JAYATRI DAS, Ph.D.
senior exhibit & program developer
The Franklin Institute Science Museum
Anonymous, Iowa,
In our science class, we are studying models and designs. We recently read about paleontologists studying fossils and assembling models. We're curious about how they display the models in museums. Are they suspended from the ceiling or what?
Jayatri Das
senior exhibit & program developer,
The Franklin Institute Science Museum
(former HHMI predoctoral fellow)
As you probably know, the first step in displaying fossil skeletons is to make replicas of all the bones. This practice has two advantages: (1) It allows scientists to keep studying the actual bones while museum visitors are seeing what an animal looked like. (2) The modern plastic materials used in making replicas are much lighter than actual bones, so museums have a lot more flexibility in deciding how to display their skeleton models.
The skeleton is usually first reassembled in a workshop, where any missing bones are recreated to complete the full set. A major principle of skeleton reassembly is that no bone is expected to support more than its own weight, so the real support comes from a metal apparatus. In some cases, you can see these metal bars from the outside, and each bone is individually screwed into the bars. In other cases, these bars are hidden internal supports. Holes are drilled into adjacent bones at precise angles so a metal rod can be inserted to hold the two bones together in just the right position. Plaster is used to anchor the rod to each bone.
Museum curators consider many factors when they are deciding how a model of a skeleton should be displayed. One important issue is the biology of the animal. For example, we know that Tyrannosaurus rex didn't fly, so it wouldn't make sense to suspend its skeleton from the ceiling, as you might do with a flying animal such as a pterodactyl. Another factor is the size of the skeleton—obviously, the larger the skeleton, the more you need to consider the risks in suspending it from the ceiling. Finally, the available space and design of the building determine how the skeleton will be displayed.
For skeletons that are displayed on the ground, the most common method of installation is to anchor vertical support bars to the floor. When skeletons are placed high above the ground (out of reach of museum visitors!) or in protective cases, they can be suspended from above. In this case, very strong but thin cables, like aircraft cables, are attached to the metal supports. The suspension points have to be carefully chosen to make sure that the skeleton is evenly balanced.
More information
This website describes how fossil casts are prepared:
http://www.uwyo.edu/geomuseum/tour/alrockie.asp
This website shows how a skeleton of a whale was reconstructed and how it was suspended from the ceiling:
This website has a picture of a dinosaur skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York that is displayed using floor supports:
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/fossilhalls/vertebrate/specimens/brontops.php
If you're really interested in the nitty-gritty details of assembling and mounting skeletons, you can read about how Adele Panofsky reassembled a skeleton of the fossil marine mammal Paleoparadoxia at Stanford University. The document is 157 pages long and pretty technical in parts, but if you scan through, you'll find some great pictures that give you a sense of how detailed the process really is:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-7829.pdf
06/25/08 01:11
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