The Gryposaurus Monumentensis is mounted in the Past Worlds Gallery in the Natural History Museum of Utah at the Rio Tinto Center. NHMU/Stuart Ruckman

Whereas most of the dinosaurs in the Past Worlds gallery are resin casts of the Museum’s paleontological specimens, this particular hadrosaur, or duckbilled dinosaur, is 85-percent genuine fossil material.

“Gryposaurus is a dinosaur that we commonly find in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and since we wanted to mount one full-scale dinosaur of original material in the new building, it made sense to mount this particular species,” noted the Museum’s Curator of Paleontology, Dr. Randall Irmis.

One of the unique features of the Gryposaurus monumentensis (Gryposaurus means “hook-beaked lizard” and monumentensis honors the monument where the fossils were found) is the large number of teeth embedded in the thick skull. At any given time, the dinosaur had over 300 teeth available to slice up plant material. Inside the jaw bone, there were numerous replacement teeth waiting, meaning that at any moment, this Gryposaur may have carried more than 800 teeth.

This Gryposaurus monumentensis was first discovered in 2002 in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and later described in 2007 by University of Utah student Bucky Gates and Research Curator Dr. Scott Sampson, based on a specimen collected by the Raymond Alf Museum in California. Museum paleontologists found the specimen that is mounted in the Museum in the summer of 2008, around the same time that the Museum broke ground on its newly opened home, the Rio Tinto Center.

“When we originally discussed mounting the Grypasaurus monumentensis, we were going to use a composite specimen, or create one specimen from parts of several different animals,” Irmis recalls of the initial discussions about the Past Worlds gallery.

“With any fossil vertebrate, it’s rare to find as much of the skeleton as we found. There are other complete duckbill dinosaur fossil findings, but this is the most complete hadrosaur from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. So, when we found this specimen, everything came together nicely, and it was a perfect candidate to go on exhibit.”

Today, it’s rare for a museum to mount an entire dinosaur of fossil material, favoring instead for resin casts of the specimen. Not only are resin casts lighter, but the mounts for casts are more easily made, and aesthetic in presentation. Additionally, the resin casts help paleontology departments preserve the collection’s research value.

“One reason we typically don’t mount fossil material for exhibition is because fossils end up being too thin, too fragile to mount,” noted Irmis. “The Museum’s collection is a research collection. It’s important that the integrity of the fossils are maintained, especially the head and legs – the most-studied parts of any dinosaur.”

Even though the specimen is on display in the Museum’s gallery, it doesn’t lose its research value. Like each of the 1.2 million objects and specimens in the Museum’s collections and exhibits, the Gryposaurus in the gallery is still relevant for study.

“Before we began mounting the fossils, we measured each individual specimen,” Irmis noted. “If there is someone who needs measurement data, we have that on record so it won’t need to be taken off of exhibit to handle such requests.

“However, if a researcher wants to take three-dimensional scans of each fossil, to better study its movement, then we’re going to remove each bone in phases. But, it is unlikely that the entire mount would ever have to come off exhibit.”

Mounting the heavy fossils was half the battle. The specimen’s arduous journey to the gallery floor began with its collection and preparation. The charge of ensuring that it was ready for the Museum’s Nov. 17, 2011, opening fell upon Collections Manager Mike Getty.

When the field crew began excavating the quarry that held the specimen in 2008, the original goal was to find fossilized leg bones that could serve the composite specimen originally penciled in to be displayed. But, fortunately, this was a quarry that, with a lot of sweat, revealed the majority of its secrets.

“As we cut out the legs of the Gryposaur specimen, we kept finding more fossil bones around it in the quarry,” said Getty. “So we kept cutting around it and we uncovered a mass of dis-articulated bones. I have to say, in my 20 years of work, this quarry was probably one of the most complicated sites that I have ever excavated.”

To have a specimen excavated, prepared and mounted for display in three years is a monumental undertaking. The stats are impressive: it was excavated from 2008-10 by 43 volunteers working 4400 hours, and it took 38 volunteers in the prep lab 5850 hours to prepare it for exhibit. Added all together, the volunteer hours worked totaled five years!

“This Gryposaurus specimen in particular is important to the paleontology department and to the state of Utah. This is our ‘Sue,’” Getty passionately noted in referring to the Tyrannosaurus rex at the Field Museum. “It’s the same size as Sue, it has the same amount of original fossil material associated with it, and both are spectacularly mounted in their respective museums.”

In May, 2011, the 76-million-year-old Gryposaurus’ journey ended with its installation on a platform in the Museum’s Past Worlds gallery, and it was unveiled with the rest of the galleries at the Natural History Museum of Utah at the Rio Tinto Center on Nov. 17, 2011.

Gambel oak sprouts are overshadowed by the charred remains of the trees that were burnt in the Red Butte Canyon fire in July, 2011.

Last July, a man-made fire scorched several acres of land surrounding the Rio Tinto Center, stretching from Red Butte Canyon to mere yards from the Museum’s new home on the east bench next to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

Curator of the Museum’s Garrett Herbarium, Mitchell Power, PhD, studies fire regimes in ecosystems. As part of this work, he collects core samples from the bottom of lakes, bogs and meadows. Air particulates, like pollen and charred plant remains, are deposited on the landscape and accumulate through time. Thus, sediment containing pollen and charcoal deposits help Power unlock the role fire has played in ecosystems over long periods of time, sometimes tens of thousands of years, and the response of vegetation after wild fires.

“Fire has an important role,” Power points out. “The perspective that our society has on forest fires comes from what I call the, ‘Smokey Bear Effect.’ The problem with the national Smokey Bear campaign is that it suggests fire is bad in all places all of the time. The truth is, fire is a necessity and it is advantageous for most fire adapted ecosystems, like the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains.

“Fire is a basic ecosystem service. We can’t live in a world without fire because it’s a crucial part of the ecosystem process.”

While it plays a key revitalization in role in nature, it becomes a bigger issue when safety of people and their infrastructure lay in the balance. Letting fire do its work to maintain the health of an ecosystem becomes tricky where urban centers sprawl into wild land.

“The problem with fire in the foothills, like we saw last July around the new Museum, is trying to integrate fire into an area where there is urban-wild land interface,” said Power. “That interface is a tough balance because we need the land to enjoy the benefits of fire, but we can’t have a fire that results in a loss of life or property.”

When wild fires tear through the land, it immediately looks like a lifeless, aesthetically displeasing and uninhabitable landscape. However, the positive effects are immediate and, in the instance of the charred area around the Museum, the rebirth of the gambel oak ecosystem was evident several weeks after the fire tore through part of its stand.

“The positives about the fire around the Rio Tinto Center is that the fire fighters were able to protect human-built structures in the area, while allowing a mosaic pattern of burn intensities (areas of high and low burn temperatures) that will provide a range of habitats during regrowth,” Power points out. “The fire not only enables native vegetation to regenerate, but it allows for greater variety in the structure of the vegetation (both in age and type) populating the area. So, ultimately, this recent fire has promoted a healthier and more resilient ecosystem around the new Museum.

“Fire is neccessary. Be it man-made or natural, it ultimately has a positive impact on the system.”

While media stories about fire suppression are always big headlines in the United States, total suppression of fire can, ultimately, result in greater damage to an ecosystem, especially in low elevation plant communties. Fire management has undergone radical paradigm shifts in the last few decades, with more managers now acknowledging fire will always play a revitalizing role in the Earth’s ecosystems.

“One reason that fire has such a poor reputation is because it changes a beautiful, lush, green forest into charred stumps,” said Power. “It can take up to 80 years to regenerate, so afflicted forests will look like a barren wasteland to an entire generation of people.

“What the public should understand is that fire is an important process. It’s necessary. Anyone who doubts the process needs only visit Yellowstone National Park to see the area that was burnt in 1988. Even today, it’s possible to see the amazing rebirth of life that takes place after a large wild land fire.”

Fires, like some other undesirable natural disasters, are key to the vitality of the planet and it’s role is certainly undeniable.

“Fire is the most ubiquitous natural disturbance we have on the planet,” Power notes. “Roughly, on average, 500 million hectares (about 1.2 billion acres) of land are burnt every year.”

One of the major advances of mankind was the ability to start and maintain fire. However, it’s still a force of nature that, while on one hand is destructive, still plays a key revitalizing role to ecosystems all over the world.

This diagram shows the the area covered by the Great Basin.

“This represents an emerging idea in the science field,” said Rickart. “Using information from the collection is a novel approach. Collections aren’t dusty information. They house information on how things can impact our future. “

The two Museum colleagues, and Rebecca Terry from the Department of Biology at Stanford, saw their work “Environmental change and declining resource availability for small-mammal communities in the Great Basin” published in volume 92, issue 6 of Ecology in June, 2011.

“When we initially started this project, our interest was to talk about what the future may hold for the Great Basin,” said Rowe. “But in order to understand what we might be able to expect in the future, it’s important to research what was documented in the past.”

The Great Basin covers parts of Utah (west of the Wasatch Mountains and down to the Colorado Plateau to the state’s south and southeast), most of Nevada (except for the area around the Utah-Nevada-Arizona boarder), and it spills into portions of southeast Idaho and south-central Oregon.

“There are a lot of issues in the Great Basin,” Rickart pointed out. “It’s endured climate change, the introduction of invasive species… it’s not an ancient system. It has seen a lot of change in its history.”

“It’s an area of great concern, ecologically speaking,” added Rowe.

This particular study looked at resources available to small-mammal communities and the impact that resource availability has had on those populations. It was a comparative project because the research team was fortunate to have access to 80-year-old field notes from the same mountain range.

“We were fortunate that studies of the Great Basin were done in the early 1900’s,” Rowe noted. “It was common during that era to send graduate assistants out West to survey areas. One of the old surveys we have was carried out in the Ruby Mountain Range by Adrey Borell in 1934. His work, among some others, offered detailed notes that made it easy to reconstruct what the ecology was like 80 years ago.”

After conducting their study of the Ruby Mountain Range, and looking at the numbers from 80 years gone, the team came to two conclusions.

“One observation that was apparent to us, the resources available on the landscape declined by about 50 percent,” Rowe summed up. “So, that means fewer resources are available to support the ecosystem.  However, not only did we see a decrease in the quanitity of resources, it is possible there could also be a decrease in the quality of resources.”

“Second, we found an increase in generalists (omnivores like chipmunks) and a decrease in specialists (herbivores like squirrels, granivores like kangaroo rats, and insectivores, such as shrews, for example). While the omnivores’ numbers were up, there was a big enough decrease in the overall population that we found that there was a general decline in community numbers.”

However, these conclusions lead to another question. If the species which have a general diet have increased, doesn’t it mean that the ecology’s balance is being maintained? The answer is, “No.” The specialists have a role in ecological systems and their decline can be troubling to biologists.

“Specialists can’t live just anywhere,” Rowe remarked. “They are sensitive to changes in their environment. So, if we find that there is a change in the population of a specific specialists, it’s an indicator of a larger problem.

“However, in our specific study, we found that there was a decline in ALL specialists. So the change wasn’t impacting a specific specialist. It was wide-spread.”

Rowe referenced additional work that Rickart had conducted in the Phillipines when she noted  that the research from Ruby Mountain may be revealing a cyclical ebb in the community’s ecology. But, before a conclusion like that can be determined, more work needs to be done.

“We are doing follow-up in the Toiyabe Range, to see what kind of results we find,” said Rickart. “We have 80-year-old field notes for that range as well. If we find the same issues that we found at Ruby Mountin, than it’s a regional problem. If we don’t find  the same results, then it’s just specific to the Ruby Mountain Range.’

While Museum researchers are continuing active research in the Great Basin, Rowe tentatively notes that the work from the Ruby Mountain research shows how small changes in climate can have far-reaching implications.

“What’s concerning to me is that we’ve seen a one-degree (Celsius) change in temperature in the Great Basin over the last 80 years,” Rowe said of the data collected. “If a minor change like that has such a profound effect on the ecology, it certainly doesn’t bode well for the future.”

While Rowe is quick to point out that scientific research doesn’t necessarily present answers on how to correct the problem, the study provides impetus for more research, and it also offers guidance to the agencies that have a stake in maintaining the integrity of the area.

Simon Heijdens pictured with his work.

The project has been three years in the making, beginning innocently enough on a business trip to New York City, when the Museum’s design team visited one of the city’s prominent museums.

“On one of our trips to New York, we saw Simon’s projected work, or installation, ‘Light Weeds’ at the Museum of Modern Art,” said Director of Exhibits and Public Programs Becky Menlove, who oversees exhibit installation at the Rio Tinto Center. “We believed his work would be a wonderful addition to the Rio Tinto Center.”

His work bridges the natural and artistic worlds, making the Rio Tinto Center a perfect place for a permanent installation. Heijdens creates “living” organisms out of light. Projected images literally comes to life; they begin as seeds, growing in reaction to climate and weather, and the movement of people around it.

Heijdens work stems from his fascination with nature, which leads to real-time artistic creations. “My interest isn’t directly in nature as an entity, such as a tree or flower, but nature as an interlinked collection of unplanned processes that change the character of each of its elements over time – growth, decay, unplanned interaction, changing aesthetics and the narrative quality these give to an environment. Every situation has its own nature.”

The London-based artist studies the life of plants and their life cycles That information is loaded as a series of algorithms on to a computer that directs projections of the life of the “plants” on the canyon wall. Sensors located around the “plants” and outside of the museum will relay data to the computer and the exhibit will behave according to the sensory data.

“The projected silhouettes are alive; from a digital seed that, in numbers, contains the genetic data of its family,” said Heijdens. “A seed drops into the projection, grows and is affected by actual measured rainfall and sunshine; it moves in the real wind; and throughout the day, it turns to follow the sun”

Heijdens has created works such as “Light Weeds,” “Tree” and “Branches,” and has had his work displayed in London, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Rotterdam and Milan. But Heijdens localized the Museum’s project, talking with each of the Museum’s curators, and specifically with Garrett Herbarium Curator Dr. Mitchell Power. His plan is to create an exhibit that projects Utah native plants. By expanding on his “Light Weeds” creation, Heijdens is making an installation for the Museum that will be both a one-of-a-kind and site-specific.

“We talked about his work, and I recommended species that would work with his schematics,” said Power. “So, we looked a phragmites (grasses that grow along the shores of Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake), sage brush, Aspen, tumbleweed, and Gambel oaks, among others.

“Simon was looking for patterns in the plants that are familiar to people, ones that people would instantly recognize when they were projected on the canyon wall. And, he truly wanted to ensure he wasn’t going to misrepresent the plants in his installation.”

Heijdens’ installation at the Natural History Museum of Utah will be his first permanent exhibit in the United States, and the first (and currently only) installation in a natural history museum. The exhibition is scheduled to be installed in the Rio Tinto Center by the grand opening in fall, 2011.

The patio at the Museum's new home, the Rio Tinto, boasts expansive views of the valley.

The energy partnership includes a grant from Rocky Mountain Power that allows for a sizable solar photovoltaic system installed on the site later this year. The project is expected to help offset at least $22,000in operational costs.

“For nearly five years, we’ve worked together to forge a true partnership to benefit not only the Museum itself but also the university, the community, and the entire state of Utah,” said Sarah George, executive director of the museum. “Our partnership has been key to our goal of reaching LEED Gold certification for Green Building Design,”

However, the solar photovoltaic will be just one of many green elements visitors to the Rio Tinto Center will see. From the solar panels above, to the pavement below, the building is built to boost energy efficiency and to mitigate its impact upon the environment.

“Incorporating the green elements into the Rio Tinto Center is a delicate balancing act,” said Kari Astle, the Museum’s architect project coordinator for the Rio Tinto Center. “Museums require a lot of energy to maintain environments that promote preservation of their collections. “However, we feel we’ve been quite successful at it. It was a team effort that required a tremendous amount of coordination between the designers and contractors.”

Local firm GSBS Architects, in partnership with Ennead, designed the green elements into the Rio Tinto Center. GSBS has designed six LEED-certified buildings, including one of the first buildings in the world to ever achieve LEED certification, the 2002 Olympic Oval in Kearns.

The Museum’s sustainable efforts begin with the ground visitors will first set foot upon when they arrive. The Museum’s parking lot is topped with porous pavement, making it pervious to water. By sifting the smaller grains out of the pavement mix, the remaining large chunks create a pervious layer,(sort of like a Rice Krispie treat,) allowing the water to percolate through to the soil below it.

Rain water that matriculates off the roof of the new building will be retained in two 10,000-gallon cisterns (one each on the north and south ends of the site), providing water to irrigate the land around the Museum.

The stored rain water not only reduces the building’s use of city water, it helps yet another one of the Museum’s sustainable efforts. During the last three years, Garrett Herbarium Collections Manager Ann Kelsey has tirelessly worked with staff and volunteers to remove invasive weeds from the foothills around the Museum, rehabilitating the area by planting sowing the seeds of native vegetation.

Another noticeable green feature will be the vegetated roof. Plants surrounding the edge of the roof will reduce both the runoff into the city storm sewer and the amount of radiant heat that the building emits back into the atmosphere.

The vegetated roof, in turn, aids in maintaining a high-performance envelope around the building. The envelope reduces the amount of heat both gained and lost through the building. The end result protects the interior of the building from outside moisture, allowing for better control of temperature and humidity levels inside the specialized collections rooms and exhibit halls.

“We invested a lot of time and effort into perfecting the envelope around the Museum,” noted Astle. “We employed infra-red scans and studied every weak point that they revealed, and we’ve worked very hard to ensure its integrity.

“It’s very important. Having this envelope around the museum makes it so much more efficient and easier to maintain the delicate environment on the inside.”

While GSBS Architects and Ennead were effective in designing the green elements, Big D construction was instrumental in incorporating them into the building. The rebar housed within the board-form concrete contains 95% recycled material and the structural steel contains around 60%. In all, more than a quarter of the Rio Tinto Center’s structural and architectural materials are recycled products.

Purchasing of locally produced products (manufactured within a 500-mile radius) helped achieve the goal of reducing the project’s carbon footprint. Some 20% of the Rio Tinto Center’s materials originated locally, including the building’s most noticeable exterior feature, the 120,000 square feet of copper which came from the Bingham Canyon Mine.

The Rio Tinto Center will house the Museum’s 1.2 million-object collection and is scheduled to open with new exhibits in eight galleries this fall.

The tight weave in the Navajo basket titled, "Rainbow Yei's" by Eleanor Rock.

At the center of the basket renaissance were the trading posts, like the Simpson family’s Twin Rocks Trading Post located in scenic Bluff, Utah. “When we started talking to the Collectors Council and the Museum about the basket collection, we pulled all the baskets out to catalogue them,” Steve Simpson from Twin Rocks Trading Post recalled. “We were reminded of how striking some of these baskets are! It truly was a movement that we all got caught up in. The creativity it produced is simply astounding.”

The origin of the renaissance in Navajo basket weaving dates back to the turn of the twentieth century. Near the end of the nineteenth century, trading posts were established near Navajo lands and the Navajo began to replace utilitarian baskets with metal, glass, and ceramic containers. However, the need for ceremonial baskets continued.

The same trading posts that made new containers available also opened up a market for popular Navajo wool rugs. Given the prices traders paid for wool rugs were significantly higher than that for baskets and the taboos that made weaving ceremonial baskets burdensome, Navajo women shifted away from weaving baskets until most observers believed this art had disappeared.

However, the art never completely died off. Unbeknownst to even Navajos on other parts of the reservation, several families on the remote Douglas Mesa in Utah continued weaving ceremonial baskets for use by the medicine men in their community.

“At first, this started as a way to make a living, and it grew and it evolved into this artistic revolution,” said Simpson in reference to the movement’s earliest stages. “Then, everyone was swept up into this tornado of creativity. There’s no better way to describe the fervor that surrounded the weavers. It was such an exciting time for everyone involved.”

Collaborating with the Simpsons, basket weavers created a diverse range of new basket designs from pictorial to abstract. For the first time, they began to include images from Navajo stories, ceremonies, and history in their baskets.

“There was so much happening during the renaissance,” Simpson recollected. “At its peak, weavers would frequently come to the trading post with new baskets, and when they unveiled their latest creation, you would get goose bumps just looking at the artistry contained in these baskets.

“This collection does contain traditional Navajo culture, but it’s contained in a contemporary format that documents the traditions while moving it forward,” Simpson said.

Anthropology Collections Manager Glenna Nielsen also contends that it highlights one the Navajo’s strongest attributes. “This collection shows how adaptable the Navajo truly are,” noted Nielsen. “Adaptability has been a strength of the Navajo. They see what people have around them and they incorporate it while maintaining their core beliefs.

“It was a change for them to weave their stories into their baskets. But, the Navajo incorporated it into this beautiful art form which allowed them to share their culture with us and with future generations.”

Simpson expanded on Nielsen’s sentiments, adding, “You have simple baskets that communicate their culture to Mary Holiday Black’s Fire Dance, which tells the story of a near-extinct ceremony. It truly gave the Navajo people a chance to create dialogue among themselves and way to share their culture with outsiders.”

The Museum’s Collectors Council is a group of visionary leaders who work with Museum curators to identify and purchase objects with cultural and historical significance for the Museum’s permanent collection. The Collectors Council has been instrumental in helping the Museum acquire nearly 20 distinguished collections and objects thus far.

“It’s an extraordinary collection that documents the movement from its earliest stages,” said Simpson in summarizing the entire collection. “You can actually see the Navajo basket weavers evolving. If you take one basket out of the collection, you lose its continuity. All together, it’s an extraordinary collection that documents the entire movement.”

The Twin Rocks Trading Post Navajo Basket Collection will be highlighted in the first large temporary exhibit at the Museum’s new home, the Rio Tinto Center. The 5,000 square-foot exhibit will feature approximately 150 baskets and run from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2013.

“We have started to see the basket-weaving renaissance fall off,” commented Simpson. “Some basket weavers have stopped weaving while others aren’t producing as many baskets anymore. Our hope is that the Museum’s exhibit ignites the creativity that we saw and that it reinvigorates the weavers.”

Dr. Randall Irmis was a member of the research team that announced the discovery of Tawa, which published this artistic rendering of it. (UMNH)

“Zoorassic Park,” at the Zoo from May 14 through August 21, will feature 13 life-sized animatronic dinosaurs representing the Jurassic and Cretaceous time periods. The dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus rex, Dilophosaurus and Allosaurus, will seem to come alive, moving, roaring, snarling and even spitting. As a partner with the Zoo, the Museum will have an exhibit featuring real fossil material, specimens found in Utah by paleontologists, called “Dinosaur Tales: Utah’s Fossils and the People Who Dig Them.”

When the life-like dinosaurs roam the Zoo’s grounds this summer, they raise the question of how scientists, like the Museum’s Curator of Paleontology Dr. Randall Irmis, determine exactly what dinosaurs looked like with only a fossil as a clue to their existence.

“There is an amazing intersection between art and science that many may not realize,” said Irmis.” It just so happens to occur so prevalently in both paleontology and biology.”

The look of each dinosaur is unveiled with the announcement of its discovery. After years of work excavating, preparing and researching a fossil find, the work is published in an academic journal. Accompanying the description is the artistic rendering of the find. It is often the most visually engaging aspect of the announcement as it captures how the dinosaur would have appeared in life.

“It’s similar to working with a forensic artist, reconstructing physical features from a skull and other bones,” noted Irmis. “We work in the same way. Based on the shape of the bone, its rough areas that show muscle attachment and the biology of its living relatives, we can reconstruct its look with a certain amount of confidence.”

The process of recreating what a dinosaur may have looked liked is a two-way process between the paleontologist and the artist. The artists, who work with paleontologists, have a biology background and bring an immense understanding of biological attributes like muscle tone, skin and movement.

“When we work with the artists, we give them photos of the bones and the skeleton reconstruction so they can work from it,” said Irmis. “From there, we, the paleontologist and artist, enter into an engaging dialogue. Before the first sketch, the artist typically asks a lot of questions and that discourse continues throughout the process until the final rendering is finished. It’s certainly a dynamic process with input going in both directions.”

However, not every aspect of an artistic rendering is rooted in science. There is a bit of artistic license when it comes to one of the more prominent aesthetic details. With all of the fossilized bone and skin impressions found, scientists are still unsure about the pigment in dinosaur scales.

“There are elements that are speculative when it comes to capturing what a dinosaur may have looked like during life,” said Irmis. “It’s those elements, such as skin color, that we leave to the artists’ discretion.”

While the artist’s rendering is one of the more prominent displays of the art in paleontology, the artistic process begins the moment the fossil is brought back from the field and the jacket is opened up in the fossil prep lab.

Visitors to the former home of the Museum on Presidents Circle were able to see that art up close and personal at the Museum’s Fossil Prep Lab. The fossil prep lab runs nearly seven days a week, and is one of the many departments that relies upon the time and passion of volunteers.

After a 4- to 6-six week training class, volunteers are first given specimens to work on, and are overseen by Museum staff like Eric Lund, the paleontology lab manager, or Mike Getty, the paleontology collections manager, because it takes a steady hand and a careful eye to parse a fossil from stone.

“Preparing fossils is an art,” Irmis pointed out. “It takes the motor skills that you find in fine sculptors to remove rock from fossil and to fill in the cracks that occur in specimens over time.”

“It’s a job that you learn best by doing it,” said Sharon Walkington, a 15-year volunteer at the Museum who works in the fossil prep lab.

Walkington has worked on some of the Museum’s most prominent specimens, many of which visitors will be able to see at the Museum’s new home, The Rio Tinto Center, this fall.

“You have to make several decisions throughout the process of working on a specimen,” said Walkington. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, except we don’t have the lid with a photo to guide us.”

“Ultimately, we work to prepare each specimen as honestly as possible. It’s a lot of detective work, but if you do an honest job on a fossil, it enables the artists and casters to interpret the skeleton and resurrect these animals.”

Adventures Newsletter

The online “Adventures” will be an opportunity for you to peer into the intriguing and, often times, hidden life of the Museum; to explore the the natural world and its people. “Adventures” will be the Museum’s virtual home for highlighting the endeavors of the Museum and its staff, and investigating the historical, natural, scientific, and environmental issues that have affected and are still impacting Utah and the Great Basin.

Find “Adventures” at its new home right here, at http://adventures.umnh.utah.edu.

We’re excited for the possibilities that are ahead for “Adventures,” and are even happier to have found an environmentally friendly and cost effective means of delivering it. Please let us know what you would like to see in our new online newsletter. We’re always open to new ideas as we aim to provide the best content we can for our readers.

Contact: newsletter@umnh.utah.edu

Dr. Mitchell Power surveys the hillside behind the new Museum for invasive weeds.

It became apparent early in the project to build a new Museum that its site, in the foothills, adjacent to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail and with breathtaking vistas of the Salt Lake Valley, would be integral to the Museum’s goal of illuminating the natural world and the place of humans within it.

Among the dominant residents of the land around the Rio Tinto Center are the native gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) communities, long-term occupants of the region. Trees on the site have been dated to between 60- and 80-years-old, according to Garrett Herbarium Curator Dr. Mitchell Power, who has been working with graduate students to explore the climate history preserved in the tree rings.

“It’s a heavily disturbed site from over a hundred years of human land use, including artillery fire, and thousand years of climate variability that impacted that landscape, the plants and animals,” said Power. “So the age of the gambel oak forest at its current location is a culmination of recent activities by Fort Douglas and a millennia of landscape change.”

The current oak forest may only be a few hundred years old, considering the longer-term climate variability in this region of Utah. These variations would have caused some plants and animals to retreat into the mountains during warmer periods in the past, while other species may have migrated down slope into the valley during cooler climates.

“Some time during the early Holocene, from 9000 to 6000 years ago, when northern hemisphere summers were significantly warmer than today, the foothills were populated by a sonoran oak, called Quercus turbinella. This species of oak has since migrated back to a warmer climate in southern Arizona,” noted Power.

“We know it was here because we still find a hybrid oak in the foothills called Quercus xpauciloba. It is a cross between the sonoran oak, and our local gambels oak.”

Even though the Rio Tinto Center sits on the edge of a large metropolis, ever-present is the evidence of the ancient Lake Bonneville shorelines, including sandy and cobblestone beaches, and the legacy of the sonoran oak that at one time commanded the best views of the valley. During the 20th century, many invasive species have taken residence in the foothills and have fortified themselves much like the sonoran oak did thousands of years ago. The site around the new Museum today remains a delicate ecosystem that benefits from the work of Museum volunteers and staff. That’s why Power and the herbarium’s collections manager, Ann Kelsey, have taken it upon themselves to literally “Adopt-a-Foothill” in order to limit the number of unwelcome weeds.
Eighteen months ago, Power and Kelsey set out to recapture the integrity of the site, which had seen its native vegetation mix greatly reduced by invasive weeds. Invasives have no natural predator to keep them in check, and they flourish in ecosystems by dominating the resources and choking out the native grasses.

Power, Kelsey, the Salt Lake City Weed Team and a handful of staff and volunteers set out to recapture the foothills in the name of its native grasses that have resided there for thousands of years, side by side with the oaks. Dozens of people spent several days treading along the foothills, filling dozens of bags with the invasive species Linaria genistfolia ssp. Dalmatica, otherwise known as Dalmatian toadflax. They also deployed a biological control agent, a stem-boring weevil.

“Not only do we feel that the weed pull was a success, but we are excited to find the biological control weevil thriving,” noted Power. “We’ve seen the stem-boring weevil in action on the Dalmatian toadflax and we’re confident it will help us eradicate future problems with this particular invasive weed.”

The stem-boring weevil, Mecinus janthinus, is widely used by the Salt Lake City Weed Team and is being adopted by many agencies across the West. While the weevil is one way to keep the invasive plants in check, on-going monitoring methods will provide both an educational opportunity and an ecological challenge.

“We started a program with the Museum’s Youth Teaching Youth program wherein youth science students will help us monitor the invasive weeds for many years to come,” Power said. “Program participants will digitally map, inventory and monitor patches of invasive weeds annually, and we’ll be able to easily trace the introduction and spread of existing and new invasive plants.”

Removing the invasive weeds was half the battle. Restoring the native vegetation is going to be a longer project.

“Success of the seeding was relatively modest in the first year,” Power said. “We hope to see double or triple the reproduction among the native species we planted. We also plan a second seeding to hit some of the spots where many of our native seeds were either eaten or washed away.”

Preservation of the site around the Rio Tinto Center is an incredible opportunity for the Museum to illuminate the natural world that surrounds us, and, of course, the place of humans in it

“The mammoth was mounted on the first floor, in the Discovery Hall,” said Supervisor of Exhibit Services Will Black. “The ceiling height was too low in there, so its mounts were built in a ‘squatting’ position. When we were finished, we moved it to the Ice Age platform in the Paleontology Hall.”

The newly remounted mammoth stands at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

The mammoth was discovered in the late 1980’s in the Joe’s Valley Reservoir. It was cast and mounted in 1992 and placed on the Ice Age platform where it resided for 18 years – kneeling down.

It’s positioning wasn’t anatomically incorrect. However, in its crouching pose, it lost some of its impact. It was a point that wasn’t lost on some visitors, curators and staff members.

“A plan to move some of the skeletons that were on display in the George Thomas building had been in the works for a few years,” said Black. “When it was finalized, we took five skeletons to the new building, including the mammoth. At that point, we realized it would be a great opportunity to fix it.”

This meant more than merely walking under it and straightening the legs. The fiber-glass cast weighs 525 pounds, and the mount was specifically designed to bend its front legs.

“A big part of what we do is communicate to the public what animals look like,” said the Museum’s Curator of Paleontology Randall Irmis. “We can show a single bone but that doesn’t fully illustrate the animal. Mounts convey size, scale and grandeur and can have a lasting impact on the human mind.”

As the George Thomas Building neared closing last fall, the project to correctly mount the mammoth began.

“We had to remount the front legs entirely,” noted Black. “We built completely new mounts and then affixed them back onto the mammoth.”

A couple of weeks were spent welding new mounts, and after the final “What’s in the Basement” event in the George Thomas building, staff spent several weeks dismantling the mammoth and moving it to its new home in the Rio Tinto Center.

However, moving it was only half the battle. Getting it situated on its new platform was an undertaking worthy of the mammoth’s size.

“The biggest challenge was holding a mammoth skeleton up without its front legs,” Black noted. “We had to bring in a rigging system into the new Museum.”
And the delicate assembly began.

“First, we set up the hind legs and pelvis,” Black described. “Riggers hoisted the spinal column into place, and we fastened it to the pelvis and then added the front legs. After we attached the front legs, we hoisted the skull into place and then attached each rib.”

Upon its completion, the mammoth became one of the first of many objects to go up in the Rio Tinto Center. Re-fit, and settled in its new home, the mammoth will forever be seen in its imposing grandeur.

“This whole project is amazing,” commented Black. “Placing objects into the new Museum where there’s so much space, it’s just a great opportunity. Certainly, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”