Our granddaughter, Mikala, is home from her summer travels but not yet back in school. So we went to Houston this week to take her to the natural history museum. None of us had been there for several years ___ I think the last time I was there was to see a traveling exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of the displays were totally new; in fact the whole exhibit hall has been reorganized.
The huge paleontology section is Big and Exciting with the creatures acting out scenes of action and terror. A bit like going to Disneyland without the animatronics. But most of the bones are cast from discoveries, not actual bone. I miss the older exhibit where they clearly showed by color which were actual bones and which were cast replicas. The older exhibit also had a complete plesiosaur ___ the actual remains! ___ now sadly gone.
One of my favorite watercolor artists is Karl Bodmer, and one of my favorites of his work was of a tree full of Carolina parakeets painted around 1830. I found an actual taxidermy specimen of one of these American parakeets; sadly they became extinct just a few years after Bodmer painted them.
