"Today is International Museum Day, and on this special day, I would like to bring you a special explanation to introduce you to the scientists behind the exhibits." At 9:30 on May 18, at the entrance of the ancient reptile exhibition hall of the National Museum of Natural History, Liu Shan, a science teacher at the museum, held a tablet and greeted the audience.
Seeing the audience gathered, Liu Shan tapped the screen, and a photo of an old man appeared. "Our theme explanation starts with an old grandfather, Mr. Yang Zhongjian, the first director of our museum, and the pioneer and founder of vertebrate paleontology." Liu Shan said as she walked, stopped after entering the exhibition hall, and pointed to the dinosaur skeleton, "Many of the exhibits here are the research results of Mr. Yang Zhongjian. ”
Before the Jingyan Mamenxi dragon skeleton, Liu Shan first popularized a little common sense to the audience: in the dinosaur skeleton in the exhibition hall, only part of the skeleton fossils are real, and the other parts are imitated with gypsum. This is because scientists don't always find all the bone fragments when excavating in the field. "Generally speaking, being able to find 30% is considered very complete, and the true bone rate of Mamenxi Dragon has reached more than 90%." Amid the audience's exclamations, Liu Shan continued to reveal the secret, when Yang Zhongjian and his team spent several years to complete the excavation. An interesting episode is that the origin of the name Mamen Xilong is related to Yang Zhongjian's Shaanxi accent. The place where dinosaur fossils were found is actually called "Ma Ming Creek".
Following in Liu Shan's footsteps, the audience came to the ancient mammal exhibition hall again. In front of the Yellow River Elephant, another of the museum's star exhibits, she updated the page on the screen, which showed Zhou Mingzhen, the museum's third director. "Mr. Zhou Mingzhen led the team to make great contributions to the study of ancient elephants." Liu Shan said that scientists have excavated the Yellow River elephant fossil very completely, not even a small toe bone, and the only regret is that the coccyx was not found. Modern scientists are continuing to work on this.
For more than 40 minutes, Liu Shan revealed the story behind the discovery and research of the "treasure of the town hall" in the museum for the audience one by one. "The highlight of this year's International Museum Day is the promotion of the spirit of scientists." Zhao Hongtao, director of the museum's science popularization education department, said that in addition to the special explanation of the exhibition hall, the museum also set up expert lectures, hands-on experience, cloud tour of the exhibition hall and other rich activities.
Source: Beijing Daily client reporter Niu Weikun, Cheng Gong
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