Orton Geological Museum (named after the first president of OSU) is part of Orton Hall, located near Main Campus. The architecture alone is incredible. Built in 1893 it was constructed to represent the geologic time scale. The building has noticeable layers representing the time periods that had persisted in Ohio. I learned that not all geologic time periods existed in Ohio because of different environmental factors that varied by location.
Mastodons and Mammoths
Mastodons are browsers and mammoths are grazers. Browsers eat autotrophs which are organisms that produce complex organic compounds from simple inorganic molecules (example: twigs and leaves). Autotrophs can create the organisms by using light energy or inorganic chemical reactions. Grazers are similar in the retrospect that they consume multicellular autotrophs and grasses, however, the terrestrial mammoths diet concentrates on low vegetation. These two terrestrial mammals are physically relative to the modern day elephant. The most significant thing I learned today was about the mammoths in mastodons. The remaining time at Orton Geological Museum was getting a general tour from the curator, Dale Gnidovec (my part time mentor).
The museum itself was interesting but I thought the what Dr.Gnidovec (a geologist) showed me behind the scenes was the most intriguing. The back rooms are filled with hundreds of drawers full of thousands of minerals, fossilized creatures and rocks. Dr.Gnidovec pulled a drawer out with the word "gold" printed on its metal exterior. My mentor let me hold a pure gold nugget half the size of my thumb. An excavation of mastodon skeletal remains are being conducted in Darke County by Dr.Gnidovec that was recently found by a farmer. They extracted 60% of the bones which is wonderfu. The problem that geologists, paleontologists and archaeologists have with retrieving the remains from ground is that these bones have been in the ground for thousands of years. After a long period of time bones are plastered with sediments of all kinds. Dr.Gnidovec offered for me clean the bones which is an intricate process or to dig for the remaining 40% of the mastodon bones.
2 comments:
Laine,
Holy cow, I mean, holy elephant, I have never learned so much about mammoths and mastadons. Wow. That is so cool, and I am intrigued by Orton Hall; I would like to wander through it to see how it displays geologic time.
I really wanted to see the pictures, but I couldn't access them. Is this because of a computer malfunction? can you see them when you post? Oh well, the words are quite descriptive. Congratulations on completing your Inuit carvings project. Where can we access the lesson plans?
Thanks for all of the info!
Ryan
There is a link attached to my previous blog. If you want to stop by Orton Hall give me a call. My computer is horrible. A new computer should be coming within this and next week.
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