OK, here goes my first post on this blog. I'll be adding to it sporadically as I travel this dinosaur tour from home to Boulder (actually, Niwot, where I'm staying with my brother and sister-in-law) to home. I plan to loop back through New Mexico to see Ghost Ranch and Dallas to see the Paluxy track site, and will find other places to visit along the way. Black Mesa in Oklahoma is another possibility, although it would make a long detour. If there are any real paleontologists reading this, feel free to jump in and correct me or make suggestions of places to go (that goes for anybody, of course).

I left Turners Falls by car on Tuesday, Oct. 22, on my way to the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver. I didn't have a lot of time on the way out, because I had to be in Colorado in time for the meeting, but just past Lincoln, Nebraska, I saw this by the side of the road and decided to investigate.

Once pulling off Rt. 80, it wasn't exactly obvious to see where the museum was, but then again, it's an open landscape and not a lot was around, so it didn't take long to see this sign:

which led to the museum.

It was 4:15 and it closed at 5:00, so I wasn't able to stay long, but got through the whole museum without actually running by not reading most of the labels. There was just one staff person there to sell tickets and take care of the small store, and I was the only visitor. The couple who built the museum don't live in the area (and own other little museums elsewhere), but wanted to make something that would help drive tourism in Lincoln. It's an interesting mix of very good models and artwork and a quirky sense of what to include. Along with the dino exhibits, it has a Hall of Mirrors (eerie and fun, although I didn't go far because I didn't have time to get lost) and a Heartland Haunt that probably thrills a certain type of kid. The Haunt is a separate charge, so I didn't go in.

The dino models are quite good, in my completely nonprofessional opinion, as were the murals. It was fun to see the little coelophysis that is associated with our grallator tracks in the Connecticut River Valley.

They also had more than one model of a diliphosaurus, possible maker of the eubrontes tracks we have at home, too.

There were several banks of dinosaur heads, arranged as below. They are well done individually, but I don't know how the groupings made sense, that is, whether each group lived in the same time period or have been found in the same regions or have other linking characteristics other than nasty teeth. I also didn't get a sense of which ones had been found locally. This all may have been answered in the labels I didn't read.

Wish I'd taken a better shot of the murals, as they were quite good. I just used my not-good cell phone camera. I'm going to learn to use my new camera on this trip, but haven't had it out yet.

Along with the dinos, there were a row of sabretooth tiger skulls, a full short-faced bear skeleton rearing on its hind legs, a few other unrelated skeletons (Pleistocene), and a row of hominid skulls.

Oddest of all were the face masks, in some cases replicas of death masks, of a motley assortment of people including Beethoven, Patrick Stewart, Jack Nicholson, Muhammed Ali, Grace Kelly, George Washington, and about 20 others. I guess the rationale is that it shows a range of human facial types. It reminded me of the work of the Russian anthropologist Gerasimov, who reconstructed faces onto skulls, guided by the muscle attachment marks. The technique seems to work within limits, but it's always seemed strange to me and reminds me of the whole posture measurement mania of the first half of the 1900s -- but those both are other stories.

I wish I'd had more time to spend there. It appears that a paleontologist advised on labels and models, but I don't know who. It would be nice if they'd include more explanatory information on that (I feel guilty now about not reading the labels). The nice guy who sold me the ticket told me the name of the artist, but I didn't write it down and can't find it on their web site. I'd be interested to see reviews of this museum. It appears that a lot of time, effort, care, and expense have gone into the exhibits and that they're accurate as far as they go. In a way, I wish there were a little more context, but maybe not all museums have to, or can, or even should, do that. In a sense, this one is a high-level example of a modern take on the old tradition of the Cabinet of Curiosity. Anyhow, glad I stopped.

Can't resist adding this from a place in Iowa. Good peach cobbler!