I’m talking about asteroids vs dinosaurs at the Alf Museum tomorrow

Already posted this on SV-POW!, but I reckon there might be a few folks who check this blog but not the other.

If you are within striking distance of Claremont, come watch me cross the streams of my amateur and professional careers as I talk about the intersection of astronomy and paleontology. And if you can’t make it in person, check out the livestream on the Raymond M. Alf Museum page on Facebook. Show starts Saturday, April 14, at 2:30 PM PDT. https://www.facebook.com/AlfMuseum/

UPDATE: here’s the video of the talk.

A little piece of Mars

This is my Mini Museum: a collection of tiny samples of rare and interesting specimens from the history and prehistory of Earth and the solar system. There’s a lot of stuff in here that is very satisfying as both a paleontologist and an amateur astronomer. Highlights for me are the preserved woolly mammoth meat, the fiberglass casts of Diplodocus bones used as the Krayt Dragon skeleton in Star Wars: A New Hope, and, above all, the tiny piece of the Martian meteorite Zagami. It’s labeled “Martian atmosphere” because the meteor is known to contain tiny bubbles of Martian atmosphere in pockets of melted glass (Marti et al., 1995).

The specimens are embedded in a single block of acrylic that is 5 inches tall, 4 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. At $299 it’s not cheap, but it’s a pretty astounding collection of objects at any price. There is also a smaller, 10-specimen edition for $99. It doesn’t include Zagami or the Krayt Dragon, but it does have asteroid fragments, Stegosaurus plate, woolly mammoth meat, fulgurite, and the moon tree sample. These will sell out at some point, so if you’re interested in picking one up, don’t tarry.

Reference

Marti, K., Kim, J.S., Thakur, A.N., McCoy, T.J. and Keil, K., 1995. Signatures of the Martian atmopshere in glass of the Zagami meteorite. Science, 267(5206), p.1981.

I blame it on Brontomerus

My lack of astronomy-related blogging lately, that is. Get the full story on the new critter here. The beautiful image above is by my friend Francisco Gasco, and you find another like it and loads more info about the new dinosaur here.