Eocene Exhibit and Education

American Museum of Natural History, New York, Eocene Exhibit ~ 

May 5, 2009

When I have time, I'm still adding images from my photo archives to the pages of the store web site. In this case, the Eocene category page.

Sometimes I feel as though this work is just for my own fun, plus window dressing plus search engine optimization. I also know it can be educational, but sometimes I forget how much the educational aspect may be needed. This is a true story: 

The other day Lee was at Starbucks talking with a barista. She said she was attending community college and wanted to be a veterinary assistant. He asked about her interest in animals, and she said she loved all animals, large and small. He asked if she liked mammals, but she didn't know what the word meant. He mentioned primates and vertebrates, and got equally blank responses. Having gone through school in the 1950s and 1960s, I can't even imagine this lack of understanding about basic biology, but there's a lot I don't know about the way the world is today. I'm grateful that I had good teachers and the climate of the times valued learning. One thing I know for sure is that if visitors can learn something from my website, I'll feel that the "extra mile" I've enjoyed adding to the site  has been worth while.

My Web Page: Tapirback.com

Oct 14, Part 18 - Paleontology, Jardin des Plantes, Paris

We ambled through the park over to the mineralogy and paleontology buildings. The paleontology museum, seen here, is one of my favorite places, maybe partly because I can only imagine what it's like to visit. It's never been open when I've been in the park. In fact, I thought for a long time it was closed to the public, and now that I've seen photos online, I'm sure I need to go back to Paris just to see it!

Here's another view of the long building as we walked through the arcade of trees (below) heading toward the entrance to this building and to the park.

These green installations ran nearly the length of the park, telling about the various ages in the Earth's history. This one says 3500 million years - the beginning of life on Earth.

And here's one of Earth's early inhabitants, Stegosaurus, along with "archaic" plants, as the sign tells us in the photo below.

This guy is the greeter outside the paleontology museum. I don't remember his name. Below is the main entrance.

I love this door. Not much more needs to be said. Too bad the place was closed.

Directly above the entrance.

A window on the facade of the building decorated with ancient crabs and lizards.

There was a lobster-looking thing above, but if you look at it, it looks more like a cross between a horseshoe crab (which is an ancient form, I think) and a lobster.

I can't say I love the McDonald's placed here, but in a strange way (absurdly, not artistically or culturally) I do love the juxtaposition.

Does the term "super-size" come to mind? I wonder what Buffon would have though of the McDonald's on the street named after him? Oh well, maybe he would have liked yucky burgers - as long as they aren't selling mammoth burgers. In Europe, most of the golden arches don't reach to the sky; they're built into the ground level of existing buildings with something else above. Buffon, by the way, is well placed near this mammoth. He (Buffon) openly challenged a belief held in his time and espoused by the church, that the Earth was no older than 6,000 years. The mammoth has nice eyes - they look alive.

Go to Part 19