THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 17, 1995 TAG: 9506170019
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Dinosaurs have been big in the news over the past few weeks, the biggest since the chilling of movie audiences by the earth-jarring monsters of ``Jurassic Park.''
The trigger for much of the latest media commotion has been the reopening, after three years' overhaul and updating, of two fossil-reptile halls at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Reasons for the excitement are readily found.
The exhibits, although they use only 5 percent of the museum's dinosaur material, are being described as the largest such array - ever - of remains left by the strange beasts which dominated the planet for about 165 million years, before their disappearance some 65 million years ago.
The new displays are also notable for the way they reach out to the cutting edge of paleontological research, resulting in such changes as a repositioned skeleton of T. rex, its tail parallel to the Earth, instead of dragging, and that huge mouth of dagger teeth thrusting low to grab luckless victims.
And yet another reason - particularly satisfying to those of us who have long plumped for this kind of thing in using relics to tell about the past - is that 85 percent of the fossils are exactly what they appear to be: fossils, and not man-made casts.
Putting a finger squarely on this special appeal (since so many museums in recent years have relied so heavily on replicas), a Newsweek article on the reopened halls noted that ``the real lure is real specimens.'' And the story quotes a curator: ``Why do people go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa? They know what she looks like. It's because she's the real one.''
This proposition applies to a lot of things, ancient and current.
When I'm looking at some museum assemblage of American Indian relics, which I usually enjoy doing, I always always read the labeling. And if it turns out that some stone projectile point, for example, is a facsimile, I lose interest - even if the substitute is a finely crafted piece from some skilled modern flintknapper.
Visiting some historic edifice, I don't pay nearly as much attention to the reconstructed sections as I do to the original parts which are still there and visible (if I can find anyone who knows which is which).
At a memorialized battlefield, what's left of some original entrenchment is a more powerful visitor magnet than a reconstruction; an artillery piece actually used at that site is better than some gun similar to those used there.
Or step outside of history to consider things we are curious about in the world of today. Judy Garland's red shoes from her Oz movie tell a more fascinating story at the Smithsonian than any mock-up possibly could. A good zoo, humanely designed and run, is better than dozens of dioramas of papier mache wildlife. At an aquarium, live fish whet our interest more than all the pictures, flow charts and big-print placards.
It's good to find, among those 85-percent-genuine dinosaurs up there in New York, fresh support for a simple guideline in using props to teach: For making the best possible connections with the living world, past or present, real is the way to go. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB