Indiana State Museum

Image: wikipedia- by Nick81aku

If you were to visit Indianapolis with fossils on your mind, you’d likely find yourself at the Children’s Museum (and I will get to that in another post); but there is another museum in the city that you should not miss.

Though the Indiana State Museum does not get the press of its (not so local) neighbour, it should…or maybe I should say it will as some of its paleo displays are currently undergoing an upgrade and when completed will be amazing. Though these displays are still months from competition, I was lucky enough to get an early bird look, but more about this later.

The collection itself dates back to the American Civil War, and for a short time it was housed in the state capital, before growing and changing locations a number of times until it found a home in its new, state of the art building in 2002.

The building itself is in the White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis, and is located near the Indianapolis Zoo, White River Gardens and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.

I had been in contact with the museum before I arrived and showed up and met the newly appointed Director of Communication, Hannah Keifer. She had a surprise for us, our own chaperon for the paleo side of the museum, the curator of palaeontology Ronald L. Richards, who was a total delight and a gentleman.

Our first stop was visiting the under construction displays of the Ice Age and Prehistoric Native America, and though there is still a few months of work to be done, the exhibition is already looking great and will be a real highlight of any visit.

Though no dinosaurs have been found in the state, there is a wealth of Ice Age animals, especially mastodons. This gallery will be fantastic and many of the specimens are already in place. It is like an Ice Age Greatest Hits with giant bison, smilodon, Short Face Bears, peccaries, rhinos, giant sloths and of course a number of locally found mastodons.

The star of the museum will be Fred the Mastodon, and how do I know Fred the Mastodon will be the star you ask? Because good ol’ Fred has his own twitter account (@FredIndiana).

 The specimen went through a very unusual (but clever) way of fundraising the new renovations by selling off Fred’s bones. People could purchase (sponsor) a bone from $20, or the skull for $20,000, and the money raised went to building the display.Much like Sue the T.rex, Fred’s organically wrought iron frame has been intricately designed, so I am looking forward to seeing images when the mastodon is finally put back together.

Ron showed us Fred, who partly was under wraps (literally) and partly dissembled on tables all about the room, and he pointed out some pathologies on the side of the skull. I also noted that, unlike almost all dinosaur skeletons you see mounted, between the vertebra of Fred were large disks of cartilage, meaning once rebuilt it will be one of the most life-like mounts you will see.Rarely do you get the opportunity to get this close to such a specimen….so I took it.

One of the completed displays we got a peek at was a life-size mammoth that had fallen into a frozen pond and is struggling to escape. Apparently, this was a necessary rebuild of an older display as the original version made the mammoth look like it was sitting in a jacuzzi, and was a source of great mirth with visitors.

The mural behind is first class, and hidden throughout the wild-scape are a number of other critters that the eagle-eyed amongst you may spot.The museum will also display the Hebior Mammoth, a rarity as this specimen was unearthed with clear signs of being butchered by Paleo-Indians. I assume this is a cast as I am pretty sure the original is at the Milwaukee Public Museum – which I will cover in a later article…

…and the hits kept coming. Ron showed us through another section of the display and revealed a new cave system that has been built for visitors to walk through.

The quality of this display is extraordinarily high, and so exact that the builders actually took molds of the original cave, so the build is an exact replica. The fossils that the crew from the museum had found while working this geological formation are to be placed in the exact location where they were unearthed - and most of these were already there for you to peer at through fissures in the rock.Ron recounted he had worked these caves with a good friend who had died, so he was taking real pride and joy building these displays as close to the original location as he could. This effort shines through and is important for another reason. Sadly, part of the cave is gone now as it sits under one of the states highways, yet here, in the Indiana State Museum, it’s been recreated for all too see.

Leaving these caves, you enter a tunnel running through a glacier, representing the Ice that once stood over the state, and standing about this are the creatures they have evidence that once lived there, such as musk ox, and its accurate down the plants.As I mentioned, though there have never been any dinosaurs found in the state, Indiana has a rich fossil history, and the next section Ron led us to was the Palaeozoic.   

Soaring above and surrounding the display of crinoids, corals, amphibian trackways, ferns and Lepidodendron trunks are columns and walls cut from the very rocks that make up the region, creating one of the more interesting geological displays I have seen.

As this museum has several floors, it is possible to get above this display and look down on how stones like these were mined and moved, and its this sort of clever use of space that I really enjoy. Why use a exhibition for one educational purpose when it can represent a number of ideas and facts.

Swimming above your head as you walk between these geological columns are some of the life-size monsters that once populated Indiana’s ancient seas. A clawed Eurypterids is diving, while behind an enormous nautoloid, maybe 10ft long, is jetting around the corner into the display. As you come around one corner is the largest predator of the Devonian seas, Dunkleosteus, built into one of the more ingenious displays I have seen in any museum. The metal structure that holds the considerable skull in place has been bent and forged into the body of the placoderm, giving an effective idea of the animal’s size and body shape when alive.

With the museum mostly covered, Ron still had something special for us. On the top floor is a long corridor that leads from the museum to the office and storage area of the collection. Here our ‘guide’ showed us some of the specimens being stored until they can go into the new displays, as well as the work areas for processing new specimens.
The Museum runs its own digs and spends time sorting through the fossil material and dirt brought back from various locations throughout the state. This includes the art work that has been produced for the exhibit, including some wonderful pieces from famous paleo artists such as Karen Carr.

Checking up on Karen’s website, it notes that the “Indiana Teleoceras mural gave Karen two new opportunities: First, she was able to visit the actual site depicted in the mural. When researching dinosaurs, almost nothing of the original environment remains other than as strata; the depression that created this small pond was still visible when Karen visited. Karen has since worked on several projects allowing her to see and explore the environments she depicts.”

Room after room we got to see some spectacular specimens, some for display, others that have been taken out and stored for future use.  

Amongst one of the largest stuffed bird collections I have ever seen, the museum stores the various mammoth and mastodon remains collected over the years. 

This includes one of the most handsome skulls I have seen anywhere. The colour is spectacular, and what I took to be possible marks from where plant roots had grown through the dirt and covered the fossil Ron suggested were more likely the stains from different minerals that filtered through the earth.

One of my favourite specimens here (that I believe will be heading back out soon) is a complete Dire Wolf skeleton. What’s unusual about this specimen is that at some point the rear left leg had been dislocated, and the wear on the hip bone shows it was an old injury, meaning the predator must have been in pain for some time before its death.

The museum also has a large archaeological collection, and amongst the small, hand crafted clay figurines lay some remarkable fossil bear teeth that had been modified by paleo-indians that Ron proudly showed off - and rightly so as they are stunning.

We thanked Ron for being so generous with his time, and I ducked away to check out the rest of the museum. There is a second geology/earth/universe display (Birth of the Earth), containing ancient specimens such as tiger iron from Western Australia and a 3D global screen of the Moon.

Next was a recently renovated and opened display about the states modern wildlife. These were exceptionally well crafted, and I was surprised to see that among all this, there was a single animatronic (or perhaps some sort of solar powered display) of a small butterfly that flapped its wings as it sat high on a fallen tree. A nice little feature that most would likely miss unless you were looking hard.

 Coming from a small museum, where we constantly struggle for space, one thing that really struck me was the size of this museum and the luxury they have for displays. This is not a crowded museum, instead you get to walk around from gallery to gallery, floor to floor – often with sky bridges connecting one area to another - and it gives a real sense you were exploring the location.

In these you will find exhibits about the nation’s 19^th state, local industries, politics and heritage; local artists and what it means to be a Hoosier, if I Hooiser you may be. There is also an IMAX cinema attached to the building and, at the time, a crazy little exhibit on Star Wars masks that had been modified by artists.

 I liked the museum a lot, and will hopefully get back there when the new display is finished, and I can see the final product.

The Indiana State Museum is located at 650 W. Washington Street in Indianapolis. Exhibition gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The first Tuesday of each month (Community Tuesdays) admission is half price. Auxiliary aids and services are available with advance notice. For more information, call the museum at 317.232.1637.

Hints:

It has underground parking, which it shares with other nearby institutions. This means you can walk straight into the museum and duck rain or chilly days. 

A parade of elephants (the Fossil Freeway -pt1)

When you think of natural history and dinosaur museums, Nebraska is likely one of those places that doesn’t immediately spring to mind. Surrounded as it is by some of the richest fossil bearing lands on the planet (South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas for example), it’s easy to see how Nebraska has, if not been overlooked in paleo-circles, at least overshadowed. The tragedy is, if the state was located in any other country it would be considered a national treasure as boy, does it have some great stuff.

Flying into Kansas, we were headed for the Black Hills in South Dakota and the shortest route would have been directly north through Nebraska to either Sioux City or Sioux Falls, and along this path is the university town of Lincoln. We, however, chose to visit Lincoln then drive west towards Wyoming on interstate 80. The 80 was built along the former Great Platte River Road, itself the convergence point for many of the most famous old west migration paths like the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails- as well as a primary Pony Express route- so it’s a journey steeped in history. Passing Ogallala, we intend to take a right and head north to the Black Hills along what’s being called the Fossil Freeway. Between Interstate 80 and 90 (in South Dakota) there’s a windy path you can follow with a number of fossil sites, museums and tourist stops along the way (basically follow Highway 71, 28, then back onto 71)…and we’ll be visiting some of these in later posts.

With Nebraska’s state government and the University of Nebraska located in Lincoln you’d expect a few local museums, but the University of Nebraska State Museum was a real eye opener.  Founded in 1871 and located today within Morrill Hall on campus grounds, along with a decent planetarium (WARNING- the planetarium, and I’m not sure if this goes for the entire museum, is closed during the University football teams home games, so keep that in mind when planning a visit) and the usual zoological galleries with mounted US animals within their natural environments, for a paleo-fan the reason for visiting the museum is the Elephant Hall.

From the museums service desk you catch a glimpse of what this hall has to offer, but once you pass through the arched entry (it being far too large and grand to be called a simple doorway), you enter a true gem. Long and corridor-like, the vaulted, maybe 50ft ceiling should dwarf the creatures on display, and perhaps if the room only had two or three specimens this would be the case, but lining both sides of this spectacular hall are two lines of elephant skeletons covering the majority of pachyderm evolution.

Amongst the recessed alcoves containing mastodons, platybelodons, stegomastodons and gomphotheres is one of the world’s largest mammoth skeletons. The beast is huge, and though rumours are there's a new, even larger mammoth about to go on display somewhere else, for now this guy is the biggest. In comparison, standing next to the 14ft bull Imperial mammoth is a tapir-sized Dwarf mammoth (pictured above). The difference between the two is startling, I mean the dwarf would be tiny for a baby, but this specimen was fully grown and is about the size of a single foot of the behemoth towering over it.

The hall also contains a display of modern elephants, but these are almost invisible thanks to the life-size mural covering the far wall of the hall that continually draws your gaze away. Painted by local artist, Mark Marcuson, this mural depicts a herd of Imperial mammoths (in the process of shredding their winter coats) crossing the Platte river, and is one of the best of its kind I have ever seen. I could have spent all my time in this hall, changing angles and humming the ‘baby elephant walk’ tune from that John Wayne movie, to the annoyance of all I’m sure, but there was more to see.

In the main corridor I spotted something that would become more common as we passed through this part of the US, a sign pointing downstairs to the Hall of Nebraskan wildlife and the buildings tornado shelter. Its weird how something so simple can make you feel like an alien in a very strange land- especially one of such extremes.

Through yet another arch you can see a large frill, and next thing you knew you’re standing before a very impressive Chasmosaurus. Marcuson is a talented guy and proves it once again here with his Cretaceous mural behind the ceratopsian. The other wall of this small room recreates a section of the Great Plains stretching far off to the horizon, with a Triceratops skull (I think) weathering out of an overhang. The display has been created as though a paleo-team has just taken a break for tea and biscuits (that’s what Americans like isn’t it?) and they’ll be back shortly to complete their excavations.

Though there technically isn’t a lot here, you’ll find yourself none-too concerned as the dynamic chasmosaur; his frill poised at an angle as though challenging you, the visitor to his domain, looks magnificent in front of its mural. Another thing I really liked was the museums lighting here. Too many institutions throw strong light at their displays, often blinding their visitors (and making it near impossible to get a decent picture), and so much light often gives the sense of sanitation- like a hospital. The warm, mood lighting in these displays I found was just right. Enough to illuminate the specimen and get about safely, but not too much that you felt on display yourself.

Around the corner visitors enter the Niobrara Sea. With limited room the curators have been clever and placed many of their fossils in the floor under durable Plexiglas. The largest of these is the 20ft long, snake-like head and neck of the plesiosaur, Thalassomedon, whose 62 depressed, illuminated vertebra you walk along as you move further into the room. Along the wall above Thalassomedon is a 30ft mosasaur called Tylosaurus, unearthed by Charles F. Sternberg, which dwarfs the equally impressive fish, Xiphactinus. I really like the way all these fossils are displayed, especially the ones underfoot and the others that have been pushed into the wall, making the place feel hand crafted and a little like Luke Skywalkers home on Tatooine.

Another impressive item in this room is a mosasaur skull belonging too M. missouriensis, which possesses the teeth marks from the mosasaur that killed it. From here you exit the room and pass though a display of early Palaeozoic life, like the Cambrian and Ediacaran, before emerging once more in the main corridor- and probably means I travelled through these galleries the wrong way.

The rest of this floor has smaller, less spectacular fossil displays, with two rooms containing local fossils. The first has a large paleo-camel (Titanotylopus or
Camelops I believe) and a number of marine fossils like ichthyosaurs, crocodiles and turtles.

The second mirrors the Elephant Hall, though on a far smaller scale. Laid out in a similar way, again the two longest walls contain rows of fossils, with one showing the evolutionary progress of horses and the other of rhinos. Clever, creative, and through no fault of its own, a little underwhelming as you enter the room through the fantastic Elephant Hall.

The main corridor linking all these galleries is another matter entirely as here you find the fossil mammals you’d expect to see in an American museum like glyptodonts, giant sloths and brontotheres. All are great, but what really caught my eye was the museums enormous entelodont. These killer hogs are a favourite of mine, and this specimen is impressive- I mean I'm not a small guy but this beast’s shoulders were as high as my own, and that head, that giant, toothy head, was easily as big as a hippos.

The third floor contains the recently refurbished Native American gallery and the display ‘First Peoples of the Plains: Traditions Shaped by Land & Sky’- along with a small gallery on the process of evolution. The strangest exhibit the floor (and the museum for that matter) contains, however, is the Jurassic dinosaur room.

The exhibits Allosaurus, which they claim was ‘one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs of North America’ (now I like Allosaurus, but lets be fair here, almost every tyrannosaur was larger), retains the classic ‘kangaroo-stance’, with its tail dragging along the ground. There is a paragraph of scripting explaining how our views on dinosaurs mobility has changed thanks, in part, to the study of dinosaur footprints, and goes on to explain that, though the skeleton retains the old pose, the ‘reconstructed allosaur model (next to it) is closer to the new pose’.

The thing is, it really isn’t. I think someone has tried to salvage the situation of having their dinosaurs in the wrong pose, not by actually (and expensively) reposing them but simply by writing they have done this on purpose in their scripting.

The room also contains a Stegosaurus that, peculiar for this museum, was not very well lit- especially if it’s real (or partly real), which I suspect it is. I think the museum had originally planned to highlight these dinosaurs by putting their darker forms in front of a white wall, making their features easier to see. Personally I don’t think it works as the room has a real gloomy feel and seems to emotionally push you out of the gallery as quickly as you enter. The few people sharing the museum with me this day seemed to agree as I watched them either not enter this room at all or pass through it as quickly as possible.

Out front of the museums entrance is a giant bronze statue of Nebraska’s state fossil, the Columbian mammoth -which I’d originally thought the giant specimen inside was. I later found out you can tell the difference between a Columbian and Imperial mammoth by the curvature of their tusks (M. imperator’s curve in more and often cross over- making Manny from Ice Age an Imperial Mammoth now that I think about it).

Standing on its podium, the colossal statue (nick-named ‘Archie’) with his trunk raised and foot poised to smash down and crush a puny human underneath is magnificent and, if the day hadn’t been absolutely freezing (the wind off the great plains cuts right through you when it carries a chill) I’d have gladly clowned around a little longer- but we had to move on as Nebraska had more to show us…and I was already half-frozen by the time I reached the car.

Directions.

Morrill Hall is located just south of 14th and Vine Streets on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. To reach Morrill Hall from Interstate 80 or Nebraska Highway 2, take 27theet, then turn west on Vine Street.

There is designated visitor parking out the front of the museum, which is located right next to what we believed was the entrance to the universities stadium. Be careful here as the 180 highway splits this part of the town and our GPS thought the roads on either side still connect.

The Museum does have an entry fee.