Natural History

By Ian Morrison, Technician, Vertebrate Palaeontology

It’s an elite group of people that have walked on the moon, but this weekend you will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to share the experience with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (or at least the image of them – Neil is reflected in Buzz’s space helmet).  Space Weekend, May 5 – 6 only, is shaping up to be out of this world!

A second impressive ‘wave’ of butterfly migration has been taking place the last few days. More Red Admirals have been joined by some other migratory butterflies: Painted Lady (saw one in the schoolyard yesterday), American Lady, Common Buckeye, Question Mark, Mourning Cloak, Cloudless Sulphur, Gray Hairstreak, Variegated Fritillary, Little Yellow, American Snout, Dainty Sulphur, etc. The list is a long one. The occasional Monarch has already been recorded as well!

For all the space junkies and aspiring astronauts, the ROM is holding its first ever Space Weekend on May 5 and 6…it’s going to be out of this world!

For some more info on the butterfly migration see Antonia’s blog plost from May 4, 2012.

Packing and transporting over 50 specimens from the ROM to the Direct Energy Centre at the Exhibition grounds for the Canada’s Oceans and You: An Interactive Exhibition at the Green Living Show is not a simple task. Days of preparation happen: models are placed delicately in or on packing material, real taxidermy specimens must be cleaned and crated, and all are loaded neatly into trucks.

We returned from the field in Patagonia to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. At about 13 million people in the metro area, BA is the largest city in the country, and third largest in modern Gondwana (behind Sao Paulo and Cairo). There are dinosaurs in Buenos Aires, but only in museums, as the fossils were found in other parts of the country- mostly Patagonia. We spent one day at the Natural Science Museum, or MACN, on the edge of Palermo.

Submitted by Vincent Vertolli, Assistant Curator Geology

March 25,2012