EK Response Week 11

The readings this week gave a lot of information about how the museum had gone about collecting specimens. The chapter on the "Gold Rush" discussed how the museum acquired its large dinosaur fossil collection and the other chapter, A Library of Bones, discussed how the museum has collector, displayed,and categorized the fossils.
I thought it was interesting how there was a "gold rush" for dinosaur fossils that resulted in intense competition between collectors, Marsh and Cope. They seemed to do whatever they could to obtain fossils before the other could. I was also a little surprised that when the museum had put together the fossil for the brontosaurus they placed the wrong head on and refused to admit it. The correct skull was discovered by Douglas (from Carnegie) when he realized he had a different skull than the museum. He challenged the museum but the museum refused to change their skull (which they had created in the first place). Years later the issue was brought up again and the museum built a replica of the Douglas brontosaurus next to their original brontosaurus claiming that if they were not able to replace the head because it would cause too much damage to the fossil. I thought it was surprising that the museum took so long to consider another idea. They did not have to accept right away but they should have examined the issue more thoroughly.
A fun fact that was brought up in the library chapter was the Frick building. I did not know that there was such a lager building in the center of the building that contained so many mammal fossils that the would collapse most structures so the building had to be reinforced with steel.
The way the museum cleans fossil bones is also really interesting. The two methods include bacterial maceration and "the bugs". Bacterial maceration includes allowing the carcass to soak in bacteria in order to get the tissue off then the bones are put in baking soda to get the rest of the flesh off and the remaining bits are taken off by hand. "The bugs" involves dermestid beetles eating the flesh clean of a small animal. I would like to see these beetles clean a carcass. They sound quite ravenous.