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| Models of Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus sit at the center of Whiteside Museum's exhibit hall. |
Following the suggestion of a dear friend with whom we travelled
to Seymour Texas for her high school reunion, my mom and I stopped at the Whiteside
Museum of Natural History last Memorial Weekend.
Unprepared and uninformed, we started the tour of what we
thought would be a tiny museum in west Texas. We were so wrong. For about two
hours, not only did we learn about the reptiles that roamed that region three
hundred million years ago, but we toured the museum’s laboratory, greeted its director,
and got to talk with staffers and volunteers that provide the museum’s unique experience.
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| Jody Dillard showing a bone segment from an Edmontosaurus. |
For the first part of our tour, we were guided by Jody
Dillard, a volunteer turned expert in the Permian period. She introduced us to Dimetrodon,
Edaphosaurus, Seymouria, and Diadectes, the most common reptiles found in the
area. As we walked through the exhibits, that include three-dimensional models
and fossils, Jody confessed that she enjoys seeing the joy and surprise when kids
and adults learn about these predecessors to dinosaurs. The main room also
includes models from a T-rex head, and lots of plant and animal fossils found
around Seymour.
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| Tracy Houpt explained part of the preparation process. |
After visiting the live animal exhibit, or Zoo-seum as they
call it, we saw their laboratory, where two people were studying rocks through
microscopes, and digging with tiny tools. There, we met Tracy Jon Houpt, a volunteer
from Georgia that besides being a passionate digger, helps updating the museum’s
social media outlets.
Even though he had just arrived from a digging site, Tracy used his lunch hour to share some of the fossils he has helped uncover, the projects
the team is undertaking, and even allowed us to use some of the paleontologists’
tools. Christopher Flis, the museum’s director, has been working with his team in
digging out, preparing, and assembling the fossils of George and Mary, a male
and female dimetrodon. They have also found skulls and hundreds of bone fragments
from edaphosaurus and eryops.
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| Unlike most museums, Whiteside keeps the lab open to visitors. |
The Whiteside Museum opened two years ago thanks to the
vision of a rancher, the passion of a young paleontologist, and the support from
the people of Seymour and Baylor County. Paleontologists from around the world have
been digging out treasures from the Texas Red Beds for over one hundred years,
and the founders felt it was time some of the findings stayed home, in a museum
dedicated to them.
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| Skull of Diplocaulus |
For those familiar with prehistorical animals, the exhibits
include fossils from the Permian period, in the Paleozoic era. These animals
roamed the earth one hundred million years before dinosaurs did, and research
is proving that there is still a lot to be discovered about them.
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| Jack the Eryops and Harold the Dimetrodon are also part of the exhibit. |
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| The museum includes models from different prehistoric periods. |
