Mini Museum Livestream Reminder - 2PM ET (UTC-5) TODAY!
about 7 years ago – Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 08:45:44 PM

Hello, everyone!

Just a short reminder that our livestream event begins at 2PM ET today (UTC-5) - about one hour from the time of this update!

Here's the link: https://live.kickstarter.com/hans-fex/live/fun-with-mini-museum-making-specimens-dinosaurs-and-q-and-a

 

During the course of the show, we'll cover the making of several specimens, including the Transatlantic Cable, Samurai Sword, and Viking Axe. We'll also share details about the Spinosaurus and Mosasaur specimens, and of course we'll have Q&A about the project too!

If you'd like to participate in chat or ask a question, you'll need to be logged into Kickstarter when you join the livestream. You also need to use a desktop/laptop rather than a smartphone. There are no chat features on mobile, but you will be able to see and hear the show.

Technical Note: In our testing, Google Chrome had the least amount of delay, so you might want to use that browser if you have it installed.

Hope to see you all there!

Now it's back to work!

- Hans

Fun with Mini Museum Live - 2PM ET (UTC-5) on Tuesday, March 7th!
about 7 years ago – Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:49:18 PM

Hello, everyone!

If you're following us on Facebook or Twitter, you may have noticed that we had an impromptu test of our livestream setup yesterday. A big thank you to everyone who jumped on the stream and shared questions!

I think this is a great way to share the process behind the scenes as well as connect with all of you. We had a great time sharing a few preparation steps of the WW II Enigma specimen, and I'm excited about sharing even more next week!

Specimen Prep, Dinosaurs, and Q&A at Tuesday, March 7th at 2PM ET (UTC-5)

Speaking of next week, our "official" Livestream will be on Tuesday, March 7th at 2PM ET (UTC-5).

 

During the livestream, members of the Mini Museum team will prepare specimens and we'll explore completed specimens under the microscope.

There will also be a few special guests who also happen to be few million years old. Of course, we'll also answer as many questions as we can about the project!

The livestream will be broadcast right on the project page but you can also access it directly here: https://live.kickstarter.com/hans-fex/live/fun-with-mini-museum-making-specimens-dinosaurs-and-q-and-a 

As always, thank you so much for making this journey possible. The whole team is working hard to make this fun and informative so I hope we'll see you! 

Now, it's back to work!

- Hans

Tucson Gem and Fossil Show, Mini Museum Touch, Great Predators of History: The Jaws of the Mosasaur, Livestream Update Coming Soon, Beyond the Elements
about 7 years ago – Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 05:15:39 PM

Hello, everyone!

As you might have noticed on Facebook, I've come back to Northern Virginia at last!

It was so wonderful to be in Tucson.  I have so many friends there, people I've know for many years.

I'm just sad that on this trip I came down with the flu and ended up in bed for several days, but that's all part of the adventure of Mini Museum! (cough, cough)

The Tucson Gem and Fossil show is one of the largest events of it's kind.  If you haven't been, it's a little difficult to describe because it is just so enormous with shows all over the city.

People come to Tucson from all over the world to meet, and share incredible treasures and stories. There's a passion here for deep history and the wonders of our universe like nowhere else on earth.

I have to give a kind thank you to Mini Museum Backer Brittney Gallagher, who joined me for a day of hunting.  She was so very kind even though I was still very ill.  Thank you, Brittney!

I also have to say a few words about that rather burly guy in the picture, paleontologist Gary Olson. Gary is one of my oldest friends in Tucson. He primarily works in fossil beds of the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota.  I'll have more to say about Gary in an upcoming update, but it goes without saying that he is an incredible resource to the Mini Museum and he has an amazing wardrobe of t-shirts I'll need to redact. :)

Mini Museum Touch - Third Edition

I'm happy to announce that we've built the first Mini Museum Touch for the Third Edition. 

The Touch is a special version of the Mini Museum which comes in a classic, glass-topped riker display case.  It includes all 29 specimens from the Third Edition collection.  Backers of the Touch will also receive a Large, acrylic Mini Museum as well.

The specimens can be removed from their individual acrylic jars for careful study.  I say careful study here because many are quite delicate as you can see in the Giant Sloth Claw image above.

Note: You'll also notice a copy of the Companion Guide. I should point out that this is a First Edition Companion Guide.  We won't have Third Edition guides until late April, but since we are planning to return to the hardbound format for the Third Edition we thought we'd use a First Edition for the picture.

Great Predators in History: The Mosasaur Tooth

I'm also excited to share a picture of the Mosasaur Tooth reward.  The teeth will vary in size, color and shape.

Generally, they will all be around 1" in size. As you can see below, there is quite a range. Some will exhibit signs of repair, which is common.

Each tooth will come in a small, glass-topped riker display box. The box measures 4 1/2" x 3 1/2" and is about an inch high. This is the same sized box we used for the Neanderthal Hand Axe fragment in the Second Edition. It's a great size for display.

A small information card will also be included along with a link to a longer article about this fascinating creature. The card above is a prototype. I'll post more images as soon as the final cards come in.

Make sure to read on below about the Mosasaur Specimen itself. There are some incredible x-ray pictures of Mosasaur teeth as well as links to several very interesting studies about their development and use.

Please Note: Many of you have asked how to back both a Mini Museum and a Mosasaur Tooth (thank you!). I'm happy to say that the Mosasaur Tooth will be available as an add on after the campaign. We plan to use BackerKit once again to gather up your shipping information and during that process you will be able to add the Mosasaur Tooth to your pledge. So, right now, you'll want to back the Mini Museum of your choice and hang on until that survey comes through after the campaign.

Speaking of Mosasaurs...

The Jaws of the Mosasaur: The Mosasaur Jaw Specimen

If we look first to the sea, the Mesozoic Era might not be known as the Age of Dinosaurs but rather as the Age of Marine Reptiles.  Beginning with the appearance of the dolphin-shaped Ichthyosaurs in the Triassic Period, the rising seas of the Jurassic Period gave way to a wider variety of large predators including the long-necked Plesiosaurs and Pliosaurs to the powerful Mosasaurs.

Since the first Mosasaur skull was discovered in 1764, our knowledge of this large family of marine reptiles has come primarily from skeletal remains.  Mosasaurs ranged in size from 1.1m (3.3ft) to 17.4m (57 ft).  Their skulls were flexible and their jaws were double-hinged.  While this arrangement probably allowed a Mosasaur to swallow prey whole, the alignment of a Mosasaur's teeth with "bony crypts" to protect emerging teeth also suggests Mosasaurs likely crushed bones as frequently as they tore into flesh.

While this evidence alone suggests the Mosasaurs were formidable predators, a spectacular find in Jordan revealed that Mosasaurs were "countershaded" with darker pigmentation on the top and lighter on the bottom, and similar soft tissue impressions show that Mosasaurs have tail flukes and true flippers.  This new information suggests this already formidable predator could swim much faster, a truly terrifying presence backed by a long history in the fossil record.

 

The specimen in the Mini Museum comes from the snout of a juvenile Tylosaurus proriger.  This species typically grew to a length of 15m (50ft). The specimen was collected on private land in Western Kansas.

I know what you're thinking... Kansas?  Yes, this entire area was once covered by a great inland sea.  If you'd like to read more about this fascinating area, I highly recommend the book Oceans of Kansas by Michael Everhart. I have the first edition of this book (2005), but I just noticed that the 2nd edition will be released this summer.

 

I think it is fascinating to think about the dramatic way our planet has changed and how life has adapted to these changes time and time again.  On a human scale, it's also interesting to look at the way our own thinking has changed about the course of events as science unravels new details.

Theories about the Mosasaur have gone through many iterations since the first skull was discovered in 1764.  In particular, Edward Drinker Cope, the famous late 19th/early 20th century naturalist, spent considerable effort trying to validate a claim that Mosasaurs were directly related to snakes based primarily on physical similarities.  But science is ever changing and our understanding of these creatures and their world has also become quite different.

In 2016, Min Liu, of the Department of Periodontology, Stomatological Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China, lead an incredible study of Mosasaur teeth titled "Varanoid Tooth Eruption and Implantation Modes in a Late Cretaceous Mosasaur." in the Frontiers of Physiology. You can read this incredible study on the NIH website, but I'll quote a particularly fascinating passage below:

"It appears as if the Mosasaur feeding apparatus was uniquely specialized to anchor large-sized teeth within powerful jaws (TBEs) and to provide optimum protection for replacement teeth within a bony crypt that develops within a resorption pit at the apex of its predecessor. While the recumbent orientation of snake dentitions facilitates retention of prey and prevents a possible escape of captured organisms, mosasaur dentitions appear to be adept at feeding on a broad range of food, including a diet of large fish, ammonites, sea turtles, and crustaceans. Crushing the bones and mineralized shells of such prey would be traumatic for developing teeth, unless they were protected by bony crypts or the covers of already erupted teeth with a rigid yet flexible attachment apparatus. It seems as if Cope was captivated by the morphological similarities between large angioform animals such as mosasaurs and snakes, and the skeletal similarities that supported his Neo-Lamarckian views, while he appeared to have overlooked the selective pressures in late Cretaceous oceans."

 

To prepare this specimen for inclusion, we began by making thin cross-sections of the material.

At this stage, the material was treated with stabilizers.

 As you can see, the final specimens have incredible texture and color!

Looking at the final specimens up close, I couldn't help but think about another study I came across while studying these creatures, "The Mosasaur Tooth Attachment Apparatus as Paradigm for the Evolution of the Gnathostome Periodontium."

While the title is a bit of a mouthful (ha, ha), the evolutionary study behind this image is absolutely mesmerizing. Just read a few of the opening sentences from the introduction:

"The anchorage of teeth in jaws is one of the great architectural masterpieces in the design of the vertebrate body plan. Teeth commonly provide pointy tips, sharp incisal edges, or massive masticatory plateaus that allow them to exert their function related to capturing, biting, and chewing. However, for an efficient capture and partitioning of prey, tooth function is greatly enhanced through the connection with a rigid base as it is established by the load-bearing jaw bones."

I'm not sure anyone has ever described the terrifying mechanics of a predator's teeth in such a beautiful way.  The complete study is available on the NIH's website.

I hope that you've enjoyed learning more about Mosasaurs. They were incredible creatures and science is constantly uncovering new details. Truly one of the greatest predators in history and very imposing when you run into one in person!

Livestream Update Coming Soon!

If you're following Mini Museum on Facebook, you might have seen this little test video clip of Jamie and I this weekend:

Surprising as this might be, I'm actually pretty camera shy but I would still love to see all of you and share some of these incredible specimens in person. We're working out the technical details now, as I'd like to have multiple cameras (including our digital microscope).

When we're ready, we will send out an invite with a date via email and in a short project update. I'd love to hear what all of you would like to see in a live update, so please leave a message on the main comment board.

As always, thank you all so very much for your support! 

Now it's back to work!

- Hans

FUNDED!!! Thank You! Upcoming Project Updates and Contacting Us
about 7 years ago – Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 07:44:05 AM

WOW!!! Thank you all so very, very much!!!  Fully funded in 5 minutes!?!  Incredible!

I just took this picture in Tucson, Arizona. That's Mount Lemmon in the background, and my beard might be in the bushes. :)

I'm here for the Tucson Gem and Fossil show, which is one of the largest event of its kind.  I've been coming here for many years now. It's wonderful to be with friends from all over the world, but I really wish I was back in Northern Virginia with the rest of the team! That's all part of the adventure though! I'll have more to share about this incredible show soon!

Upcoming Project Updates

Previous backers know that we put a lot of information into our project updates. I'm happy to say the Third Edition will be no different. The goal is to communicate project information in a timely manner when we have information, but not to overwhelm your mailbox with too many messages. Of course, you can also expect specimen preparation details and interesting finds in science and history.

Speaking of which, before the end of the campaign I'll share pictures of the Mosasaur Tooth reward (Yes, it will be available as an add-on! Thank you!). The large Samurai Sword cross section included in the "Samurai Edition" will also get a special spotlight in an update that will include the details about the creation of the Samurai Sword specimen included in every Third Edition Mini Museum.

The image above, also featured on the project page, shows just one step in the process of creating this specimen (I still can't believe our GoPro survived this). We've been waiting months to share this with all of you as the Samurai Sword is one of the most complex specimens we've worked on to date! I'm so looking forward to this. Hope you are too!

Contacting Us

If you have questions about the project or your pledge, the best way to get in touch is to send us an email. The address is [email protected]. Helpers Stephanie, Andrea, and Jamie will respond to messages posted on the comment board as well but we try to handle broad questions in project updates. This information is valuable to all backers and can get lost in the comments when there's a lot of conversation going on - and there are great conversations going on now!

Thank you all for making this journey possible!! We are all so very grateful to continue the adventure with all of you!

Now, it's back to work!

- Hans

 P.S. Coming soon... Jen working on the First Transatlantic Cable specimen!