Museum Of Natural History and My Experience

I recently visited the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York and it is quite an enjoyable experience. The last time I visited this museum was in high school but I had an agenda to fill for a project and did not get to enjoy it in the mix of everything. There where four halls that I visited the Hall of Planet Earth, Hall of Bio-Diversity, Hall of New York State Environment, and the Hall Of Human Origins. The two halls I found most interesting were the Hall of Planet Earth and Bio-Diversity. The Hall of Human Origins did strike some interest but I was not as intrigued as the other two I listed.

Picture of Ice Core, Credit: Denis Finnin

When I first walked into the Hall of Planet Earth It covered a lot of topics we have discussed in our Ecology and Human Spirits in the beginning half of our class. The first thing I layed my eyes on was a piece of giant ice in pole form.I thought this giant piece of ice was real cool you can see all the variation between the years how they measure the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. This particular ice of is from the Greenland and measure time from 88,670 BC to 5671 BI.

The Hall of Planet Earth caught me by awe there were all these different size scales of rocks and minerals that were simply amazing. One thing that caught my eye for quite sometime was these large sulfide chimney found in Juan De Fuca Ridge called Godzilla. Godzilla was found in 1991 and it collapsed in 1996. While Godzilla was still around it stood 47 meters and the water that traveled through it was at the temperature of 302 degrees centigrade. The Godzilla is made up of quite a few minerals they are chalcoprite, copper-iron suffide, zinc-iron,wurtzite, calcium, suffate anhydrite iron sulfide,oxide, and silica. The composition of all these minerals leave this sulfide chimney with a beautiful interior. The sulfide chimney holds a beautiful crystal like interior with gray undertones where it gets rich in gray color through out the chimney. There are as well these beautiful purple undertones mixed in with the gray and leaves an gorgeous sight. The chimney holds over all an odd beauty gorgeous on the inside but quite ugly on the outside. When the Godzilla collapsed in 1996 over the next year another spire grew 20 meters high in it's place. Nature truly works in some amazing ways. This is a picture of sulfide chimney like the Godzilla but a little smaller and is found in Mothra Field. Picture Unknown, founded on http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/hottopics/names.html

Then my feet lead me to the Hall of Biodiversity and I peer my eyes through this glassed area saw all these different trees with unique exotic animals throughout it. It is a replica of the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest in Africa. In Africa they have develop reserve to help to protect the ecosystem. The local people where still able to live on the reserve and as well work on it. Humans are biggest threat to the forest through actions of extracting timber and diamonds, killing of animals, clearing the land of its agriculture and other basic needs really put this land in jeopardy. Some hunting in this land is okay for peoples basic needs of eating. Unfortunately commercial hunting puts a lot of pressure on the people and they illegally set up snares and traps to kill the bush meat (gorillas). Cable hunting is not allowed but is what is used by most of the hunters this type of hunting is the most devastating to the wildlife. People do not check there traps on a daily bases which leave the animals to die and the meat go rotten, as well as the animals captured are left to prey to predators, and there are times the animals that are captured are lost. About 1/3 of animals that are captured are lost. So a place that was set up to protect the land and animals is still beaning attacked in many ways. I found that to be a really twisted scenario and just kept wondering there got to be something more these people can do to protect this area before it all disappear before there eyes.

Overall I found my trip to the museum to very interesting to me. I learned many new things and it as well retaught me things that I forgot from my early a education. I loved to here the children in the background fascinated by all the different things as they learned new things. Plus i was able to find a couple of interesting topics that allowed me to do outside research cause I wanted to know more than what they told me on the little cards. By the end of the trip I made a kool friend which was one of my classmates.