Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight

The Royal Ontario Museum currently has a special exhibit entitled Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight.

This afternoon, I popped by to wander through the exhibit.

Going to museums makes me feel very, well, not-smart. I just feel like there's so much about the world that I don't know about that I wish I did. I wish I could go to school for the rest of my life and sit in comfy chairs and have someone tell me stories about everything in life. If they have visuals and manipulatives, it would only make storytime better.

I'm not sure if it was because the information was over my head, or because I was feeling a little tired this afternoon, but I really struggled with reading the graphics. You know how I've always said I've had problems reading and retaining? Or that I find it really hard to learn from reading textbooks? Well, I felt that again today. It was really really hard to focus and learn from the graphics. My knowledge about looking at the fossils, prints and replicas only took me so far. I needed explanations to go along with them, and the graphics that they had just didn't seem to be working for me...until..."The Bird Connection".

This part of the exhibit definitely had families and children in mind. They had lots of pictures, and simple graphics (along with the normal ones) which I really got a lot out of, because I could read the children's graphics and then move on to the "adult" versions and learn more about the basic things mentioned in the "kiddie" ones. I think having a more basic explanation could be a way to make exhibits less intimidating and more accessible to the average visitor. Not all visitors know much about what they are seeing, but they're there to get as much as possible. The kiddie graphics were a really casual way of introducing the visitor to the topic and I felt that they really explained the main points of the exhibit quite well. One of the main things I enjoyed about this section, was that each graphic had a little icon, and beside each replica/cast was an arrow (with the corresponding icon on it) that pointed directly to the spot on the replica/cast that the graphic was describing. Often I see these impressive specimens, but don't really know what the main features are, and what's so significant about them. Or for example (using feathered dinosaurs to prove my point), archaeologists and curators know exactly what to look for in fossils, but to an untrained eye, a couple little ridges in the rock really doesn't have you clue in that is a cluster of feathers. Having someone blatantly pointing it out really helps and makes me better understand the significance of what I'm looking at.

I know that if you take a tour, the guide (and there are some incredible ones at the ROM, I must say) would point out such things, but I don't think most visitors take tours. I just have to reiterate that I really enjoyed the fact that this specific part of the exhibit was so accessible and I hope that museums consider making more of there collections just as accessible as this one. It will cater to so many more types of visitors.

I also decided that I need a latin name. Sure, I'm homo sapiens, but that's my genus and species name. I need a me name. Something cool. Any suggestions?

The exhibit runs until September 5th, so go visit soon!