RE: The best dinosaur museum in North America ?

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Roger Smith
>
> Here's a question that has come to me from a correspondent:
>
> "Hi, I would like to find the biggest and the best dinosaur
> museum in north
> America to take my 5 year old son to.....any ideas?...thanks,"
>
> As I don't live in the US or Canada, what museums would the list
> recommend?

Okay, here's my recommendations, in order:

1) The American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  A great
diversity of dinosaurs (representing stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, ceratopsians,
pachychephalosaurs, many clades of ornithopod, prosauropods, sauropods (the
only real dinosaurian weak spot for the AMNH compared to the Smithsonian and
Carnegie, which have both diplodocoids and macronarian skeletons on
display), and LOTS of theropods), classic taxa and specimens (including
several ornithischians with skin impressions), extremely well lit.  Also
present are the truly unsurpassed Hall of Paraphyly... er, Hall of
Vertebrate Origins and the mammal halls.  The single best collection  and
the single best set of vertebrate paleontology exhibits on the planet.

BUT, only shortly behind...

2) The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.  Out of date
exhibit design and smaller amount of specimens on display than the AMNH, but
again truly astonishingly classic stuff.  Also, fossil mammal halls are
strictly North American, but given that restriction actually provide a
highly effective exhibit for understanding Cenozoic change in North America.
Much better fossil marine life exhibits (including invertebrates) than the
AMNH.

3) The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, AB.  While the
above two are in major cities with plenty of else to do, and to which it is
quite easy to travel, the Tyrrell is a bit harder to get to (fly into
Calgary, drive for an hour and a half to the little town of Drumheller).
However, given that, these are phenomenal exhibits of Late Cretaceous
Canadian fossils, and are smack dab in the rocks whence the fossils came!
(I heard a rumor that at the 1988 SVP meeting, the only one since '87 I've
missed, that Jack Horner was walking around the parking lot and came across
a hadrosaur jaw...).  There are exhibits of other dinosaurs here, too.  For
researchers on Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America, the Tyrrell is
Mecca, but that is as much for behind-the-scenes stuff as anything else.

4) The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL.  "Sue" the T. rex,
Brachiosaurus altithorax, Apatosaurus, Daspletosaurus mislabelled as
Albertosaurus (suffering from a rather weird homeotic mutation of the pedal
digits... :-), Lambeosaurus, Herrerasaurus, and more.  Excellent stuff, and
again in a city with a lot else to do.

5) The Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Denver, CO. Some of the best
dinosaur exhibits in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, including the best
Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and
Edmontosaurus (and the only? Garogoyleosaurus) mounts around.  Lots of other
good dinosaurs, and plenty of non-dinosaurs, too.

In my opinion, the next tier (actually, some of these I might rank with
Denver) are:
The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA;
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA;
Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, CT (although mounts are
mostly out-of-date);
Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT (however, collections far surpass the
exhibits, which have a lot of life reconstructions rather than fossils);
University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley, CA;
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, LA, CA;
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON;
Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, ON.

There are still others out there, of course, but many of the rest have ten
or fewer dinosaurs mounted in their exhibit halls. (Friends and colleagues
who work at these others: please don't be offended that I didn't list them
all!).

A **VERY** special mention, though, to Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal,
UT, where their are as many mounted skeletons as such, but there is the
spectacular wall featuring dozens of partial dinosaur skeletons still
encased in the sediments in which they were buried.  Made a great impression
on me when I was 7 (although I had already decided to become a
paleontologist by that point).

Hope this helps.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796