The Wall Street Journal-20080115-Old Fossils- New Exhibition
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Old Fossils, New Exhibition
Pittsburgh -- In 1898, a newspaper headline trumpeting the discovery in Wyoming of the "most colossal animal ever on Earth" stoked the competitive fires of Pittsburgh steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. After initially failing in his attempt to buy the fossil, a sauropod thigh bone, he hired a leading paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York to head an expedition to Wyoming. The results were impressive: In 1899, the Carnegie team unearthed the bones of two long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs and named the species for its benefactor.
To house an 84-foot-long Diplodocus carnegii skeleton, Carnegie built Dinosaur Hall, which opened in 1907 and drew enthusiastic crowds. Dinosaur demand was high, and Carnegie sent replicas to monarchs and museums around the world. In Pittsburgh, Diplodocus, affectionately known as "Dippy," served as the centerpiece of a growing collection of dinosaur fossils -- the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's finds from the Jurassic Period are unexcelled -- and an increasingly cramped and outmoded hall.
A century later, at a cost of $36 million, the museum has unveiled a much anticipated new exhibition, "Dinosaurs in Their Time," with the aim of contextualizing and updating its dinosaur displays. The exhibition involved a major construction project and the remounting of the Carnegie's dinosaurs. It is chronologically organized, running from 230 million years ago, the middle of the Triassic Period, to 66 million years ago, the end of the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs became extinct.
In the first phase of the reconstruction, which opened to the public Nov. 21, a dozen dinosaurs appear in ecologically precise dioramas filled with re-created ferns, gingkoes and conifers, and against the backdrop of colorful, superbly executed murals. Another seven dinosaurs, from the Cretaceous Period, including two battling Tyrannosaurus rex specimens, will go on view in the spring when the project is completed. Zhe-Xi Luo, the museum's acting co-director and curator of vertebrate paleontology, says that as much as 85% of the materials on display are real fossils.
Alongside the dinosaurs are fossils, images and, in some cases, models of other ancient creatures from the Mesozoic Era: crocodile- like reptiles, flying pterosaurs, small early mammals, monstrous carnivorous fish, insects, amphibians and others. Some of these fossils are as spectacular in their way as the dinosaurs, though they may prove distracting to those who prefer to focus on dinosaurs alone.
Diplodocus, with its impossibly long body and whiplash tail, still elicits awe. Beside it rests the single thigh bone that started it all; Carnegie got the fossil in the end. Both are housed in the museum's magnificent, three-story Jurassic Atrium, the focal point of the exhibition, which supplies a view of the Carnegie Library stacks, as well as a singularly theatrical space for dinosaur drama. In one show-stopping scene, Apatosaurus louisae -- a bulkier cousin of Diplodocus that was named for Andrew Carnegie's wife -- towers over a baby Apatosaurus as a ferocious, razor-toothed Allosaurus menaces them both.
Elsewhere in the atrium, a massive Stegosaurus, with sloping body, tiny head, triangular armored plates and spiked tail, seems to be walking into a fern and forest landscape to join a herd of green Stegosaurii with bright-red plates. The mural, by Robert Walters and Tess Kissinger, is a brilliantly realized artist's fantasy of Jurassic life, since no one can be sure of dinosaur coloring.
By contrast, the fossil poses, created by Phil Fraley Productions of Hoboken, N.J., reflect the latest scientific thinking about dinosaur morphology and behavior. The giant sauropods no longer drag their tails, as they were once thought to do, but keep them aloft, possibly to use as weapons. Instead of standing almost erect like a kangaroo, the carnivorous, bipedal Allosaurus, a smaller ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, hunches horizontally over the ground and uses its tail for balance.
There is much in "Dinosaurs in Their Time" to admire, from the painstaking reassembly of the fossils to the breadth and magnificence of the collection itself, which includes important early mammal fossils discovered in China by Mr. Luo. "The age of dinosaurs is also the beginning of the age of mammals," he points out.
For some visitors, all this will be enough. But while the museum's approach to dinosaur display may be revolutionary, in other respects the exhibition design is deliberately retro. Apart from the dioramas, "Dinosaurs in Their Time" relies heavily on labels on yellow backgrounds meant to evoke a paleontologist's field notebook. But the type is too small, and the content geared to very patient adults. The labels are supplemented by touch-screen technology, which includes films and videos but also considerable text.
Within the halls themselves, there is almost no written material easily accessible to children, no casts or fossils to touch, a dearth of inventive interactive exhibits that might present the science in a compelling way. An orientation film could help spark the imagination and render the exhibition's themes more comprehensible, but there isn't one.
Nor is the problem limited to children. Even for a meticulous adult visitor, some of the labeling is confusing. In one of the Triassic displays, for instance, visitors might easily conclude that the crocodile-like Redondasaurus skeleton is a dinosaur; in fact, the dinosaur in this diorama, Coelophysis bauri, is represented by bones embedded in dirt. Mr. Luo says the exhibit is a deliberate attempt to show the vulnerability of early dinosaurs.
In an otherwise intriguing display of Cretaceous Period bird-like dinosaurs from China, featuring both three-dimensional flesh reconstructions of the feathery beasts and two-dimensional casts, it takes some work to match up the two. In general, beyond the stunning visuals, the information in the exhibition is laborious to absorb. It would have been helpful to learn concisely just which myths about dinosaurs have been overturned by contemporary paleontology without having to wade through so much verbiage.
The museum does offer a film, outside the new halls, on the demise of the dinosaurs. It features the Carnegie's engaging scientists speculating about how climate change -- possibly caused by some combination of an asteroid hit and volcanic activity -- led to the massive extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The film offers exciting digital re-creations of brightly colored dinosaurs roaming the earth. There are also two older attractions: a fossil dig for kids called Bonehunter's Quarry and a Paleo Lab where visitors can watch scientists cleaning and restoring fossils.
For all its limitations, "Dinosaurs in Their Time" remains a rewarding experience, as well as a stark commentary on what Alfred Lord Tennyson memorably called "Nature, red in tooth and claw." Several exhibits depict a contest between predator and prey, among them a re-creation of the Western Interior Seaway of the Cretaceous Period. In this North American inland sea, nicknamed "Hell's Aquarium," the giant carnivorous fish Xiphactinus audax chases a dinner of other fish, while nearby, against a watery blue mural teeming with sea life, a plesiosaur gets set to devour a penguin-like diving bird. Dippy, a dedicated vegetarian, seems a real sweetheart by comparison.
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Ms. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.
