Ben Miller

Just give them the adobe treatment

Mounted Apatosaurus skeleton with missing feet and platform around it demolished. People and ladders all around

Same photographed from above. Head has now been removed. There’s a paper model under the skeleton now with women looking at it.

Guy hoists a cervical vertebrae while other verts sit on a cart.

Dismantling Apatosaurus in 1990. Note the paper model of Life Over Time at its feet! #FossilFriday

Giant ass croc ass in our exhibit hall, with other dinosaurs and pterosaurs for scale

Everyone posts pics of the toothy end of a Deinosuchus but nobody ever appreciates all the hard work we put into it's booty, including all those fiddly osteiderms

Dwarf crocodile resting with open mouth near the glass front of an enclosure with logs and a pond

Close up of her face with squinty eyes

Smalls has been the shyest of the scaly colleagues so it’s nice to see her out and about today

🦎THREAD: We just published something wild in @asn-amnat.bsky.social - lizards missing entire limbs not only survive, but some appear to actually thrive in the wild?!

Let me tell you about the "three-legged pirate" lizards 🏴‍☠️

[Paper: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... ]

(1/n)

YouTube video by Aztec Death Whistle Aztec Death Whistle: The Sound That Terrifies

Imagine, if you will, fifty protesters in inflatable animal costumes converging on ICE agents while blowing Aztec Death Whistles

youtu.be/x12hyuonfFI?...

Poster for National fossil day. Lower text says discovery/science/prehistoric life, October 15 2025. Illustration has a bush baby-like primate in a branch in the foreground and horses, a stream, and a mountain behind.

Happy 16th #NationalFossilDay!

Fossils connect us to the lands we live on and the ecosystems we’re a part of. They show us that everything around us is here because of a 4.5 billion year story that’s still ongoing. I just think that’s magical. ☮️ ❤️ 🦕 🦣

Here's a T. Rex bored to death trying to bite their own tail. My partner asked me to animate it in stop motion, after she watched a video about the very important topic of "could T. Rex chew its own tail like a dog". The puppet is still a work in progress 🦖

Close encounters of the extinct kind I’m a huge museum nerd. When I travel, museums are top of my list – and it doesn’t matter a whole lot what they’re museums of.* But what’s even better than a day at a museum is a chance to tour a m…

A reflection on the extinction, and museums, and the simultaneous excitement and sadness of getting to hold an ivory-billed woodpecker.

A digital drawing, few simple drawings on a dark background. From top to the bottom, it starts with half of the Earth seen with its continents being placed like in the Middle Ordovician. Below it is a line, showing a process of life - from one little star, to dividing cells, to an embryo (it's all different creatures - fish, dog, tadpole, and a human). Then, series of little drawings, showing different stages of life in different things. A plant emerging from the soil, a larvae, baby birds with their bright open mouths, pregnant horse with a star on its belly, very old human, and a dry plant in a pot with a leaf falling from it. A fossil of a crinoid can be seen on the background, in some places nicely preserved, in some - scattered around, with segments seen as little stars. The text on the picture says: "Let sunshine touch the memory of me again"

Following the previous part of it, from top to the bottom: mammal bones scattered around, a fossil of a trilobite on a rock, human remains, a piece of a fossilized plant, little drawing of an ammonite, a part of a thylacine seen in a little square, and in a square next to it - plate with fossilized fish, being shattered. Below them is a line - an ornitomimus running forward, its fossilized remains, and on the right - same remains, but scattered around in little pieces. The text goes through the drawing, saying "I will remain. I will remain. I will remain" The first phrase is written normally, the second is written fast. The last one is poorly written by my left hand, without looking at the screen.

A lot of feelings that are more than words

(I guess, in a way, #paleoart)

Black and white photo of display case with Diplocodus and Allosaurus skulls facing away from each other on a bed of gravel. Illustrations and text above describes Saurischian dinosaurs generally.

Same Diplodocus skull now paired with a Camarasaurus skull. Out in the open, mounted on red poles.

Same Diplodocus and Camarasaurus skulls, now facing the same way. Still out in the open on poles.

3 generations of the Diplodocus (probably) skull USNM 2672 on exhibit. Collected by O.C. Marsh's crew in 1883, this was the first (and still one of only a handful) complete diplodocid skull ever found.

A literary Iguanodon at the Earth Sciences Library. Do any other libraries have dinosaurs or other antediluvian creatures carved into the furniture?

Double page spread from an Argentinian magazine from 1912. Shows models of prehistoric animals, including a Toxodon, Macrauchenia, Mylodon, Megatherium, Mastodon, Glyptodon and sabre-toothed cap. The central image is an illustration of all the creatures standing in a landscape.

A sadly never-realized Pleistocene animal park in La Plata, Argentina. Article from from Fray Mocho (9 August 1912)

The animals were designed by Josef Pallenberg, who also did the dinosaur sculptures at Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg

(more info in this article: doi.org/10.31048/185... )

#FossilFriday

Woah, I'm only just noticing that's not the same Camarasaurus skull in the 1982-2014 exhibit as is on display now! 😳

Black and white photo of display case with Diplocodus and Allosaurus skulls facing away from each other on a bed of gravel. Illustrations and text above describes Saurischian dinosaurs generally.

Same Diplodocus skull now paired with a Camarasaurus skull. Out in the open, mounted on red poles.

Same Diplodocus and Camarasaurus skulls, now facing the same way. Still out in the open on poles.

3 generations of the Diplodocus (probably) skull USNM 2672 on exhibit. Collected by O.C. Marsh's crew in 1883, this was the first (and still one of only a handful) complete diplodocid skull ever found.

When a default argumentative position is rejecting field consensus but field consensus has not been pursued and generally hasn’t existed with an clarity since the 60s, then the arguments take on the affect of a cafeteria food fight

Black jeep on a hill overlooking autumnal forest and nuclear cooling towers in the distance

View from driver's seat of a jeep ahead on the trail barely squeaking under a diagonal fallen tree

A yellow FJ cruiser is stuck with 1 wheel off a wooden bridge. Driver of jeep behind it is preparing winch

A black and white cat curled into a very tight ball on a pillow

When you follow me I make you look at jeeps sometimes, sorry. I'll include a snugly cat this time.

I highly recommend watching this 1993 documentary on the making of the Africa hall. It's a great look at the exhibit-making process in general, as well: americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-...

And the choice to open the concluding section about the African diaspora with a walk through the hold of a slave ship has gotten some well-deserved commentary. (This section was removed last year).

Recreation of a late-80s field camp, complete with folding chair, clothesline, lanterns, and other gear under a shade tarp.

Display about the differences between rhino, hippo, and giraffe digestive tracks, with models of intestines hanging over a light-up interactive.

Recreated wall of a field cabin. Wooden construction with hanging map and postcards, and photo the camp outside the "window"

Desk nook in field scientist's cabin covered in books and paper, with interview with scientist playing on a TV monitor

The exhibit did have some issues: the area about Africa's natural biomes and the lives of western scientists in the field gobbled up more than its share of budget (because the development process was finished faster), but always felt out of place.

Realistic model giraffe alongside acacia tree

Large model baobab with cut-out people, a TV on a stand, and artifact case at its base

A recreation of a well in the desert alongside a replica data palm under a blue ceiling.

The exhibit also featured some pretty extraordinary craftsmanship: the full-sized giraffe, baobab, acacia, and date palm made in-house are particularly impressive.

Four life sized cut-outs of men gathered around tea. A TV plays behind them.

A motorbike with a rack of cassette tapes for sale is parked in a corner with ornate stonework.

A recreation of a street mural showing man in white robes in front of a mosque.

Africa hall opened in 1993, and everyone's go-to description is that it was "ahead of it's time." The goal was to showcase contemporary Africa through the lived experiences of Africans, rather than cases of decontextualized artifacts.

Colorful, abstracted mural of a cityscape surrounds the exhibit entrance. A hanging sign says Welcome to Senegal and to Dakar...gateway to Africa (Ministry of Tourism)

Large exhibit space with cutout camel resting alongside water jugs and a realistic date palm replica. Immediate area is tan, walls and ceiling are sky blue.

Africa-shaped panel with header "Art and Society." Replica bellows in a corner with cases of metal artifacts.

Suggestion of street scene with storefronts and life-sized cutouts of people. A realistic baobab tree behind them.

Some photos from my last walk through the Field's Africa hall, which closed forever last week to make way for a new version. 🧵

Ok but I dare anyone to know for sure which part of that building they’re in at any moment

Yeah. TikTok is out. It's an arm of the ruling fascist party at this point.

Oh, really interesting about the understanding of extinction! And should have mentioned that Peale’s mastodon was primarily built by Moses Williams, an enslaved man.

Can you say more? I've only read parts of that book!

I was out on the des plaines constantly for like six months, then put it away forever apparently. But I should definitely start again next summer!

Yeah I bought a kayak and haven’t touched it since that year

Illustration of mastodon skeleton made during original Peale museum display. Differs from photos above in that head is held higher and tusks are much shorter

There are only drawings of the original display to go on but it was likely reassembled a few times as it changed hands