Re: Museology

["KEVIN HEDGPETH" <brontotherium@hotmail.com>]

>From: "Jeffrey Martz" <jeffmartz@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: "Jeffrey Martz" <jeffmartz@earthlink.net>
>To: <majestic_cheese@yahoo.com>, <dinosaur@usc.edu>
>CC: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
>Subject: Re: Museology
>Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 18:15:31 -0000
>
>
>>Second, let's give the paleolife artists their due.  They are right
>>there on the cutting edge of dinosaur science and work in close
>>consultation with paleontologists in preparing their displays.  (So
>>shelve those fears that the artists would make the scientists take the
>>back seat. :)  )
>
>
>      Giving the laregly conjectural artistic interpretation of the 
animal
>the front seat to the evidence it is based on is exactly what you are
>advocating.  There is still going to be a great deal more 
interpretation and
>subjectivity involved with a restoration then with showing the actual 
fossil
>bones.  Look at Greg Paul, Mark Hallet, James Gurney, Brian Franzak, 
and
>Doug Henderson's Tyrannosaurus rex restorations.  All are cutting edge, 
all
>are plausible and give a sense of how the living animal MAY have 
looked, but
>they all look different.  Which would you choose to emphasize in the
>exhibit?  The science can only take a restoration so far.
>interpretations are completely conjectural.
>


Perhaps the answer is to emphasize multiple restorations of the same 
animal, along with the idea that we don't know -exactly- what these 
creatures looked liked.  I think that kind of conjecture opens up the 
imagination.

--Kevin
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