Re: Sue Photos Online (Good ones!)

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

How does one keep dust off the real thing if it's really really big and
on display to the public?  
I remember going to the Peabody years and years and years ago and seeing
the tan, fuzzy Apatosaur and Triceratops.

-Betty

-Betty Cunningham

"Jerry D. Harris" wrote:
>    This, of course, brings up the old mutual exclusivity of mounting real
> vs. cast bones.  Casts, if made properly, can undergo a sort of
> "antidiagenesis," in which diagenetic distortions are undone via the plastic
> properties of the casting material.  Mounts certainly look much, much nicer
> when distortions are corrected for -- it's more of that "the animal just
> died yesterday" sort of mount, like one would expect in a mounted skeleton
> of an extant animal.  I personally prefer these mounts.  However, mounting
> real bones shows the public what kinds of ravages time and physics imposes
> on fossils and, although never pointed out directly, implies to them what
> paleontologists have to go through to mentally undistort bones to properly
> interpret them (as we've seen here with the discussions about the skull
> shape in "Sue").  The mounts aren't nearly as pretty, but are more "real" in
> that sense.  Although I've not seen it done, it would be nice with said
> mounts if signage were put with the mount explaining why it looks lopsided,
> why the ribs aren't quite right, etc., and then have pictures of what the
> proper, restored bones _would_ look like.

-- 
Flying Goat Graphics
http://www.flyinggoat.com
(Society of Vertebrate Paleontology member)
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