UBC Biodiversity Museum

By Austin:

When I went to the museum I saw a big skeleton of a whale and it had a big mouth for eating krill.

We saw the steps a whale took to feed and we saw some krill. We also found out how you can tell what an animal ate by it's skull. For example, where the eyes were and how the teeth were shaped. We also saw some snail shells and found out how they ate their food. The tour guide talked about how plants were very successful in their evolution. Then, we went onto fishes and the evolution of the jaw and we saw some funny-looking fish called hagfish.

I noticed then that the guide was dumbing the talk down.

And I don't have any evidence to support this, but believe me, it could have been a lot more informative.

Then we went into the fossil sectionals. We heard about the trilobite dilemma where they found fossils of trilobites with bite marks on them, and at the time that they lived, nothing could have bitten into anything.

And then a recent fossil field was discovered in BC where soft-bodied animals were fossilized. They found one with only three hard pieces. It was called anomalocaris and it had a very early form of a jaw. After that, we saw some hunting trophies and there was a moose with its face falling off.

And a stuffed penguin ... that's all. I hope you enjoyed this. Farewell and good night.

To add, by Mom:

We went to the UBC Museum of Biodiversity last Tuesday, September 25. We had intended to go to the UBC Geology Museum, but it is closed for renovations. We plan to go there next month, when they reopen.

The blue whale skeleton is quite impressive. It is a female skeleton. The next time we go, we will watch the movie, “Raising Big Blue,” a Discovery Channel production about this skeleton and her transport across the continent.

A few minutes into the tour, our guide showed us two sets of skull bones, one of a mountain goat, and another of a wild cat. Our guide asked us what we noticed about the skull features, that would indicate what kind of food the animals would have eaten. One visitor pointed out the large canine teeth on the cat’s skull. The tour guide pointed out the dull molars on the sheep’s skull, and the difference on the cat’s jaw - the cat’s back teeth were sharp, indicating it was a meat-eater. Then, the tour guide asked about any other features we noticed, to distinguish between prey and predator. Austin mentioned, “the position of the eyes.” The predator has eyes that are positioned forward on the face, and the prey has eyes that are positioned at the sides. Austin says he remembers learning about this over the years, with all the animal videos he’s watched, or perhaps at demonstrations at science centres we have visited.

Hagfish

Anomalocaris

The fossil field Austin mentioned, where so much was learned about Anomalocaris, is the Burgess Shale, located in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Austin was impressed by the comparatively tiny amount of geologic time during which humans have inhabited the earth. This isn’t new information to him, but the chart on the wall of the museum, which spanned about 20 metres, really put this into perspective!

Austin has requested a family trip to this museum. He is looking forward to going there again, spending more time, and sharing what he’s learned, with his brothers.