Party With a T Rex

The Opening of a Dinosaur Lab Takes the Natural History Museum's First Fridays to Another Level
by Julie Riggott

A First Fridays event at the Natural History Museum is not your typical night out. Sure, there are bands, DJs and food and wine, but where else can you explore billions of years of history and find intellectual stimulation to boot?

On April 4, two emerging local bands will fill the North American Mammal Hall with indie rock and DJs will spin ambient tunes in the African Mammal Hall, as visitors sip wine amongst the dioramas.

But before the atmosphere turns completely clubby, you can take a guided tour of the highly anticipated Thomas the T rex Lab, where scientists will be assembling a 66-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton in public view. Or join a discussion about love, the greatest topic ever explored by poets and philosophers and now under scientific study. At any point, you can sneak away and explore the museum’s quieter spaces, discovering ancient gems, minerals and fossils - some objects are 4.5 billion years old.

“It’s not just that we’re hiring a DJ and you can drink wine here,” said Su Oh, performing arts manager for the Exposition Park museum. “This program is not just about getting people here, but it’s about discovery and exploration.... It’s more of a social and intellectual experience.”

Events in this year’s series, which runs January through June, have attracted as many as 1,700 people. Oh predicted the demand for the Thomas the T rex Lab tour would probably surpass all past events, so they will offer two, starting at 5:30 p.m.

Paleontology on Display

The fact that only 30 semi-complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons have been discovered would be reason enough for the museum to be excited about Thomas. But the 210 bones (70% of the 300 in a complete skeleton) excavated between 2003 and 2005 in southeastern Montana (all T rex skeletons have been found in western North America, including the Dakotas, Wyoming and parts of Canada) make Thomas one of the five most complete in the world.

“It’s a very rare find,” said Dr. Luis Chiappe, director of the museum’s Dinosaur Institute and curator of the NHM’s department of vertebrate paleontology.

On Friday, Chiappe will lead the tours of the lab that the scientific team moved into last Thursday. It is a working lab just like the others on the museum’s fourth floor, but built of glass so that visitors can watch the technicians at work. “This is not fake, or created for the public,” Chiappe explained at the press opening.

The almost-futuristic room, designed by L.A. architects Hodgetts + Fung, has two pods that jut out from the rest of the lab, specially designed for the use of power tools such as micro-jack hammers or miniature sandblasters that remove rock from the fossilized bones. Craig Hodgetts said they took a cue from Hollywood, aiming to make the scientists’ work appear “theatrical,” “glamorous,” and inspiring to all ages, especially children, who can work alongside the technicians in two interactive spots on the pods.

Chiappe will work with Doug Goodreau, the museum’s senior paleontological preparator, overseeing the technicians, who will clean, prepare, photograph and document each bone in the lab during the next 18 months, at which time the bones will be sent out for mounting. The skeleton will become the centerpiece of the new dinosaur galleries being built in the museum’s historic 1913 building, currently being renovated and scheduled to open in 2011.

Each day, progress in the lab is tracked on a giant blackboard, indicating for the public which bones are being worked on. Another diagram specifies all the bones found so far. Others could turn up as the fossil jackets are cleaned.

Scientists do not yet know the sex of the dinosaur (meaning Thomas could be Theresa), but they do know the T rex was 13 when it died because of the growth rings, like those found in trees, in the bones. Chiappe also said that Thomas was one of the last living dinosaurs before the major extinction event.

The lab will show people that “discovery really doesn’t end in the field,” Chiappe said. “Obviously the field is the moment of discovery and when things are found and collected and brought to the museum, but there are many discoveries that actually get done here in labs like the one we are going to have downstairs and in this case in front of people’s eyes. They will be able to participate in those discoveries.”

Exploring Attraction

Appropriately enough, Oh built this year’s First Fridays series around a theme of discovery - “Discovery in the Age of Mammals: Building Brains and Making Minds.” The lecture component of the evening, which begins at 6:30 p.m., has brought speakers exploring topics such as human consciousness and elephant communication. Dr. Daniel Dennett’s talk last month drew 300 people. The core audience is between 20 and 30 years old.

“It used to be that the discussion had the older people, and the music had the younger people, but now that’s kind of cross-pollinating,” Oh said.

“It’s not there to bore people to tears with scientific jargon. Hopefully it’s talking about interesting stuff with inquisitive people,” said USC’s Dr. Michael Quick, who assembled the speakers and also moderates.

This week, Dr. Thomas Lewis from the department of psychiatry at UC San Francisco will talk about the chemistry and psychology of emotional attachment. “We are wired to understand the emotional states of others,” Quick said. “That’s pretty profound, so I thought that’s a cool topic.”

Of course, some people start filling the North American Mammal Hall long before the tour and lecture are over to hear local indie bands, booked by Silverlake’s Spaceland Productions, play in front of the bison diorama. This week, alt-pop, folk-influenced Castledoor takes the stage at 8 p.m. They will be followed by the Watson Twins, who play a type of neo-country music, complete with the lap steel guitar.

“Because of our discoveries theme, we tried to get artists either on the cusp of breaking out or doing something different and interesting,” Oh said.

Meanwhile, those hanging out in the museum’s foyer, sipping wine with the “dueling dinosaurs,” can watch projections of the performances. Others can visit the African Mammal Hall where groove-based DJs Small Town Talk will create a lounge vibe, spinning everything from world to popular music, against the backdrop of a practically iconic diorama with huge elephants, buffalo and other animals.

“From 5:30 to 10, it’s pretty much nonstop,” Oh said.

In other words, it’s not your traditional night at the museum.