Here be Dinosaurs (and Trilobites)

Since the sun only chooses to exist in Ithaca during the summer, we’ve been trying to do a lot of outdoor activities on the weekends. However, some weeks ago it rained all day on a Saturday, so my roommate and I decided to pay a visit to the Museum of the Earth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, besides something to do with rocks and the Earth, but it turned out to be fossils. Lots and lots of fossils.

Their website isn’t great about what to expect when you get there, but once you do show up, the exhibits are very well designed and organized. The main attraction is titled A Journey Through Time and as long as you enter from the correct end, it takes you chronologically through the geological eras. Each era/time period has an introductory sign giving an overview of dominant species, temperature, sea level, and major events. Then there are lots of fossils, and most of the time periods also have a short video.

A fun part of the museum is in one of the back corners. Besides coloring sheets, they have buckets of rocks. If you take the time to go through these rocks and happen to find a fossil, you will be allowed to take the fossil home with you. So I now have a bivalve fossil on my desk.

Near to the end, they have some dinosaur models (including a stegosaurus that’s in the process of being reassembled after being cut up to be moved to the museum) and a mastodon skeleton. The last section of the museum has you walk into an ice tunnel with descriptions of research being done now (some of it by Cornell scientists) about glaciers and global warming. As you walk out of the hallway, you find yourself back where you started.

For a few hours of entertainment and education, the price was reasonable, plus we got a student discount. It was just the right size for a half day excursion. We pretty much saw everything at a relaxed pace. There were also a good number of people in the museum. Not so many that it was crowded and we were constantly bumping into people or waiting to see things, but not so few that it felt like we were wandering through an abandoned building. It was just right, and it made for another successful adventure out to experience Ithaca.