June 2011 - Manitoba Museum

Posted on: Tuesday June 28, 2011

Imagine yourself in the basement of the science building at Brandon University, on a Saturday morning in the summer. The place seems to be abandoned, with the hum of the lights and ventilation the only sounds you hear. Opening a door, you walk into a quiet, darkened laboratory. A curtain closes off one end of the room, and something behind that curtain emits an eerie blue-green glow.

Close-up on a green-lit fossil seaweed.

An Ordovician fossil seaweed from Airport Cove, Churchill, photographed with UV radiation and a green filter.

Tiptoeing closer, you observe that there is a man behind the curtain, huddled over a pair of computer screens. Beside the computer, a scientific instrument is producing a blinding bluish light. Who is this mad scientist, and what are the nefarious schemes that bring him here at this strange time?

Actually, the man is me, and I am looking at fossils. I travelled to Brandon to use the fine microscope in their Environmental Science Laboratory, by kind invitation from Dr. David Greenwood. At the Museum we have good microphotography equipment, but I had reached its limits trying to sort out the fine structure of some of our unusual fossils. When I visited Brandon a few months ago, David suggested that I might want to try their scope system, which was set up with the aid of a large grant from the Government of Canada.

The digital camera on the binocular microscope feeds into a dual display computer.

The panel on the left screen allows you to select the area being photographed, and to spot focus the image. The right screen shows the captured images.

So a couple of weeks ago, I hauled a variety of fossils out to Brandon, and spent a few days on the binocular scope seeing what it could tell me. It is a lovely Olympus setup, with full digital image capture and focusing, and a variety of illumination options. It took me quite a while to figure out how to get good photos of our material, but once I had it sorted I was very happy with what it could do.

My research colleagues and I are trying to sort out the fine structure of some of the unusual fossils we have collected in the Grand Rapids Uplands and the Churchill area, things like horseshoe crabs, eurypterids, and jellyfish. I felt a bit rushed trying to look at the many specimens of these, but in several instances I was struck by the sudden realization that I was seeing features that I had never been able to make out before.

Some of the legs of an Ordovician eurypterid (“sea scorpion”) from the Grand Rapids Uplands.

Spectacularly preserved cuticle of an Ordovician arthropod (joint-legged animal) from Airport Cove, Churchill.

The front image is a UV photo of the central part of a fossil jellyfish from the Grand Rapids Uplands.

This sense was particularly striking when I was able to image specimens under ultraviolet. Although none showed the bright fluorescence I had hoped for, some of the images were very different from those under standard lighting. With their odd greenish glow, I sometimes felt as though I was seeing the ghosts of the long-departed creatures.

Museum Stories: Palaeontology & Geology

Palaeontology & Geology

Wednesday March 19, 2025

Posted on: Wednesday June 8, 2011

A significant part of the conservator’s job is cleaning. At the Manitoba Museum, our numerous open dioramas require regular vacuuming. The larger dioramas require a team of staff including the Conservators, Diorama Artist, Exhibit Assistant, and whichever Collections Assistants we can round up. We try to get to every diorama once a year.

Lisa vacuums a bison.

Vacuuming through a screen in the Boreal Forest diorama.

The vacuuming must be done carefully, so parts are not pulled off. That’s why we use screens, and vacuums that are portable and have adjustable suction.

Sometimes, for vacuuming small and/or fragile artifacts or specimens, we put screening over the vacuum nozzle, or use micro-attachments made for cleaning computers and other electronic equipment.

We use household vacuums for most things.

Brushing dust into the vacuum.

A piece of window screen can prevent the loss of any parts.

Dirt and dust can be damaging. They may attract insect pests, can be aesthetically disfiguring, or obscure important information, and can even cause physical harm by, for example, microscopically tearing fragile threads on an old textile.

The most important thing we remember is to remove as much dirt and dust as possible, without harming the object.

Museum Stories: Collections & Conservation

Collections & Conservation

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Meet Me at the Bug Light

Spring has finally arrived on the prairies! Trees are leafing out, flowers are in bloom, days are getting hotter, and, of course, the insects are back! They’re flying, swimming, and crawling around, playing important ecosystem roles that make…

Collections & Conservation

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Tackling Dirty Data One Field at a Time

One prevailing comment I hear about my job, whether in person or via social media, is “your job sounds so cool!” And you know what? It is. But I’m about to reveal the dark underbelly of my job…

Collections & Conservation

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A Sticky Situation

Tape might seem like a good option when it comes to quick repairs of torn papers or fast mounting of photographs in an album, however, they age badly …

Posted on: Wednesday June 1, 2011

I recently attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution in Banff, Alberta. However, being stuck inside a building on several beautiful sunny days was agonizing and on several occasions I found myself gazing wistfully out the windows at the mountains beyond. Fortunately, visiting other museums while I travel is an important part of my job as it helps me to plan exhibits here at the Manitoba Museum. This trip was no exception and I was able to visit the Banff Park Museum during a long lunch break one day.

The Banff Park Museum in Alberta.

Next to a case of very old birds.

The Banff Park Museum is such an old museum (1903) that the building and its collection were protected as a National Historic Site in 1985. So basically it is a museum of what old museums used to look like. Apparently in the late 1950’s some people in the community wanted the Museum torn down and replaced with a new building and more modern exhibits. Looking around at the beautifully crafted wooden cases, hundred-year old specimens and gorgeous Douglas Fir wood panelling on the ceilings, I was thankful that cooler heads prevailed.

The Museum contains numerous “cabinets of curiosity”, as they used to be called. These cabinets contain more than 5,000 mounted birds, mammals, insects, plants and eggs collected in western Canada mainly between 1890 and 1930. Some of the “newer” exhibits created in 1914, displayed animals in their habitat, an approach that was considered radical at the time. Eventually this approach evolved into our modern-day dioramas. Nowadays some Museums are tearing down their dioramas and putting in “cabinets of curiosities” again, albeit with a modern twist. So I guess that “what goes around comes around” even in Museum design. I myself tend to think that what is most desirable is a mixture of the best of both, especially when many dioramas themselves have become worthy of preservation.

A “radical” new diorama circa 1914.

The Curator left and never came back.

The Banff Park Museum is a museum of a museum in yet another way-there has not been a Curator there since 1932 when the last one retired. What this means is that the collection has effectively “died”. Curators keep collections alive through research, promotion and interpretation. Collections that cease to grow cannot incorporate new, valuable information about genetic, population and ecosystem changes over time. Without this information, our societal ability to make wise decisions about resource use is hindered. Curators ensure that information from the collections is accurate and promote collections use by anyone who needs it, such as scientists, managers, and government employees. Curators are also able to interpret the collection in the context of our current society. Unfortunately the important supporting role that collections play in science is rarely understood or appreciated, even by some scientists.

Image: An orchid on display at the Museum.

I was reading the job description of the ideal Curator in the Museum’s interpretive brochure. Professor John Macoun suggested in an 1895 correspondence that the ideal Curator should possess the following qualifications:

“A man of wide intelligence;
Energetic (not a hotel lounger);
Ought to be able to skin a bird or mammal;
Will talk natural history, mineralogy, geology or anything else to the visitor, and
A political bloke should be the last man for that place.”

A museum display case featuring a number of insect specimens.

What’s amusing is that a natural history Curators’ job description hasn’t really changed in a hundred years! You still need to be energetic to conduct field work and collect specimens. You still need to know how to prepare specimens for preservation. You still have to have a broad interest in natural history and the ability to communicate with visitors. And we are most definitely NOT “political blokes”. Really the only thing that has changed is the technology that modern Curators employ. I use a palm pilot to record my field notes instead of a notebook, a GPS to navigate instead of a map and compass, and a blog page to “talk natural history” with the visitor. It seems that “the more things change the more they stay the same”.

Image: Museum display of pinned insects.

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Curator of Botany

Dr. Bizecki Robson obtained a Master’s Degree in Plant Ecology at the University of Saskatchewan studying rare plants of the mixed grass prairies. After working as an environmental consultant and sessional lecturer…

Meet Dr. Bizecki Robson