Event 5 (Extra Credit): Dinosaur Hall at the National History Museum

For this event, I went to the Dinosaur Hall exhibit at the National History Museum. Generally, we don't think of the display of fossils as being related to art, but while at the exhibit, I saw how closely the fields of paleontology, medical technology, mathematics, and art are intertwined. Concepts taken from each of these fields are utilized to create the life-like fossil sculptures we commonly see at museums.

Typically, when we think of paleontologists finding fossils, we imagine them using pick-axes, meticulously uncovering fossils piece-by-piece. Though this image is correct for most paleontologists, new technologies such as enhanced X-ray imaging (medical technology), 3D printing, and electron microscopy (nanotechnology) are being used to re-create fossils as never before. With this technology, paleontologists are able to accurately re-create how ancient animals, such as dinosaurs, moved, ate, and behaved.

Additionally, applying mathematics to fossils helps scientists understand such as things as an animal's total wing span and leg length, all measurements that are necessary to accurately reconstruct a fossil.

  

Where does the "art" aspect come in? Well, in order for scientists to re-create fossils and present them to the public, they have to have an artistic eye. All the dinosaur fossils I saw were, essentially, sculptures. Just as an artist would take into account such things as proportion, perspective, shape, and form when creating a sculptural piece, so too did the people who had to put together these fossils for the public. Furthermore, fossils were typically accompanied with artists' depictions of what the animal looked like (picture below shows this). I actually learned from a series of paintings that prior to computerized images and X-Ray technology, artists and painters were responsible for depicting what they believed fossilized animals to look like.

A painting by the artist Charles Knight depicting what he believed an herbivorous dinosaur looked like prior to computerized technology

Me at the exhibit

Here again, in somewhere where I didn't expect to see art intertwined with science, I saw life-like fossils being recreated through a collaboration between artists and scientists.

Link to the event: http://www.nhm.org/site/explore-exhibits/permanent-exhibits/dinosaur-hall

                         

References:

Safford, Matt. "How New Tech for Ancient Fossils Could Change The Way We Understand Animals." Smithsonian. Web. 02 June 2016.  

"Using Mathematics in Fossil Reconstruction." Using Mathematics in Fossil Reconstruction. Web. 02 June 2016. <http://www.sedl.org/scimath/compass/v03n01/usingmath.html>

 "Art and Science of Fleshed-out Fossils." John Hawks Weblog. Web. 03 June 2016.

"What Does the Fossil Record Show?" BioLogos. Web. 03 June 2016.

"The Art of Natural History: Fossil Art!" Idaho Museum of Natural History. 2015. Web. 03 June 2016. 

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