Mastodawn

Two weeks ago, I went to a museum. Now long term followers, will not be surprised by this. I goto a lot of museums. In fact one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon is mooching round a museum with a friend excitedly infodumping at each other about the artifacts. I've written numerous threads on the subject. Mostly positive, a couple less so. But the Museum I went to two weeks ago. The visit was an incredible mix of emotions that I'm still trying to digest. But I want to share with you.
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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

I should have twigged something after looking at the first display case I saw after exiting the lift on the 1st floor of Das Wiener Naturhistorische Museum. I should have understood it immediately. It's a failing that it took me several hours of wandering around the museum for that to sink in.

The museum is undergoing construction work, so I had to take a slightly illogical route to get to the start of the incredibly well curated set of artifacts. I walked past all sorts of things to get...
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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

back through time to where it begins.

And it begins with rocks.

Many of the natural history museums I've been to have started with dinosaurs. With fossils. But this museum? This one starts at the beginning, over 4 billion years ago as the earth forms. Oak display case after display case of rocks. Interpreatation boards on the walls explain how the earth forms. The different types of rocks. I've often moaned at modern museums not having enough artifacts on display. NHM Wien is not one...
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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

Of those museums. Display case after display case filled with hundreds of rock samples. I was actually kinda overwhelmed by this. I didn't really take many photos of the geology rooms. Something in a way I'm a little bit salty about...
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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

In fact I took more photos of the display cases than I did the rocks. I'm not much of a geologist, tho I did used to collect rocks as a kid. So after a few rooms full of rocks from earth. I entered the meteorite room.

NHM Wien has the largest collection of meteorites in Europe.

Six of the meteorites caught my eye. They came from mars. I admired them. I photographed them. I even posted a joke about them on fedi, which very few people got...

https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/116210234799385684

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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

Next to the six 1 in a million meteorites from mars is a case with a single rock from the moon. Donated to the museum by NASA, and brought back by the crew of Apollo 15. I stood looking at this rock. My hand on the glass of the display case positioned as close as I could get to the rock sample. I said to myself. This is the closest I will ever get to the moon. I studied this rock for a few minutes before moving onto the next room.
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Quixoticgeek 1d ago

After rocks, came dinosaurs. There were some animatronic dinosaurs, which seemed to be delighting and scaring a group of school kids that were looking at them. In a dark display case along the wall tho lay a much more important find. One that completely revolutionaised how we understood dinosaurs.

The stone is small. About the size of an a3 sheet of paper. It showed a flattened toothed dinosaur.

A dinosaur with feathers.

Archaeopteryx.

This fossil changed humanity's understanding.
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Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦

@quixoticgeek wow, that's a beautiful fossil!