Reading for 4/12

For as much crap as I've given Dinosaurs in The Attic for being uncritical of the museums practices, I have to admit that Douglas J. Preston does a really good job at showing how muddled the museum often is. It seems at times as though the museum is a large playground for wealthy investors, scientists, and intellectuals all vying for various objects and agendas. I think this is interesting when you apply the Teddy Bear Patriarchy theme, especially with the incessant competition between the scientists to find and claim dinosaurs. Also the entire way that men like Sternberg are framed is in a similar vein to the Roosevelt adventurer. I think this is really blatant in this particular reading, which shows how chaotic, bureaucratic, and confusing the dinosaur rush was.

Something else I want to bring up is how much I don't know about dinosaurs or paleontology. I was actually surprised by how much I've taken for granted in terms of not caring or having any enthusiasm about really looking at the dinosaurs at the museum. Like Mario I hadn't really thought about all the biological and geological componants to bones. Not that these ideas were new or surprising to me, but rather I just never really thought about how much a bone can tell us. I also wondered about how palenontologists know how to put skeletons together, which made me think about last weeks reading and the example of the horses. I cant remember if they have this at the museum, but it would be really interesting to see all the various changes that have happened to dinosaur bodily structures.