Website: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/
The Collections: I was a regular visitor to the Field Museum collections during my Iowa days. The main focus of my work while there was marsupial material from the Pleistocene Madura Cave locality in Western Australia and carnivore material from the White River Badlands of South Dakota. I spent a day in the mammalogy collections as well, where I measured fossil marsupial teeth and encountered perhaps the saddest specimen I've ever seen, a pelt of the recently extinct thylacine. I also had one especially motivated student who developed a project on pathology in teeth of the giant shark C. megalodon in the Field's extensive fossil fish collection. I sadly haven't spent time in perhaps the most impressive of the Field's collections consisting of material from the Green River lagerstätte in Wyoming.
The Exhibits: I could wax rhapsodic about the Field Museum exhibits for hours on end, but I'll try to restrain myself. During my college years in Chicago, I routinely felt very isolated and alone, but the Field Museum (and the magnificent Shedd Aquarium next door) always felt like home. The fossil hall is one of the best in the world, featuring world-class displays of Paleozoic invertebrates, Carboniferous coal forests, Permian synapsids, dinosaurs (including the notorious Tyrannosaurus Sue, soon to open in a new exhibit), Green River fossils, and Pleistocene megafauna from both Americas. It is also home to the single greatest work of paleoart ever created, the murals of Charles R. Knight. The rest of the museum is equally wonderful. The botany hall is unique in its size, scope, and the quality of its plant models, the extensive zoology halls are the birthplace of modern taxidermy (the Hall of Asian Mammals is particularly great), the Northwest Coast hall has an incomparable forest of totem poles through which you can wander, and the other anthropology exhibits are integrative and extensive. This treasure trove is housed inside what is, for my money, the most impressively imposing museum building in the world and centered around the Stanley Field Hall, that feels like the sanctum sanctorum of a scientific temple.
Gift Ideas: Given that I've twice mentioned the Green River Formation, I feel I should advertise the beautifully-illustrated book on Fossil Lake by Field Museum curator Lance Grande. I have it on my bookshelf and it remains one of my favorites to leaf through!
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