Tuesday, April 11, 2017

March 23, natural history museum, part 2

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Dinocerata.  I like rhinos, so it's not a surprise that I would like this. 



Grateful to artists who have worked to help us imagine what these creatures were like......




Pigs.  Interesting how different the eye opening is, between these two skulls.



I know sheep horns can sometimes curl the wrong way and end up puncturing the skull.  Apparently boar tusks may be able to do that, too.  There was barely enough space between this tusk and the skull to accommodate skin.....



The museum has a lot of minerals.  Travertine.



Mammoths lived around here.  They were LARGE.  That green-circled text is at my eye level.



It seems to me that the "earliest date for fire-use by humans" keeps getting pushed back and back.  Apparently that date may be a million years ago.  Or more.

I think this is a really effective display, done low-tech.  The rocks and burnt sticks are real, and there is a photograph of flames behind them.  Pretty sure anyone who's ever seen a campfire would see this display as a campfire.....

We humans would not be who we are without the ability to produce fire at will.  Cooking allows us to make use of a lot more of the calories in our food.  Without those extra calories, we could not support the prodigious energy needs of our big brains.....



Speaking of fire, and of things within our control...........  Spotted this sign in the museum. 

Each of us has a choice.  We can just repeat things we've been told by someone else, or we can check just a bit and see if those words seem to actually be truthful...........




Thank you, Universities everywhere, for standing up for truth, facts, science, reality. 

Light in the darkness. 



Walking home.  Art on the sidewalk, by David Zinn.



Te right side of this guy's eye-glasses frame is something metal that was sawed off at sidewalk level.  An ex-parking-meter, maybe......  The rest of him is David's imagination.



In West Park.  Looking back east toward downtown (and campus).  The man on the path has two nice corgis with him.  We got to say hi to them.



Turning back west toward home.


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