#fmnh

Happy Historic Sauropod Day! William Holland’s Carnegie Museum crew found Diplodocus carnegii (the skeleton London’s Dippy is cast from) on July 4th, 1899. Elmer Riggs of the Field Museum discovered the Brachiosaurus althithorax holotype on July 4th, 1900.

The original sketch for this infographic was made at a ‘SciArt Meetup’ event at the Florida Museum of Natural History (color and graphical details added afterwards). The graphics on the left include a breakdown of the time period and geographical location of the ancient animal’s existence.

Here’s how Sue’s doing right now.

I learned recently that many of the animals on display at the Field Museum aren’t traditional taxidermy, but celluloid acetate casts made from original specimens. Leon Walters developed this technique in the 20s and 30s as a way to keep rare skins out of harm’s way.

As in I love how beautiful they look, but I hate that they give me splinters.  Even when I’m super stupidly careful when handling these things.  I even got a splinter today from just having 2 specimens to image.

Just got back from the preview of our newest exhibit!  I and a number of my photos are in this exhibit too dontcha know.  All the specimens come from our own collections and are incredibly photogenic.  It’s stunning.  The exhibit officially opens to the public this Friday but it will be up until next January.