On the second day, our museum partners took us into the vault areas, where treasures are stored.
We saw dinosaur femurs and eggs, learned about the race between four museums in the early 1900s to see who could find and display the first large prehistoric creature (the Field Museum came in fourth), how bones are transported (in field jackets) and cataloged. We saw preserved mammals including a black rat that is named after the Field Museum researcher who showed us around his lab. And finally, chatted with a group of volunteers who were meticulously pulling feathers off birds so that they (the birds, not the volunteers) could then be completely stripped by scavenger ("flesh-eating") beetles with only the bare bones remaining. Here are a couple of videos I took:
I didn't notice it at the time, but love the photo here with the dinosaur model...and the hot glue gun in the foreground. Ancient animal meet modern crafter.
