At Wesleyan University
We are very excited to announce a visit to Wesleyan by Dr. Kirk Johnson, Sant Director, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Dr Johnson will give a public lecture: Natural History in the Age of Humans. The lecture is scheduled for 1 March 2018, 7:30 pm, in room Shanklin 107, and will be followed by … Read more
Wesleyan’s remarkable series of fossils casts includes two large specimens of ferocious predatorial reptiles- Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosaurus. The fossil casts were in a dishearteningly deplorable state when they were rediscovered, crated in the Penthouse of Exley. The casts were put in crates when the Wesleyan Museum closed in 1957. We did not know where they were stored, but they were moved … Read more
Long thought to be marine dinosaurs, Plesiosaurs and Ichthyosaurs were once formidable apex predators in the Mesozoic. Living in oceans at the same time when the dinosaurs were roaming the land, these magnificent beasts are now iconic displays in many major museums, showing these animals as representatives of this golden age of the giants, some 228 to … Read more
Four millions years is a blink of an eye in terms of evolutionary time. Our collection houses 5600 specimens of fossil seashells from Sarasota County, Florida, from over 460 species. These fossils are found not along the coast of Florida as one might expect, but buried in sediments far inland. After 4 million years since their … Read more
We made some headway with the Glyptodon restoration: the tail was once more fixed to the carapace, and repairs were made to its internal structure =. Then we cleaned Glyptodon. Now we still have to fill in a few damaged spots (see white spot in left image), and probably provide a new coat of paint. … Read more
The Glyptodon carapace (see earlier blogs for more background information on the Wesleyan Glyptodon) was partially unpacked, so we could for the first time since 1957 inspect it – still in pretty good shape. It needs cleaning from 60 years of dust accumulation, some restoration, a new coat of paint, and re-attachment of the tail. … Read more
Today we finally moved the crate with the plaster cast of the Glyptodon body-skeleton (see earlier blogs) from the tunnels underneath Foss Hill to the machine shop at the ground level of Exley. The name Glyptodon was given by Richard Owen (1839), who was the first to realize that a number of fossils described as separate animals … Read more
In this special edition of Unseen Wesleyan, we interviewed Mr. Paul Hadzima ’59, the last student curator of the Orange Judd Museum of Natural History. He worked at the museum in 1957, the year when the Judd Museum ceased to exist. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Geology, and a MAT with a concentration … Read more
Fossil leaves from the Florissant fossil beds in Colorado (~ 34 Million years old). Fossils of dinosaurs, trilobites, and wooly mammoths typically attract more public attention than fossil plants. Although they are not as eye-catching to most people, fossil plants are far more important than this lack of interest suggests. They help reconstruct the morphology … Read more
There is always something mystical about going underground. Since antiquity, people have always pondered the possibility of a subterranean realm – a sort of magical or hellish place right beneath our feet. In all world’s civilizations and religions, from the Greek Underworld to the Christian Hell, people have been fascinated the world’s underground. In the … Read more