Natural History Museum

Whenever there is a traveling exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum, our group of volunteer interpreters gets training in the subject of the exhibit and we then sign up for morning or afternoon sessions to talk with visitors about the displays.  I've been with the program since it started in 1997, and have worked at all the exhibits up until the Monarca exhibit.

      Jurassic Park                                                      Spring 1997
      Shona: Spirits in Stone                                        October 11 – 26, 1997
      Cats! Wild to Mild                                              November 15, 1997 – January 4, 1998
      REPTILES! Real and Robotic                                 February 21 – September 7, 1998
      The Nature of Diamonds                                      March 27 – September 19, 1999
      Desert and Sea: Visions of Baha California            November 19,1999 – January 9, 2000
      The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park:The Lost World      March 4 – September 10, 2000
      BEARS: Imagination and Reality                            October 10, 2000 – January 2, 2001
      Epidemic! The Natural History of Disease             April 6 – August 12, 2001
      Monarca: Butterfly Beyond Boundaries                  October 6, 2001 –January 6, 2002

It's a great experience.  I try to get the mornings because that is when the school groups come in, and they are great to talk with.

The Museum Interpreter program can always use more volunteers.  Call Volunteer Coordinator, Janet Morris at 619/255-0245 or send email to jmorris@sdnhm.org.

From February 16 through May 27, 2002 the museum hosted “T Rex on Trial!”.  It was based on the issue of whether Tyrannosaurus Rex was a predator or scavenger.

These are some pictures from the “Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park: The Lost World” exhibit:

Here we are looking at  and touching a "gastrolith"  an actual fossil.  It is a stone that dinosaurs swallow and keep in their stomachs to help grind up the food.
 
 
 
 
 

This is a single vertebra from the spine of the Argentinosaurus, a plant-eating dinosaur which grows to about 100 feet in length and weighs up to 100  tons.
 
 
 
 
 
 

In the background is a juvenile Tarbosaurus, pretty big, and overhead is the jaw of a Giganotasaurus, which is bigger than Tyrannosaurus Rex, and a fierce predator.  T. Rex was probably a scavenger.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Kids don't care too much about exactly when the Cretaceous period was, but they sure wanted to know about the Tarbosaurus  overhead and the larger Giganotasarus just out of the picture to the right. You may think you know how to pronounce that last one, but you might be wrong.

It is pronounced Jig-a-NOTE-a-saurus.
 

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