity from Sunday, May 17th. On Sunday evening there was an earth earthquake that struck Los Angeles, California. It was a 4.7 on the Richter Scale and is represented in the black box on the image below.

Primate Fossil Could be Key Link in Evolution - ABC News

Primate Fossil Could Be Key Link in Evolution - ABC News

Source: abcnews.go.com

Scientists report a primate fossil from Germany may be an important link in understanding the evolution of human beings as they separated from early primates. It has opposable thumbs and fingernails like modern humans, and may have stood on its hind legs.

Who We Are - Samantha Sands

Samantha is a geologist and museum educator who has explored rocks, fossils, and museums all over the United States. She received her Bachelors from the University of Michigan where she studied environmental geology.

Samantha arrived at Museum of the Earth in July 2006 after completing her Masters work in Colorado. She is primarily responsible for developing and organizing a variety of educational programs for the public at the Museum as well as off-site locations.

Meet Samantha:

Fossilized Jelly Fish -- Part II

Here's a couple photos from our delivery of Cambrian fossils!
Visit us on Facebook to see more photos from our delivery!

Fossilized Jellyfish...

Today, Whitey Hagadorn, PhD from Amherst College donated part of his research collection to PRI. Whitey is interested in various aspects of Neoproterozoic-Cambrian paleontology, and in noninvasive 3D visualization of matrix-encased fossils. Many of the specimens he donated are full of fossilized jelly fish. It's really cool! Meet Dr. Hagadorn:

Fossil of the Week

Ammonites are extinct shelled cephalopods (today including octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and the Chambered Nautilus). Like the Nautilus, they have chambered shells (the specimen pictured here has been cut in half to reveal the chambers). In life, each of the chambers was filled with gas - together the gas-filled chambers allowed the ammonite to control its buoyancy as it swam in the ocean depths. The animal would have lived in the largest chamber that opened to the outside at the "mouth" or aperture of the shell. Interestingly, the closest living relative of ammonites is probably not the living Nautilus (which they outwardly resemble), but rather the rest of the cephalpods, that is, members of the subclass Coleoidea (octopus, squid, and cuttlefish). Ammonites were especially abundant during the Mesozoic Era, and went extinct in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary mass extinction, along with the dinosaurs.

Text by Paula Mikkelsen, Photo courtesy J. Casciano

Sculpting Human History...

John Gurche is one of the best-known paleo-artists working today. His work is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution,The American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum, and has been featured in ten issues of National Geographic, including three covers. He was chosen by Steven Spielberg to work on the film “Jurassic Park,” his work has appeared on four U.S. postage stamps, and has won many awards, including a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators. Did you also know that John Gurche is the Artist-in-Residence at PRI and its Museum of the Earth?

He is, and for the past several months John has been working on his latest project in a special studio in the lobby of Museum of the Earth in Ithaca and out of his private studio in Trumansburg, NY. He was commissioned by The Smithsonian Institution to create a series of hominids that will be cast in bronze for permanent exhibition.

John is working on creating a female Homo erectus, a male Homo heidelbergensis, and a female Homo neanderthalensis at his studio at Museum of the Earth. He's also working on two other specimens at his home studio, most notably Homo floresiensis which is often referred to as a "Hobbit." If you're interested in learning more about the "Hobbit" there was a great article in the New York Times: Click here to read it!

If you would like to learn more about these works or John's process, he will be giving a lecture on Friday, May 15th beginning at 6 pm. For more information on John's lecture visit us on the web at museumoftheearth.org.

Here's a sneak peak at John's home studio where he's working on the "Hobbit!"

John at work!

The face of our not so distant ancestors...

Travis the Traveling Trilobite...

Director of Public Programs, Samantha Sands, took Travis the Traveling Trilobite to his first conference, the American Association of Museums conference in Philadelphia. Follow along on his travels...



At the MuseumExpo I entered for a chance to win a Diamond! I really wanted to make a ring but I don’t have any fingers.



I sat on a cast of a T-rex femur. Dinosaurs were so much bigger than trilobites!




Wow! I thought I would be the farthest traveling fossil at the conference but this dinosaur skeleton traveled from South Dakota.




We went to the American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin.




At the APS we saw an exhibit called “Dialogs with Darwin.” It was really neat!





I ate a cheesesteak at the Reading Terminal Market. It went straight to my thighs!








Can’t visit Philadelphia without a stop at the Liberty Bell. It’s much smaller than I expected.





Independence Hall. So much history here!



I really wanted to sit in the Rising Sun chair, where George Washington sat when he presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787.



Next stop...Oklahoma!

Who We Are: Dr. Paula Mikkelsen

Dr. Paula Mikkelsen is the Associate Director for Science at PRI, and has over 25 years experience as an author, editor, and research scientist. She also manages the publication of our scholarly journals (Bulletins of American Paleontology, Paleontographica Americana), special publications, and our quarterly membership magazine, American Paleontologist. She is a malacologist, conducting her own research on the systematics and diversity of living and fossil marine mollusks, known collectively as "seashells." She specializes in two groups: shelled opisthobranch "bubble" snails, and bivalves, including clams, scallops, mussels, and oysters. See her latest research on Bivalve Evolution at BivAToL. Meet Paula:

Travis the Traveling Trilobite visits Washington, D.C.

Hello from Washington, DC. My first stop is here at the Capitol!

Where’s President Obama?

I’m glad it was a rainy day. I usually live in the sea, so I felt right at home with all of the water. Here I am walking to the Washington Monument.

Staring up at the Monument!

Hmmm…the National Museum of Natural History.

Friends inside the Museum!

That’s when all trilobites but me went extinct. Sigh…

Ack! Dinosaur with big teeth!

Dinosaurs are scary.

Oooh…Stegosaurus! It ate plants, so this dinosaur is not scary.

Off to the Air & Space Museum.

The actual Wright Flyer…wow!

Missiles for nuclear weapons. Humans confuse me sometimes.

John Glenn’s Mercury capsule. Cool!

And, to end my day in DC, I got to touch a piece of the Moon.

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Many thanks to Richard Kissel, Director of Teacher Programs at PRI and its Museum of the Earth for his help in taking Travis on his travels! If you would like your very own trilobite be sure to visit the Museum of the Earth's gift shop on your next visit...