Monday, September 14, 2020

AMNH Tour the Hall of Vertebrate Origins Video

 

Today, I found a great video series being created by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York city. During the Covid epidemic, the museum is publishing videos every Friday at 1 PM EST as live stream. The last video was presented by fossil fish researcher Allison Bronson. She does a great job narrating a video tour of the Hall of Vertebrate Origins at the museum. I was there in July of 2018 and I wished I had watched a video like this before my visit. After watching the video, I missed taking pictures of at least two special specimens she highlighted. Have to go back now :)

I am weak on my understanding of fossil fish and vertebrates in general as we do not find a lot of those fossils in the Louisville area. When I was in this museum section, the Devonian shark Cladoselache caught my attention (see posting here, to know why):

https://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2010/07/cladoselache-shark-fossil.html

After seeing her talk about the shark at the 7:20 mark, I realize I am pronouncing its name wrong.

It was amusing at the 22:05 mark in the video, Allison talks about the happy tortoise which is one of the most photographed specimens in the museum. As it turns out, I blogged about the Geochelone atlas specimen in December 2018, so count me in that large group of photographers!

https://louisvillefossils.blogspot.com/2018/12/geochelone-atlas-tortoise-fossil.html 

If you cannot see or use the embedded video viewer in this blog post, here is the direct YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRuy7KfvqWs&t=479s