Public Employee Press


Local 1559 artists at work at the American Museum of Natural History
DINOSAURS AMONG US

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

What has three toes, lays eggs and sometimes flies? If you guessed birds you are only partially right.

A new American Museum of Natural History exhibit "Dinosaurs Among Us," riffs on the 150-year-old theory that birds are modern dinosaurs.

By exploring avian ancestry, it turns out roadrunners and raptors are related. With shared anatomy like wishbones, feathered arms, hollow bones and respiratory systems built for migratory journeys of thousands of miles, dinosaurs - which became extinct 65 million years ago - inhabit our world as modern birds.

As scientists advance new theories and paleontologists unearth fossils, it's the job of Local 1559 members who are Preparators, Artists, Scientific Assistants, Photographers and Maintainers at the world-renowned American Museum of Natural History to bring these latest discoveries to life. Their painstakingly constructed displays help ordinary people - and their children- see and imagine the extraordinary, and their highly skilled work inspires the next generation of scientists.

Fossils, feathers, flight

"Dinosaurs Among Us" is based on 20 years of discoveries and excavations in China. The exhibit lets visitors interact with life-size lizard-like birds and taxidermy specimens and view fossils recently unearthed in Liaoning Province. This latest science teaches that the common pigeon shares the same gene pool as now-extinct dinosaurs.

The feathered fossils of the microraptor that roamed the earth over 150 million years ago help scientists develop ideas on the origins of flight, a mystery that is no mere bird-brained feat. In fact, CT scans of the brain cases of birds and their theropod ancestors show these animals share large brains that are far more complex than previously thought.

Teams of museum Preparators and assistants work under the direction of the museum's paleontology curator, Mark Norell. The idea behind the exhibit began several years ago as Preparators began molding small-scale clay models. Using the latest technology and artistry, they crafted life-like replicas of raptors, birds and toothsome winged dinosaurs.

"We spent months on molds and built steel skeletons that we coated in spray foam, layered on silicone and rubber and finished with hand-painted feathers," said Rebecca Meah, a Sr. Principal Preparator.

Each feather was detailed and glued on individually, feather by quilled feather.

One imagines each raptor - set with a pair of customized doll eyes - as it tracks its prey. The models are posed as they would be in nature. While constructed seamlessly to the naked eye, they can be disassembled for travel.

The exhibit links the kinship of fossils of dinosaur embryos, elongated dinosaur eggs, and crocodiles and their shelled offspring to modern birds and their chicks.

Much like a modern bird, a Citipati that Preparators nicknamed Big Mama broods over her offspring. A bony-tailed yutyrannosaur stretches on for 23 feet. Four-winged microraptors with vibrant plumes are suspended among the range of raptor-birds whose teeth, tails, feathers and beaks loom large. Sid and Nancy - two small, fossilized feathered oviraptors - are agaze. The exhibit fuels answers to an evolutionary question of sorts: which came first the chicken or the T-Rex?

"We show transitionary animals, explore their growth rates and theories of flight, and detail characteristics not seen in modern birds," said Tory Ferraro, a Sr. Principal Preparator. "These are strange-looking big birds, dinosaurs that range from the size of a chicken to a 4- or 5-foot ostrich."

"It's not at all like 'Jurassic Park,' " Ferraro heard one preteen visitor say, referring to Hollywood's blockbuster version of writer Michael Creighton's novel.

"Dinosaurs Among Us" is better, bolder, an interactive experience that can be seen at the museum through January 2017.