What do you first think of when you think of Florence? The Renaissance, with artists such as Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, and others? Soaring Roman Catholic cathedrals? A center of culture and fashion and food? Fantastic art museums and works like the David?
... how about dinosaurs?
In Florence, along with museums like the Uffizi and the Accademica Gallery, there is a small complex of museums that make up the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze (Florence Museum of Natural History). One of these is the Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia, a fairly out of the way little building behind the S.S. Annunzoila. It's not well advertised... if we hadn't done a lot of research into where exactly we wanted to go prior to traveling to Italy, I don't think we would have known it exists at all. However, we did, and I was curious to see how Italy does paleontology, and so the morning of our last day in Florence, we set out to find the place. Now, the previous day, trying to visit the art galleries, we'd frequently gotten hopelessly lost, so our first stop was at an internet cafe to ask Google Maps to plot our course for us. This, however, completely failed. The street signs are often absent or are out of date in the city, and so, after wandering around confusedly for a while, we stopped into an archaeological museum on the Piazza di Annunzoila for directions. We found one large sign for the temporary exhibit currently in the museum, but still managed to walk past it several times before noticing the entrance.
Once there, though, the visit was entirely worth it. The temporary exhibit, "Dinosauri in Carne e Ossa" ("Dinosaurs in the Flesh") began in the Botanical Gardens, with life-sized reconstructions of various prehistoric creatures. These weren't small, Velociraptor-sized creatures either (for context, real Velociraptors are only about 6 feet long and 1-2 feet tall); the models included giants such as Spinosaurus aegyptaicus, Diplodocus longus, and Tyrannosaurus rex.
As much as the dinosaurs themselves were cool, though, the part I found more interesting, from what I could read of it with my limited knowledge of Italian, was the information about the artists themselves. The prehistoric creatures were from all over the world; all the paleoartists and sculptors were from Italy. Prior to this, I'd seen very little recent scientific art done by anyone outside the U.S., England, and Germany. It was very interesting to compare the pieces on display to the ones made at the paleo lab I work at back in Chicago. Some of the detail was less refined; the scales looked fairly manufactured, and none of the dinosaurs had flaws, scars, or strings of drool hanging out of their mouths, which are features I've come to expect out of a truly life-like model. However, there was a sense of tension and movement in a couple these pieces that I don't often see back in the states. It was rather reminiscent of some of the Classical or Renaissance statues I'd seen the day before, actually. Except, of course, that instead of human figures, these were prehistoric creatures, and they were made of special plastics instead of stone.
The exhibit continued inside the museum, with more models as well as a decent collection of Cenozoic fossils, including multiple mammoths, several bears, and a set of large extinct flightless birds from New Zealand. They also had a whole walk through time of invertebrate shells, showing how the diversity had changed since calcification first appeared in the Cambrian period, over 500 million years ago. They even had a token case full of plant fossils, mostly leaves and bark. For all that the museum was small, in need of some updating, and rather hard to find, it was really well set up, and had a wonderful collection.
Since I've been in Greece and Italy, I've been surprised by how little hard science seems to be evident. There's a lot of archaeology, but not much else. Perhaps it's here, and I just don't know where to look; perhaps in America, I'm so ingrained into that subculture that I see it everywhere, and it's not as prominent as I think it is. But I'm used to there being major natural history and science museums in every large city, that are well advertised and key places to visit. That doesn't seem to be as true here. So it was a nice surprise to find even a small natural history museum in Italy, to learn about the geology and paleontology of the area, and discover how that interacts with field in the rest of the world.
... how about dinosaurs?
In Florence, along with museums like the Uffizi and the Accademica Gallery, there is a small complex of museums that make up the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze (Florence Museum of Natural History). One of these is the Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia, a fairly out of the way little building behind the S.S. Annunzoila. It's not well advertised... if we hadn't done a lot of research into where exactly we wanted to go prior to traveling to Italy, I don't think we would have known it exists at all. However, we did, and I was curious to see how Italy does paleontology, and so the morning of our last day in Florence, we set out to find the place. Now, the previous day, trying to visit the art galleries, we'd frequently gotten hopelessly lost, so our first stop was at an internet cafe to ask Google Maps to plot our course for us. This, however, completely failed. The street signs are often absent or are out of date in the city, and so, after wandering around confusedly for a while, we stopped into an archaeological museum on the Piazza di Annunzoila for directions. We found one large sign for the temporary exhibit currently in the museum, but still managed to walk past it several times before noticing the entrance.
Once there, though, the visit was entirely worth it. The temporary exhibit, "Dinosauri in Carne e Ossa" ("Dinosaurs in the Flesh") began in the Botanical Gardens, with life-sized reconstructions of various prehistoric creatures. These weren't small, Velociraptor-sized creatures either (for context, real Velociraptors are only about 6 feet long and 1-2 feet tall); the models included giants such as Spinosaurus aegyptaicus, Diplodocus longus, and Tyrannosaurus rex.
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| Diplodocus longus and I Image credit to Sarah G. |
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| Spinosaurus eating MawsoniaImage mine |
Since I've been in Greece and Italy, I've been surprised by how little hard science seems to be evident. There's a lot of archaeology, but not much else. Perhaps it's here, and I just don't know where to look; perhaps in America, I'm so ingrained into that subculture that I see it everywhere, and it's not as prominent as I think it is. But I'm used to there being major natural history and science museums in every large city, that are well advertised and key places to visit. That doesn't seem to be as true here. So it was a nice surprise to find even a small natural history museum in Italy, to learn about the geology and paleontology of the area, and discover how that interacts with field in the rest of the world.
