After spending an hour or so in the Freer Gallery, my friend and I decided to walk across the Mall to another free Smithsonian museum, the National Museum of Natural History, for a couple more hours until my cousin could meet up with us. Though natural history museums are not necessarily my favorite, this one seemed like the typical touristy thing I needed to do while in DC. With over 7.4 million visitors each year, it is the most popular museum on the Mall. As I walked through the front door, I realized that at least 4 million of those visitors must be under 12 years old. I couldn't hardly walk four feet without knocking over a kid. They were going bonkers looking at dinosaur bones. I'm never sure what to think when I see huge display of dinosaur bones because I know that many times those displays don't have real bones but instead have replicas or casts of bones. Since this museum has one of the largest collection of fossils and bones, I would think that this place might actually have displays with mostly real dinosaur bones, but I couldn't find a plaque that confirmed my hunch.
This might be sacrilege and un-American, but I wasn't overly impressed with the museum. Yes, it was huge with tons of stuff to look at. However, many of the displays and decor had a dated feel, as if the museum hasn't been renovated in the past couple decades. Even the elevator felt old and as if it was about to fall apart. It's kinda hard to put my finger on exactly what didn't feel right, but it just felt as though the museum needs a fresh coat of paint and some other renovations. I'm sure millions of tourists each year will put wear on the infrastructure. I would compare it to the Houston's natural history museum, which I went to in the summer of 2009. Obviously, this museum doesn't have as much stuff as the one in DC, but it is much nicer. All the oil and natural gas money from huge corporations for the different exhibition halls probably doesn't hurt. For instance, the mineral exhibit in Houston was at least 10 times better than the one in DC. The dark halls in Houston with carefully lighted cases made the minerals sparkle. For some people the mineral collection might be the most boring part of the museum, but the displays in Houston made the collection incredibly beautiful. DC's exhibition hall for the minerals felt like a narrow hotel lobby with sloppily-lit cases.
Elephant in the central rotunda.
T-Rex in the Dinosaur Hall.
This animal's horns would shed off every year.
A timeline showing when major ecological events occurred.
Each line represents 10 million years.
The Hope Diamond.
This 45.52-carat diamond from India is the world's
most famous diamond and is renowned for its deep
blue color and flawless clarity.
The coolest part of the museum was a temporary exhibit called Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake. Whereas the rest of the museum has a dated feel, this exhibit was much newer and nicer, even if it was tucked away in the back corner of the building. The displays show how forensic scientists look at bones in order to solve crimes. It reminded me of what I've seen on various tv crime shows, especially Bones. The first part of the exhibit shows bones and skulls from recent victims, but most of the exhibit shows the bones of early inhabitants of the Chesapeake Bay colonies. So there was a mix of history and anthropology. I would go back to the museum just to spend some more time looking at these bones.
Example of facial reconstruction.
Edentulous (toothless) skull. The 73-year old
male wore dentures and had resorption
(wasting) of the tooth sockets.
Gunshot wound in cranium with entrance in
the mid-frontal and exit wound in the right
occipital, each with five radiating fractures.
Skull with shotgun pellets embedded in bone
(healed antemortem trauma).
Skeleton of a 14 to 15 year old male with a small arrow-point
found in the grave. The skeleton was part of a grave in Jamestown
at the fort and was buried in 1607. His right collarbone was broken
near the time of death, likely during an attack. Irregular positioning of
the right arm reflects this injury and hasty placement of the body
in the grave. The arrow-point was not embedded in the femur but
would have been lodged in the tissue of his left leg. His feet and
legs remained together, once held in place by a loose shroud.
Dr. Grover Krantz, a professor of physical anthropology
at Washington State University, left his remains and those
of his beloved 160-pound Irish wolfhound, Clyde, to the
National Museum of Natural History. After his death in 2002
his remains were taken to the University of Tennessee's
Anthropology Research Facility, where scientists conducted
many kinds of skeletal research, including studies of
soft-tissue decay rates- information that is essential in
forensic cases for accurately estimating time of death.
In 2003, Grover and Clyde were brought to the museum so that
their skeletons could be used in teaching. Posed here as in life,
their skeletons help scientists teach human and nonhuman
skeletal anatomy in relation to biomechanical function.
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