When did the last Great Marine Reptile really go extinct?

 

Visiting the Sauriermuseum Aathal - Part 4: The Main Hall

Kept you waiting, huh? Yes, I admit last year was not really productive, at least when it comes to this blog, and that was down to various reasons, but let us just hope this year will be better. For Part 3, go here. We finally return to the Sauriermuseum Aathal one last time to finally look at the main hall…

… which is either the best part about the museum or the most lacking. The reason is that this part of the museum seems to be the oldest and has undergone very little change since the 90s. I can personally attest this, as I remember almost every detail here also from my visits as a child during the early 2000s. For people who do not know much about dinosaurs, this is likely detrimental, as much of the information and especially the depictions are outdated (though most of the plaques go with the Dinosaur Renaissance approach of saurian biology, so the reader at least does not leave with a completely wrong vision of dinosaurs as big dumb lizards). For people like me, who are very much into old paleoart and nostalgia, this is pretty much heaven, since literally everything here still reeks of 90s Dino-Mania. In a meta sense, this part of the museum becomes in itself a (perhaps intentional) exhibit of the state of dinosaur science and pop culture from around the time the museum was first opened. I personally love this, perhaps because it is comforting knowing that at least one part of my childhood is still intact and well, but maybe also because of the fact I now know so much more about paleoart and history than I did back then, so I can appreciate all of this much more. Just look at the image above! You get Burian’s classic Tarbosaurus, right next to allosaur-style Spinosaurus and naked Struthiomimus. It is like seeing old friends again.

Two other old friends, “gumby-style” Therizinosaurus, as the authors of All Your Yesterdays call Ely Kish’s particular reconstruction of the animal, and naked Deinonychus. The latter’s appearance is especially funny, since, if you remember, the same museum also has an exhibit on feathered dinosaurs, with a fuzzy Velociraptor model. As the Natural History Museum of London has shown, however, even the big name museums seem to have trouble updating their resident Deinonychus. For what it is worth though, judging by the standards of when this model was likely made, it is pretty good. Especially the closed-mouth, lipped expression and bird-like gaze help make it look less monstrous and more like a normal animal. Regarding the outdatedness on Therizinosaurus, paleoartist Mark Witton has fairly recently kicked off a debate over whether particularly big coelurosaurs, such as this one and Deinocheirus, really would have had feather-coats, even if their ancestors evidently did, as they might have easily ran the risk of overheating. Make of that what you will.

This low-roofed part of the hall (a bistro is right above it) it mostly filled with general dinosaur-information and skull- and bone-replicas. You were even allowed to touch a real Triceratops bone while Burian’s rendition of the animal judges you (making this the second time I got to stroke a dinosaur bone). Having skull-replicas so close-up is always fun, because A) You get to stick your head inside a T. rex jaw, which is always great fun, and B) You can really appreciate the oddness of some of these anatomies. Just look at the freaky jaw-apparatus on Edmontosaurus at the bottom.

Also endearing are these wax models, showing paleontologists at work. I strongly suspect that the appearance of the one on the left is based off (young) Kirby Siber himself, while the one on the right is meant to be Ben Pabst, who still works at the museum as a preparator. Imagine you yourself are part of an exhibit in your own museum while you are still alive. I do not think I have ever seen that one before.

The biggest skeleton of the museum (apart maybe from one of the whales that Siber dug up and also exhibited) was of course the sauropod under the glass-roof. It is a replica of the real one in the Berliner Naturkundemuseum, which I believe is to date still the largest (nearly) complete dinosaur skeleton ever exhibited in a museum. Unfortunately, here the main hall also shows its age again, as the replica is still labelled Brachiosaurus. This was still seen as mostly correct in the 90s, but since 2009 the main consensus has become that the Berlin-skeleton is actually Giraffatitan. What is notable about the Aathal-replica is the posturing. Obviously, they had to lower the neck down a fair bit, as otherwise the skeleton would not have fit into the building, but the tail is notably raised above the ground (and has been that way since the very beginning). Compare this with the Berlin-original, which had its tail dragging on the ground all the way until its remounting in 2009. Another thing you can see here, which I also really like, is the usage of plants (real and plastic) which the museum lavishly uses to decorate many sections and exhibits. It makes the whole atmosphere feel much more organic and prehistoric, rather than the quite clinical look of some other museums.

Standing underneath the sauropod’s neck like squabbling children were these skeletons of Carnotaurus and Gastonia. Surrounding them were smaller fossils of petrified wood or the tail-club of Ankylosaurus. I do like the dynamic posturing of the skeletons here, though it kinda looks like the Carnotaurus is about to attack the Gastonia, which would be temporally and geographically impossible, as one animal lived in Late Cretaceous South America, while the other one lived in Early Cretaceous North America.

As you may have noticed in some of the pictures before, many of the bones and species plaques are accompanied by glass vitrines with life-models of the dinosaurs in question. While some, like this “Dracorex” (really just a young or female Pachycephalosaurus, let us not kid ourselves) seem to have been made more recently, others I remember standing here since time immemorial and preserve all of their outdated charm. I really want to know who made them.

Just look at this extremely retro Parasaurolophus for example. Not only does it stand upright like a man in a suit, it also has that membrane between its crest and neck. This was a somewhat popular interpretation during the 80s and earlier, I imagine because it gave the animal more of an aquatic look, to reinforce the stereotype that these duck-billed dinosaurs also lived like big ducks. This idea has mostly died out (last time I remember seeing this was in Disney’s Dinosaur from 2000), perhaps because this structure would have made it difficult for the animal to turn its head.

The other models are also really interesting to look at. I especially like the Apatosaurus miniature, because it accurately shows how strangely wide and robust the neck was, compared to older reconstructions that just made it a big, grey tube. Today there is even serious speculation that those bony protrusions on the underside of the neck may have had keratinous bulbs or even spikes, which the dinosaur then used for inter-species combat (or, in short, Bronto-Smash!).

And then there is this Camarasaurus, whose facial expression just keeps cracking me up. Seriously, does it not look like it is letting out a stoned Seth Rogen-laugh?

Out of the Howe-Quarry corridor, one comes to the outside area of the museum. Apart from a grilling area, a sand-pit where children could dig up a dino-skeleton and some photo-posing options, one is also greeted by an outdated, but nonetheless imposing T. rex enjoying his meal. Surrounding the model were various labelled plants from groups that have existed since the Mesozoic.

In fact, there would have been a small paleobotanical garden, but it was unfortunately not accessible that day due to Covid-restrictions. This also means I could only photograph these two life-sized sauropod models, an adult and a baby, from afar. They were actually animatronics that swung their heads and neck around. What species they were exactly I also could not find out, as their info-plaque was in the restricted area. All I found out is that they are meant to be turiasaurs.

Finally we come to the marine reptiles, starting off with this very retro family-tree. The mosasaurs seem to not have changed much since Charles R. Knight. Also there of course is Walking with Dinosaurs' oversized Liopleurodon, who, let us be honest, is still family, so his presence is always welcome.

Hanging from the ceiling are of course the three superstars from the Western Interior Seaway, Elasmosaurus, Mosasaurus (or maybe it is Tylosaurus, I am not actually sure anymore) and Archelon, which I photographed here from the upstairs dining area. Accompanying them were also fossils of various smaller ichthyosaurs, pliosaurs and marine crocodilians.

The Archelon in question is, by the way, a replica of the one in the Vienna Museum, or in other words the same one Kirby Siber dug up all the way back in the 70s. The turtle, which so many decades ago planted the seed of an idea for this museum has, at least in one form, found its way back into Aathal and I think that is a nice note to end this visit on.

I hope you had a fun time reading and I hope I inspired you to visit the Sauriermuseum Aathal yourself one day. It is an over all very enjoyable experience, which I recommend to everyone. Minor outdated stuff (which pretty much every museum has) do not distract from the great, charme, passion and love this museum has for its subject matter.

If you liked this and other articles, please consider supporting me on Patreon. I am thankful for any amount, even if it is just 1$, as it will help me at dedicating more time to this blog and related projects. Patrons also gain early access to the draft-versions of these posts.

Related Posts:

• Visiting the Sauriermuseum Aathal - Part 1: The Howe Quarry Dinosaurs
• Visiting the Sauriermuseum Aathal - Part 2: Exhibits
• My Trip to the Dinosaur Museum of Frick
• Fossil Hunting in the Jura Mountains of Holderbank
• Gresslyosaurus: The Eldritch Dinosaur that turned its Discoverer insane?

Online sources/Further Reading:

• Megafuzz under the microscope: how credible are restorations of giant fluffy extinct animals? by Mark Witton.

Antique Paleoart: The Lost Paleozoic Museum

Author's Note: This blogpost has been severely outdated by a a new study into the topic two years later. Substantial evidence exists now that the destruction of the Palaeozoic Museum was not caused by William Tweed but instead by jurist Henry Hilton. As such, this blogpost should only be read itself as a historical relic of an older historiography.

The Crystal Palace Park from the last post should be something well-known to most of you. What is less well-known is that the park was supposed to have a follow-up by the same modeller, constructed in the Central Park of New York no less. In 1868, seventeen years after the first opening of the Crystal Palace exhibit, the managers of the then newly created Central Park commissioned Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to build new sculptures of prehistoric animals for their own park, which would be housed in an exhibit called the Paleozoic Museum. Why exactly it was going to be called that I am not sure, because by the looks of it none of the planned animals to be featured actually came from the Paleozoic. Unfortunately, this park never came into existence and all that exists now is concept art and sketches. Why? Read until the end to find out.

Before we take down the mood with a depressing story, let us simply appreciate what still exists. Here we see one of the earliest concepts, probably drawn in 1868 (Davidson 2018). Presumably the actual size of the museum and other details were still unknown. As you can see, unlike its British counterpart, all the sculptures were supposed to be housed in the same building, a glass palace (maybe intentionally) very similar to the one that existed in Hyde Park. As a consequence, the animals were not separated by their time period anymore but shown in one menagerie, though it seems Hawkins wanted to make at least some attempt to separate the mammals and dinosaurs through islands or pedestals. The science in here, while still goofy-looking, had greatly advanced since the Crystal Palace days. Ten years prior in 1858 William Parker Foulke discovered the remains of Hadrosaurus in Illinois, which were more complete than any other dinosaur-material in Europe and showed that instead of the rhinoceros-like creatures they were previously depicted as they were actually more kangaroo-like animals which walked on two bird-like legs. In the short time between this discovery and until the first description of Camarasaurus in 1877 it actually became common thought that all dinosaurs were bipedal (leading to pretty funny Stegosaurus-reconstructions). The same year as Hawkins was put to task for the Paleozoic Museum he also made the first full-scale skeletal reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first mounted skeleton of any dinosaur, for the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Obviously, he wanted to (and did) use this model as a base for his sculptures and Hadrosaurus seems to have been the center-piece of the Paleozoic Museum, towering over the theropods and even the mastodons. The theropods here are meant to be Laelaps (Dryptosaurus), described two years prior from incomplete remains. They look pretty weird, considering that Hawkins could have just made them “Megalosaurus but bipedal”, like he did in later murals. There is something gargoylean about them, especially the ones fighting over the carcass resemble naked vultures. They actually remind me of early fan-art of the fellbeasts of Mordor (before the Peter Jackson movies). Another oddity is the eel-like creature on the bottom right. That is not meant to be a mosasaur, no, that is actually supposed to be Elasmosaurus platyurus (Davidson 2018). Remember, Edward Cope had just described this animal in 1868 and, infamously, misplaced the head on the tail, mistaking the ridiculously long neck for the tail. Even considering Cope’s error, this reconstruction is odd, because the hindlimbs are missing, the ones on the front look like articulated arms instead of flippers and the head looks like that of an iguana instead of the already known skull of Elasmosaurus. It is for reasons like this that Jane Davidson speculates that this concept art was drawn before Cope had even published his description and Hawkins was working on only the vaguest information (Davidson 2008, p. 72).

Here we see the same concept one year later and more detailed. Elasmosaurus has now already been dramatically overworked (looking closer to the plesiosaurs in Crystal Palace), in part because Cope had actually sent Hawkins the animal’s pelvic bones as reference material. Another major change is the exhibit itself. The building has shrunk down but also been decorated livelier with various ferns and other scenery-plants. It actually reminds me a lot of the main hall of the Sauriermusem Aathal, which I recently revisited again (hint, hint). The back-wall was apparently also supposed to have had a mural at this point and the menagerie was separated from the viewers by a wall or ditch. The hallway behind the balcony was likely meant to further house fossils and miniature models. The dinosaurs still look remarkably active and lively and unlike in the Crystal Palace Park actually engage in conflict. Hawkins also employs his tried and tested method of depicting at least two individuals of the same species doing different stuff to give the animals a believable range of behaviour.

Here is an engraving of Hawkins’ Central Park Studio. The reclining Hadrosaurus and Megaloceros were apparently already finished for the exhibit. Some sort of crocodilian was also planned. There are also two smaller figurines in the center. I believe these were not meant for the grand exhibit but rather were miniatures of Hadrosaurus and Laelaps, likely to be exhibited in vitrines in the back-halls of the balcony. According to Davidson, the rocks on the lower left right to the large bones might be the aforementioned Elasmosaurus-concretions that Hawkins was allowed to borrow (Davidson 2018).

Here we see another depiction of the scene, though with slightly wonkier details. Maybe it was based on the above drawing or was drawn from life when the workshop was tidied up a bit. Interestingly the skeletal mount of Hadrosaurus now bears its trademark tree that the model was usually reclining on.

And finally, here are actual surviving photographs of the workshop, proving that the above drawings were not just some fancy concepts. The second photograph is especially interesting due to the second skeleton being assembled. Mark Witton speculates that this may have been the model for Laelaps, which records indicate was finished up shortly after the photo was taken. We can also see in the background many skeletons of modern birds which Hawkins used as reference. Now, you probably want to know what happened to all of this. By the late 1860s New York City was in the iron grip of one man named William Magear Tweed, who is widely considered to have been one of the most corrupt politicians in American history. Working his early youth through various bands and gangs, he eventually became the boss of the Tammany Hall Society, which had large control over the Democratic Party of New York. In 1852 this led to him becoming the councillor of the city, as well as a member of the United States House of Representatives. Tweed used his position for exorbitant amounts of personal gain, by bleeding the city’s funds dry, putting his own men in important positions and granting them contracts, which they used to sell products to the state for ridiculously inflated prices. Almost all critics or adversaries were bribed to stay quiet or were bullied into submission. During the zenith of his power he had become the third-largest owner of real-estate in the city. The Paleozoic Museum and the Central Park in general were a great nuisance to him, as he thought they were a waste of money. In an 1870 legislature he removed Andrew Green from the park’s administration and replaced him with his own man, Peter Sweeny, to gain direct control of it and exploit it for all that it was worth. Shortly after, work on the museum was halted under the pre-text that it costed the taxpayers too much money. The foundations that were already laid were filled up with dirt and concrete. The next year something truly heinous happened. Vandals, paid by Sweeny and Tweed, broke into Hawkins’ workshop and destroyed the already finished models of Hadrosaurus, Laelaps and various other animals with sledgehammers and buried the shards in the park. Not only the finished models, but also the moulds and concept models were destroyed in the process, as well as the Elasmosaurus-remains Cope had lent out, for no other reason than wanton vandalism. Why exactly Tweed resorted to these actions is unclear, as he could have easily sold the models to institutions like the Smithsonian for easy money. According to some sources, Hawkins publicly spoke out against Tweed’s corruption, likely making this an act of revenge. Tweed’s personal comments however also indicate that he was very doubtful of the science of paleontology and he referred to the modelled animals as “alleged to be of the pre-Adamite period.” (Desmond 1975), indicating that he was sceptical of the creatures actually coming from a time before humanity existed. It therefore seems plausible that Tweed was what we would today call a young-earth-creationist and that he held a personal grudge against the models because they offended his religious beliefs. This might further explain why such a greedy man wanted to squash a project that would have otherwise brought many visitors to the Central Park, potentially increasing his revenue: He did not want people to be educated about prehistoric life. Disturbingly there still are people with such attitudes in American politics, though they now tend to come from the Republican party. Then again, this was before the 1960s, when the two parties completely switched their voter-bases.

Hawkins, devastated with the loss, went to Princeton University to draw murals (which thankfully still exist) and build one more dinosaur model, before he went back home to England. A few months after the destruction of the museum, county sheriff James O’Brien, upset about not being paid enough bribes by Tweed, decided to talk to the press and leak the large amounts of embezzlement that the Tammany Society was involved in. After national and international investors became shocked at how badly the city’s finances were managed and how it might not be able to repay its debts, the Society’s funds were cut, making Tweed unable to pay the workers he relied on, thus eroding away his voterbase. After further investigation under Andrew Green, Tweed was finally arrested, bailed out for 1 million dollars, later got arrested again, served one year in prison, got sued for embezzlement again, got jailed again and on an allowed home visit escaped to Spain. There he was recognized by a policeman as a fugitive, thanks to detailed caricatures made by Thomas Nast (which you can see above) that were used as wanted posters, and brought back to America, where in 1878 he finally died in jail from pneumonia. A slightly funny anecdote to end this story is that the policeman, presumably due to not speaking English, interpreted the caricature as Tweed being wanted for kidnapping, not corruption.

If you liked this and other articles, please consider supporting me on Patreon. I am thankful for any amount, even if it is just 1$, as it will help me at dedicating more time to this blog and related projects. Patrons also gain early access to the draft-versions of these posts.

Related Posts:

• Antique Paleoart: Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World
• The Alien Prehistoric World Trope: Part 2 - Dinosaurs become movie monsters
• A History of Thick Dinosaurs

Literary Sources:

• Davidson, Jane: A History of Paleontology Illustration, Bloomington 2008.
• Desmond, Adrian: The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs. A revolution inPaleontology, London 1975.

Papers:

• Davidson, Jane/Everhart, Michael: The Mystery of Elasmosaurus platyurus Cope 1868 – Where is the Rest of the Type Specimen?, in: Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 121, 2018, p. 335-345.

Online Sources/Further Reading:

• Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins: the first grand master of palaeoart by Mark Witton.

Image Sources:

• Fig. 1: Davidson 2008, p. 72.
• Fig. 2: Wikimedia
• Fig. 3: Wikimedia
• Fig. 4: Desmond 1975, p. 38.
• Fig. 5: Davidson 2018.
• Fig. 6: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins: the first grand master of palaeoart
• Fig. 7: Wikimedia