Yesterday our family went to the Alaska Museum of Science and Nature. It was more of nature than science, and really cool prehistoric nature at that. It had a lot of fossils and history, as well as several models of prehistoric creatures and some geology. It also talked about earthquakes and a little about the Alaskan native peoples. Most of this, however, was in two display cases showing some tools and garments that native peoples had made. There was even a gut parka, which is what it sounds like!
As usual, I have some photos to share.
1. A stuffed black bear, the white line above which shows how much bigger a polar bear would be. The brown bear shows how much bigger an Alaskan Short Faced bear would have been than even the polar bear!
2. The front of the museum.
3. The skull of an American Lion, which was much bigger than the African Lion of today is. This skull was discovered by a twelve year old boy while he was on a family canoe trip.
4. A real fossilized mammoth tusk, which we were able to touch! A sign said that the original owner of the tusk had covered it in Elmer’s Glue, but did not offer any comment on whether that was a good thing or not.
5. Selected pieces from the collection of Joe Turnbow.
6. A piece of fossilized mammoth skull. To make them light, yet strong, enough to work for the mammoth, mammoth skulls had a hollow honeycomb pattern on the inside.
7. Skull of a Zygorhiza.
8. Model of a Tylosaurus. Note the diver in the lower left side. He’s to scale. In real life, this one would have been about 45 feet long – but Tylosauri(?) could have grown to 80 feet!
9. A tree that was frozen inside a glacier for 2,000 years! It came out feeling just about like it was before it got frozen. We were able to touch it, and it felt just about like ordinary wood, though maybe a little stony. Despite its age, the tree was definitely not petrified.
I think that’s just about all for the museum, but I have some comments I would like to add about the blog in general.
All the photos you will see on my blog, unless otherwise specified, are ones that I have taken myself, and I have made all the collages on here also.
Please leave a comment on this post / email / message me if you would like to be texted whenever I post.
And, thank you very much for reading my blog!
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Looks like fun!