May 23 -- natural history museum

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I had more than two hours between lunch and a doctor's appt (to talk about my shoulders).

I decided to visit the University's natural history museum, which is very near Health Service.

It was a gorgeous day.

The paleontology section has new exhibits, and has been rearranged a bit.

I don't know if the plant fossils I noticed on the 23rd are new, but I don't remember seeing them before.

A palm frond, just as big as they are now.

So cool, how much we can tell about how such old plants grew, from the fossils.....

Love all the models in the museum.  What a cool job, making them......

Uintatherium.

Taking pics of objects behind glass is always problematic.  Standing to the side, avoiding glare, results in crooked images (like the one above).

Luckily, tools provided in Photoshop Elements often enable straightening....  This next image is a straightened version of the above.

Love this trilobite, particularly as it has its appendages.

There are lots of casts in the museum that are ok to touch (unlike the above).

This was very big.....

Deinonychus.  I am glad there are no dinos in my neighborhood.

Petrified wood (also ok to touch).  It was a  gymnosperm.

A maple leaf, looking just like modern ones to me.

Petrified flowers!  Who knew?

Then I went upstairs.  There is a large group of Michigan birds that were there when I was a kid.  It was interesting to me -- many of the birds in the displays are smaller than the ones in my neighborhood.  I don't know if this is an artifact of taxidermy, or if the birds are bigger nowadays than they were whenever these specimens were collected......

Way back in March, when I hung laundry out on three 80-degree days in a row, I noticed some small gray birds going in and out of a hollow in the neighbors' maple tree.  They were sort of sparrow-sized, and gray, and could walk down the trunk of the tree just as this little guy seems to be doing.

I wonder if they were nuthatches, like this one....  (I also wonder if they had eggs, way back then, and if so, what became of the babies, so early in the year.....)

Here is something else I remember from visiting this museum when I was a kid.

This is a large (a yard across?) model of a drop of pond water.  All of the critters are made of glass.

Upstairs yet again. 

Selenite.

Pegmatite.

Closeup of the prev.

Geode.

Not time for my doc appt yet.

Back on the third floor.

Red-tailed hawk.   Look how long its legs are!

Great horned owl. 

Much shorter legs than the red-tail!

So interesting -- those huge eyes, with their own bone structure....

Barn owl.

I took pics of some of this kind of fungus, back in 2007.  I had no idea what it was called, nor why it might have the shape it had.  How cool to see this poster and model, and learn more about the fungus.  It is apparently called "bird's nest" fungus.  I wonder if whoever named it had ever seen an egg!  These are circular and flat.  Not like any egg I've ever seen....  But quite like cookies............  These are "bowl of cookies" fungus, I think.

A piece of one of the oldest exposed rocks on earth.  They say that this piece of Acasta gneiss is about four billion years old, and comes from one of the earliest known continents formed on this planet.  At present the ancient continent is part of northern Canada.

Pretty cool.  Wish they'd had a piece out where we could touch it.  Touching the piece of moon rock that is available for that purpose in the Air and Space museum in Washington, DC, is one of my must-do Washington experiences!



Still not time for my doc appt.  I was ready to sit for a while.  There are several places in the museum where a bookshelf is right next to a bench.  I sat and read a book about Sue, the largest and most complete tyrannosaurus skeleton ever found (so far!), while I waited. 

Eventually it was time, and I went and chatted with the nice doc.  He sent me home with several pages of range-of-motion and strengthening exercises for shoulders.  Mine don't bother me much, but if I can make them better, it seems like a good idea.

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