Congratulations to Ed!

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

Ed Dobrzanski is a “fixture” at the Museum. He had been a volunteer here before I started back in in 1993, and he has volunteered continuously for the past 20 years. Ed has done tremendous work as an amateur paleontologist, collecting, preparing, studying, identifying, and cataloguing fossils. He has contributed to paleontological field and laboratory work in a great variety of ways. For his all-round efforts, many of us are delighted that Ed has just been named as the recipient of the Katherine Palmer Award, a North America-wide award for amateur paleontologists, presented annually by the Paleontological Research Institution.

An inveterate collector with interests in a great variety of objects, Ed had a long career as a government meteorologist. When staff reductions resulted in an opportunity for early retirement, Ed took advantage of this to turn his volunteer work into a daily avocation. In his time here, Ed has contributed tremendous knowledge to the organization of fossil collections as varied as brachiopods (lamp shells), fishes, and bivalves. He has also donated many specimens to the Museum (and to other institutions such as the Royal Ontario Museum), has contributed to exhibit development and public programs, and assists with all sorts of tasks in other departments of the Museum!

Ed Dobrzanski is a tremendous asset to the science of paleontology in Manitoba and beyond; it is wonderful to see this recognized!

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

The spaces that house Museum curators and collections are, perhaps, notorious for appearing to be crammed full of objects. Our work consists of collecting and organizing, and actively-collecting Museum scientists typically have many specimens spread out for study and cataloguing. Our collections rooms contain many thousands of well-organized specimens, but it is tricky to find space for the largest pieces. For this reason, some of our biggest specimens are not stored in the official Natural History storage: ever since I have worked at the Museum, most of our large mammal mounts have been in alcoves along the hallways here. If I wish to, I could say “good morning” to two muskoxen, a grizzly bear, and two mule deer just in the short space between the elevator and my office!

It used to be that, when the elevator stopped at our floor, those inside would glance out to see our creatures, safe in their protective plastic cocoons. Although this may be an interesting sight (if you know what they are), it is hardly a fitting introduction to the great variety of activities here, and it made it look rather like a warehouse. A few years ago, we decided to remedy this; when an old display case came available in the Museum basement, we grabbed it and placed it facing the elevator to house an introductory exhibit.

This display has taken years to develop, because we were always getting sidetracked with our real work! We placed a few items into the case right after we moved it, but then it sat untended for some time. Returning to the case a couple of years ago, we added a lot of interesting pieces and planned to include a title explaining what it was about, but again we of course became busy with projects such as the Biodiversity and Colours in Nature exhibits. Then, this past week, we finally managed to “finish” this display, at least for the moment, adding a title panel and several of the wonderful Haeckel posters that had been included in the Biodiversity exhibit.

What is the purpose of this case, and why have we decided to feature the particular items that are in there? As well as providing “eye candy” for those who happen to see it from the elevator on their way to other floors, we wanted the case to introduce the basic research and collecting disciplines that occupy this floor: Zoology, Botany, and Geology/Paleontology. Since it is not climate-controlled, and is subjected to dust, light, and vibration, all the items in it are robust. They are generally replicas or are from the stores of “teaching grade” objects lacking basic data.

Although the choices were limited, we were pleased that we could include some of our favourite sorts of items (an ichthyosaur replica, a box of fake “dino stones”), and examples of things related to some of the research that takes place here (Tyndall Stone fossils, snake skin). Undoubtedly the display will continue to evolve in the coming years as we come upon other suitable exhibits for it!

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

Ever since the Museum’s Earth History Gallery opened in the early 1970s, visitors have been struck by the appearance of a giant skeleton near the end of the gallery. Many children (and perhaps more than a few adults) have thought that it is a dinosaur, but it is in fact a mammal from the much more recent past, a replica of the giant ground sloth Megatherium americanum.

Megatherium was a huge ground-dwelling creature, distantly related to the modern tree sloths. Ground sloths were a very successful group, with fossils known from many parts of South and North America (including western Canada), but sadly they disappeared in the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, along with other wondrous creatures such as the woolly mammoth and short-faced bear.

But let me begin the sloth’s tale at its beginning.

Megatherium is among the best known of ground sloths, with dozens of fossils collected in South America and shipped to Europe from the 18th Century onward. Many specimens apparently came from the banks of the Luján River near Buenos Aires, Argentina, and were in collections and on exhibit in cities such as Paris, Madrid, and London. The first formal scientific description was produced by the great French scientist Georges Cuvier, in 1796. In the 1850s, a young American scientist, Henry Augustus Ward, made a detailed study of Megatherium, visiting collections in Paris and London among many other places. After his return to Rochester, New York, he became a professor at the University of Rochester, but also founded Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, a company that sold scientific specimens, replicas, and materials.

Ward got started on the casting and selling of fossil skeletons very early. His company was among the first to produce casts for sale to the many new natural history museums that were then being developed, and the giant Megatherium was one of his “star attractions.” His catalogue advertised that a full skeleton consisting of 124 different casts could be purchased for $250, “packed not painted” but including a replica tree.

In Montreal, a museum for McGill University was planned from the 1860s onward, to exhibit collections developed by the world-famous Professor William Dawson. This facility, funded by and named for the industrialist Peter Redpath, was opened in 1882. It was primarily to serve as a resource for the university’s faculty and students, but secondarily for the education of the people of Montreal.

Dawson had long corresponded with Ward concerning the acquisition of particular items, so it is not surprising that a description of the original museum includes:

But how did these fascinating and historic replicas become migrants once again, moving westward from Montreal to Winnipeg? In the 1960s there must have been a push to add other creatures such as a dinosaur to the Redpath’s exhibits, and the only way to do this was to replace the large pieces that filled its space (that part of the Redpath is now occupied by a tyrannosaurid dinosaur, among other exhibits).

According to what my predecessor Dr. George Lammers told me, the Redpath was looking for a home for these enormous casts, and this just happened to come at a time when The Manitoba Museum was constructing its new building, with plenty of square footage that needed to be filled. So the skeleton casts were transferred to our Museum, and they were crated and shipped to Manitoba.

On arrival at the Museum, the replicas were uncrated and examined. George told me that some repair was required as a result of damage in transit, and apparently the plaster bones were found to be stuffed with Reconstruction Era American newspapers! The Megatherium was re-mounted in a slightly different posture, and sadly lacks the “tree” on which it had appeared to browse for ninety years or so. But at least it had its friend, the glyptodont, nearby, and they seem to have happily settled into their new home, impressing (and sometimes scaring) the millions of children who have visited our Museum in the past forty years.

The glyptodont (above) and a detail of the bony plates that made up its protective shell (replica, in our example). Although it looks quite turtle-like, this creature was a mammal related to anteaters, sloths, and armadillos!

The name of our sloth is a bit complicated. The note that George left me calls it Megatherium cuvieri. This is what Ward had called it, and it was probably labelled as such when on exhibit at the Redpath. The species name “cuvieri” was, however, apparently based on a misguided attempt in the 1820s to re-brand Cuvier’s perfectly valid Megatherium americanum. Modern rules of taxonomic usage consider cuvieri to be a nomen illegitimum (“illegitimate name”), so we can  safely call it M. americanum.

Given this cast’s critical role in the history of exhibits at two of Canada’s most important natural history museums, and its place in the story of the development of North American paleontology, what is the future of our sloth? Since we have been progressing with a gradual refurbishment of the Earth History Gallery, I would like to soon plan new interpretive materials that explain the tremendous story and significance of this exhibit. But in the somewhat longer term, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it could be re-mounted and given back its “tree,” perhaps serving a new role as the centrepiece for a larger exhibit of extinct ice age animals?