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Established | 1942 |
---|---|
Location | 737 North Main St. Rockford, Illinois |
Coordinates | 42°16′38″N89°05′18″W / 42.2773°N 89.0882°W |
Type | Natural history |
Public transit access | RMTD |
Website | www |
The Burpee Museum of Natural History is located along the Rock River in downtown Rockford, Illinois, United States, at 737 North Main Street.
The museum was created as a Works Progress Administration project. It was established in 1941 and opened on May 24, 1942. The complex is made up of four buildings—the Manny Mansion, the Barnes Mansion, the Solem Wing, and the Water Lab.
The Solem Wing is the public portion of Burpee Museum. Built in the winter of 1998, the Solem Wing houses the museum's exhibits, meeting rooms, laboratories, gift shop, and the Mahlburg Auditorium. It is named after Robert H. Solem who was a major benefactor, patron, and friend of the museum.
The Manny Mansion was owned by John P. Manny and was built in 1852. Formerly the Burpee Art Museum, it is now attached to the south side of the Solem Wing and houses museum classrooms and offices.
Prior to the expansion, the museum was housed entirely in the Barnes Mansion. Built in 1893, the mansion was owned by industrialist William Fletcher Barnes. Today, the Barnes Mansion houses meeting rooms and the administrative offices.
The Water Lab (funded by Aqua Aerobic) is a lab facility along the Rock River in which students in grades 6 through high school collect water samples from the river and analyze them for physical, chemical and biological parameters.
Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1) is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex or Nanotyrannus lancensis discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in southeastern Montana during the summer of 2001 by Carol Tuck and Bill Harrison, team members of an expedition led by Burpee Museum curator Michael Henderson, [1] [2] "She" [3] is named after Burpee Museum benefactor Jane Solem. After four years of preparation, Jane is on display as the centerpiece of the exhibit at Burpee Museum, "Jane: Diary of a Dinosaur". [4] Visitors can discover what happened during the 66 million years she lay buried, visit a re-creation of the expedition's Montana base camp, and view her fully restored 21-foot skeleton. She was 11 years old at death, and is half as big as her adult counterpart "Sue", who is 43 feet long and resides at Chicago's Field Museum. Jane's weight was probably nearly 1,500 lb (680 kg). Her big feet and long powerful legs indicate she was built for speed. Her lower jaw has 17 finely curved, serrated, razor-sharp teeth designed to tear into flesh. [5]
Rockford's Jane exhibit also contains scale casts of other dinosaurs, including a 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex. Another exhibit is Homer, the most complete subadult Triceratops fossil yet discovered in the Hell Creek Formation of southeastern Montana, found by Helmuth Redschlag in July 2005. Homer is the primary constituent of the first Triceratops bone bed, [6] at a site discovered in Carter county on land leased to ranchers by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Preparation of Homer began in the summer of 2005, and was completed in late August 2012. The complete skeleton will be on display as part of the Homer's Odyssey exhibit, coming in May 2013.
In July 2006 The Science Channel aired The Mystery Dinosaur, a one-hour documentary on the discovery and continuing scientific argument over whether Jane is a juvenile T. rex or an adult Nanotyrannus lancensis. The Mystery Dinosaur aired on the Discovery Channel in the fall of 2006.
In March 2007, Jane was nominated as one of Illinois' Seven Wonders.
A two-story tall prehistoric coal forest is created, which displays local landscape, insects and amphibians as they existed 300 million years ago. Featuring life-size replicas of giant insects and tetrapods, the diorama acts as an analogue to the Mazon Creek fossil beds, a Carboniferous-age geological Lagerstätten in central Illinois, responsible for the preservation of most of the area's coal. Chief among the exhibit's specimens is Tullimonstrum gregarium, the Tully Monster, which is the enigmatic state fossil of Illinois.
An exhibit located adjacent to the front desk featuring local fossils from the Ordovician Platteville, Mifflin, and Grand Detour Formations, as well as a diorama of life in the prehistoric Rockford; an expansive sea and coral margin 455 million years in the making.
Displays focus on how the earth was formed and the forces at work shaping our planet. Included are exhibits on economic, world and regional geology; a 10-foot glacier model; displays of unusual rocks, gems, and minerals; and information on plate tectonics and land formations.
Displays and exhibits give the history of humankind in North America. The First People features a full-size wigwam and tipi, an American bison, and a dugout canoe that can be climbed into. The display includes video presentations focused on Native American lifestyles and archeology.
Focusing on the wildlife of the Rock River Valley, the Windows to Wilderness exhibit includes live and mounted wildlife; scale recreations of common landscapes and environments of the Rock River Valley. This exhibit includes hands-on activities designed to entertain children.
The Fossil Preparation Lab is a window into how the museum works. The Burpee Museum is home to a talented staff of vertebrate fossil preparators and scientists who restore and curate specimens collected at the museum's dig sites abroad, including Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. Located on the lower level, the viewing area's large glass windows reveal the biology and paleontology laboratories where specimens are prepared for the museum's collections and exhibits. Visitors are able to view exhibits and collections pieces as they are prepared and researched before going on exhibit or into the permanent collection. The Burpee Museum of Natural History maintains more than 100 thousand items in its permanent collection.
Tyrannosaurus is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The type species Tyrannosaurus rex, often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the latest Campanian-Maastrichtian ages of the Late Cretaceous period, 72.7 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
Triceratops is a genus of chasmosaurine ceratopsian dinosaur that lived during the late Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago in what is now western North America. It was one of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs and lived until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The name Triceratops, which means 'three-horned face', is derived from the Greek words trí- meaning 'three', kéras meaning 'horn', and ṓps meaning 'face'.
Tyrannosauridae is a family of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs that comprises two subfamilies containing up to thirteen genera, including the eponymous Tyrannosaurus. The exact number of genera is controversial, with some experts recognizing as few as three. All of these animals lived near the end of the Cretaceous Period and their fossils have been found only in North America and Asia.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is situated within a 12,500-square-metre-building (135,000 sq ft) designed by BCW Architects at Midland Provincial Park.
Aublysodon is a genus of carnivorous dinosaurs known only from the Judith River Formation in Montana, which has been dated to the late Campanian age of the late Cretaceous period. The only currently recognized species, Aublysodon mirandus, was named by paleontologist Joseph Leidy in 1868. It is sometimes considered dubious now, because the type specimen consists only of an isolated premaxillary (front) tooth. Although this specimen is now lost, similar teeth have been found in many US states, western Canada, and Asia. These teeth almost certainly belong to juvenile tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurids, but most have not been identified to species level. However, it is likely that the type tooth belongs to one of the species in the genus Daspletosaurus, which was present in contemporary formations, and which matches specific details of the original tooth. The synapomorphies alleged to distinguish the Aublysodontinae, especially lack of serrations on premaxillary teeth could have been caused by tooth wear in life, postmortem abrasion, or digestion. Most other "aublysodontine"-type teeth may be from ontogenetic stages or sexual morphs of other tyrannosaurids.
Museum of the Rockies is a museum in Bozeman, Montana. Originally affiliated with Montana State University in Bozeman, and now also, the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is largely known for its Paleontological collections as well as having the largest collection of North American Dinosaur fossils in the United States. They also possess the largest Tyrannosaurus skull ever discovered, as well as the thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex that contains soft-tissue remains. The museum is part of the Montana Dinosaur Trail and is Montana's official repository for Paleontological specimens.
The Hell Creek Formation is an intensively studied division of mostly Upper Cretaceous and some lower Paleocene rocks in North America, named for exposures studied along Hell Creek, near Jordan, Montana. The formation stretches over portions of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. In Montana, the Hell Creek Formation overlies the Fox Hills Formation. The site of Pompeys Pillar National Monument is a small isolated section of the Hell Creek Formation. In 1966, the Hell Creek Fossil Area was designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service.
Peter Lars Larson is an American fossil dealer who is head of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, which specialises in the excavation and preparation of fossils. He led the team that excavated "Sue", one of the largest and most complete specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, which was the subject of a legal dispute resulting in its seizure and public auction. In 1996, Larson was convicted of customs violations related to failing to declare money he had brought from overseas as well as taking two fossils from federal land, and served 18 months in prison.
Mary Higby Schweitzer is an American paleontologist at North Carolina State University, who led the groups that discovered the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and later discovered soft tissue remains in the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen MOR 1125, as well as evidence that the specimen was a pregnant female when she died.
Sue is the nickname given to FMNH PR 2081, which is one of the largest, most extensive, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found, at over 90 percent recovered by bulk. FMNH PR 2081 was discovered on August 12, 1990, by American explorer and fossil collector Sue Hendrickson, and was named after her.
Tyrannosaurus is one of the most iconic dinosaurs and is known from numerous specimens, some of which have individually acquired notability due to their scientific significance and media coverage.
The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, located in Katsuyama, Fukui, Japan, is one of the leading dinosaur museums in Asia that is renowned for its exhibits of fossil specimens of dinosaurs and paleontological research. It is sited in the Nagaoyama Park near the Kitadani Dinosaur Quarry that the Lower Cretaceous Kitadani Formation of the Tetori Group is cropped out and a large number of dinosaur remains including Fukuiraptor kitadaniensis and Fukuisaurus tetoriensis are found and excavated.
This is an overview of the fossil flora and fauna of the Maastrichtian-Danian Hell Creek Formation.
The Morrison Natural History Museum is a natural history museum located in Morrison, Colorado. The exhibits include several dinosaur fossils that were found nearby. Hands-on exhibits are designed to appeal to both children and adults, scientists and non-scientists.
The Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology is a paleontology museum in Claremont, California, that is part of The Webb Schools. It is the only nationally accredited museum on a secondary school campus in the United States. The museum has two circular 4,000 sq. ft. exhibition halls and 20,000 unique annual visitors. The collections number about 140,000 specimens, 95% of which were found by Webb students on fossil-collecting trips called “Peccary Trips,” expeditions usually centered in California, Utah, and Montana. The collections consist primarily of vertebrate, invertebrate, and track fossils and the museum's large track collection is widely recognized as one of the most diverse in the world.
This timeline of tyrannosaur research is a chronological listing of events in the history of paleontology focused on the tyrannosaurs, a group of predatory theropod dinosaurs that began as small, long-armed bird-like creatures with elaborate cranial ornamentation but achieved apex predator status during the Late Cretaceous as their arms shrank and body size expanded. Although formally trained scientists did not begin to study tyrannosaur fossils until the mid-19th century, these remains may have been discovered by Native Americans and interpreted through a mythological lens. The Montana Crow tradition about thunder birds with two claws on their feet may have been inspired by isolated tyrannosaurid forelimbs found locally. Other legends possibly inspired by tyrannosaur remains include Cheyenne stories about a mythical creature called the Ahke, and Delaware stories about smoking the bones of ancient monsters to have wishes granted.
David Hosbrook Dunkle was an American paleontologist. Dunkle was curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and later associate curator for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
The Mace Brown Museum of Natural History is a public natural history museum situated on the campus of The College of Charleston, a public liberal arts college in Charleston, South Carolina. Boasting a collection of over 30,000 vertebrate and invertebrate fossils, the museum focuses on the paleontology of the South Carolina Lowcountry. As an educational and research institution, the museum provides a unique resource for teaching and internationally respected research activities conducted at The College of Charleston. Admission to the museum is free, and donations are welcome. The museum has the holotype specimens of Coronodon, Cotylocara, and Inermorostrum, as well as the reference specimen of Ankylorhiza tiedemani
Titus is an obsidian black skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex discovered in the Hell Creek Formation, Montana, United States in 2014 and excavated in 2018.