#Utah Natural History Museum

[ihazyourkitty]

Orcas, at the Utah Natural History Museum

The Utah Natural History Museum recently opened an exhibition on orcas. It’s really good, and I highly recommend it if any of you have the chance to go. I wish I had taken more pictures.

The display covers a lot of topics, e.g. natural their natural history, pod/ecotype dynamics, neural anatomy, echolocation, significance to indigenous cultures, conservation, etc. They had a life sized model of Ruffles, and even highlighted how it was discovered that Ruffles was unrelated to Granny! Oh, and some of their models even had a few rake marks on them. Loved that attention to detail.

The section on orcas and indigenous cultures was fascinating! Indigenous voices really took center stage there and I learned a lot about just how significant orcas are to many Pacific Northwest tribes.

It was very immersive and well done!

The overarching theme was our shared history and future with orcas. So not only was it just a bunch of facts about the animals, but it progressed through time, highlighting our changing perceptions of them. They briefly talked about Moby Doll, Skana, Namu, Keiko, Tokitae, Morgan and Tilikum. There were some (debatable) inaccuracies about Tokitae, but I do appreciate how they acknowledged Keiko’s release attempt didn’t work. They showed various orca themed memorabilia from the 60’s onward, which was cool.

They also pulled no punches in talking about the plight of wild orcas like the SRKW’s. They went into a lot of details about PCB’s, plastic pollution, Chinook salmon, boat noise, etc. It was heart wrenching and very well done.

And naturally…. yes Blackfish and the general anti captivity movement were highlighted. This was fine, the museum’s intent was to show how public perception progressed, and it wasn’t so much that they themselves took a side. It was just…. unfortunate the glaring blind spot it left.

There was some mention of the work trainers have to do to take care of their orcas, including some memorabilia from the Vancouver aquarium. But was kind of a blip where if you blink, you’ll likely miss it.

They mentioned the important work museums and labs do for research, as simply observing them in the wild can’t give us all the details we need….. but nothing about the research done at accredited marine parks, aside from just how public display changed how we used to fear orcas. Sealand of the Pacific was highlighted in one corner, with people like Steve Huxter* appearing in video. Comparatively, SeaWorld was barely mentioned in passing on the plaque about Tilikum, which I found odd.

My guess is that this was a combination of not wanting to piss off certain donors or contributors to the exhibit given how hot this topic is, and/or simply the lack of contributions from places besides Vancouver aquarium. Perhaps there were too many PR, bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Perhaps all of the above. Curating museum displays is a complicated thing.

I suppose if nothing else, this is true to how our history has progressed here. One side has come to dominate the public narrative, while the other has just clammed up. The biggest mistake SeaWorld and the larger zoological community made in the wake of Blackfish was to just stick their heads in the sand, hide behind their PR departments, and hope the controversy would just go away. Well, it didn’t. And the less we tell our stories, the more they win. They’ve done the work of cultivating media connections and media training. We haven’t.

This, like many other things, has the unintended side effect of erasing women from the picture. They mentioned Tilikum briefly, but said nothing of Dawn or the Dawn Brancheau Foundation (then again, they may not have gotten permission to do that).

Most marine mammal trainers are women, some of whom have gone on to make important contributions to the science of animal welfare, behavior and training…. do they deserve to be remembered only as anonymous pretty faces in wetsuits? Actually, I don’t remember them ever explicitly citing Ingrid Visser, Naomi Rose, or Lori Marino for that matter, not even in the areas about field research or orca brain MRI’s. There’s plenty to criticize about their anti-captivity lobbying to be sure, but they have made some key contributions to scientific literature. So it’s odd they wouldn’t even be mentioned by name given both that and their place in the anti-captivity movement.

Alas. I am not a museum curator, and while I disagree with Blackfish et al., I do think the museum handled the topic very well overall. It is good to be exposed to different points of view, and the truth is that there are valid points to be made about the ethics of orcas in captivity. So how do we go forward from here? Do orcas deserve special legal protections as non human persons? That was a question left open to the interpretation of the viewer, even if slanted somewhat in one direction. I love it when displays can pull that off.

Or at least, they handled it well except for when they talked about Morgan. I am pretty sure that the Free Morgan Foundation was not only the sole contributor to that part of the display, but was given a huge amount of editorial leeway in what little information was provided. The rhetoric in the writing alone was a dramatic departure from how the rest of the exhibit was handled.

So. Many. Problems with this!

First of all, Loro Parque is not connected with SeaWorld. They’ve had a business relationship in the past in that SeaWorld gave them some orcas on a breeding loan, and then eventually transferred ownership of said animals completely to Loro Parque. Their veterinarians and trainers have networked/collaborated with one another in the past. But that’s it. That is the extent of their relationship. That is not the same thing as being “connected.” They are not affiliated with one another. They are two completely different parks owned by two completely different companies. This is such an important legal distinction, how do you get this wrong!?

There are no international regulations that ban orca breeding. Some countries or localities have banned it, but this is not universal. The part about Morgan not being allowed to breed was misleading. When SeaWorld ended their breeding program, they still owned the male orcas at Loro Parque. As such, they were not allowed to breed them until ownership was transferred. SeaWorld never claimed ownership of Morgan.

There’s no mention of Morgan being deaf, which is one of the key reasons why she can’t be released. This was confirmed by multiple third party studies, including the US Navy. Cases brought by the Free Morgan Foundation to multiple courts to have her released have each been dismissed.

And as for scientists supposedly discovering multiple fake orca “rescues” ….I’m sorry, which orcas are they referring to? With exception of the Russian Whale Jail and some facilities in China and Japan, marine parks have not been collecting orcas from the wild for decades. Most orcas alive today in Western parks were born in captivity. We know which orcas are which, where they are housed, and where they came from. Morgan was an exceptional case. So what in the world are they even talking about here!?

Further, marine parks are not the ones who decide whether or not an orca is releasable. Government agencies do.

Orcas rake each other in the wild and in captivity. It can happen from aggression and also from rough play. This is normal behavior. The following is an actual peer reviewed study on the social interactions among the orcas at Loro Parque. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C13&q=Loro+parque+orca+communication&oq=loro#d=gs_qabs&t=1731592546318&u=%23p%3DHSC5vZFo3tcJ

Just. So many problems here! Who wrote this!? Seriously, I was able to handle the rest of the anti-cap stuff there up until that point. I had to really bite my tongue to keep myself from getting on a soapbox with my friend in public. Oh well. It was only a very, very small part of the exhibit at least.

(*I’ve actually had a few online conversations with Steve Huxter. While I disagree with him on a lot of things relating to wild vs captive orcas, I do think he’s a genuinely nice guy whose heart is in the right place. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have been there when Keltie Byrne was killed).

[dotts-inkings]

Utahlivebur LITERALLY my favorite guy; keep up the skrunkly, little lad !!

design/character from @utahlive​, reference image below the cut

i just couldn’t help myself from making him after seeing this image, it was too similar to my boy <3

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Fossil Friday

Allosaurus fragilis teaching her offspring how to hunt Barosaurus lentus at NHMU.

[zzcrypticcoyotezz]

felt like finally posting my cosplay pics! these are from september and october but my dumb ass kept forgetting to post (mental illness ♥️) but i figured i might as well get it over with before the end of the year lol. i got to see the jeep at the jurassic park symphony, it was an incredible experience! and the day before halloween, i visited the nhmu and took some pics with the dinos, including the recently discovered lokiceratops. hope y'all enjoyyyy

[lionofchaeronea]

Clovis point, fashioned from chert and belonging to the Clovis culture (so named from early 20th century archaeological finds near Clovis, New Mexico) that spread throughout North America following the Last Glacial Period. Clovis points are distinguished by manufacture through the pressure flaking technique and by fluting near the base. Manufactured between 11,500 and 9,000 BCE and found in Sevier County, Utah; now in the Natural History Museum of Utah, Salt Lake City.

[dinodorks]

A photo of the Past Worlds exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah, which includes representations of various dinosaurs found in the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.

[speedyz3]

Here Kitty Kitty. One of my favorites from the Natural History Museum. The Saber Tooth Tiger was my favorite dinosaur when I was a kid.

[awkwardbotany]

Book Review: Wild Wasatch Front

If it isn’t clear by now from my Weeds of Boise series and countless other posts, I happen to be interested in the flora and fauna of urban areas. Urban ecology is a fascinating field of study, and I’m not sure that it gets the attention it deserves. Nature is not some far away place, and you shouldn’t have to leave city limits to go in search of it. Remarkably, nature exists right outside your…

[kodigobacktosleep]

It sucks not being into hiking because so much of "What to do in Utah" is so hiking focused.

[yoseisstuff]

[hufflepufflinguist]

Some Pictures of the Herbarium of the University of Utah.

[that-dinopunk-guy]

Ugh I could have gone here in 2012 if our minivan hadn't shit the bed with the lights on and fucked up our itinerary.

Museum of Natural History of Utah!

[elizabeths-dumbassery]

Meet the Lokiceratops.

A name that happens when you let a mythology and Marvel nerd into the discovery group.

[throwsahammer]

The Nauvoo Legion is such an absurdity within American history. Joseph Smith, freshly escaped from prison in Missouri, set up shop in Illinois and offered the state politicians what they craved most in the world: a loyal voting bloc. The deadlocked Whigs and Republicans immediately rushed to secure the brand new mormon vote by any means necessary. In 19th-century America, those means included signing the Nauvoo Charter, a document that, among other provisions, allowed Joseph to maintain a municipal militia (which would theoretically be subservient to the state of Illinois and the US federal government). Joseph Smith was so completely overjoyed by having his very own standing army that he only tried to scam the state of Illinois into arming it for him once before purchasing an arsenal of rifles and artillery pieces with tithing money.

Thus was born the Nauvoo Legion. On the one hand, giving Joseph Smith that kind of power was (obviously) a really terrible idea, as he eventually destroyed a printing press and declared martial law. On the other hand, the Legion itself was the sort of captivatingly goofy, dysfunctional monument to ego that is really funny to read about after the fact. For starters, the Legion had an absolutely insane number of officers for its size. If Joseph liked you or wanted you to like him, you were probably one of the fifteen or so brigadier generals. Smith himself was given the rank of lieutenant general by the governor, which is especially funny because 1. basically everyone who wasn't a Mormon or deeply invested in making sure Joseph liked them enough to "encourage" Mormons to vote for them knew that the rank was bogus because at the time the rank of lieutenant general was reserved for the late George Washington and nobody was allowed to outrank him or even pretend to be his equal (as a side note, when Ulysses Grant was given the rank after the Civil War, congress posthumously awarded Washington an even-higher rank just to avoid this problem), and 2. The state of Illinois most definitely didn't actually have the authority to bestow a rank that would theoretically place Smith in charge of the entire Union Army in the event of a war without congressional approval. This fact was blindingly obvious to everyone who wasn't deeply invested in appealing to his massive ego.

As for what the Legion actually did, mostly it involved a lot of parades. Joseph certainly tried to use his army as a police force, only to be informed by the governor that that's called "martial law" and is an act of treason when it isn't ordered by the president or governor. Naturally, Joseph would eventually do exactly that. The Legion also frequently hosted mock battles, which Joseph would always dress up for (he loved his little uniform so much) and even had a military youth program, which is horrifying. Following the whole treason thing, the church suffered a succession crisis and the governor revoked the Nauvoo Charter, which officially ended the Nauvoo Legion. It was mobilized anyway by Brigham Young during the battle of Nauvoo, and his faction of the church ended up taking their one good artillery piece with them to Utah, where it's on display in the church history museum.

Overall, the Nauvoo Legion was a silly army that made an egomaniac happy, and I feel like it belongs somewhere on the history shelf next to L. Ron Hubbard's attempted naval war against Mexico that eventually gave us the Sea Org.

[mineralsrocksandfossiltalks]

Fossil Friday: Brachiosaurus altithorax

Another well known sauropod, Brachiosaurus has captured the imaginations of many for over a century with its incredible size.

Found in 1900 by Elmer S. Riggs in Fruita, Colorado near the Colorado River, the name Riggs chose means "arm lizard with a deep chest." Apt name if you ask me.

Riggs worked for the Field Columbian Museum now known as the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago. Riggs was actually looking for Eocene mammals when he was informed of the dinosaurs near Grand Junction. Little did he know he would find the biggest dinosaur to date!

As you can see, there really isn't a ton of material found from Brachiosaurus. In fact, most of what we know has been extrapolated from the African cousin, Giraffatitan which was believed to be a species of Brachiosaurus until 1991.

Despite the apparent lack of material, what has been described has come from Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. The holotype skeleton (the first one) consists of a right humerus, a right femur, the right ilium, the right coracoid, the sacrum, 7 dorsal vertebrae, two caudal vertebrae and several ribs.

In 1883, Marshall Parker Felch who worked for Othniel Charles Marsh, found a sauropod skull in Garden Park, Colorado. It was incorporated into the Brontosaurus skeleton at the Yale Peabody Museum but in 1975 a couple of paleontologists said it was closer to Camarasaurus than an any diplodocid skull. One of them brought it to the attention of Kenneth Carpenter, a well known paleontologist in Utah and Virginia Tidwell. In 1998 they tentatively assigned it to Brachiosaurus sp. as there are no overlapping elements with the holotype it's impossible to determine if it belongs to B. altithorax.

There are some possible dorsal verts from Dry Mesa Quarry, Colorado, possibly a nearly complete juvenile from the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, and possibly a foot from the Black Hills in Wyoming.

As you can see, finding more Brachiosaurus material would be awesome and we believe we may have one in our bonebed.

This rib alone is about 3m and still diving into the hillside. Hopefully, we will be able to get it out this year.

This could potentially be part of the scapular coracoid. Again, it's diving into the rock so it is difficult to tell. But the sucker is pretty big.

We also pulled out an articulated sequence of caudal vertebrae from the same general spot that all these bones are located. Fingers crossed that a skull is in there somewhere waiting for us to find.

Thanks for reading and tune in on Monday for a bit of focused talk on Macronarian sauropods like Brachiosaurs!

[malorisaurus]

I posted this in a community I am in, but I also wanted to post it here for my own posterity.

I live in Idaho, and for the past week, I have been on a long road trip driving through Utah and SE Idaho going to various fossil sites, museums, dinosaur attractions, etc. The list of places I visited are:

Dinosaur National Monument - hot hot hot! But very worth it. It is perhaps the most well known location on this list, so I won't be too detailed here. Highly worth it, though!

Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum - a smaller museum, but they had an interesting focus on actual field work which is great if you are interested in spending time in an exhibit focused on the discovery and preservation of fossils as well as seeing skeleton and fossil exhibits. Good hands on exhibits for kids.

Hiking trails like the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Bone Trail and the Copper Creek Dinosaur Track trail - The sun! It is brutal! BRING LOTS OF WATER.

Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point - This is one of the largest, if not the largest, displays of dinosaur skeletons in the country. It was interesting to see the positioning that they chose, and the skeletons were often posed in fully decorated scenes which was a fun change from the usual museum pedestal setups. The museum moves through the fossil record chronologically, so while dinosaurs are a large feature, they are not the only focus.) Excellent space for kids with lots of activities and hands on displays.

Natural History Museum of Utah (they had lokiceratops fossils and a skull cast on display, which was pretty cool to see. Their displays in general were wonderful. Their other displays were also wonderful, and they did a great job including hands on stuff for adults and kids alike.

George S Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden - I had a really fun day here, though the dinosaur statuary was often comically outdated—their T. rex was standing fully erect putting weight on his tail, which was nostalgic and funny. A lot of that statuary is dated because it is from when the park was founded, but they have made some attempts to update the statuary. Inside is a geology exhibit as well as a fossil exhibit, and their signs were informative and more accurate. Overall a very fun experience, though.

Did some driving around and hiking to view some outcroppings at the Wayan Formation, but this was just general site seeing for my own gratification and there isn't really access to much of the area.

Idaho Museum of Natural History at CSI in Pocatello - they had several oryctodromeus fossils as well as complete skeleton displays. This was of particular interest to me because they are unique burrowing dinosaurs found pretty exclusively to the area, and it is now our state dinosaur as of 2023. The museum is small, but I will say that all of the displays are very thoughtful, and they included a lot of birds, small mammals, and plants in their informative displays. The Hagerman Horse also featured, which is our state fossil, and they highlighted the unique fossil record of Idaho.

Hagerman Fossil Bed National Monument - This was my final stop of this particular trip, and I am glad that I went. There is no access to the fossil beds themselves, but there are some great trails with lots of informational placquards with views of the fossil bed area. The Thousand Springs Visitor center for the monument is one of my favorites that I have been to. The rangers were so excited, friendly, and informative. I asked to become a Jr. Ranger, and I did the book and got my badge and patch after being sworn in as a protector of fossils and advocate for conservation by a wonderful ranger who talked with me for a long time about all of the things they had on display as well as an endocast of a hagerman horse brain. The ranger got very excited about that and told me the thing he loved most about it was that the brain size to body mass ratio indicated that it would have been similar to that of modern day horses, so that it indicates that the hagerman horse had personalities, emotions, etc. just as modern horses do. I am already of the belief that this is largely true of all life on the planet, but how it was described really hit me and I got quite emotional about it! It was extra fun because I could see how excited it made the ranger—the expression of like "YES we have TRUE ENGAGEMENT." 😂 It is a small little place, but turned out to be a highlight of my trip.

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded post! I took about 5 million pictures, and am working on organizing them all by location and animal. My goal is to go through, animal by animal, and read the current literature and compare it to the information and skeleton positioning at each of the museums. I will be sharing that progress here eventually. If anyone has any questions or recommendations for travel in the area, hmu!