Parikh 1

Nisarg Parikh

Prof. Tracy Smith

BIOL142

2 August 2019

Visit to the Museum

The feeling to visit Natural museum of history never gets old! It always feels refreshing and new
for some reasons. I have been there previously, but this time I was able to relate my knowledge on history
of earth and human origin in the museum. There was excitement to see and touch some real fossils. In the
fossil section there were labs on one side and fossil were placed around it. Some scientists were working
on fossils and some educators/helper were explaining about the fossils. I got the chance to talk with one
of the educators to know about the process after the fossil is discovered. After the fossil section I headed
straight to the deep time. On the way to deep time there were some huge fossils of dinosaurs and early
birds with tyrannosaurus feeding on triceratops that was placed carefully and remarkably. Deep time
exhibit depicts that we all are connected with each other. Even a small mouse like organism is connected
with us, which sounds oddly weird but it is our truth. Deep time exhibit starts at the very beginning of our
planet earth and ends by displaying the actual picture of our potential future. Deep time demonstrated our
past, present, and future respectively. Basically, in the journey from “present to past” they depicted all the
eons in detail: Hadean eon, Archean eon, Protozoic eon, and phanerozoic eon. They displayed all the
“first appearance” organism in each eon. There was also this area where they explained plate tectonic
movements and how it affected the living organism in particular eon. They have a video on plate tectonic
and how the geography of earth changed overtime. There was this beautiful and educational video
explaining each eons and history of earth in simple easy language, which helped me as well to
comprehend it easily. There was a different section of mass extinction, where they portrayed 5 mass
extinction in history of the earth. There was a video on cretaceous extinction which was portrayed
fabulously. In this video each detail were demonstrated carefully and precisely including the abundance
of iridium in fossil, coming up with the conclusion of meteor strike, finding its evidence in the Mexico all
details were explained easily to the visitors. They also demonstrated Permian extinction (PT), which is
said to be the biggest and major extinction in the history of earth. Over 95% of the species went extinct in
Permian extinction. According to the scientist there was an explosion of flood basalt which increased
carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other greenhouse gases which made climate warm, and because of that
ocean’s temperature increased which dropped down the sea level. Due to the eruption, carbon dioxide was
absorbed by the sea in abundance and end up killing most of the marine species in the atmosphere. Still
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the reason of Permian extinction is debated. On the way to “present to future” scientist predicted that
there will be a 6th mass extinction in coming future which will lead by us “Humans”. According to the
scientists 6th extinction maybe the most severe than other 5 extinction that earth previously faced.
Scientist analyzed that some rare, (also common) species are getting less in number because of the
excessive hunting, climate change, and toxic pollutions of which humans are the solely culprit. Also,
overpopulation is the cause in extinction because overpopulation leads towards overconsumption. It’s a
bitter reality, but we still have chance to redeem ourselves and save our planet from 6th upcoming
extinction by controlling population, pollution, and hunting; In the end, I visited human origin section.
There was a well-maintained tunnel of time, where it depicted all hominins chronologically from
australopithecines to sapiens. There was a model of Lucy on the right side of the tunnel, and many more
till the way to the end of the section. I had an opportunity to talk about the journey of homo
neanderthalensis and Cro-Magnon (early homo-sapiens) with an aspiring kid. There were some fossils
placed to compare between the hominin, which helped me visualize them as a hominin. Like the history
of earth, there was also an educational and beautiful video on how hominins migrated with respect to
time. There were also some touchable skulls of the hominis to compare the traits (such as brain case, jaw,
foramen magnum) between them. In the Neanderthal section they depicted that although Neanderthal had
bigger brain, but they were not able to think as complex as we sapiens can think. At that era, we had a
knowledge to create sharp and hunting tools to hunt, a tent or caves like structure to live, a method to
cook food from fire. This all contributed building our brain much complex which helped in surviving
from Neanderthal. Scientist says we still have alleles Neanderthal in our body. Some notable traits are,
red hair, back hair, blood clotting, or neurological disorders. An individual with this trait have a greater
chance of having Neanderthal alleles. We were not homo sapiens earlier, we evolved from Cro-Magnon
(Early homo-sapiens). As brain began to develop more, Cro-Magnon were able to think much complex,
they invented different cultures and languages. They were purely talented artistically, they invented
jewelry and proper cloths to cover and make themselves in different climates. Overall the take-away
home idea for me was to contribute in keeping the climate clean by creating less pollution, because in
every extinction in the past climate played a major role.
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References
All information came from Smithsonian museum of natural history.