Curator, Tracey-Ann Hooley and Exhibition Designer, Richard Glover create a showcase template, placing objects within helping with the process of designing showcase of Victorian birds for the upcoming Wild: amazing animals in a changing world exhibition.

Wild: amazing animals in a changing world opens September 2009.
 

Credit: late Gary Lewis, Source: Museum Victoria

Wow look at me I'm being installed into the new exhibition. My friend Dean has been working really hard to make me look good, you can see him on the ground sorting out my tail.

Credit: Melinda Iser; Source: Museum Victoria

Curator Wayne Gerdtz with Jurassic poo. Image Benjamin Healley, Museum Victoria.

The lump looks small and unassuming. It has a rough texture and is surprisingly heavy for its size. This small pink and grey rock holds an intriguing secret. It is a 150 million year old sauropod dinosaur poo – fossilised and preserved as a record of life in a very different time.

Imagine standing in a lush Jurassic forest in what is present day Utah, USA.
The ground vibrates with thundering footfalls. It is a 25 tonne sauropod coming to feed. Its giant neck and small head reach into the dense vegetation to tear off some leaves. The mouthful of leaves travels down its long neck to its roomy stomach. Fermentation chambers filled with bacteria in its guts help break down the plant fibres and extract the nutrients. A soft lump of poo falls onto a bit of swampy ground, where it is preserved and fossilised – turned into stone. It is buried and remains hidden for 150 million years until someone digs it up. We acquire it for the museum.
 
Fossilised poo – or ‘coprolites’ – were unveiled at Melbourne Museum today in preparation for installation in the Dinosaur Walk, opening on April 3 at Melbourne Museum. A coprolite will be on open display in the new exhibition, enabling visitors to touch it for themselves.

How do we know it is dinosaur poo? It comes from a rock layer known as the Morrison formation, which is the right age and contains many fossils of Late Jurassic dinosaurs. It is the ‘right’ size and shape. It is similar to other lumps which have been analysed and have been found to have plant remains in them. The process involves looking at thin sections of the rock under a microscope, where traces of plants can be seen. We cannot be 100% sure our lump is fossilised dinosaur poo, but the evidence suggests it is highly likely.

Is it rare? Fossils of dinosaur bones are quite rare, but fossils of soft parts like skin, muscle or traces like poo are even rarer. The conditions to preserve a soft lump are unusual, so coprolites are rare.

Rencently we installed a Quetzalcoatlus at Melbourne Museum for the upcoming Dinosaur Walk exhibition. It ‘s a huge pterosaur with a wingspan of up to 15 metres - the largest flying creature of all time and existed the very end of the Cretaceous period. Being such a large animal it was suprisingly light and probably weighed no more than 100 kilograms.

Credit: Rodney Start, Source: Melbourne Museum

Hello

I'm currently getting a new 'look', all my bones have been individually cleaned and freshed up to make me look good for the new exhibition. I'll be standing on my hind legs like the picture below.

I've also added a picture of ramp (second image) that is being built, I'm going to be exhibited down the end near Diprotodon, he's the fellow you can see right at the end of the ramp.

Not long now only one month to go before I'm back on show and you can come and visit me again.

Artist: Kym Haines, Source: Museum Victoria / Credit: Kate Phillips, Source: Museum Victoria

Above: Trilobites, fossil ferns and Diprotodon - all a bit older than me.  (Source: Museum Victoria)

Time is an odd sort of thing – I’m always losing it, but you can never get it back. For example, one year ago, my son wasn’t even born. Ten years ago, I was still at University. A thousand years ago, Vikings were doing their thing in Europe . A million years ago, ancestral humans hadn’t even formed recognisable civilisations. But 600 million years? It almost goes without saying, but that’s a very long time ago. As you can probably guess, quite a bit has changed on our planet in that time.

One of the challenges we’re facing with our new exhibitions in the Science and Life Gallery redevelopment is to make this sort of timescale comprehensible – the amount of time is so big that it is hard to wrap your head around. The first of the four exhibitions to open will be Dinosaur Walk, displaying dinosaur skeletons and others, aims to summarise the last 253 million years of land vertebrate evolution, starting just before the age of the dinosaurs, passing through the Mesozoic where dinosaurs, flying and marine reptiles ruled their domains, through to their extinction and the eventual rise (and demise) of the megafauna.

So how do you fit something as mind-bogglingly vast as hundreds of millions of years into an exhibition space less than 50 metres long at Melbourne Museum ? The answers to that are, with careful selection of display objects, some very clever (and patient) exhibition designers and an equally talented exhibition team!

Mt Cottrell Grassland  |  Native grass tussock at Mulla Mulla  |  Convolvulus erubescens, Mulla Mulla Grassland Credit: Jenni Meaney, Source: Museum Victoria

A grassland environment will be created as part of an exhibition about Biodiversity, opening in September 2009. In order to catch the plants in flower this spring we had to research and select the best sites to photograph.

We started by driving to Mt Cottrell in Melton to look two grassland sites there. As well as a great view across the western plain to the CBD of Melbourne, we saw some unusual and intriguing grassland plants. We also visited Iramoo, in St Albans which includes a community education centre, protected native grassland and nursery.

Our next visit was to Derrimut Grasslands, a special patch of Grassland bounded by busy roads and industrial estates. These visit highlighted the beauty and the fragmented nature of Melbourne’s Grasslands.

Credit: Tom Rich, Source: Museum Victoria

In August 2008 Dr Tom Rich headed an expedition to find and excavate an Ichthyosaur fossil in outback Queensland for display in a new exhibition.  The fossil they were looking for was of Platypterygius, a large ichthyosaur (marine reptile) which lived at the time of dinosaurs between 110 and 100 million years ago. It grew to 6 or 7 metres long in the inland sea, now western Queensland.

He was guided to a likely spot to find fossils by Dave Suter together with Tom and Sharon Hurley who had the local knowledge. They used a digger to excavate rocks which looked promising. There was no guarantee that they would find anything as there is always an element of luck in finding fossils. However, Tom has forty-seven years as a palaeontologist and extensive experience at dig sites. This combined with six experienced eyes who knew the local fossils, led to finding a fossil on the third hole they excavated. They found a skull and rostrum of the animal including wonderfully preserved teeth. The fossil was encased in plaster for a safe return journey to the museum in Melbourne. How complete the skull is, and what other bones they find, will not be known until work is done to remove the rock that surrounds the fossil.

Credit: Kate Phillips, Source: Museum Victoria

Giant Panda from China, that’s me

Credit: Melinda Iser, Source: Museum Victoria

I’m part of the Museum Victoria natural science collection; been part of this gang since 1978. This is how the museum classifies me – check this out – my data sheet!

Registration Number:                           C 27435

Category:                                             Natural SciencesS

cientific Group:                                    Vertebrate Zoology

Discipline:                                            Mammalogy

Type of Item:                                       Specimen

Scientific Name:                                  Ailuropoda melanoleuca

Phylum:                                               Chordata

Class:                                                   Mammalia - (Mammals)

Order:                                                  Carnivora

Family:                                                Ursidae 

Genus:                                                 Ailuropoda

Species:                                               melanoleuca

Common Name:                                   Giant Panda

Nature of Specimen:                            Mount

Country:                                               China 

Cool hey – I got heaps of different names – you can just call me GIANT PANDA as I’m pretty big…. and I’m a panda! Did you know that I’m going to get ready for this like cool exhibition with a heap of other mammals and birds? Were going to hang out together in this WHITE exhibition space, white is cool so is black – a bit like me I’m back and white – I hope I get a spot on the wall in the exhibition that would be cool too. I’m in the store at the moment hanging out with some other bozo that keeps looking at me – think I’ll be moving on soon – catch ya next time, I’ll be back….