Saving Sego Lilies

It takes seven years for a sego lily to grow from a seed to a flower, but if something happens to its home, it can be gone in an instant. That’s why a team of staff has made it their job to save the lilies living at the site where the new Utah Museum of Natural History will be built.

Why go to all that trouble for some plants? Because we’re causing trouble for them. A new building will disrupt the communities that live at the site, but we’re doing all we can to help preserve and protect the small slice of Utah landscape we’re affecting.

In June 2007, volunteers fanned out across the 17 acre plot in the Salt Lake City foothills, where the Museum will one day move, searching for signs of sego lilies – Utah’s official state flower. Each time the salvage team spotted the thin, grass-like leaves of a lily, they dug deep around the plant to retrieve the bulb, buried 6 or 7 inches in the dirt. They moved the plants into pots, and the pots into an outdoor “gated community” at the University of Utah Biology Research Garden. There the lilies will snuggle until 2010, when the new Museum is built and it’s safe to return them to their home in the foothills.

Saving the sego lilies is just one part of the Museum’s effort to take care of the land; staff has also collected seed from plants and rescued tarantulas and other invertebrates that live on the site. Architects are designing the new building to be as friendly as possible to the environment. We know we’ll never be able to eliminate our impact on this piece of the planet, but we hope that, by doing our best to respect and preserve the creatures that live there, we can be proud to one day call it our home too.

To read more about the environmental impact the new Museum will have on the site, check out our official Environmental Impact Statement.

Click below to explore a map of where the new UMNH building will be.

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Still Life: BYU's Rhino and the Museum Specimen Controversy

What belongs in a museum? And how far should museums go to get those things?

These are questions that Utahans have been asking themselves this week, as controversy rages over a rhinoceros soon to be on display at the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University in Provo. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

"Bean officials recruited museum benefactor Fred Morris of Draper last year to hunt a rhino at South Africa's Mkuze National Park. The park sells the rights to hunt excess rhinos to finance its conservation efforts, officials said....The Bean's plan is to mount the rhino skin on an artificial form as part of an ongoing taxidermy exhibit at the museum through January and later add the mount to a waterhole diorama. In that exhibit, the rhino would join an elephant that was also obtained by a modern hunter."

Angry words have been flying ever since news of the rhino's hunt hit the public. "If the private university wants stuffed animals in its museum, it should display Teddy bears," said one commentator. "It's education and conservation in its most lifeless form," railed another.

Representatives from the Bean Museum argue that the rhino was killed legally and in line with good management practices. "Our only intent has been to use it as an educational mechanism for promoting public appreciation of the conservation of these magnificent animals," a Museum spokesman told the Tribune.

So what is the place of dead animals in museum displays? As one of the angry commentators pointed out, the Utah Museum of Natural History has "a collection of moldering mule deer, a spray of birds from Farmington Bay and a scene of Boulder Mountain carnivores, including a bear and bobcat" on display in our Biology Hall. We also have many more specimens that we use in teaching and for research. Are these valuable? Ethical? [author's note: our mule deer aren't moldering, by the way.]

One major difference between UMNH's specimens and the BYU rhino is that most of those on display here were killed or donated more than 30 years ago. We are still adding animals to our collection, but only for research and education purposes, and as UMNH Director Sarah George told the Tribune, "We focus on Utah."

Still, some people are uncomfortable with the idea of displaying dead animals at all. Here at UMNH, we've made the decision that it's worth it. The unique opportunity for observing a real specimen that you might not otherwise see can be a valuable experience. And as for the rhino? You'll have to decide that for yourself.

Tell us your opinion on displaying animal specimens. What kind of experiences have you had with them?

The Great Tarantula Rescue

There's some creepy crawly stuff going on at the Museum these days! UMNH insect scientist (or entomologist) Christy Bills delivers this report from the field:

"Knowing there are tarantulas on the site where the new Utah Museum of Natural History facility will be built [starting next year], I thought it would be exciting and important to try to locate and rescue those tarantulas that would otherwise be displaced.

Using a local independent researcher, Zach Valois, I learned how to identify and lure tarantulas out of burrows. There are many burrows at that site because it's often a very hot, dry place so rodents, snakes and invertebrates hide underground to stay cool and keep from drying out.

It's interesting to try to identify what might be living in different burrows. This is especially challenging because some creatures will utilize burrows that were made and abandoned by other animals. However, some burrows are characteristic of the animal that lives in it. Tarantula burrow openings are usually the diameter of a silver-dollar and are tidy and lined with silk.

There are many black widows at the site and their burrows are strewn with a messy and coarse webbing. Black widows are also untidy housekeepers and their burrows are usually littered with insect bits.

In the course of looking for tarantulas, I discovered that the invertebrate night life on that particular hill is ever-changing and always exciting. When I encounter large invertebrates, I often take them home to keep alive. I've found 7 Jerusalem crickets and dozens and dozens of wolf spiders. I've only brought a couple of those home though! Their bites are fairly venomous.

I've only located three tarantulas on the site: 2 roaming males and one female in a burrow. The female has mated with at least one of the males. I missed whether she mated with the second because while I was distracted, she ate him. No telling if mating occured beforehand! I'm looking forward to the spiderlings in the spring!

The female wolf spiders that I have have also been mated and their egg sacs could be formed any day now. The interesting thing about that is that the mother spider will carry the babies on her back for awhile.

The Jerusalem crickets are doing well on a diet of dog food and oatmeal. When I learn to differentiate the genders, I will attempt mating a pair. They are such peculair insects that I'm excited to show them to people. Most people have never seen them even though they are fairly common, probably because they are solitary, nocturnal and they like to live underground.

I'm hoping to keep many invertebrates from the site alive so they can be displayed in the upcoming insect zoo the Museum will be opening next summer! Hooray for bugs from Utah!"

What creepy crawlers have you seen in Utah?

Solving The Mystery of Gryposaurus

Terry Gates - better known as Bucky - is a paleontologist here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Today, there's hot news about a dinosaur he named. Here's what he had to say about the whole experience:


"I study the duck-billed dinosaurs that lived in southern Utah around 75 million years ago (during the Late Cretaceous period). For decades, paleontologists knew that there were duck-billed dinosaurs hidden in the sediments of what is now Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, but their identity remained buried. That is, until a volunteer from the Raymond M. Alf Museum in California found a skull within the Kaiparowits Formation of the Monument.

The Alf Museum needed help collecting the large skull from the steep and rugged landscape, so in August 2004 UMNH preparation lab manager Eric Lund and I helped the Alf Museum bring it to UMNH. Everyday I visited Eric as he cleaned the fossil in our preparation lab, trying to decipher any information possible from the bones that he had exposed. (Check out Eric’s blog entry for a description of that process).

It wasn’t until we got our hands on a piece of bone that had eroded from the skull that I was able to tell what kind of duck-billed dinosaur this was. Every known species on Earth has a genus and species name; for instance, the genus name for humans is Homo and the species name is sapien. In the same way, all dinosaurs have a genus and species name, and members of the same genus have characteristics in common. The portion of the skull that I found inside a box of eroded bone was exactly the piece of evidence I needed to quickly identify this specimen’s genus. The species of the genus Gryposaurus share several characteristics that are only present on those animals, most noticeably a prominent hump on the nose bone – and that’s what I found.

Now that I knew the genus, I had to figure out the species name. That was more difficult and I had to wait until preparation of the skull was nearly complete before I could proceed with detailed study. Once Eric completely exposed the skull (after two years) I was finally able to meticulously compare the shape of bones on this skull to that of other known species of duck-bills. I traveled to museums all over the U.S. and Canada (including Bozeman, MT, New York, NY, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), in order to see a broad spectrum of dinosaurs that might help me identify our mystery species.

In the end, I found that there are several differences in the skull found in southern Utah compared to other species of the genus Gryposaurus. Because of these key differences, I named a new species, Gryposaurus monumentensis, meaning “Hooked nose lizard from the monument”.

The process of naming a new species is not easy. First I had to do weeks of research, then spend weeks writing a description of the new species for other scientists. Finally, I submitted the research paper to a scientific journal for publication. More time passed for editing, revisions from other paleontologists, and final editing from the journal. When you count all those phases, it took literally months to name a new species, which explains why it has taken three years since the excavation of the skull for the name to become official. Yet, in the end, all of the work is worth the effort because each new species opens the door a little wider on the ecology and lives of prehistoric animals, and allows us to ask deeper and deeper questions about an ancient world."

Have a question for Bucky about his work? Click "Comments" below and ask him yourself!

Meeting the “Duck” of the Grand Staircase

Eric Lund is the Paleontology Lab Manager here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Today, there's hot news about a dinosaur he helped uncover. Here's what he remembers about the process:

"The hadrosaur skull was discovered in 2004, in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, by a group from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in California. When I saw the skull in the field there wasn’t much to see, my first impressions were dulled by the lackluster plaster jacket that covered much of the exposed bones. However, we were dealing with a dinosaur skull, so no matter how much of it was there, it was pretty freakin’ awesome!

The day of the helicopter lift there was an air of excitement beaming from every person who was present. For me, there was some apprehension behind my excitement; a myriad of ‘What If’ questions ran through my head: What if the Helicopter can’t lift the block? What if the jacket isn’t strong enough? What if the helicopter pilot drops the specimen too early? All my uncertainties soon faded to jubilation as the helicopter crested the horizon with the skull safely nestled in the dangling cargo net below. I watched with amazement as the helicopter pilot expertly placed the specimen back on the ground. I think everyone exhaled a collective sigh of relief to see the job done. The skull then made the five hour journey up to the Utah Museum of Natural History, where I would get to spend the next two years preparing it for display.

Cutting open the plaster jacket back in the lab, I soon realized just how much work I had ahead of me; there was a lot of rock surrounding the bone. I cautiously began by removing the loose debris from the surface, and to my amazement much of the surrounding matrix practically fell off the bone. I quickly progressed removing much of the bulk that surrounded the bone. That was until I discovered the deeper matrix pockets were harder than cement, forcing me to use the mini-jack to break through the matrix. As the name of the tool implies it is a hand held jackhammer, and with a little elbow grease chunks through the matrix quite easily. I took things in stride and tediously removed the matrix chip by chip until the skull reached its present state. After spending two years preparing the skull, it makes me very proud to see it on display in the Museum for all to see."

To read more about naming this new species of dinosaur, check out what paleontologist Bucky Gates has to say about it!

Got questions for Eric about preparing the skull or working in a dinosaur lab? Click "Comments" and ask him yourself!

Velociraptor: A Feathered Friend?

If you've seen the movie Jurassic Park, then you probably have a pretty clear picture of what Velociraptor looked like: a smoothed-skinned, long-armed, vicious meat-eater. Unfortunately, that image turns out to be another reminder that you shouldn't believe everything you see on screen. According to evidence published in this week's journal "Science", Velociraptor had feathers!

How could they tell? Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Field Museum in Chicago looked closely at the arm bone of one of the creatures and found a series of bumps where feathers attached, just like we see today in modern birds like the turkey vulture.

"The question is why an animal that's clearly not flying would have this structure," says Lindsay Zanno, a graduate student who studies related dinosaurs here at the Utah Museum of Natural History. One theory is that Velociraptor descended from ancestors that once flew. Other thoughts include that the feathers were used for display like a peacock's tail, to help keep warm-blooded dinosaurs warm, or to control the temperature of nests. Whatever the reason this species had feathers, "It's good to finally have proof" says Zanno.

Could any of Utah's dinosaurs have had feathers too? Possibly, but no one knows for sure. While Utah was home to many cousins of Velociraptor including the world famous dinosaurs Utahraptor, Falcarius, and Hagryphus, the ancient environment at their burial ground wasn't right to preserve feathers.. However, similar marks on a bone could in theory show up. "It makes you want to go back and look closer, to see if you were missing something," says Zanno. "Each step forward makes you look back; there's a constant reevaluation."

Why do you think a creature who couldn't fly might have had feathers? Click "Comments" below and let us know!

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Welcome to the newest feature of the Utah Museum of Natural History! Our blog will bring you the latest in natural history and Utah news.