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A Visit to the Museum of the Rockies

© Beverly Eschberger

I was very fortunate that I was able to spend my time as a graduate student at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, and that I worked with famous paleontologist John "Jack" Horner. The Museum of the Rockies is one of my favorite small museums to visit, and I can still say this, even after having spent many, many hours almost every day of my graduate student career there.

MOR has a new look. A life-size bronze sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex, cast from the bones of one of the museum's T. rex specimens MOR 555, was dedicated during the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. The bronze T. rex is named "Big Mike" after late Montana State University President Michael Malone, who died December 21st, 1999.

Be sure to enter the museum through the Landforms Lifeforms exhibit (if you enter through the museum's current travelling exhibit, "Weapons that Changed the West: From Flint to Fusion," you will find yourself going backwards in time!) and enjoy watching the Earthworks Machine as it shows the dynamics of the earth and sun.

As you travel through the Paleozoic Era (570 to 230 million years ago), you will see dioramas of life forms from the Cambrian Period (570 to 500 million years ago) through the Permian Period (280 to 230 million years ago). Be sure to play Blind Date, an interactive computer game which demonstrates how paleontologists are able to date fossils using radiometric dating, and Time Travel, an interactive computer program which allows to look at how Montana has changed with time. You might even pick up a copy of the Rocky Times--Early Earth Edition, a newspaper which reports on what life was like 530 million years ago. You can also try your skills at survival on the Playing for Keeps pinball machine.

Stop in at the Pangaea Theater for a look at how life was changing in the late Paleozoic Era, and what it looked like after the Permian Extinction Event. You then enter the Berger Dinosaur Hall, where Maiasaura ("the good mother lizard") feeds her young, while Troodon watches with its young, and Quetzalcoatlus soars overhead. The Glass Menagerie, a collection of paleontological specimens collected and prepared by the Museum of the Rockies, is upstairs from the Berger Dinosaur Hall.

Next is the T. rex hall, where the bones of 11 Tyrannosaurs of varying degrees of completeness are on display. Considering that there are only 23 known skeletons of T. rex, MOR has a large number of specimens! You'll also see the robotic Triceratops mother and her young, plus casts of the skulls of Triceratops and Torosaurus. You can watch volunteer preparators as they work preparing fossils in the Bowman Fossil Bank.

"Big Mike"

Maiasaura

Troodon

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