Massive museum of many items. I certainly remember the fossils here, but also the cultural exhibits. More on those below.
But first: temnospondyls! This is Trimerorhachis. Anapsid skull, amphibious lifestyle. But it already has forelimbs and those awesome iris-bones.Buettneria, another fine temnospondyl. No apparent wrist bones, no beginnings of hip evolution.Eryops, a much more land-adapted temnospondyl. What I don’t know: is “tetrapod” the name of a more general group of animals, with temnospondyls as a sub-set? I have heard Eryops referred to as a tetrapod as well.Prestosuchus. Not yet as evolved as Allosaurus or Deinonychus, but apparently successful in its day. Proportions of forelimbs and rear limbs indicates transitional between quadruped and biped. Or, like Smilodon, maybe those big forearms are for grappling and pinning prey.Maniraptor. More evolved for real running, with a proportionally lighter build with chonky rear legs. More developed hip for better thigh-muscle geometry.Then there is Deinonychus. Well-evolved for running and probably leaping a bit.The many openings in the skull of Deinonychus reduce the weight of the skull. I don’t know if Allosaurus is a direct descendant of Deinonychus, but it has many of the same weight-to-strength optimizations in the skull.Also, Allosaurus’ hind hips and legs fully committed to bipedal running.Hadrosaurs (duck-billed, herbivorous dinosaurs). I count nine vertebrae fused to the ilium bones (scapula homologs).Parasauropholus, a mid-sized hadrosaur, as a weave of small stiffener-bones to help hold the spine and tail horizontal while walking only on the rear legs.Varanoid, a plesiosaur marine reptile. A scary-but-elegant skeleton.An “ornithomimid.” I do not know why this is considered a ‘mimid’ rather than an actual bird.So…as for the cultural politics of the Museum: when we were visiting, the Roosevelt statue had been boxed up and covered. Shortly after our visit, it was removed. The portrayal of the Native American (left) and the Negro (right) should make it clear why there were major public protests calling for the removal of the statue. The problem with keeping it as a critical reminder of ‘how far we have come’ is that such an argument presumes that progress is unilinear, always-improving. The last 5 years have shown, very violently, that we are not necessarily progressing in tolerance and understanding. Jews are being attacked again. Asians are being attacked. Muslims continue to be vilified, and violence against African-Americans continues. The only change is that we now have smartphones and therefore video-capture is ubiquitous; so the abuse of African-Americans gets documented. Statues that represent white supremacy are not just relics of the past, when you have elected officials like Tom Cotton still out there.Inside the Museum, the curators have still kept this diorama, but overlaid it with significant critical commentary. Maybe that can serve as an effective teachable moment. But I would let the Lenape tribe decide that.I will be very interested in how this plays out. But I also want to point out another dimension of the museum movement in the 20th century: to persuade the public about the Darwin/Wallace theory of evolution of species. Several exhibits show the homologous bones of different species, showing how lobe-finned fish evolved into tetrapods. All of these fossils are skeletons of extinct species, making the implicit argument that species emerge, evolve, and die out over very long periods of geologic time. Noah’s flood cannot explain this — although it does serve as a good allegory for mass-extinction events. I am hoping that the baby of evolution-advocacy does not get thrown out together with the bathwater of colonial racial-heirarchy representations.Speaking of progress, and lack thereof: this is the Kismet Shriner’s Mosque, built in 1911, and sold to the Baptists in 1966. Yes, 100 years ago the Shriners embraced many aspects of Islam, including calling their temples mosques. Yeah, we can call this Orientalist, but it represented a far more positive view of Muslims that Americans hold in 2022.…it also has really cool architectural details. And this mosque is in Crown Heights, an enclave of hard-line Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews. Kind of awesome.
