New cast-cutting saw

Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County made a big donation today to the paleontology department, in the form of a cast-cutting saw. Cast-cutting saws are used at hospitals to remove plaster casts around broken bones; we use ours to remove plaster field jackets.

Darwin Day at Roanoke College

Last Friday Roanoke College held their 5th annual Darwin Day celebration, in honor of Charles Darwin’s birthday (which was actually on February 12). Thanks to the efforts of DorothyBelle Poli this has become a big event at the college, and includes lectures, videos, scavenger hunts, and all kinds of additional activities. Each of the last two years, VMNH has participated by setting up a small paleontology exhibit in the student center.

On Museums

Over the last few months I’ve had the opportunity to visit a number of other museums for various reasons. These institutions are highly diverse in terms of their goals, and the contrasts between them gives me the opportunity to reflect on the different applications of the term “museum”.

General Assembly Building Exhibit

For the last week VMNH has had an exhibit set up in the lobby of Virginia’s General Assembly Building in Richmond. The museum’s research activities were a particular focus for the exhibit, with special emphasis on Carmel Church, which is only about 30 miles from here.

From the Collections Room—Special Groundhog Day Edition

In honor of Groundhog Day, I did a quick search through our paleontology collections looking for groundhogs. Groundhogs (Marmota monax) have been reported from four different Pleistocene sites in Virginia, so there was a chance that we would have some. A database search didn’t turn up any, but a large percentage of our collections are not yet in the database, so I went to the Pleistocene cabinets.

Indiana State Museum

Last Thursday I made yet another trip to Indiana, this time for visits to Earlham College and the Indiana State Museum. I had arranged to meet ISM’s paleontologist, Ron Richards, to spend Friday looking at Pleistocene squirrels from various Indiana sites, like the femur shown above.

Isorthoceras model

A huge amount of my time over the last several weeks has been spent working on an upcoming VMNH exhibit, which will include a significant component on the Ordovician Period (the reason I’ve been doing so much collecting in Indiana and Kentucky over the last year). In addition to collecting specimens and writing text, I’ve also been working on life-sized models of some of the Ordovician critters.