On Wednesday, September 29, the American Museum of Natural History reopened the famous display featuring the skeletons of two long-time combatants—an Allosaurus and a towering Barosaurus protecting her young—after a separation process that began in early August. The reopening introduced a new feature to this iconic display: an eight-foot-wide pathway that allows visitors to walk between the dinosaurs for the first time.
For nearly two months, the Barosaurus, which soars 100 feet above the floor,and Allosaurus in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda had been surrounded by scaffolding while necessary structural work was performed. By cutting a swath through the fiberglass and steel platform which forms the bottom of the mount, the Museum has provided visitors with a fascinating new perspective on these two old favorites.
On Monday, September 20, the American Museum of Natural History hosted a gala event in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United States Agency for International Development, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Conservation Society, Conservation International, the World Resources Institute, and other organizations, where 25 local and indigenous community groups from across the developing world were presented with the Equator Prize.
The award ceremony, together with a policy forum was convened to illuminate critical linkages between biodiversity conservation, healthy ecosystems, climate change and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Celebrities and opinion leaders joined top UN dignitaries to help deliver the message to leaders that biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, which are being lost and degraded at unsustainable rates, are essential for achievement of the MDGs, and that front-line solutions advanced by local and indigenous communities offer tremendous opportunities for conservation and sustainable development and must be scaled up.
“The American Museum of Natural History is proud to collaborate with the U.N. Development Programme and to be a partner in the International Year of Biodiversity, which had its North American launch at the Museum in February,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the Museum. “Through collective efforts like this one, we hope to foster a renewed commitment to and sustained public awareness of the urgency and enormous consequences of biodiversity loss, climate change, and related issues. Serving as a bridge between science and society, institutions like the Museum have an important role to play in advancing scientific understanding about our increasingly threatened natural world, bringing the fruits of that research to policymakers, and leaders, and, importantly, demystifying for the public the most vexing and complex science-based issues of our time.”
The event was attended by nine Heads of State or Government and dozens of Ministers in New York for the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. Ted Turner, Chairman of the United Nations Fund; Andrew Revkin, New York Times Dot Earth reporter; Edward Norton, actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador; Anggun, singer/songwriter and FAO Goodwill Ambassador and MDG Champion; Paul Tergat, marathoner and WFP Goodwill Ambassador; Catarina Furtado, television host/documentarian and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador; Prince Albert II of Monaco; and Gisele Bündchen, supermodel and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, were among the participants in the evening’s activities. Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, gave the keynote speech.
American Museum of Natural History officials and members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon gathered today in the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space to mark the 10th anniversary of an historic agreement recognizing the Tribes’ spiritual and cultural connection to the Willamette Meteorite, which is the centerpiece of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Hall of the Universe, and affirming the Museum’s role in maintaining public access to it.
Museum President Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, and Kathryn Harrison, former chair of the Grand Ronde Tribal Council, were among those in attendance.
The largest meteorite ever found in the United States, the Willamette Meterorite weighs 15.5 tons and is believed by scientists to be the iron core of a planet that was shattered in a stellar collision billions of years ago. Its hollows were formed not in space but from weathering after it crashed into Earth thousands of years ago, traveling at more than 40,000 miles per hour. The Museum purchased it in 1906. Since then, it has been on almost continuous display at the Museum and has been viewed by millions of visitors from around the world.
A federally recognized tribe, the Grand Ronde is the successor to a number of tribes from northern California and western Oregon, including the Clackamas, who lived in the Willamette Valley before the arrival of European settlers and long revered the meteorite under the name “Tomanowos.” According to Clackamas tradition, a union occurred between the sky, earth, and water when the meteorite rested in the ground and collected rainwater in its basins. The rainwater in turn served as a powerful purifying, cleansing, and healing source for the Clackamas and their neighbors. Tribal hunters, seeking power, dipped their arrowheads in the water collected in the meteorite’s crevices. These traditions are preserved today through the ceremonies and songs of the descendants of the Clackamas. As part of the Grande Ronde agreement with the Museum, a description of the meteorite’s significance to the Clackamas was installed in the Cullman Hall of the Universe alongside a description of its scientific importance. The Museum also established an internship program for Native American young people.
Thirteen students, ages 13 to 18, will be treated to exclusive behind-the-scenes tours of the American Museum of Natural History’s paleontology and invertebrate collections today — part of the prize for winners of the 13th Annual Young Naturalist Awards, a nationwide science-based research contest presented by the American Museum of Natural History and supported by Alcoa Foundation.
“The Young Naturalist Awards program is a superb example of students engaging creatively and enthusiastically with the scientific process,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History. “We are proud to help foster a love of science and nature in all the participants and especially the terrific winners, whom we congratulate for their exceptional and inspiring work.”
These aspiring scientists, all students in grades 7 through 12, carried out scientific investigations of the natural world and presented their research, methods, observations, and analyses. A panel of judges from the Museum’s scientific, educational, and editorial staff evaluated the entries on originality, ability to gather data, analysis and interpretation, and creativity and clarity of presentation. This year’s projects included a study of the breakdown of wastewater pharmaceuticals and an investigation of snapping turtles.
The winners, who hail from as near as the Bronx and as far as Hilo, Hawaii, traveled to the Museum today to receive their prize, which includes cash awards ranging from $500 to $2,500, meetings with Museum scientists, behind-the-scenes tours, and recognition at an awards ceremony. The winning entries will also be published on the Museum’s website.
Christopher Raxworthy, curator in the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, has been to Madagascar more than 30 times to conduct field research on this island nation’s chameleons, frogs, and lizards. Now you can follow him to the summit of Mt. Marojejy as he climbs through tropical rainforests, bamboo thickets, and low-lying scrub to camp at nearly 7,000 feet. For the next few weeks, Raxworthy’s thoughts, discoveries, and photographs will be posted as the inaugural blog for The New York Times’sScientist At Work: Notes from the Field.
“We are delighted that this new blog brings the process of science to countless readers. This highlights yet another way that Museum scientists and educators are using digital technologies to share new thinking and approaches to scientific discovery and learning with the public,” says Ellen V. Futter, President of the Museum. “Scientific research is at the heart of this institution, and that research hinges on the weeks and months that our curators, like Chris Raxworthy, spend in the field.”
“Time now for the editor to step back and let the scientist start talking,” writesThe New York Times Deputy Science Editor James Gorman. “Dr. Raxworthy says the best part of each visit to Madagascar is the first night in the forest, because it is such hard work to get there, and you never know what you will find…”
We recently caught up with Raxworthy as he prepared to head back out to Madagacar. Watch as he discusses the importance of his studies and what it is like traveling around the island nation.
