Friday, February 8, 2013
Museum Spotlight: Fernbank Museum of Natural History
In 2006, my family and I went down to Georgia (we were lookin' for a soul to steal) to visit our really good friends the Guinees (we were way behind, and we were willing to make a deal). On our trip, we visited what is now one of my most favorite museums of all time: the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. While Fernbank certainly has a large number of really cool exhibits, easily my favorite one was the one around which most of the museum is built: an enormous room with a Giganotosaurus attacking an Argentinosaurus, one of the largest theropod dinosaurs known to science attacking one of the largest sauropod dinosaurs known to science. It was simply fantastic! In the upper levels of the atrium thing, you could also see fossil skeletons of various pterosaurs, and there was also a fossil crocodile on the ground floor! Fantastic!
Another thing that I thought was really cool was a large, life-size statue of Stegosaurus outside of the museum! Below is a picture of my sister and I acting like dinosaur in front of it!
All of the photos in this post were taken by Julie Neher.
Museum Spotlight: California Academy of Sciences
Another really cool museum that my family and I visited in California was the California Academy of Sciences. They had lots of really cool exhibits! My favorite was a prehistoric mammals exhibit, but unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside, so therefore I don't have any pictures! We also didn't get to visit the whole museum, but the parts that we did we all really enjoyed! But I did get a few pictures of some of the other really cool things, so here they are! A brief overview of the California Academy of Sciences! Enjoy! First, we are going to look at what they call "The Living Roof," which is a cutting edge....garden. However, although it does sound a bit unexciting, it was actually pretty cool, as the cutting edge garden was on the roof! (Hence the name "The Living Roof," in case you missed that part.) It actually always reminds me of the Shire from Lord of the Rings!
Although I didn't get any pictures of any prehistoric mammals, I did get a picture of another prehistoric animal! Does anybody know what it is?
One particular exhibit was called "Rainforests of the World," which, as you can imagine, focuses on the worlds rainforests. It was really cool, and it was all inside of this enormous dome thing! But yeah here are some pictures from inside of the dome!
Finally, the last thing that we saw that I thought was really cool was this: an albino alligator! Definitely don't see those every day!
Seals and Sea Otters in Monterey Bay
Right after my family and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, we went out to eat at a Bubba Gump on the dock. As we looked out at the bay, we saw a seal pop its head up out of the water! We took a bunch of pictures, but it wasn't long before it disappeared beneath the waves again. After looking at the pictures, I came to the conclusion that it was not, in fact, a seal, but actually a sea otter! My bad.
After a few more minutes, one of us suddenly realized that not all of the lumps of floating kelp out there were actually kelp: some of them were actually wild sea otters! It was really, really cool! Being a native Coloradoan, a sea otter is pretty exotic, especially a wild one! Here are a bunch of pictures that my mother and I took!
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| The seal that's not really a seal but actually a sea otter |
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| A wild sea otter! |
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| The sea otters are off to the right, not the thing right in the center of the photo, that is a kelp thing |
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| The sea otter is a little below and to the left of center |
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| The group of three little dots in the middle-ish of the photo, as well as the little dot thing off to the right of the picture (almost out of the shot) are all sea otters. The other random dot, to the left of the three other dots, is the same lump of kelp that is in the photo two above this one. |
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| The sea otter-looking dot in the a bit above the center of the photo is the sea otter |
Aquarium Spotlight: Monterey Bay Aquarium
When my family and I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, we saw a ton of really cool things! So let's take a look at some pictures of some of these animals now in our very first....Aquarium Spotlight! First off, the sea otters! They were really super cute and were swimming ALL over the enclosure, as it was feeding time, and some of the zookeepers were doing a feeding demonstration with training.
Sea otters weren't all that they had, though! Another thing that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had was a pretty good jellyfish exhibit.
They also had one of my most favorite animals, the African penguin!
They also had a few fairly large tanks too, with large schools of fish that looked super amazing and really pretty. My mom tried to get some good shots of them, but it was dark and they didn't really come out super well.
Finally, the other main thing that I thought was worthy of mention were the sea turtles, they had some pretty cool sea turtles!
Photo credit for all of these pictures goes to Julie Neher.
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