Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The City Museum

The other major stop of our weekend trip to St. Louis was the utterly wickedly wondrous and splendid City Museum. I won't get into the whole history of it; suffice to say that it's a giant indoor playground made of salvaged building materials, and is completely bananas. I didn't go expecting a lot of Mesozoica, but I figured there had to be at least a little. I was happily surprised at what I found.

First, there's this great sauropod staircase, leading from the entry level to the mezzanine and second floor. You can barely make out her head in the first shot...

The City Museum

...so here's a close-up.

City Museum Staircase Sauropod

On the second floor is a small room of natural history type stuff, presumably from other institutions' defunct displays. I was thrilled to find a glass case containing a bunch of fossil casts, including Tapejara, Velociraptor and Masiakasaurus skulls, and some others I didn't get good pictures of. Not that these are hot stuff; I've never been good at snapping photos through glass.

The City Museum

City Museum Velociraptor

City Museum Masiakasaurus

Opposite the display case is a diorama containing various reconstructions, including Bambiraptor, Compsognathus, Sordes, and Anurognathus. They were created by Missouri's Fossilsmith studios; unfortunately, it doesn't look like they've done a lot in the last few years (or maybe they're so busy they haven't had time to update their site). Their work here is excellent. Seeing that extravagantly feathered bambi when I walked into the room was such a great surprise.

City Museum Bambiraptor

City Museum Comsognathus Couple

The room also has a case full of other assorted fossils and casts, including various pterosaurs and a reproduction of Archaeopteryx. Really, its a lot of paleo crammed into a pretty small room. There's also a Pteranodon hanging from the ceiling on the ground level, somewhat out of place as the rest of the area has an undersea theme. But I'm not complaining.

The City Museum

The City Museum

Seriously, this is a must-see if you're ever in St. Louis.

2 comments:

  1. Oh wow, that looks so awesome! Have you ever been to the Royal Tyrrell Museum?

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  2. Never been up that way, but I'd love to.

    ReplyDelete

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