Night at the Museum...well, Afternoon

A few weeks ago, we decided to spend the afternoon at the new Natural History Museum in Salt Lake. My uncle Jerry volunteers at the museum and had offered to take us on a guided tour sometime ago, so my parents and us finally took him up on his offer. What I thought would be a couple hours turned into four...there was so much to see!

 

• Gage sticking his head in the dino penny collector...yup, stick a penny on it's tongue and it rolls inside to get digested. The dino will thank you with some creepy growls.
• Mother looking like she's in a scene from The Sound of Music
• Cave drawings
• Megacroc! I think Gage could pretty much lie down in it's mouth.

 

 

•  The evolution of the human skull...Gage making friends.

 

•  My pregger feet standing on one of the glass walkways in the dino section and then in a dino footprint from a duckbill type of dinosaur found in Utah.

 

• Triceratops...I hope I'm not the only one who thinks of Cera from Land Before Time and the great earth shake. I would've loved to take a pic of the brontosaurus replica but of course the full thing didn't fit in the camera screen. It was huge! 

•  Purdy butterflies!

 

•  Checking out the nasty tarantula and other nasty bugs like hissing cockroaches and scorpions...I made Jake take the picture because no way was I getting that close.

•  Uncle Jerry showing us some of the dino bone castings in the lab that are being worked on. The lab is not open to the public, so we felt pretty nifty getting the exclusive tour.

 

• Allosaurus...Utah's dinosaur, in case you didn't know. I've remembered that since elementary school! Looks like a small T-Rex.
• Uncle Jerry letting Gage put on his lab gear to work on the dino bone casting he's been uncovering. Talk about feeling like Columbus...Unlce Jerry discovered this dino bone and was the first human to see it in what-ever-million years. Try beating that on your resume!
• A picture of Uncle Jerry on display near the lab. Famous! Oh, your uncle sells insurance? Mine digs up dinosaurs.