Visit the Museum of the Rockies

Located between the Bridger Mountains and the Gallatin Range on the north and east, and the Tobacco Root Mountains to the west, is the Gallatin Valley and the town of Bozeman, Montana. Bozeman is home to Montana State University, and is a wonderful spot for anybody interested in geology to visit. The geology literally shouts at you from every direction. But to get a feel for the land, and what you can expect, take the time to visit the Museum of the Rockies. Here you’ll learn about Montana geology and paleontology, as well as the history of the Bozeman area.

Located on the MSU campus, the museum offers a wide range of activities from exhibits on geology, paleontology, and history, to a living history museum and planetarium. Big Mike, a full-size bronze reproduction of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, greets visitors to the museum. Big Mike is the newest addition to the museum, dedicated in October 2001 at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting.

Inside, the museum tour begins with the Landforms and Lifeforms Exhibit. This exhibit explores the geology and paleontology of the Bozeman area. As you approach, you’ll hear the sounds of billiard balls rolling and falling along a metal track. This is the Earthworks, a large, Rube Goldberg device that demonstrates the dynamics of the earth including the food cycle, rock cycle, water cycle and the overall earth cycle. You can follow the billiard balls along the track moving from the suns energy and interact with the different cycles of the earth. It’s a wonderful display and I spent quite a while just watching the interactions between the different cycles. Also located in the entrance hall is a hand-on activity that demonstrates the vastness of geologic time. The Timelinks is a very long bicycle chain where each inch (link) represents 10 million years. Rotate the wheel until you get to the beginning, and then go through the various eras of the earth, he Precambrian (406 inches – 4.06 billion years), Paleozoic (30 inches, 30 ma), Mesozoic (18 inches, 18 ma) and the Cenozoic (only 6.5 inches, 65 ma).

Continue on the exhibit and you will learn about the geology of the Gallatin region. Here there are exhibits demonstrating the rock cycle, how geologists read the rocks and interpret what they tell us. Here there is a flipbook with information about the Law’s of Superposition and Horizontality. There is also a computer where you learn about the different radiometric dating methods. The museum has many hands-on examples of rocks and fossils found in Montana, and interactive displays. There’s the Rocky Times, a newspaper about events happening 530 million years ago. The time travel interactive computer that allows you to see how different places in the Rockies (Yellowstone, Glacier) looked like through time. My favorite is the Playing for Keeps pinball machine. You need a quarter to play, but have at it and see how far up the evolutionary ladder you can climb. I made it to trilobite, not to far up the ladder.

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