EB News: Museum of Natural Sciences

A couple of weekends ago, Matthew and I decided to take advantage of the (free) Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. We headed over shortly after lunch and spent most of the afternoon wandering among the rocks, taxidermy foxes, and dinosaur skeletons. Everything at this museum focuses on the nature of North Carolina, so it was also a really great introduction to our new home. For example, I learned that it's the only state to produce emeralds and it used to be home to the only North American parrot (which went extinct in the early 20th century). It's a lot more traditional than the Museum of Life + Science (which I wrote about last week) but very well executed! Plus they've got a little trick up their sleeve... more on that later.

Matthew was very amused to learn that this 161 lb meteorite was used as an anvil until the museum purchased it in 1930.

They did a great job incorporating live animals into the exhibits!

Except this poor little turtle kept trying to swim to the other side of the plexiglass :(

We liked this model of a pelican catching a fish. Also, did you know that they can grab up to two gallons of water at a time?

That's a blue whale skeleton floating near the ceiling. Another crazy fact: baby blue whales gain about 200 lbs every day! Talk about a growth spurt!

This little shrimp dude was very comical.

Of course we visited the arthropods. These little guys gave me a great throwback to my childhood, when I used to keep them as pets.

Can you find the black widow?

There's a very helpful warning, if not.

They also had camel crickets, which gave me a less pleasant throwback to my childhood.

The butterfly house was wonderful! In addition to the butterflies and tropical plants, they had some tortoises, a tarantula (housed in its own tank of course) and a sloth! However, I wasn't able to get a good picture of any of the other residents, so you'll just have to imagine them.

The museum also featured a special exhibit highlighting lots of superstar women in science. It was awesome reading their stories-- although I was shocked (though maybe not surprised) to learn that when Florence Bascom became the first woman to receive a doctorate from Johns Hopkins, she had to sit behind a screen during classes "so as not to distract the male students".

All right... here's the surprise I was teasing earlier. As it turns out, the Museum of Natural Science also owns a building dedicated to lab space. This is available to a wide variety of research teams-- with one little catch. That's that they do their work behind a glass wall and that they spend a certain amount of time talking with visitors and explaining the work they do. It's a great way to showcase science in progress, in contrast to the confidently labeled displays across the street. We spent a while wandering around and I was thrilled with what I saw.

We crossed over via a bridge.

The lab space is behind the glass wall, and there are beautiful exhibits in the hallway space highlighting the research groups. I actually met with the lab director of this research group earlier this week; her work focuses on "citizen science", or crowdsourcing research to collect better data and engage the public. One of her most well-known projects studied the microbes in our armpits, using swabs collected from volunteers. Another, which she's working on now, looks at the microbes present in a variety of fermented foods.

These little guys were on display in front of a lab that works with DNA. They're customized fish that glow. Weird.

I have to say, this astronomy lab is a lot nicer than any I've ever seen. (They're typically just a desk and computer.)

We were highly entertained to find John Mather looking like a secret agent in this James Webb Space Telescope group photo.

Here's a display on biodiversity.

I loved this-- here are two frogs who look absolutely identical, even to experts. Yet they're entirely different species; one even has twice as much DNA as the other!

And here's a great example of the subtleties scientists have to face as they classify organisms. All of these milk snakes are different varieties and have wildly varying appearances-- but they're actually the same species!

Matthew with his buddy, the T-rex. "I feel like such a basic dinosaur enthusiast," he confesses. "Everyone's favorite dinosaur is the t-rex." Truly one of the greatest tragedies of our time.

Speaking of dinosaurs, this is the only Acrocanthosaurus on display! Researchers were able to use fossilized footprints to recreate its attack on a Brontosaurus (below).