USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH
UNDERGRADUATE PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
WARREN D. ALLMON1, ROBERT M. ROSS2, RICHARD A. KISSEL3,
and DAVID C. KENDRICK4
1Paleontological
Research Institution, 1259 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca, New York 14850 and
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
<wda1@cornell.edu>
2, 3
4
Paleontological Research Institution, 1259 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca, New York 14850
Department of Geoscience, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York 14456
ABSTRACT.—Museum exhibitions possess a long history of serving as useful tools for teaching both paleontology and evolutionary biology to college undergraduates. Yet, they are frequently under-appreciated
and underutilized. However, they remain potentially outstanding resources because they can be used to
meet a spectrum of learning objectives related to nature of science, real-world relevance, and student interest. Specifically, even small museum displays can provide: 1) authentic specimens, which often are
more diverse, of higher quality, and historically more significant than those in teaching collections; 2)
specimens in context, with other specimens and/or geological or biological background available; 3) examples of how fossils connect to virtually all of Earth and life sciences (explaining why they have so frequently been at the center of traditional “natural history”); 4) cross-disciplinary experiences, connecting
science, art, technology, and history within a social context; and 5) opportunities for students to learn
about teaching. A survey of instructor-developed activities performed within a host of natural history museums—with particular attention devoted to the Museum of the Earth, an affiliate of Cornell University—suggests that natural history exhibitions, regardless of size and scope, can complement and strengthen
formal education in an undergraduate setting.
INTRODUCTION
“In our highly simulated post-modern culture,
museums play…a compensatory role by providing
authentic experiences.” (Lowry, 1999)
ALTHOUGH FEW new major natural history
museums have opened in the United States over
the past half-century (and a few institutions have
even closed), small and medium-sized museums
with fossil displays are still common on college
and university campuses or in surrounding communities. Such institutions are uniquely valuable
assets for teaching both introductory and advanced courses in evolution, paleontology, and
Earth history at little or no additional cost to a
course’s budget. This value is present whether
exhibits are new or dated, static or interactive.
Yet, despite some conspicuous exceptions, natural
history museums are viewed by many collegeand university-level educators and administrators
as irrelevant, obsolete, or only for the general
public or children. Most resources produced for
educators by museums, such as educator guides to
both permanent and temporary exhibitions, are
slanted toward K–12 teachers. Consequently,
these resources often are underutilized for undergraduate teaching (e.g., Breithaupt, 1996), diminishing students’ learning potential and perhaps
further endangering the future of natural history
and paleontology museums and their collections,
on- and off-campus.
We suggest that all collections-based natural
history museums, small and large, rich and poor,
can meet important objectives for undergraduate
teaching and learning in paleontology, as well as
many other subjects, in at least five ways (Table
1). First, such museums are places that house
In Teaching Paleontology in the 21st Century, The Paleontological Society Special Publications, Volume 12,
Margaret M. Yacobucci and Rowan Lockwood (eds.), pp. 231–246. Copyright © 2012 The Paleontological Society.
THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS, VOL. 12
authentic objects that help meet goals related to
student understanding of the nature of historical
sciences, and the basis by which we understand
the history of life. Museum specimen collections
are unique and highly cost-effective resources for
formal instruction (Duhs, 2010; Chatterjee, 2010)
that can play a pedagogical role that is in some
respects similar to, and an extension of, the role
that fieldwork plays in undergraduate education.
Utilizing museum collections, non-science majors
benefit from an understanding of how such
specimens are a basis for science and for what
they see in popular media reconstructions of ancient life, and majors benefit in their professional
development from experiences with a diverse set
of scientific specimens. Exhibition specimens of
both fossils and modern organisms tend to be
larger, better preserved, and/or historically more
significant than the specimens that students may
see in teaching collections, textbooks, or even online, and may include taxa that are too rare, large,
or fragile to be practical in a teaching collection.
They thereby provide a peerless source of examples of various taxa, morphologies, modes of
preservation, and taphonomic, paleoecological,
and paleoenvironmental variables. The use of
specimens from museum collections, on or off
display, also can be an excellent source for student research projects.
Second, museums are places that—to varying
degrees—show these objects (specimens) in context via interpretive exhibits, providing structure
for a variety of unique learning opportunities that
encourage interpreting the origin, interaction, and
significance of the taxa and phenomena represented by the specimens. Seen as “content
authorities,” museum displays can confidently
place content learned within a formal setting into
a larger—and visitor-trusted—framework of
knowledge (Falk and Dierking, 2000).
Third, museums can be places dedicated to an
interdisciplinary approach to learning. This is especially true of natural history museums, which
by definition span almost all of biology, geology,
and beyond. This approach has been and remains
essential to biology (Bartholomew, 1986; Greene,
1986, 2005; Futuyma, 1998; Grant, 2000; Wilcove and Eisner, 2000; Dayton, 2003). Natural
history is much more than mere description; it is
the area of human endeavor that takes as its goal
the understanding not just of how natural phenomena work but where they came from (Bates
1950; Allmon, 2004a). The central method of
natural history is comparison, and the compara-
tive method lies at the heart of all historical science (e.g., Harvey and Pagel, 1991). In order to
pursue comparison, adequate data are required.
These data originate in description, are organized
by classifications, and are vouched for by museum collections.
Fourth, some of this context can be outside of
traditional science curricula, offering unique opportunities for making intellectual connections
between science and other fields, such as art.
Thoughtful consideration of objects within the
context of a museum experience greatly facilitates
learning and meaning-making not only during the
visit, but also long after, greatly expanding the
potential of the students’ long-term learning (Falk
and Dierking, 2000).
Finally, museums are places where postsecondary students can learn about teaching via
involvement in public educational outreach and in
program and exhibition development, design, and
production. Some knowledge of the history of
natural history museums in the U.S. can also help
faculty understand and better use these resources
in their teaching. Many paleontology and evolutionary biology faculty who came of age in the
late twentieth century or later did not receive their
graduate training in a museum culture, and often
are unfamiliar with the many unique instructional
resources that museums provide. Many are also
largely unaware of exactly how and why museums were once so important for science education, and how and why this changed.
Changing intellectual fashions and approaches to science have never diminished the
value of natural history museums and their offerings. In this chapter, we summarize the many important, continuing, and growing potential roles
that such museums can play in teaching and learning evolution and paleontology at the undergraduate level, and present a number of specific examples of how these roles are actually played from a
variety of institutions across the U.S. We consider
both evolution and paleontology here because
they are arguably the two most common and welldeveloped themes in most of the world’s natural
history museums (e.g., West, 2005). We hope that
our discussion and proposed framework for categorizing and summarizing educational roles and
subject matter (Table 1) will encourage faculty to
not only use local museums as integral parts of
their teaching, but also to support those local institutions’ continued health and existence.
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ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
TABLE 1.—A potential framework for categorizing and summarizing educational roles and subject matter
in natural history museums.
Museum collections and ex- Teaching paleontology benefits
hibitions provide…
through…
Teaching evolution benefits
through…
specimens representing a range of
large, rare, or fragile specimens; relaa wide range of outstanding
major macroevolutionary events
tively comprehensive examples of taxa
specimens
and trends, as well as concepts of
through time and space
variation
specimens in interpretive
concepts (exhibitions)
specimens of related modern
organisms, explanations of ecology,
climate change, plate tectonics, etc.
providing a framework for life’s
history and the interconnectedness
of life and a changing Earth
through time
the merging of traditional paleontologi- allowing connections between orinterdisciplinary connections
cal methods with the incorporation of ganismal anatomy, the environamong natural sciences
ment, and geologic change
ecology, climate science, etc.
attracting student interest through the
interdisciplinary connections
aesthetic qualities of depicting fossils
between science and art
and ancient life
experiences to learn about
teaching
an attention to detail and shape,
promoting concepts of morphology
and variation
student opportunities to explain
student opportunities to identify fossils,
evolutionary concepts to visitors,
interpret exhibitions, or give educational
teachers, students, and museum
programs
docents
HISTORICAL CONTEXT I: MUSEUMS AND
TEACHING EVOLUTION
ted to Baconian inductivism, in which facts of
nature were widely believed to be able to speak
for themselves. With their collections of objects,
museums were particularly well-suited for such
an approach. Museums had arisen within the Victorian belief that, “the meanings held within objects would yield themselves up to anyone who
studied and observed objects carefully enough”
(Conn, 1998, p. 4). The Smithsonian’s George
Brown Goode wrote in 1888 that, “The museum
cultivates the powers of observation, and the casual visitor even makes discoveries for himself and
under the guidance of the labels forms his own
impressions” (quoted in Conn, 1998). The American Museum of Natural History’s Henry Fairfield
Osborn said that, “The peculiar teaching quality
of a museum is that it teaches in the way nature
teaches, by speaking to the mind direct and not
through the medium of another mind.” (Osborn,
1912, p. 500) Today, most of these ideas are
anachronistic at best.
The rise of experimentalism pushed the institutional base of biology gradually out of museums
and into universities (Rainger, 1991; Conn, 1998).
American natural history museums have a
long history as centers for undergraduate education. Louis Agassiz’s Museum of Comparative
Zoology (founded in 1859) and Yale’s Peabody
Museum (founded in 1866) are perhaps the most
famous of scores of small to large college and
university natural history museums, mostly
founded in the second half of the nineteenth century, across the U.S. (Lurie, 1960; Winsor, 1991;
Wallace, 1999; Jaffe, 2000). Indeed, few American colleges or universities of the period did not
have a natural history museum, reflecting the centrality of natural history and object-based learning
in both science and science education at the time
(see, e.g., Conn 1998; Allmon 2004a; Kohlstedt,
2005).
The status of natural history museums in research and undergraduate teaching began to
change dramatically in the early twentieth century. Science in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was still significantly commit233
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As a result, museums came to be seen as no
longer being places of cutting-edge science (or
teaching), and consequently, many universities,
colleges, and faculty began to view museums as
obsolete. Many college and university museums
were eliminated, and many others relegated to
seemingly permanent marginal status (for discussions of the challenges still confronting
university/college natural history museums, see
Humphrey, 1991; Tirrell, 2000, 2002; Benton,
2006, 2009; MacDonald and Ashby, 2011). This
diminished view of museums decreased their use
in undergraduate teaching in paleontology and
biology.
Most of the world’s natural history museums
were founded during the second half of the nineteenth century, simultaneous with the development and institutionalization of Darwinian evolution (Conn, 1998; Allmon, 2004a; Kohlstedt,
2005). As evolutionary theory was refined and
further supported by findings made in genetics,
paleontology, systematics, and biogeography, the
physical evidence for evolution accumulated in
museum collections. These collections, combined
with the research by scientists in those museums,
served as the basis for these museums’ public exhibits, and thereby became the principal means by
which the lay public learned about evolutionary
theory (Rainger, 1991; Clark, 2008 AbrahamSilver and Kisiel, 2008; Homchick, 2010).
Surprisingly, despite this long legacy, modern
natural history museums have been criticized for
not addressing evolution as explicitly or effectively as they might (e.g., West, 2005; MacFadden, 2008), especially in light of the rise of antievolutionism in the United States. At the first National Conference on the Teaching of Evolution in
October 2000, for example, “It was recognized
that for a variety of reasons, museums and informal science centers in general do not do a good
job of increasing the public understanding of evolution” (UC Museum of Paleontology, 2000, p. x).
Many natural history museums have responded to such criticism by addressing evolution
more actively and ambitiously in their exhibits
and/or public programs (Diamond and Scotchmoor, 2006; Diamond and Evans, 2007). Some of
these changes have come in connection with recent external events, such as the rise of “intelligent design” theory and subsequent challenge in a
2005 Federal Court trial in Dover, Pennsylvania
(e.g., Anderson, 2005; Anonymous, 2005; Collins,
2005; Burghart, 2006; Dean, 2005; Allmon, 2006;
Herrmann, 2006; Kates, 2006), or the celebration
of the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth in 2009 (e.g.,
Eldredge, 2005; Winters, 2006; Dean, 2009). Major new exhibitions have opened at a number of
large museums (such as Evolving Planet at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History; the Hall
of Human Origins at the Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History; and Darwin, a traveling exhibit developed by the American Museum
of Natural History), and sessions and symposia
have been held at meetings of both museum and
science professionals (e.g., Understanding the
Tree of Life Conference, held at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 2010). The
inaugural issue of a new journal, Museums and
Social Issues, appeared in 2006, and was themed
around the topic of museums and the public understanding of evolution (e.g., Diamond and
Scotchmoor, 2006).
Natural history museums have been the focus
of considerable research about public knowledge
and views of evolution (e.g., Diamond and
Scotchmoor, 2006; Spiegel et al., 2006; MacFadden et al., 2007; Diamond and Evans, 2007;
Abraham-Silver and Kisiel, 2008; Evans et al.,
2009). These studies have found that although
visitors to natural history museums are significantly more likely than Americans in general to
accept that evolution is true, they typically have
no better understanding of evolution than does the
public at large (Storksdieck and Stein, 2006;
Abraham-Silver and Kisiel, 2008). While there
are no comparable data specifically for American
college students in museums, a great deal of information is available about what students know
and think about evolution (e.g., Nehm and Reilly,
2007; Lovely and Kondrick, 2008; Cunningham
and Wescott, 2009; Jakobi, 2010; Allmon, 2011).
Thus, the average American college undergraduate, even if they are biology or geology majors, is likely to know and/or understand little
about evolution, and these are the preconceptions
that they will bring with them into a natural history museum.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT II: MUSEUMS
AND TEACHING PALEONTOLOGY
Although it is possible to have a natural history museum without dinosaurs or other large fossil vertebrates, history suggests these specimens
spark public interest and visitation, which are an
important step to long-term interest in science and
to self-directed learning. As noted by West (2005,
p. 23), “Exhibitions of large and impressive fos234
ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
sils have been staples at natural history museums
virtually as long as those institutions have existed,” and “vertebrate paleontology may well be
the most public, most highly popularized, and
most visible branch of systematics; its immense
specimens have immense appeal.” (Shelton, 1991,
p. 106) Several major natural history museums,
for example, were founded with fossil vertebrates
at or very close to the core of their existence.
Yale’s Peabody Museum, for example, was
founded and funded by George Peabody essentially as a professional home for his vertebrate
paleontologist nephew, O. C. Marsh (Schuchert
and Levene, 1940; Wallace, 1999; Jaffe, 2000).
Soon after funding a new natural history museum
in Pittsburgh in 1896, Andrew Carnegie made the
museum’s top priority the acquisition of a dinosaur “as big as a barn” (Rainger, 1991, p. 97); the
discovery of Diplodocus carnegii in 1899—a
specimen nicknamed “Dippy” by the public—more than fulfilled that objective (Rea,
2001), and the Carnegie Museum became known
as “The House that Dippy Built” (Batz, 1999). In
1909, Carnegie field parties found the site of what
is now Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and
the Carnegie Museum quickly amassed one of the
world’s outstanding collections of dinosaurs
which, with Carnegie’s additional personal donations of over $250,000, continued to grow until
his death (Porter 1990, p. 10). “At the Carnegie
and other museums, vertebrate paleontology
served a social objective: to educate and entertain
the public. That was the bedrock on which a program of fieldwork and research in vertebrate paleontology was sustained” (Rainger, 1991, p. 22).
Although originally not centered to this degree on fossils, the American Museum of Natural
History underwent its most important growth
spurt arguably because of, or at least in association with, an enormous expansion of vertebrate
paleontology under the guidance of larger-thanlife paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–
1935), who clearly saw the value of dinosaurs and
other large fossil vertebrates for engaging the
general public (Preston, 1986; Rainger, 1991;
Dingus, 1996). As museum president from 1908
to 1933, Osborn was able to expand the museum
largely by expanding vertebrate paleontology,
raising private funds for acquiring and mounting
numerous large dinosaur and mammal skeletons,
and reconstructing them via the work of outstanding artists, most importantly Charles R. Knight
(Czerkas and Glut, 1982). Although they failed in
their original goal of finding the origin(s) of hu-
mans, the museum’s Central Asiatic Expeditions
of the 1920s were hugely successful for their
spectacular discoveries in non-human paleontology.
Fossil invertebrates historically have had a
much more modest presence in natural history
museums despite occasional attempts to the contrary by invertebrate paleontologist curators (e.g.,
Ruedemann and Goldring, 1929). This paucity of
representation of invertebrates likely is due, in
part, to the generally smaller size and more distant
affiliation with humans. It is also probably is due
in part to the greater use of vertebrate fossils in
early evolutionary studies (e.g., Rainger, 1991). In
the 1920 edition of the General Guide to the Exhibition Halls of the American Museum of Natural History, for example, less than three pages are
devoted to fossil invertebrates, compared to 14 on
vertebrates (Lucas, 1920). The trend continues
today, with the fourth floor of the American Museum home to four large halls devoted to the fossil record and evolutionary relationships of vertebrates, while fossil invertebrates are confined to a
small display within the Hall of Ocean Life. Invertebrate fossils are probably best known to
modern museum visitors through their recreation
in dioramas, some of which have become widely
known via textbook illustrations (e.g., Sheehan,
1996).
AN EXAMPLE: TEACHING
PALEONTOLOGY AT THE
MUSEUM OF THE EARTH
The Museum of the Earth is the public exhibition arm of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) in Ithaca, New York (Allmon, 2004a,
2007). Although PRI was founded in 1932, the
18,000-square-foot public museum opened in
2003, and receives 30–40,000 visitors annually.
Most of the ~650 specimens on permanent exhibit
in the museum are invertebrates (as is most of
PRI’s collection of 2–3 million specimens). The
permanent exhibition represents a chronological
tour through the history of Earth and its life, with
an emphasis on the fossils and geology of the
northeastern United States. The only large
mounted fossil vertebrates are a cast of the placoderm Dunkleosteus and the complete skeleton
of a mastodon that was excavated in 2000 (Allmon and Nester, 2006). The skeleton of a modern
North Atlantic right whale hangs in the lobby
(Allmon, 2004b). Other vertebrates are either
relatively small or represented by one or a few
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skeletal elements, especially skulls. Also present
are life-sized models of the small Triassic dinosaur Coelophysis, often referred to as New York’s
dinosaur, because of footprints found in the lower
Hudson River Valley (e.g., Fisher, 1981).
PRI and the museum are most closely connected with nearby Cornell University, but also
regularly serve students and faculty from a number of other colleges and universities in central/
upstate New York, including Ithaca College, Wells
College, SUNY Cortland, Colgate University,
Syracuse University, Elmira College, Hobart &
William Smith Colleges, and several community
colleges. Here, we summarize a number of examples of use of the Museum of the Earth in collegelevel education in paleontology and evolutionary
biology, most of which could be adapted to other
museums. We also provide examples of accompanying materials that various instructors have developed (see Appendices).
dent then prepares a fossil specimen. By focusing
on fossil preparation and the documentation and
final presentation of that work, students are exposed to an important step in the understanding of
fossils and their record.
A visit to the museum is required of all students taking introductory evolution at Cornell,
usually 250–300 students per semester. During
their visit, which is made on their own, they must
complete an exercise (see example in Appendix
2). These exercises vary by the professor teaching
the course, but all focus not only on the fossil record as documentary evidence for the history of
life, but also on how fossils can inform us about
evolutionary processes, especially extinctions.
Ithaca College.—Ross and Kissel each teach
sections (about 90 students in each) of a course
for non-science majors at Ithaca College (IC)
called “The History of Life on Earth.” Students
visit the museum on their own time in one of the
last few weeks of the semester to do an activity
that synthesizes some of the major themes of the
class (Appendix 3). The IC classrooms are wellsuited for multimedia, but the shape of the lecture
halls, large class sizes, and lack of labs limits the
number of specimens that students get to observe.
Thus, the museum visit provides students with an
opportunity to see the actual fossil evidence upon
which the understanding of paleontology is based.
The activity is therefore fairly traditional, focusing on observing a wide variety of specimens in
the exhibits. In some instances, students find
specimens from major events in Earth’s history
(the treasure/scavenger-hunt approach; see below); in others, they are drawing specimens; and,
in a few cases, they describe patterns in the fossil
record using the chronological displays in the
Museum.
Hobart & Williams Smith Colleges.—
Kendrick brings students to the museum for a variety of reasons that depend on the class being
taught. However, all of his class visits are motivated by a common set of goals: exposing students to the presence of the museum itself, and
encouraging them to understand and interact with
it in a variety of ways. Some visits are about understanding the objects presented in the museum
exhibits or vouchered in its collections, but others
center on using the presentation of the material to
foster integrative, critical thinking about historical
and paleontological concepts in the earth sciences.
It has been easy for Kendrick to develop activities
that satisfy the object-focused goal, but more difficult to develop strategies that satisfy the
Examples of use of Museum of the Earth
Cornell University.—The museum is visited
and used regularly by Cornell classes in biology,
geology, anthropology, and art.
The museum is used in two Cornell courses
that one of us (Allmon) teaches. In “Paleobiology,” the labs, which focus on one phylum or
other major taxon per week, are taught in the museum classroom (lectures are on campus). Students tour the exhibits and collections early in the
semester so that they can use these resources on
their own later in the semester. Each student is
required to complete a research project using
specimens in the PRI collections, on or off exhibit. Almost every week’s lab includes examination and sketching of at least some specimens in
the permanent exhibits. In a historical geology
course for majors called “Evolution of the Earth
System,” students use the permanent exhibits as
the basis for several lab exercises, including Devonian fossils (terrestrial plants and tetrapods and
marine invertebrates), Carboniferous plants, and
Pleistocene mammals (see Appendix 1; all appendices available online at: http://serc.carleton.edu/
NAGTWorkshops/paleo/volume2012/index.html).
Kissel is lead instructor for the lab-based onecredit course called “Fossil Preparation.” Aside
from the introductory lecture and one fossilcollecting field trip, all classes are held at the museum. After students are introduced to the exhibits
and collections, their work is conducted primarily
within the museum’s on-exhibit Prep Lab, in
which group training is conducted and each stu236
ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
concepts-based goal.
At the most basic level, Kendrick uses the
museum’s permanent exhibits to provide specimens for students to examine in a way that cannot
be provided in Hobart and William Smith’s teaching collections, which are—like those in many
colleges—limited in number and of variable quality. The collections on exhibit provide a useful
adjunct because they often are of better quality,
and include a much wider taxonomic and ecological variety. They cannot substitute for vital,
hands-on work because they remain fixed on display; however, the value they do provide, as
authentic objects and as exemplars to which other
touchable material may be compared, is high. In
addition, if students are visiting the museum as
part of a trip on which they have been to outcrops,
the exhibits serve as direct, immediate reinforcement of the organisms and histories they have just
examined. What students often think is, “Oh, I
see, those are all the things that were living together in that shale unit we just visited.”
If the learning goal is about process, rather
than particular organisms or environments (i.e.,
How do you ask and answer questions in paleontology?), Kendrick schedules a visit to PRI’s research collections, rather than the museum exhibits. A behind-the-scenes tour pays off in several
ways. Students in introductory classes often are
not aware that academic museums keep large collections off display, and usually exhibit only a
small sample of their holdings. Looking through
drawers of specimens opens their eyes to the vast
amounts of data available, and also makes them
conscious of the infrastructure required to maintain that information, and the work that it takes to
make it available. As a side effect, the experience
may encourage students to have a positive attitude
about the mission of natural history museums and
the hidden activities that go on within them.
Without guidance as to what they should be
looking for or thinking about, students tend to
become overwhelmed by the number of things to
see in the museum exhibits, and wander through
them without much critical thinking. Without
some structure, they will complete a circuit
through the exhibits and be mentally prepared to
depart in a very short time, prematurely ending
the learning opportunity. Exercises listing objects
to identify or locate within the exhibits (treasure
hunts) are common assignments developed to
provide structure for an introductory class visit to
a museum (see, e.g., Appendix 1). While good
treasure hunts do succeed in getting students to
visit examine museum spaces and specimens, and
can help develop student’s understanding of the
museum content, too often they are perceived by
undergraduates as a kind of make-work task that
provides them with little benefit other than a
grade for completing the exercise.
To head off this “it’s just static stuff” mindset,
Kendrick has experimented with assignments that
encourage students to observe and integrate a
wide variety of information presented in the Museum’s exhibits to develop a story, not just checkoff finds. The Museum of the Earth has an unusual asset, Barbara Page’s Rock of Ages Sands of
Time, a remarkable 500-foot mural permanently
installed along the ramp leading to the permanent
exhibits (Page and Allmon, 2001). Each of the
544 11 x 11-inch tiles in the mural represents one
million years in the Phanerozoic; walking down
the ramp transports the visitors (metaphorically)
back to the Cambrian; walking through the Museum’s exhibits and back up the ramp brings them
back to the present. Using mural tiles as the organizing element of a class visit helps focus students on a particular part of the story presented at
the Museum. For example, in a jigsaw-type assignment in which the learning goal is developing
a picture of the world and its biota at particular
times (see the assignment handout in Appendix
4), students first choose a subset of mural tiles. In
the museum, students investigate the period of
time represented by those tiles, developing an internal, then written understanding of that unique
moment in time. Before departing, the class gathers by the mural and each student in turn presents
a short but full review of what they’ve learned, as
well as an analysis of how the tile set fits into that
story. The assignment is completed later with a
written follow-up summarizing their tile story.
This approach promotes a unified view of the particular time period they have chosen, along with
an overview of all the time periods represented
among the class members. This approach can be
modified to address a variety of learning goals.
For example, paleoecological comparisons can be
developed, or evolutionary histories could be investigated by following groups across tiles, and so
on.
Finally, to encourage students to think more
deeply about museums and their role in education,
Kendrick has students work with exhibit design.
As part of their museum visit, students are asked
to analyze the design of the permanent exhibits.
When students consciously examine the choices
exhibit designers make, it clarifies the principles
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and concepts the designers hoped to communicate
(Appendix 4). As a final semester project, students also work in groups to develop new exhibit
concepts to be pitched in a competition. This is a
complex but rewarding project that incorporates
almost all elements that museum visits can provide. The students must develop a message about
paleontology or evolution that they want to communicate, decide what kinds of objects to include
in their exhibit, and decide how they’ll be presented. In the end, it provides a full-circle experience for the class and, because they see the care
and thought that should go into displays, it may
also encourage a greater interest in supporting
these institutions.
Colgate University.—Connie Soja frequently
brings her paleontology class (GEOL 215, Paleontology of Marine Life) to the museum, where they
use an exercise she developed for the exhibits
(Appendix 5). After spending the morning in the
field collecting Devonian marine fossils, the class
spends 1–2 hours in the Museum. Soja reports
that, in her experience, the students do not “tend
to look very closely at exhibits unless they have
some kind of activity,” such as the exercise she
provides. The museum visit typically takes place
very early in the semester, and Soja uses the museum to emphasize “foundational concepts about
taxonomy, preservational processes, taphonomy,
evolutionary history, and local fossils.”
on vertebrate biomechanics and adaptation in evolution.
Bill Gallagher teaches paleontology at Rider
College and the University of Pennsylvania, and
also uses ANSP exhibits in his classes. The exercise he uses (Appendix 6B) is a scavenger/
treasure hunt that guides the students through the
dinosaur hall with the aim of letting them make
their own inferences about the paleobiology, paleoecology, and phylogenetic relationships of the
animals on display. The assignment culminates
with the students constructing their own cladogram of dinosaur relationships. Gallagher says
that he tries to let the students do as much as possible on their own or acting in teams.
Beneski Museum of Natural History, Amherst
College, Amherst, MA.—Whitey Hagadorn taught
paleontology at Amherst from 2002 to 2010. He
developed a number of lab exercises to take advantage of the recent major renovation of this historic college museum (formerly called the Pratt
Museum; see Appendix 7). Hagadorn’s so-called
fish lab was designed for students lacking a formal vertebrate paleontology or anatomy background, with the idea that all students could relate
to fish they had seen in other contexts (“on a dinner plate, in an aquarium, or even in “Finding
Nemo,” as he puts it). Hagadorn says that the dino
trackways lab was extremely popular, but more
difficult for students to do without significant
guidance from him. For example, many students
who had not examined sedimentary rocks before
needed help with distinguishing between sedimentary structures formed by inorganic processes
(e.g., oscillation ripple marks, raindrop imprints,
load structures) and organically formed structures
(trackways, plant impressions, etc). The tetrapods
lab was what Hagadorn describes as “a capstonelike experience” for his students in the sense that
it called for them to stretch to apply what they had
learned in lecture. “Where else,” Hagadorn writes,
could students “reach, on their own, the discovery
that birds and dinosaurs are more closely related
to one another than to anything else?... After reassurance that there was no wrong answer—after
all, cladograms are just hypotheses—they loved
it.” For all of these labs, Hagadorn had students
work in teams of two or three students, with each
team handing in one lab assignment. He tried to
arrange the teams so that each was balanced with
both geology/more-experienced and first-year/
non-geology students so that the students could
learn from one another.
OTHER INSTITUTIONAL EXAMPLES
To obtain a broader sense of exactly how museums are used in undergraduate instruction in
paleontology and evolution, a number of colleagues around the country were contacted, and
we solicited their and/or their institution’s experiences. The selection of the individuals contacted
was decidedly nonrandom, and their responses
varied widely in length and detail. Nevertheless,
they do cover much of the spectrum of both museums and undergraduate teaching in the U.S.,
from small college museums housed in a department to large, university-affiliated museums to
very large free-standing museums; from large,
urban, research universities to small, rural, undergraduate colleges.
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia,
PA.—Allison Tumarkin-Deratzian teaches biology
at Temple University in Philadelphia, and has developed two exercises using the dinosaur hall at
the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia
(ANSP; see Appendix 6A). These exercises focus
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ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA.—While a postdoctoral fellow at San
Francisco State University, Kenneth Angielcyk
developed a lab exercise for a class to use at the
California Academy of Sciences (CAS; see Appendix 8). The class made a field trip to CAS
(which was, at the time, under renovation and in
temporary space in downtown San Francisco).
Angielcyk led a tour of the collections for the students and had them do an exercise on a temporary
exhibit on dinosaurs that was in the academy at
the time.
The Field Museum, Chicago, IL.—David Jablonski of the University of Chicago uses The Field
Museum to teach a lab session of a core course on
evolution for non-scientists (Appendix 9A). In
addition to the exercise, which all students do,
there are individual projects where each pair of
students get an additional question of their own to
answer using the exhibits, and they make a presentation of their findings in class a couple of
weeks later.
Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois
Chicago has modified an exercise for use at The
Field Museum (Appendix 9B) based on an exercise first developed by Allison TumarkinDeratzian for use at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia (see above).
Linsley Geological Museum, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY.—The Department of Geology
at Colgate maintains a small museum named in
memory of the late Robert Linsley, who taught
paleontology at Colgate from 1955 to 1992. Connie Soja, who succeeded Linsley on the faculty at
Colgate, has had students in her course “Evolution: Dinosaurs to Darwin” visit the Linsley Museum exhibit, which houses a Cretaceous Mongolian oviraptorosaur egg—the only one from the
famous Central Asiatic Expeditions of the 1920s
outside of the American Museum of Natural History (Carpenter, 1999; Soja, 2008). Students have
also done an informal and optional extra-credit
exercise on mammalian dentition based on the
Pleistocene skulls on display. In that exercise,
they are asked to determine feeding preference
(herbivore, carnivore, omnivore) after identifying
tooth types (incisor, canine, pre/molar). Prior to
this exercise, students already have completed a
similar exercise in class with unidentified skulls
representing all vertebrate clades.
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles
County and Page Museum, Los Angeles, CA.—
Don Prothero taught paleontology and historical
geology at Occidental College from 1978 to 2011.
He routinely took his historical geology class on
the last weekend of the semester to see the La
Brea exhibits at the Page Museum, and the dinosaurs and mammals at the Los Angeles Natural
History Museum (LACM). When he could arrange it, he took students on a behind-the-scenes
tour of the Page Museum, so they could see the
quantity and quality of specimens. He also supervised numerous undergraduate research projects
using specimens in the Page (Prothero et al.,
2011).
Luis Chiappe is a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the LACM. He currently has a grant
from the National Science Foundation’s Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences
program (OEDG), “Proyecto Dinosaurios”. This
grant is aimed at recruiting community-college
students of Hispanic background from the greater
Los Angeles area and offering them a one-year
research program. Each student receives a stipend
for 12–15 hours a week, and is assigned a research project. They attend workshops, join
Chiappe’s crews in the field in Utah and Arizona,
and attend scientific meetings (e.g., Society of
Vertebrate Paleontology). Towards the end of
their project, they are required to give a public
presentation about their research and experience.
Although the newly renovated Dinosaur Hall at
LACM (see Rothstein, 2011) is not used as a formal teaching component of this program, the new
students are taken on a tour of the hall, and it is a
resource available to them for their projects.
Orton Geological Museum, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH.—Bill Ausich teaches
a non-majors undergraduate course in historical
geology at Ohio State. In this course, he uses the
exhibits in the Orton Museum for two exercises
(Appendix 10). For introduction to fossils and
fossil preservation, students complete a 1.5 hour
museum exercise examining the full sweep of the
multicellular fossil record, from sponges to sloths,
and identifying modes of preservation. As a supplement the hands-on specimens available in the
vertebrate paleontology lab, students study larger
and one-of-a-kind specimens available only in the
museum.
University of Kansas Natural History Museum, Lawrence, KS.—Bruce Lieberman teaches
“Prehistoric Life: From DNA to Dinosaurs” at the
University of Kansas, usually to about 150 students. He gives one of his lectures in the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and walks
the class through the pertinent parts of the exhibit
halls while talking about the exhibits and their
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scientific significance. Because the permanent
exhibits use the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway as a major focus, he talks quite a bit about
mosasaurs and pterosaurs. He also spends time on
La Brea tar-pits material and large Neogene
mammals from Kansas. During this lecture, he
focuses on “key paleo examples and what they
illustrate about evolution; for example, commonalities between snakes and mosasaurs, pterosaurs
vs. bird limbs,” etc. He also draws on the work of
Adrienne Mayor (2005) on how Native Americans correctly interpreted fossil remains, using the
display of a large corkscrew burrow, Daemonhelix, as an example. Lieberman does this lecture/
tour towards the end of the semester, using it to tie
together material discussed throughout the semester. He features images of some of the exhibits in
his recent textbook (Lieberman and Kaesler,
2010), and about 5% of the final exam focuses on
material covered during the museum visit.
Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, CT.—At
least four undergraduate courses at Yale make
regular use of vertebrate fossil collections and
exhibits in the Peabody Museum.
“History of Life” is taught by Derek Briggs and
Leo Hickey. The class focuses on examination of
fossil and geologic evidence pertaining to the origin, evolution, and history of life on Earth. Emphasis is placed on major events in the history of
life, what the fossil record reveals about the evolutionary process, the diversity of ancient and living organisms, and the evolutionary impact of
Earth's changing environment. This includes a
tour of the Peabody collections, including vertebrate paleontology.
“The Collections of the Peabody Museum” is
taught by Leo Buss, and enrollment is limited to
freshmen and sophomores. This course involves
exploration of selected scientific problems using
the biological and geological collections of the
Peabody Museum. Eric A. Lazo-Wasem reports
that students select a topic for which some historically or scientifically important theme or principle can be evaluated. For example, one student
evaluated the museum’s sclerosponge collection
(built by Willard Hartman, a significant figure in
the field), and spent some time evaluating fossil
stromatoporoids, thereby learning about the importance of sponges to ancient reefs. Another student evaluated shells, learning how they tell a
story of their natural history, and related this to
the concept of morphospace in the fossil record as
demonstrated by shell shapes, etc. Other student
projects have included evaluation of the utility of
mouthpart analysis to help make taxonomic decisions, the developmental biology of dorsal plates
in stegosaurs, and convergence in cranial morphology between notoungulates and various extant mammal groups.
“Vertebrate Paleontology,” taught by Jacques
Gauthier, is a seminar offering a detailed look at
current issues in the phylogeny, anatomy, and
evolution of fossil and recent vertebrates. Lectures review the broad outline of vertebrate phylogeny and evolution, and lab section is required.
The lab classes for this course make heavy use of
the vertebrate paleontology teaching collection, a
subset of the main research collection. Students
also get a tour of the collections.
Both the biology and geology departments at
Yale have a requirement for a research project in
the senior year. Each year, the Peabody usually
hosts one or two undergraduates who make use of
the collections for their project(s). Recent examples include the phylogeny and evolution of softshell turtles across the K/T boundary and body
posture in stegosaurs. These projects frequently
are co-supervised by collections staff in the Museum’s department of vertebrate paleontology.
NEGATIVE RESPONSES
We were struck by some of the negative responses we received. A number of colleagues
wrote that although there was a museum with displays and collections of fossils close-by and readily available, it was not used in teaching by either
themselves or colleagues. Some stated reasons for
non-use included:
1) “[the museum] is not very helpful for
paleo teaching … [because] all the paleo
stuff is terrible old static dusty [sic]”
2) “We have students [at the museum] all
the time but there are no formal exercises.
… I don’t [use the exhibits or collections]
because my class (historical geology) is
too big for our little classroom. [The professor who] teaches invert paleo …
doesn’t come near the museum!”
3) “We use the museum for grad student
research and their support, but don't do
any undergrad teaching activities over
there. Part of this is because the [invertebrate paleo] collections are housed off site
in a warehouse that is a little too far to get
to be convenient.”
4) “I barely use the [public museum] in
the paleo lectures. I refer students to the
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ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
public exhibits on occasion, particularly
the ones for which we do not have comparable materials in the lecture/lab room. …
I do not use the museum for lab. The lab
specimens we use are completely independent of the museum materials, partly
for convenience, and partly because I do
not want to risk damage to the museum
specimens. … I have assembled an excellent collection of paleo lab materials, and
there is no need for exercises based on
museum materials.”
specimens of certain modern organisms that are
not available in the college teaching collection.
Or, the museum may have staff or research collections or other attributes that help students understand the function of collections in paleontological research. The key is to make use of the
strengths of the museum exhibits, and use them as
a complement to other class resources. Moreover,
instructors do not need a museum’s exhibits to be
large or extensive to provide useful learning experiences. After all, we want our students to be able
to make sense of the natural world around them,
to see evidence of evolution, geologic processes,
and deep time from the flora, fauna, and rocks
with which they are likely to come into contact.
Likewise, museum exhibits needn't be comprehensive, unusually well labeled, or interactive to
be useful in paleontological education: they simply must have a sufficient number of real specimens beyond what is available in the classroom or
in other resources.
3) Teaching specific content using museum
exhibitions, even those that are well-designed for
public audiences, usually requires the formal
structure of an instructor-created exercise. This
need stems from the primary role of most museum exhibitions to introduce visitors (usually
from the general public) to a few basic concepts,
and to inspire curiosity and interest that may promote additional learning after a visitor has left the
museum. Although there may be large amounts of
information available in an exhibit, tools must be
constructed for students to make specific observations and foster specific interpretations. The lab
activities presented in the appendices to this paper
provide very structured examples that encourage
and enable students to make specific observations
and interpretations.
4) Some museums may need to be improved
for use in teaching undergraduates. Some are so
small and limited in their displays, and possibly in
their own collections of specimens, that an exhibit
experience is of lower quality than a lab experience would be utilizing a decent college teaching
collection. Exhibit panels may be so out-of-date
that the information they provide is seriously misleading. Even if a local or university museum is
suboptimal for undergraduate teaching, however,
instructors can consider how they might help improve it. Most museums, even those that are wellfunded and possess modern displays featuring an
abundance of specimens, are understaffed and are
usually happy to have partnerships, especially
with well-informed faculty. Educational pro-
DISCUSSION
Some generalities emerge from the exercises
and experiences discussed above:
1) Museum exhibitions and collections have
unique, specific strengths that fill particular teaching needs. Although often unstated, one of the
primary benefits of having students use museums
is that they see numerous actual specimens, which
greatly supplement the 2-D images available in
textbooks and the Internet. This can be the case
even when specimens incorporated into exhibits
cannot be handled as they normally would be in a
lab (Kansas, Michigan). In some instances, there
is something special simply about the authenticity
of specific, rare, and/or interesting specimens
(e.g., the oviraptorosaur egg at Colgate; the Hyde
Park Mastodon at the Museum of the Earth) or the
awesome size of large vertebrates. In other cases,
the physicality of real (or cast) specimens with 3D morphology, texture, etc., is widely believed to
be a better teaching tool than two-dimensional
representations. Such arguments are in some ways
akin to valuing fieldwork, and would likely benefit from educational research on object-based
learning and visualization. Exploration in museums can also lead to intrinsic motivations and
therefore enhanced learning experiences for visitors, including students (Csikszentmihalyi and
Hermanson, 1995; Falk and Dierking, 2000).
2) Using a museum to teach is as much about
faculty creativity and initiative as it is about the
resources in the museum. Even relatively small
museums (e.g., the Linsley Geological Museum,
Orton Geological Museum, etc.) often have
s p e c i m e n s r e f l e c t i n g f u n d a m e n t a l p a tterns—change through time of dominant taxa,
origin of major groups, adaptation, significance of
mass extinctions—that cannot be explained as
well with illustrations or teaching collections.
They may have interesting fossil specimens or
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gramming at a museum might be influenced simply through expertise, i.e., suggesting use of museum collections or exhibits in ways they haven't
been because paleontological expertise was not
previously available. Museums often have existing K–12 programs that can be extended to make
them appropriate for some college activities. Major changes to museum exhibits always cost
money, and very good exhibits can be quite expensive, so writing the local museum into the outreach portion of research grants can provide both
museum and faculty members with new resources
and new opportunities. It can also provide opportunities for students to be involved in public outreach. PRI and its Museum of the Earth, for example, have had numerous exhibits and educational programs funded through research grants to
its own staff and colleagues at Cornell University.
5) Museum research collections can provide
experiences in specimen-based research that go
beyond what is possible in exhibits and teaching
collections. Most students and many faculty
members have thought little about the existence of
collections as a foundation for much of what we
think we know about the history and evolution of
life. Such use of collections, however, is important both for helping students to understand the
science and for helping them to value collections
and their own potential role in developing and
maintaining collections. For example, PRI offers
collections tours for classes from several central
New York colleges; colleagues relayed similar
experiences at LACM and Yale. Furthermore,
some museums may have their own teaching collections that are, in effect, the university teaching
collection (e.g., the vertebrate paleontology teaching collection at Yale), or that include specimens
not present in the lab collection. Research collections, if they are accessible to students, can be the
very best ways to expose students to collections
as a component of paleontological science.
There are also recommendations here for museums themselves that serve or could serve postsecondary audiences with paleontological education:
but should focus on what cannot be found elsewhere. For undergraduate teaching, this means
real organisms in natural contexts, combined with
compelling storytelling (Valdecasas and Correas,
2010: p. 511). The specimens (and their contexts
and stories) should be viewed not as static objects,
but rather as perpetual sources of new insights
and questions, and new ways of looking at old
issues.
Natural history museums and their collections
are at the core, intellectually and historically, of
modern evolutionary biology and paleontology.
Evolutionary biology and the closely related disciplines of paleontology and historical geology
fundamentally rely on the notion that objects in
the natural world have histories—that they have
not been created from nothing, and that these histories leave records in the shapes of natural objects. The ancient classical authors and their Enlightenment descendants recognized this concept,
and also the idea that objects can speak to their
own history, even if these authors did not grasp
the mechanisms by which that history occurred. It
was this insight that led to the founding of collections and, ultimately, museums.
Museums are not obsolete tools for addressing scientific questions that can be solved more
adequately by other more “modern” devices, e.g.,
in labs or computers. The specimens that museums hold in their collections are physical manifestations—shapes, compositions, and contexts—of
the processes that make the world as it is. Museums are thus uniquely “a nursery of living
thoughts,” which educate the visitor by illustrating “every kind of material object and every
manifestation of human thought and activity”
(Goode, 1888). The specimens exhibited not only
illustrate what we think we already know, but also
“arouse a host of unguessed ideas that reverberate
through the corridors of countless minds” (Murphy, 1937).
Natural history museums have unique
educational responsibilities.
Because they have a unique relationship with
the study and teaching of both evolution and paleontology, natural history museums have a
unique potential for public education in these areas, starting with all undergraduates:
“…Natural history museums continue to
have the potential to profoundly impact
science literacy as it relates to evolution if
they choose to focus their educational efforts on this important topic. Because they
Museums should focus on their unique
strengths.
In their rush to be perceived as relevant and to
compete for audiences with other forms of entertainment, museums should maintain their focus on
specimens for research and education, because
what they are is uniquely valuable. Natural history museums cannot be everything to everyone,
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ALLMON ET AL.: USING MUSEUMS TO TEACH PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
and technical.
This should start with the role of museums
themselves in making new knowledge and housing objects that can be used for making such
knowledge. Museum exhibits should give emphasis not just to the objects, but also to presenting
how science works, and the roles of observation,
hypothesis testing, uncertainty, and critical reasoning.
CONCLUSION
hold in trust the tangible objects that are
the evidence of evolution, it can be argued
that these museums are in fact able to
teach about evolutionary theory in a way
that is both unique and profound when
compared to traditional schooling.”
(Abraham-Silver and Kisiel, 2008, p. 52)
This obligation includes the training of future
scientists. As Philip Humphrey noted twenty years
ago, natural history museums, especially those at
colleges and universities, “play a crucial role in
creating new generations of scholar-curators who
are essential for the continued ability of the national community of museums to fulfill their obligations to science and society.” One of the “significant failures of graduate programs in systematic biology,” he wrote, “is that most of the
scholar-curators they produce lack an understanding of the broader societal obligations of natural
history museums, and have little educational and
experiential background in the totality of the
complex missions and associated functions of a
comprehensive natural history museum.” (Humphrey, 1991, p. 8)
A local museum can provide a unique and
outstanding opportunity to teach paleontology in a
way that helps students understand the central role
fossils play in everything we think we know about
the history of life. Authentic objects are engaging
and informative in ways that images and even
models are not. A museum can provide students
with experiences they cannot get anywhere else,
not just in science, but in the broader culture of
science and society. Museums are, of course,
storerooms of objects, and vouchers for the ideas
that have been generated by those objects. But,
they also are fundamentally places of inspiration
and potential sources of new ideas. Fossils and
museums are often thought of as the epitome of
old; yet they can also be wellsprings of the new.
Museums are about objects, and what can be
learned from them.
The word “museum” is now routinely applied
to other sorts of educational or entertainment entities. Science centers or science museums, for example, focus mainly on providing experiences and
processes that cannot be reduced to unique objects, or they largely replace objects with images.
Museums are places-based and focused on unique
objects (Alexander and Alexander, 1996). They
can and should, of course, usefully employ new
learning technologies, as long as it strengthens,
rather than replaces, the focus on an object-based
experience.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to many colleagues for generously sharing their own and/or their institution’s
experiences with teaching paleontology and/or
evolution in museums, including: K. Angielczyk,
W. Ausich, L. Babcock, L. Balko, T. Baumiller, D.
Bottjer, A. Curran, P. Dodson, W. Gallagher, D.
Geary, W. Hagadorn, M. Hopkins, D. Jablonski,
R. Laub, E. Lazo-Wasem, B. Lieberman, C.
Mitchell, C. Myers, E. Nesbitt, R. Plotnick, D.
Prothero, C. Soja, A. Tumarkin-Deratzian, T.
White, and K. Zaumdio. Thanks also to M.
Fraiser, P. Yacobucci, and an anonymous reviewer
for their comments, which greatly improved the
manuscript, J. Thompson for help with formatting, and the editors for allowing us to participate
in this volume.
Museums should not shy away from subjects
controversial in the general public, such as
evolution or climate change, which have sound
scientific bases.
But, their treatment of these topics should be
based in what museums do best—showing and
interpreting objects relevant to such topics. In this
way, museums have an opportunity to display the
kinds of specimens that are part of the basis for
how and what we know about nature.
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