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Gawking at Prehistoric Beasts

© Christine Roane

For the museum-minded, interesting television often jogs our brains and set us to thinking how a visit to our local science center (or a trip to a special attraction) can enhance our learning experience.

This month (December 2001), the Discovery Channel's Walking with Prehistoric Beasts got me going with an evening's-worth of computer-animated creatures not nearly as well known as dinosaurs but just as scary. As evidenced by Gastronis, a flightless, six-and-a-half-foot-tall killer bird with a hatchet-shaped beak, terror played a lead role after the dinosaur extinction, too. Though I suspect they will always play second fiddle to the beloved, extinct reptiles, fascinating prehistoric animals are well represented in many museums.

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, DC offers exhibits including "Life in the Ancient Seas -- 570 Million Years Ago to Today," which includes the eras of the dinosaurs. This topic features lesser-known animals such as the Trilobite, Mososaur, Basilosaurus (the tiny-legged ancestor of the whale) and Gastropod (sea snails).

Among NMNH's Ice Age Mammals, you'll find skeletons of the Giant Ground Sloth, a plant-eater the size of an elephant; the Saber-oothed Cat, with the ability to stab and break the neck of animals much larger than itself; the freeze-dried, 28,000-year-old mummy of a Big Horned Bison and American Mastodon, thought to have been eaten by other Ice Age mammals called humans. Go on and take the NMNH Virtual Tour now.

The Joseph Moore Museum at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, has numerous skeletons, including those of the Giant Beaver, Giant Sloth and Mastodon. The website offers pictures and some background information.

The Los Angeles George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries sits amid the asphalt deposits that trapped more than 565 species of plants and animals from the Ice Age -- the La Brea Tar Pits. Here you can take part in tours and programs in addition to examining the remains and life replicas of Saber-toothed Cats, Colombian Mammoths and more. You can even test your own ability to pull free from the sticky asphalt.

If you are on the East Coast, a visit to New York's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is always worth the time. The AMNH displays its collections of fossil animals not by chronology but by vertebrate family tree. Of the six newly renovated halls, the Lila Acheson Wing of Mammals and their Extinct Relatives is most relevant to our topic. Visitors are invited to trace their mammalian lineage. You can take a virtual tour after downloading a free browser plug-in from a link on the webpage.

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