Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Natural History Museum — The Fossil Lab

This is new at the Natural History Museum or at least new to me. It is also so very cool.

The FossiLab:

FossiLab is a real laboratory located at the back of the Dinosaur and Ancient Seas halls of the National Museum of Natural History.  Paleontologists and volunteers working in this glass-enclosed space unpack new fossil shipments from the field, prepare fossils for study by removing the rock matrix that encases them, piece together broken fossils, and perform many other fossil preparation and conservation tasks. Visitors to the Museum can watch us work, talk to us about what we are doing, and ask questions.  

Here are a couple of pictures of what was being worked on when we were there.

Here you see the guy working on the fossil. There is a description of what he's working on and a picture of what the dinosaur looked like.

Here's a close up on a video screen of what he's doing.

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