Cradled in a bed of felt and fiberglass in the basement of Carnegie Museum of Natural History is the fossilized jawbone of the first thing in history to ever be called Tyrannosaurus rex.

The 66-million-year-old carnivore’s jawbone still bears the serrated, banana-sized teeth that were used to rip through the flesh of its prey.

When this fossil was discovered in Montana in 1902, it was a revelation. What is today one of the most recognizable dinosaurs was then completely unknown. The find was but one piece of the puzzle that would become the T. rex holotype, or the name-bearing specimen upon which the entire species is based.

The museum purchased the fossilized T. rex skeleton from the American Museum of Natural History in 1941, and it continues to thrill visitors in Pittsburgh as part of the Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibition. But the head on display is a reproduction. The real fossil skull bones are too heavy, fragile, and scientifically significant to be on public view.

Instead, they reside in one of two underground rooms referred to by museum staff as the “Big Bone Room” and the “Little Bone Room,” where the bulk of the museum’s vertebrate paleontology collection is kept and cared for.

The collection’s size, breadth, and scientific significance distinguish it as one of the finest in the world, containing specimens—including the T. rex holotype—that continue to shape humanity’s understanding of the history of life on Earth.

“These rooms hold one of the world’s great vertebrate paleontology collections,” says Matt Lamanna, the museum’s Mary R. Dawson Curator  of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Into the Bone Zone

Vertebrate paleontology is the study of prehistoric animals with backbones, and their fossils are carefully stored in nearly every square inch of the “bone rooms.”

The Big Bone Room (which, like its smaller counterpart, is named for the size of the space, not the size of its specimens) is larger than a basketball court, with low, whitewashed ceilings and dozens of shelves holding fossils, some still wrapped in protective materials.

Photo: John Schisler

The Little Bone Room is a short jaunt down a hallway, where the polished concrete floors are still veined with tracks that were once used to move heavy specimens via rail cart into the museum’s basement over a century ago.

Like the Big Bone Room, the space boasts rows of movable shelves and drawers that date back to the early 20th century. All told, the collection contains about 120,000 specimens, approximately 500 of which are holotypes. They range in age from 450 million years old to 500 years old and come from every continent, including Antarctica.

Since Andrew Carnegie started it in the 1890s, the collection has produced groundbreaking discoveries. This includes the first 50-million-year-old mammals ever found in the Arctic—a find made in the 1970s by paleontology pioneer and former head of the museum’s vertebrate paleontology program Mary Dawson. It also boasts the holotype skeleton of Anzu wyliei, a 7-foot-tall feathered dinosaur that received its name from Lamanna and three colleagues in 2014.

The contents of the bone rooms draw researchers from around the world. The museum’s fossils of the gigantic, long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs known as sauropods are among the most scientifically important on the planet.

“More information about sauropods has been derived from our collection than maybe any other,” says Lamanna.

“The Carnegie paleontology collections—you just can’t beat them,” adds paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Sarah Davis. “Especially for large dinosaurs.”

The bone rooms are Davis’ domain. She’s the museum’s collection manager of paleobiology, a position she took in April 2024 following the retirement of longtime collection manager Amy Henrici.

Davis cares for a staggeringly diverse assemblage of fossils, most of which are not on display.

Some are smaller than the head of a pin. That includes the holotype specimen—a tooth—of the 56-million-year-old Teilhardina magnoliana, one of the geologically oldest primates ever discovered in North America. In life, the tree-dwelling, marmoset-like creature weighed less than an ounce. Dental fossils are often the only surviving evidence that these tiny animals existed.

Other specimens are comparatively huge. One is the fossilized skeleton of a mastodon, an elephant-like animal that roamed North America until about 12,000 years ago. Even in pieces, the specimen is stunning, with a church-bell-sized skull.

Photo: John Schisler

Believed to be among the largest mastodon skeletons ever found, it was one of Andrew Carnegie’s first acquisitions for the museum and was on display until 2013, when the museum removed it to restore some of its bones. That conservation work was completed last year, and the mastodon now rests where Davis can keep an eye on it until it is ready for exhibition again. Lamanna hopes that day will come soon, especially after the museum’s recent $25 million dollar gift from longtime patrons Dan and Carole Kamin, part of which will be used to renovate the dinosaur exhibition and neighboring galleries.

Davis’ job is to ensure that each fossil is kept in the best shape possible—this includes checking that they are correctly identified, recorded in the museum’s database, and safely stored. Davis also helps other scientists use the collection, from fielding data requests to overseeing the use of a forklift to access large specimens.

Some of those large fossils are on a shelf near the mastodon. They are the manhole-cover-sized vertebrae of a dinosaur species whose initial discovery helped put Carnegie Museum of Natural History on the map: Diplodocus carnegii.

The first fossils of this sauropod were unearthed in an 1899 expedition funded by Andrew Carnegie. Later nicknamed “Dippy,” the famous dinosaur spawned casts that have been distributed around the world, and the original is still on display in the museum.

The Diplodocus fossils kept in the Big Bone Room, however, mostly don’t belong to that first find. Instead, they’re part of a second Diplodocus that was discovered in the same quarry the following year and used to fill in some missing parts of the specimen on display. That doesn’t mean they are any less significant.

“You could absolutely make a case that science has learned more from the second specimen of Diplodocus carnegii than it has from the first,” says Lamanna. That’s why a collection like this is so vital.

“It’s super important to have real fossils on display, but there’s a trade-off,” the museum’s longtime paleontologist continues. “Doing so tends to decrease access to the fossil for research. When we have specimens down in the collection, they can be studied, measured, photographed, and 3D-scanned from all angles. And that’s often how knowledge of paleontology advances.”

Dinosaur Color Theory

A drive for discovery is what brought Davis to the museum.

The Arizona native grew up the child of two scientists—an engineer and a pharmacist. She was drawn to paleontology as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, where she pursued research projects on dinosaur appearance and color chemistry that she later built upon for her PhD thesis at the University of Texas at Austin.

“The research I did was into this pigment system called carotenoids, which are involved in the expression of pink, red, yellow, and orange, among other colors,” says Davis. “They are very tricky because they are unlikely to fossilize. What we find in the fossil record are melanin-based colors, which are black, brown, and gray.”

Photo: John Schisler

Davis turned to birds—descendants of dinosaurs—to examine how color may have been expressed in prehistory. Alongside her graduate adviser at UT Austin, Julia Clarke, Davis evaluated colors of more than 4,000 living bird species, as well as dinosaurs’ distant relatives, crocodiles and turtles, to determine the likelihood of carotenoid colors appearing in their extinct cousins.

She found that it’s possible that dinosaurs sported yellow, orange, or red skin features.

Lamanna was eager to learn more about Davis’ research after Clarke introduced the two of them. They worked together on Antarctic fossils, and Lamanna was impressed by her intelligence and enthusiasm.  

When the collection manager position opened, Lamanna thought of Davis right away. He figured the museum’s ornithological and paleontological collections would be an ideal professional home for her.

She agreed.

“This work is super rewarding,” says Davis. “I love being surrounded by fossils all day, and then also getting to do my own research.”

In With the Old and New

The collection manager job is a big one, and not just because of the size of its specimens. Davis is a steward to over a century of paleontological work, evidenced by the original tea-colored, cursive-written field notes still associated with many fossils.

Some notes are from a dig in Utah that helped build the foundation of the collection.

That excavation, begun in 1909, was led by Carnegie Museum paleontologist Earl Douglass. He was unearthing what would turn out to be the fossilized skeleton of a giant Apatosaurus when his team came upon the bones of another dinosaur, then another, and another.

Over 14 years, they collected 350 tons of prehistoric bones from that single locality, which today is known as Carnegie Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument.

“Much of what was there ended up here,” Lamanna says. “By most estimations, it’s the greatest single locality of Jurassic-age dinosaurs that’s ever been discovered anywhere in the world. It rocketed our museum into the stratosphere.”

The vertebrate paleontology collection continued to grow in size and scientific significance over the decades. More fossils came from digs around the world, including those in Egypt and Antarctica led by Lamanna.

Despite the allure of fresh-from-the-dirt discoveries, the oldest specimens can still yield great things.

Lamanna recalls a find made in the mid-1980s by Davis’ predecessor, Henrici. She was a preparator at the time, working on a hunk of rock from Dinosaur National Monument. It wasn’t believed to contain anything significant. But as Henrici chipped away the rock, she discovered one of the only lower jawbones of a Stegosaurus ever found.

“That’s why we hang on to this stuff,” says Lamanna. “New eyes come along, new technologies come along, new viewpoints and expertise. You learn new things from old stuff.”

Even a closer look at a well-known specimen can yield exciting findings.

Below the terrifying teeth of the T. rex holotype jaw are two or three gouges on its chin.

“We think this animal was nipped by another
T. rex at some point in his or her life,” says Lamanna. He points out how the surrounding bone shows signs of healing, indicating that the Cretaceous-era conflict occurred long before the dinosaur’s death.

“What’s awesome to me is that these show us evidence of two different animals and an interaction between them,” he continues. “It’s a literal moment  in time, captured for us to learn from 66 million
years later.”

Through that framing, the museum’s bone rooms are a trove of prehistoric stories, some told already, some still waiting to be discovered.

“This place is a library of the history of life on Earth,” says Davis. “The specimens are incredible on their own, but so are the people that built this collection. It’s amazing to be part of that history now, and to keep taking care of it for generations to come.”

The post What Lies Beneath appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Middle school students aren’t known for their long attention spans. But on a gray day in late March, a whirring laser cutter at Carnegie Science Center is holding a group of teens rapt.

 The students from Pittsburgh Schiller STEAM Academy hover over the machine, which is about the size of an office copier, and watch their invention come to life.

Soon, they pull out custom-designed pieces for assembling an airplane glider—their first project inside Carnegie Science Center’s newly renovated and relocated BNY Fab Lab.

After spending the first decade of its existence in a separate building that also housed Highmark SportsWorks®, the Science Center’s digital fabrication laboratory has moved into a former educational theater space on the main building’s third floor.

The new Fab Lab is more than just a fancy makerspace. Staffed by knowledgeable educators who are available to guide anyone who stops in, it’s an incubator for invention. In the center of the room are a dozen computer terminals where anyone can start creating their designs—for everything from jewelry to action figures and drones. Lining the walls are the machines that will turn visitors’ wildest imaginings into reality: laser cutters, vinyl cutters, sticker makers, equipment for soldering and circuitry, and more than a dozen 3D printers housed in a room around the size of a spacious high school classroom.

Science Center leaders hope this move into the main facility will translate to even more visitors—from school groups to teens to senior citizens—stopping in to design and make stuff.

“Part of finding the right path for one’s future is feeling successful at it and feeling like you could do it,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center, who helped create the Science Center’s original Fab Lab a decade ago. “What the Fab Lab provides is a judgment-free zone where people can experiment and iterate and see what they like, see what they’re good at.”

Visibility Boost

When the Fab Lab opened in 2015, the Science Center intended to make its high-tech tools like 3D printers accessible to everyone.

“This cutting-edge technology was out there, but very few people had access to it,” explains Brown. “We wanted to provide the opportunity to connect people to it, especially kids, so that as the technology grew, they could imagine themselves growing with it.”

Photo: Becky Thurner

At the time, the SportsWorks building seemed like the best location for an experimental concept like the Fab Lab. But as enthusiasm for it grew, Science Center leaders felt it needed a more visible location.

The new location on the third floor is also almost twice as large as its previous digs. The old location and Mobile Fab Labs—which transport the Fab Lab concept to schools, libraries, community centers, and more using two vans—saw thousands of visitors each year, Brown says. But he expects a lot more people to visit the new space.

“We’re going to have many more passersby that I think will hopefully, for lack of a better term, do the impulse buy and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to see what’s in there and go in and try something out,’” Brown says. “Now, literally 500,000 visitors a year will walk right by the door.”

Brown notes that the bulk of the programming in the new space will be defined as “FLASH” workshops—which stands for Fab Lab Art and Science Hangout—with STEM-themed walk-in activities that last anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and can accommodate up to 30 people.

“It’s going to be much more open and experimental than a set workshop,” Brown explains.

If visitors like the experience, they can buy tickets for more time-intensive workshops or attend certification classes to learn more. The new space will be open during regular Science Center hours and for evening events, such as teen nights and 21+ nights.

And with the move comes a few new additions: a larger laser cutter, more 3D printers, handheld CNC routers, and a sticker printer. They join a roster of existing tech, including computers with design software and even robotics equipment.

Designed for Flexibility

Despite constant advancements in technology, the Fab Lab’s technology still manages to sound straight out of a sci-fi book.

People may be familiar with a 3D printer that layers material upward to create an object, but the new Fab Lab also has a resin printer, a relatively new innovation that shoots lasers into a vat of liquid to create high-definition objects.

“The science is just baked into all of it,” says Jon Doctorick, Science Center director of STEM outreach. “Come on in and try the tech that you’ve only seen on YouTube or whatever. Come and try it and see how it works.”

When Brown and Doctorick worked to create the original Fab Lab, the team innovated to make it fit the Science Center’s goal of being open and accessible to all.

“We had found a really unique path to digital fabrication in that we applied the Science Center model to it, that we made it accessible to everyone, including second, third, fourth graders and, apparently, no one had really done that before,” Doctorick says.

Photo: Becky Thurner

The model worked so well that Doctorick and his team have helped set up Fab Labs elsewhere, including three Mobile Fab Labs at Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, a permanent one at Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a Mobile Fab Lab at the Science Spectrum museum in Texas.

“We roll it out to schools, community centers, other places, and take everything off, set it up in a community space, and then run hands-on activities with whomever is around,” Brown says. “Whether they feel proficient at it or not, they can go and have a really good experience, and then hopefully get their feet wet.”

Relying on a decade of Fab Lab experience, the Science Center designed a space that can change with the times. The new Fab Lab is completely modular, with easily rearrangeable furniture and more electrical outlets than currently needed, allowing them to reconfigure and accommodate technology that may not even exist yet, Doctorick says.

“Some exhibits, when they open that day, they’re baked in that way—any changes can be somewhat difficult,” Doctorick says. “Whereas with the Fab Lab, the very purpose of that space is to change over time. The Fab Lab as it is today is not like the Fab Lab as it was 10 years ago.”

And their knowledge in operating the Fab Lab will only grow with the new space. The open programming and increased foot traffic mean more people will come to the Fab Lab and experiment with the technology.

“It’s my hypothesis that great ideas from the community are going to emerge from this,” Doctorick predicts.

It’s a space designed for the kind of collaboration that the Schiller students naturally initiated during their visit.

Groups of kids leaned over one another’s computer terminals, peeking at designs and occasionally helping by pointing out a flaw in the shape of a wing or asymmetry that threatened the glider’s ability to fly.

The computers are closely lined in rows, making it easy for the kids to collaborate, and the staff encourage discussion by asking visitors questions during workshops. It’s an environment designed to attract everyone from elementary-age kids to seniors.

Photo: Becky Thurner

“The team there is so supportive of people, and they really just want to get them to try things out,” Brown says. “People walk out of there feeling successful, and they walk out of there feeling like they did something fun and new and different.”

That feeling of success could spark the next generation of innovators. The Fab Lab runs the Mentors in the Making program that pairs teens with professionals in STEM fields, who then learn to use the equipment alongside them in weekly sessions over the course of five months.

“We saw the need to provide students with an adult STEM mentor and give them the opportunity to do digital fabrication and help better their community,” Doctorick notes.

As part of the program, the cohort identifies problems in society and then designs machines or devices that address them. Doctorick says one creative young student interested in the water quality of the Ohio River designed an encasing for a device to conduct water quality readings.

It provides them with experience using new-age technology, a place to develop critical thinking, and a mentor who can help them find a place in the STEM field.

Doctorick says one reluctant student in the Mentors in the Making program went on to volunteer at the Fab Lab, then work as a staffer for the Fab Lab’s summer camp program, and eventually pursue computer science in college.

It’s an experience the Science Center hopes to give any and all who wander inside its new digs.

As Doctorick notes, “I want it to be a resource for patrons who are coming in for the first time, and experiencing the world of digital fabrication that they’ve only maybe in passing heard about.”

The post Moving Into the Future appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Photo: Joshua Franzos

Lisa Haney was in the seventh grade when her fascination with ancient Egypt began. She had a world history teacher who made it come alive through creative assignments, including one in which they mummified Cornish hens from the grocery store. Haney even created a shoebox diorama of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb. “One of the main reasons I wanted to work in a museum is to be able to touch all the things that are in the museum,” says Haney. Now, Haney is living her childhood dream as the Egyptologist and curator of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s upcoming Egypt on the Nile exhibition. Since joining the museum in 2020, Haney has led a multiphase reimagining of the museum’s Egypt gallery that includes conservation of the 4,000-year-old Dahshur boat and ongoing work that visitors can view in the temporary exhibition The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects From Ancient Egypt. Eventually, the Dahshur boat will become the centerpiece of Egypt on the Nile when it opens, anticipated late next year. A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Haney earned her doctorate in Egyptian art and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and held positions at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. She says it’s her calling to share her expertise on ancient Egypt and be a responsible steward of material in the museum’s care. “Science is always changing and evolving,” she says. “The more we learn, the more it changes how we think about and understand ourselves and the past.”  

Q: Why is now a good time to update the Egypt gallery?

A: Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt had been open for over 30 years and, in that time, we have learned so much more about ancient Egypt. For example, we discovered that Senwosret III, the owner of the Dahshur boat, had a second funerary complex located in Abydos that we did not even know about when Walton opened. There are so many new discoveries and exciting stories we want to share. This also gives us the opportunity to present ancient Egypt from new perspectives that speak to the inseparable connection between nature and culture, and are more aligned with our commitments and goals as a natural history museum.

Q: Why is it important to continue conservation on the Dahshur boat, and what new revelations has that work yielded?

A: Archaeological wood is very fragile and does not usually survive well. The fact that we have such a large-scale wooden object in our care is something that is really special. We have learned a lot about how past conservation work affected the boat, which helped with planning its current treatment. We also know from past rounds of multiband imaging undertaken in 2017, as well as some of the new photography, that the boat was once fully painted.

Q: The visible lab that allows visitors to chat with working conservators is a unique part of The Stories We Keep. What has the experience been like for the conservators?

A: Every day from 11:30 to noon and 2:00 to 2:30, you can visit the conservation lab and speak directly to a member of the conservation team. They genuinely enjoy being able to share their work, and people always have lots of questions. The ability to have a direct, one-on-one experience like this is really special. It makes people feel like they are a part of what is happening at the museum and showcases the range of different skills conservators need.

Q: How is the planning going for Egypt on the Nile?

A: I’m the content expert for the exhibition and part of a larger team that has been working very diligently to create the best possible experience for our visitors. Right now we are designing the final floor plan and case layouts, looking at graphics, and laying out all the really exciting and engaging interactives that will be part of the exhibition.

Q: Like many other museums, the Museum of Natural History has decided to no longer display human remains, including mummified individuals. What do you want visitors to understand about that change?

A: We are looking to be at the forefront of best practices regarding the stewardship of the individuals in our care. For ancient Egypt, specifically, their tombs, texts, and material culture tell us a lot about what they hoped would happen to them after they died and how they wanted people to engage with them. That has influenced our decision-making and policy creation.

Q: To visitors, ancient Egypt may seem quite distant from Pittsburgh. How can your work create a connection?

A: As a city on the rivers, I think Pittsburgh has a really clear connection to ancient Egypt. River life is part of its cultural identity. We hope to connect with our audiences through that lens to help them see that life in ancient Egypt was rooted in the Nile River and the surrounding landscapes. It’s not that different from our own local culture and life here in Pittsburgh.

The post Q+A: Lisa Haney appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

As this past school year approached, Brad Adams was chatting with his daughter, a high school junior, about the upcoming Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair.

“She started doing the Science Fair in the ninth grade and said, ‘I wish there was this opportunity in the sixth or seventh grade,’” recalls Adams, who teaches at Indiana Area Junior High School alongside his wife, Lisa. “That’s a conversation at home that got us involved in research. What about our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders?”

Previously, due to financial and logistic constraints, Indiana’s middle school had not been among the dozens throughout western Pennsylvania and Maryland to send kids to the Science Fair, a Pittsburgh tradition that dates back to 1940.

But Brad Adams’ conversation with his daughter would turn out to be well timed. 

Shortly thereafter, he discovered an opportunity to get his own middle school students involved in the Science Fair, hosted by Carnegie Science Center in early April.

Thanks to grants via the Science Center’s Lucchino Science Inspiration Fund, Adams was able to bring 23 first-time students to the North Shore, where they presented projects about all things science at the regional science competition.

Featuring 230 judges and 65 volunteers, the 86th annual iteration of the event attracted 476 students from 75 middle and high schools.

Increasing access to Science Center events and resources is the objective of the Science Inspiration Fund, which was established six years ago and offers grants to middle schoolers.

“We’re trying to get students to participate who wouldn’t otherwise participate,” says Steve Kovac, associate museum director for service & engagement at the Science Center. “The kids that we’re trying to reach are ones that maybe don’t have a mentor or role model or someone to show them that, ‘Hey, this is something you can do.’ We’re trying to even the playing field between where they fall in terms of ZIP code and what kind of access they have.” 

While Adams had been interested in getting his students to the Science Fair, the commitment and coordination of doing so seemed daunting.

That’s where the Science Inspiration Fund came in, providing teachers with stipends and workshops while reimbursing students for the material costs of their research projects. 

“It took a lot of the anxiety away,” Adams says. “How do you get started? How do you get the kids to dip into an actual subject that they’re interested in?”

Brady, a sixth grader from Indiana Area School District, was one of the students participating in the Science Fair for the first time.

Inspired by a family member who deals with acid reflux, Brady’s project examined the acidity of various fruits—including lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruit—in order to better encourage their dietary decisions. (Of note: Eat more grapefruit and oranges, fewer lemons and limes.)

“I really liked it because it’s about science and showing your mind to people, showing what you know,” Brady says of his first experience. “I really love chemistry, first of all, and some people have acid reflux problems, so they should know this information.”

“There are some incredibly bright students out there, and that’s the great thing about the Science Fair—it taps their potential in a way that doesn’t get tapped by writing down notes, reading them, taking a test, or taking the SAT.”

Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of the Science Center

Indiana Area Senior High School also sent students, one of whom went on to be selected for an all-expenses-paid trip to the prestigious International Science & Engineering Fair in May for her project about integrating prosthetic materials with the human body. They joined students from other schools around the region who explored a variety of subjects, such as the culinary arts (the best way to bake a cheesecake) and the future of robotics in medicine (how to improve recovery times from surgery), as well as botany (which fruits grow best in Pittsburgh). 

Alegria, an eighth grader at St. Kilian Parish School in Cranberry, focused her project on the impact of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook on child learning development based on her mom’s belief that nothing good comes from kids having access to social media.

“My mom was like, ‘You’re going to hurt your brain. You’re not going to retain information as well,’” Alegria says. “So, I was like, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong!’” 

After her Science Fair project, Alegria will enter the next debate with her mom about the perils of kids’ social media consumption equipped with new insights: Her experiment showed that being distracted by social media had less of an impact on puzzle completion times among her tween and teenage subjects than it did people in their 20s. 

Others won cash prizes, recognition from judges, and college scholarships. But for all attendees, the Science Fair was a chance to explore their curiosity and dig deep into the topics and issues that most interested them.

“There are some incredibly bright students out there, and that’s the great thing about the Science Fair—it taps their potential in a way that doesn’t get tapped by writing down notes, reading them, taking a test, or taking the SAT,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of the Science Center. 

“This is a totally different way of tapping into that world of brilliance. Our goal is to have a science fair that represents everyone—all of the districts from around the region.”

The post Inspiring More Kids appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Who:
Ray and Joneen Betler 

What They support: 
Carnegie Science Center

Why it matters:
“I see the opportunity to expose young people much, much earlier than I had the opportunity to be exposed to science and technology and engineering.”  –Ray Betler

 A career in engineering seemed to always be right there for Ray Betler; he just needed to find a bridge to it.

His stepfather encouraged him to enter the field, which was thriving in the 1960s and ‘70s at  Pittsburgh companies like Westinghouse Electric. But, as a kid from a working-class community in South Park, there were precious few opportunities  to gain a toehold.

“I never had a chance to do internships and get exposure,” he says. “That’s why I have this affinity and commitment to young people and science and engineering.”

Ray is now retired after a remarkable career at Westinghouse, where he became the company’s youngest-ever president and chief executive officer. He and his wife, Joneen—a couple since they were teenagers—want to help young scientists and engineers forge their own path through their support of Carnegie Science Center. They note that the Science Center can be a bridge to careers in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—and be a place where kids of all income levels and backgrounds can get inspired.

“To me, the Science Center is like the touchstone,” Ray says. “It’s the one asset that we have in Pittsburgh that everybody regionally can relate to in terms of science and technology.”

Ray and Joneen have been donors to the Science Center since the early 1990s, and Ray has been a Science Center board member for nearly as long. At 32, he was promoted to VP of Engineering at Westinghouse Transportation—the youngest in the company’s 120-year history—before ascending to become its youngest president and CEO when he was just 38.

As a child, Ray rarely visited museums or even Buhl Planetarium, now part of the Science Center. Inspiration had to come from elsewhere. Fortunately, a high school physics teacher saw promise in Ray, and connected him and a few other students with a Saturday enrichment program for promising young engineers at Westinghouse Research Center.

Years later, and after earning degrees in engineering and business from Carnegie Mellon University, he returned to Westinghouse where he not only ascended through the ranks at a historic pace, but also looked to cultivate a new generation of talent. He created a robust internship program, which brought in hundreds of budding engineers to learn and work each summer.

If Westinghouse is the place where young adults can start their STEM careers, the Science Center provides the initial spark of interest, Ray says. He has sought to bridge the two institutions through employee incentives and other programs. Westinghouse gave out museum memberships to employees as prizes, held its annual holiday party at the Science Center, and sponsored the museum’s annual Science Center awards.

“I made sure there was a close relationship with the company, and we were constantly trying to engage with the high schools and colleges to promote STEM-related activities,” he notes.

But the Betlers’ interest in supporting the Science Center isn’t just about inspiring local kids to go into STEM fields. They’ve spent many afternoons at the Science Center with their three sons—now all grown—and have since accompanied their 10 grandchildren there on visits. Even though four of their grandchildren live in Connecticut, they make sure to visit the Science Center on every trip to Pittsburgh.

“The youngest grandkids don’t live here, so they go twice every time they come,” Joneen says. “We also get them back to Pittsburgh to do the summer camps. It’s really nice.”

The Betlers are especially excited about ongoing transformation at the Science Center, including the recent relocation and expansion of the BNY Fab Lab on the third floor of the main building.

“I see the opportunity to expose young people much, much earlier than I had the opportunity to be exposed to science and technology and engineering,” Ray says, “and an opportunity to support families in this area that maybe didn’t have the opportunity to see and get exposed to the Science Center. That’s really what interested me and has been extremely gratifying.”

Learn more about how you can support your museums!

The post Building a Bridge to an Engineering Career  appeared first on Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Every evening, a wall of noise unlike any other erupts out of the woodwork as nearly 3-inch-long giant cicadas begin to sing. In fact, the insects’ 100-decibel cacophony is so routine, some people know them by another name—the 6 o’clock cicadas.

It’s amid this jackhammer-level of sound that Jennifer Sheridan must begin her nightly quest to seek out tiny, camouflaged frogs, sometimes by eyeshine and other times using only the amphibian’s chirps and squeaks to zero in on its location. Bornean elephants and venomous snakes live here, too, so Sheridan must be wary as she works, picking her way carefully across slippery streams.

“If you’re out during the day, the elephants are kind of loud. They’re crunching things,” says Sheridan, associate curator of amphibians and reptiles at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. “But if you happen to stumble upon a sleeping herd at night, that could be dangerous.”

Despite the risks, the grueling travel (a 35-hour journey from Pittsburgh), the thin mattresses, and the stinging insects, it’s all worthwhile the moment Sheridan hears the cheep cheep cheep of the mysterious mud-brown toad she’d come to study.

On an earlier expedition to Borneo in 2023, Sheridan heard something in the night that didn’t make any sense. It was a three-pulse call, and it originated from a pebbly-skinned toad that’s brown on top and sandstone-colored on its underside.  At first glance, it appeared to be an amphibian known as Ansonia longidigita.  Except there was a problem.

“We heard this longidigita making a call that was not what we knew the call of longidigita to be,” Sheridan explains.

In fact, it wasn’t even close. Earlier recordings of the species, taken more than 100 miles to the southwest in Brunei, revealed that A. longidigita sings with a 12-pulse rhythm. But the frog in front of her was only belting out three notes in a row.

A new call could mean that this was a new species for the Mahua area. Or it might have meant that the frog back in Brunei was previously misidentified. Finding the answer was important, Sheridan says, because understanding an area’s true biodiversity is critical if you’re trying to help save it.

“You can’t conserve what you don’t know is there,” she says. “We need to have baseline information before we can assess effects of climate change or environmental degradation.”

Unfortunately, because the 2023 outing was focused on recording, not collecting, Sheridan didn’t have the proper tools on hand to take the frog as a specimen, which could have allowed her to solve the mystery.

And so, Sheridan traveled to Borneo again this past October on a Carnegie Museum of Natural History-sponsored expedition. To aid her in this pursuit, Sheridan was accompanied by Kara Fikse, director of donor engagement and stewardship for Carnegie Museums, who not only helped document and publicize the outing but also served as Sheridan’s field assistant, learning how to preserve and fix samples that would ultimately go into the museum’s herpetology collections.

Their goal: to collect specimens, record frog calls, and solve the mystery of the three-note frog.

“You can’t conserve what you don’t know is there. We need to have baseline information before we can assess effects of climate change or environmental degradation.”   

–Jennifer Sheridan, associate curator of amphibians and reptiles, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

As a community ecologist, Sheridan focuses her research not just on frogs but also on how frogs interact with each other and their environments, and how those interactions are changing over time.

Sheridan says frogs are a perfect study organism—and not just because they don’t constantly peck and bite at you, like the birds she studied for her master’s degree.

For starters, frogs can be found in great numbers across a variety of ecosystems. So when Sheridan visits a place like Borneo, she knows she’ll always come away with a healthy number of observations, recordings, and samples. The same can’t be said for researchers who study larger or more difficult-to-spot creatures, such as marine mammals.

“In ecology, an important factor is having strong sample sizes. If you have small sample sizes, it’s hard to get statistical power,” says Sheridan.

The other neat thing about frogs? Their calls are what’s known as a reproductive isolating mechanism—“which means that a frog of a given species will only respond to the call of that same species,” says Sheridan. “And so you can use this to help define species.”

In Love with Frogs

A lot of herpetologists—scientists who study reptiles and amphibians—talk wistfully about childhoods spent catching frogs, chasing snakes, or raising turtles.

“That was not me,” Sheridan admits. “I loved animals as a kid, for sure, but when I was really little, I lived in Detroit, and those animals did not exist in my neighborhood.”

Rather, it wasn’t until her third year of undergraduate study at the University of Chicago that Sheridan would take an ecology class that thrust her into a study of amphibians in the forests around northern Illinois.

“I remember going out to these ponds, setting out minnow traps, and then going back the next day, and they were full of blue-spotted salamanders or these big, giant tadpoles,” she says. “And that was the first time I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting paid to play with animals.’”

A year later, after graduation, Sheridan signed on to spend six months working as a field assistant to a PhD researcher studying Bornean frogs.

“It was the greatest six months of my life,” she says. “And that is how I fell in love.”

Sheridan has now been to Borneo more times than she can remember, sometimes making several trips per year, going back to 1996.

“My mother always asks, half-jokingly, ‘Why can’t you study frogs here? Why do you have to go so far away?’” laughs Sheridan. “But the tropics hold the majority of terrestrial life on Earth, and yet we know the least about them.”

As an example, she points to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2010 that tallied up just how many species of tree live in the Ecuadorian rainforest. And not even the whole Ecuadorian rainforest, or a large section of it, but an area only about one-quarter the size of Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood. Amazingly, this sliver of the tropics contained 1,100 species of trees, which is more species than exist in the entirety of the United States.

“The tropics hold the majority of terrestrial life on Earth, and yet we know the least about them.”    

–Jennifer Sheridan, associate curator of amphibians and reptiles, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

And it’s much the same story with amphibians. For instance, around 180 species of amphibian call the island of Borneo home. The vast majority of them are endemic, which means they are found nowhere else on Earth.

“Everything in the temperate region is very well studied compared to things in the tropics,” says Sheridan.

The Importance of Frog Calls  

Frog calls are not set in stone.

“Some species only make one type of call. Others have several different call types,” says Sheridan.

To complicate matters further, the call of a given species might change based on environmental factors, such as temperature or elevation. This bit is particularly important when it comes to human-caused global warming, says Sheridan, because what was once representative for a certain species in a certain area may now be different, all because the climate is changing.

Humans can also affect frog calls through our noise, she notes. For instance, in at least one frog species, an experiment revealed that when traffic noise is played, the animals will start calling louder as a way to compensate. Similarly, other research has shown that animals may change the frequency at which they call when confronted with anthropogenic noise. But behavioral adjustments come at a cost.

“Frogs are going to have to either consume more resources to maintain their body size, for example, or they might ultimately not grow as big if they’re putting all this energy into calling that they could have previously put into growth and maintenance,” Sheridan explains.

Prior to this most recent Borneo trip, Sheridan didn’t yet have the data she needed to solve the mystery of A. longidigita. She couldn’t determine if the different calls were actually separate species or if the species might simply have more calls in its vocal repertoire than anyone has ever documented before.

In the end, there was only one way to learn the identity of every crooner in the night. She needed to collect recordings and specimens.

A Headlamp and a Whole Lot of Questions

Surveying amphibians in a rainforest doesn’t require massive nets like researchers use for capturing birds or bats, nor does it call for rock-cutting power tools, like in paleontology fieldwork. The most important tools are hand-held audio recording equipment and a good headlamp.

“We spent most of our time in the rainforest, and to add to the usual challenges of fieldwork, it was night,” says Kara Fikse, who assisted Sheridan on the trip. “Every once in a while, I would turn off my headlamp just to get that full sense of immersion in the darkness.”

Fikse marvelled at Sheridan, an experienced nocturnal navigator. She remembers watching in awe as Sheridan spotted tiny tadpoles attached to a rock as they were crossing a stream, or the way she pinpointed the call of a distant frog in the pitch-black. And she says she’ll never forget when Sheridan lifted up a frog and told her to “take a whiff” of the amphibian’s toxic, tangy perfume.

“I never thought I’d be sniffing a frog,” laughs Fikse.

“I think amphibians make great systems for this sort of work as they are great sentinels of environmental change. So by tracking their health, disease, microbiome, or evolution, they may serve as indicators for other things happening on the landscape.”   

–Kevin Kohl, animal physiologist and microbial ecologist at the University of Pittsburgh

In all, Fikse and Sheridan spent two weeks wading through streams, recording equipment in hand. The duo managed to record the calls of 11 species of frog, several of which will be new to the scientific literature. They also collected and preserved 76 specimens.

Eleven species will be entirely new for the museum’s collection, and several had never been seen by Sheridan before. These included several specimens of a large frog known as the Kinabalu horned frog (Xenophrys baluensis), which comes in various shades of mottled red and looks like it would disappear in a pile of fall leaves.

While Carnegie Museum of Natural History already houses 81,794 frog specimens, every new addition holds value. For instance, many outside researchers use the collection to study an array of topics.

“I think amphibians make great systems for this sort of work as they are great sentinels of environmental change,” says Kevin Kohl, an animal physiologist and microbial ecologist at the University of Pittsburgh. “So by tracking their health, disease, microbiome, or evolution, they may serve as indicators for other things happening on the landscape.”

Three Notes in the Night

But what of Ansonia longidigita, the mystery frog by which the success of Sheridan’s recent Borneo expedition would be measured?

“We were walking along a trail and I heard a sound I couldn’t immediately identify,” remembers Sheridan.

Realizing it was coming from the stream nearby, she quickly but carefully made her way down to the water, then backtracked downstream to where she’d first heard the sound. After several minutes, she spotted it—a frog of the Ansonia genus, sitting on a branch about 3 to 4 feet above the water. The frog began to sing again, at which point Sheridan got the recording and steeled herself for the last step.

One mistake and the amphibian would leap into the water and disappear, leaving what’s known as the “extended specimen” incomplete.

It’s not enough to spot a frog, or even to record it singing, if you can’t collect the animal. It’s critical that the same animal that produces the song is included in the specimen. Without that, you can’t prove identity, or compare that identity against other animals already in the collection. An extended specimen might contain different things depending on what kind of organism you’re trying to document, but for frogs, Sheridan likes to include not just the animal, but also its precise location, DNA, and audio recording.

“I recorded it for several minutes, and even though it was a bit high to reach because I was standing knee- to thigh-deep in water and the bedrock was steep and slippery, I managed to get it before it jumped away,” Sheridan exclaims. “Success!”

But exporting exotic frog specimens from halfway around the world is a complicated process, and not all of the materials have arrived back in the United States. So it will be a few months before Sheridan will know whether the frog she caught was actually A. longidigita or perhaps a new species. It’s also possible that by comparing the new call data with that from the specimen in Brunei, she’ll be able to describe an entirely new call for A. longidigita.

“This is still a work in progress because the export permits came through after I left Borneo,” says Sheridan. “So once we get the materials back here in the U.S., I can confirm the identification genetically and then solve the mystery.”

Her best guess? Sheridan suspects the frog she caught is the true A. longidigita, and the individual captured in Brunei is an as-of-yet-undescribed species.

Once Sheridan has the extended specimen of A. longidigita in hand, the mystery of those three chirps in the night should unravel nicely. But there will always be new questions to answer, new biodiversity to discover and explore.

“As scientists, we are sort of trained that it’s never enough,” says Sheridan. “So I struggle with thinking, ‘Oh, it was a success,’ versus, ‘If only there had been better weather on a couple of nights, or if only I had more time, I could have gotten more!’”

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“Sometimes I feel I shouldn’t be alive,” the man confesses aloud, “like I’m a burden—useless.”

The theatrical living room scene is not real life. Called “Depression Theater,” the staged scenario is depicted by mannequins with the audio coming through hidden speakers. But it may seem familiar to anyone who has experienced depression, or knows someone who has. And while challenging to watch, it aims to spark an important conversation about mental health as a key part of an exhibition that is now open at Carnegie Science Center.

The exhibition, called Mental Health: Mind Matters, seems a radical departure from some of the more lighthearted fare common at science centers and museums. But the need to speak openly about its content has never been more urgent, says Hope Gillespie, museum experiences officer at the Science Center.

“Mental health is something that we should all focus on,” Gillespie says.

According to the latest data from the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 21 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. Depression, however, is just one diagnosis in the expansive realm of mental health. In total, an estimated 1 in 5 adults in America has a mental illness, amounting to 59.3 million people. And yet, only somewhere between a half and two-thirds of those people get treatment.

“It’s a lot about being a person and reminding yourself that you, too, could have these experiences, or that maybe you know somebody who’s had these experiences.”   

–Hope Gillespie, museum experiences officer at Carnegie Science Center

On loan from the Science Museum of Minnesota, Mind Matters seeks to bring awareness to the larger picture of mental health through a series of multimedia and interactive exhibits that cover four primary themes: mental health as part of overall health, empathy building, identifying and expressing emotions, and the importance of asking for help (and supporting those who do). The exhibition will be available to visitors as part of general admission.

“It’s a lot about being a person and reminding yourself that you, too, could have these experiences,” Gillespie says, “or that maybe you know somebody who’s had these experiences.”

Empathy Through Discomfort

Gillespie acknowledges that displays throughout Mind Matters might make visitors feel uncomfortable. “That is the point,” she says, “and I think that once you get over that hurdle, the exhibition is able to draw you into things that do hurt, which is important.”

A poignant part of the exhibition aimed at building empathy is “This Is My Story,” which features videos of actual people (and, in some cases, their families) talking about their individual experiences with a wide range of mental illnesses including bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia.

The people are filmed, and the viewing area is designed, in a way that invites intimacy between video and viewer. Interviewees speak directly into the camera as if they’re talking to the viewer, who is seated. Gillespie likens it to being on a Zoom call and feeling like it would be rude to walk away as someone is sharing something so personal.

Gillespie recounts seeing one video where a man is describing the internal chaos of simultaneously realizing he was gay and learning he has schizophrenia. “The only thing that I was able to think through that entire moment was he is calmly sitting here, reliving this experience, which was clearly    so present to him and has shaped him in such a way,” says Gillepsie, “and he’s able to sit here and talk about it and is doing this in order to educate people.” She felt the same with each subsequent video. “It hits you in a way that’s so personal.”

Mark Dahlager, vice president of museum experiences at the Science Museum of Minnesota, says he appreciates “how willing people were to share their own stories in the context of helping other people make sense of their own health and in the health of the people they love and who are around them.”

Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, originally developed Mind Matters. The Science Museum of Minnesota adapted it alongside the Minnesota chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness to reflect North American perceptions around mental health and mental health treatment systems. The museum also worked with health care providers PrairieCare (a psychiatric care provider) and HealthPartners (a health care provider and insurer) to find people willing to share their personal stories. The updated exhibit debuted in 2018.

Jessica Burke, professor of behavioral and community health sciences in the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, says that presenting information on mental health through videos and other visual arts humanizes what is otherwise a list of facts and statistics.

“When it’s humanized, and you really put a face to it, you react to those on an emotional level that you don’t for other dissemination or communication tools,” she says. “By presenting it in a way that is more accessible, people are more open to receiving the information. They are curious about what it is, they want to learn a little bit more, and then are more open to it because it’s a personal story.”

Destigmatizing Mental Health

Not everything in Mind Matters is as heavy as “Depression Theater” and “This Is My Story.” Elsewhere in the exhibition, visitors can test their knowledge of common misperceptions about mental illness through a quiz show. There are also toy theater sets that depict how the ways we understand and treat mental illness have changed, and continue to change, over time.

While some of the exhibits are seemingly simple, they all act in concert to destigmatize mental health, Dahlager says.

For a long time, he notes, science museums felt like they couldn’t or shouldn’t talk about subjects that carried as much cultural weight as mental health. They started to find out otherwise through market and visitor research, as well as with successful exhibitions such as RACE: Are We So Different?, hosted by Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 2014.

People look to museums to help them make sense of their world, Dahlager says. “And, increasingly, making sense of your world means tackling some meaty subjects.”

“We believe that it is, in part, our role to create opportunities for discussion on important issues like mental health, social justice, health care, inequality, and climate change that impact all of us.

–Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center

Carnegie Science Center leaders agree.

“We believe that it is, in part, our role to create opportunities for discussion on important issues like mental health, social justice, health care, inequality, and climate change that impact all of us,” says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center.

Opening a conversation about mental health at the Science Center “gives it a stamp of approval and elevates the conversation,” says Burke, of the University of Pittsburgh. “People who might be going there for something completely different may stumble across it and, because it’s interactive, because it’s engaging, will likely learn from it without even going in with that mindset in the first place.”

Most of the exhibition is geared toward children who are 10 and older, Gillespie says. And she acknowledges it may prompt difficult conversations.

“There are kids who are going to be introduced to things that there isn’t necessarily an easy explanation for,” she says.

Still, it’s never too early to start learning, and there are aspects of the exhibition geared toward younger children, too.

One such segment focuses on identifying and expressing emotions. There’s room to dance and paint and act out different feelings. Young visitors can explore their fear of the dark on a large touch screen forest. When they see something scary like glowing eyes, their touch will illuminate the area, revealing not-so-scary cartoon animals. They can also write down their anxieties and then feed the paper through the Worry Shredder. Naming feelings and coping with them are important factors in a child’s mental well-being, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gillespie encourages adults to allow children to ask questions as they come, rather than trying to front-load them with information they might not want. “Be mindful,” she says, “but also remember that kids are a lot smarter than they seem to be sometimes, so allow them to take it in and then allow them to come to you.”

The exhibition ends on the importance of asking for help and features local resources and other materials for further understanding, including reading lists for visitors of all ages.

Awareness and destigmatization are an important first step, Burke notes. “We have to talk about it before we can do something about it.”

Gillespie hopes that as visitors learn about mental health through Mind Matters, they also come away knowing that help is available.

“If you are having these feelings, if you are experiencing something,” she notes, “there is never a wrong time to ask for help.”

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Who: Leslie Fleischner 

What She supports: 
Powdermill Nature Reserve

Why it matters:
“If (children) don’t learn about nature when they’re in elementary school, they’re not going to go out and be good stewards of the environment.”  –Leslie Fleischner

In the summer of 1979, 8-year-old Chris Fleischner brought to his parents a deceased robin that he found in the backyard of their Squirrel Hill home.

The robin was an exciting find for young Chris, but there were practical considerations—most importantly, what they were going to do with it.

They could have just tossed the feathered carcass in the trash or buried it in the yard. But, sensing a learning opportunity for her son, Chris’ mother, Leslie Fleischner, offered an alternative proposal: donate it to Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s bird collection. And so, they put the robin in a shoebox and set out for Oakland.

Leslie and her husband, Hans, knew they weren’t offering the museum a major avian discovery—they were just trying to foster their son’s curiosity in nature. All these decades later, Leslie still wants elementary school-age children to engage with nature up close and in person.

“That’s the age,” Leslie says. “If they don’t learn about nature when they’re in elementary school, they’re not going to go out and be good stewards of the environment.”

The Fleischners are longtime supporters of Carnegie Museums and, most recently, the avian and conservation research happenings at Powdermill Nature Reserve, the museum’s field station in the Laurel Highlands region of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Located a little over an hour outside Pittsburgh, Powdermill is something of a hidden gem, Leslie says. Trips to the Oakland museum are wonderful for school trips, but Leslie wants more people to explore Powdermill’s forests, fields, ponds, and wetlands. Last year, she made a generous pledge to support capital improvements at Powdermill, notably to the cabins where researchers stay overnight, to purchase valuable research equipment, and to invest in increased research and outreach on-site.

“I don’t think people know much about Powdermill,” she says.

Established in 1956 under then museum director M. Graham Netting, Powdermill Nature Reserve covers nearly 2,200 acres of forested land and is best known for its bird banding program, which is the longest-running year-round professional bird banding operation in the country. Years of bird banding data contribute to our knowledge of migrating species and how they are responding to a changing world. Powdermill researchers also examine how forests regenerate and ecosystems recover from pollution related to mining, among other study areas.

The public is invited to learn more about these research efforts, attend nature hikes, and enjoy other programming free of charge, opportunities that Chris and his family have been enjoying more since 2020.

“I think COVID was a good chance for people to realize the importance of being back in nature,” he says. “That definitely brought some of those conservation issues—and just being present in nature—much more to the forefront for us.”

Powdermill recently has been upgrading its facilities. In 2022, the Richard P. Mellon Avian Research Center—a 2,859-square-foot research facility—officially opened to host educational demonstrations and trainings, and provide more space for up to 10 researchers to stay on-site when projects call for it. The new facility was supported with a $1 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and Leslie’s generous contribution will build on that work by supporting further renovations and paying for new equipment.

“We love the idea of contributing toward a greater understanding of what’s happening in and around our surroundings,” Chris says. “I think Powdermill has been at the cutting edge of doing a lot of avian research and other types of research too.”

Leslie says it’s important to support work that contributes to a fuller understanding of the natural world. An avid traveler and photographer, Leslie spends much of her time on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where she has witnessed the impacts of climate change on the local ecosystem.

This experience has reinforced for her the value of getting outside and learning about ecological issues. Museum exhibitions are a vital resource for teaching people about the environment, she says, but there is no substitute for actually engaging with nature in person.

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At the time, no one anticipated the damage that this packing material—a dense, fast-growing annual grass common in Asia—would cause across North America. Stiltgrass seeds found their way into forests and other habitats where they took root and spread, threatening fauna and wildlife throughout the continent.

Stiltgrass is one of the many invasive species featured in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s new exhibition Uprooted: Plants Out of Place, opening on March 22.

Rather than sound the alarm about plants like stiltgrass, however, the goal of the exhibition is to help visitors reflect on humans’ role in introducing invasive species, and how they can manage the problem, says Sarah Crawford, the museum’s director of exhibitions and design.

“One of the things we really want to drive home is that human actions and concepts of stewardship shape the past, present, and future of invasive plants,” Crawford says. “We are the ones that move these plants around.”

The exhibition caps two years of research by associate curator of botany Mason Heberling and postdoctoral fellow Rachel Reeb that was funded by a $225,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. Uprooted will be on display in the Hall of Botany and the overlook on the third floor, where visitors will learn about the history of certain invasive plants in the United States, read stories from community partners working to manage them, and view a photography exhibition that recontextualizes how one species in particular—knotweed—has thrived in different habitats around the world.

“One of the things we really want to drive home is that human actions and concepts of stewardship shape the past, present, and future of invasive plants. We are the ones that move these plants around.”

–Sarah Crawford, director of exhibitions and design, Carnegie Museum of Natural History 

The exhibition challenges the binary ways we tend to think and talk about invasive species, Heberling says.

“You think, oh, it’s a pretty easy topic, right? Native and non-native, this plant belongs here, this plant doesn’t belong here. This plant is good, this plant is bad,” he says. “Even in a scientific sense, it’s much blurrier than that.”

Invasive species are any plants, animals, or other living organisms that cause economic or environmental harm to ecosystems where they are introduced. They are a massive problem around the world—costing an estimated $1.3 trillion to the global economy over the past 50 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Just as concerning to many experts is how the issue is discussed with the general public.

Value-laden language, such as “alien” or “villain,” that anthropomorphizes invasive species places the blame on the plant and minimizes human responsibility, Reeb says. In actuality, invasive plants are “passengers to human movement,” she notes.

A photography display in the museum’s third-floor overlook uses Japanese knotweed to explore how perceptions of a plant change with context. Japanese photographer Koichi Watanabe has documented knotweed’s presence around the world. It’s highly valued as a culinary and medicinal herb in Japan, yet it’s considered one of the most harmful plants in Pennsylvania.

An interactive station encourages visitors to group plants based on their personal feelings, positive or negative, before flipping a panel to reveal whether the plants are native or introduced.

Meanwhile, the museum’s Hall of Botany focuses on three species: stiltgrass, multiflora rose, and garlic mustard. Three display cases examine each plant’s impacts through herbarium and animal specimens, photos, and art.

Stiltgrass is the only one of the three that was accidentally introduced in the United States. Garlic mustard was intentionally brought here for culinary and medicinal uses, but it releases chemicals that disrupt microbes in soil. A smell station and historic books will showcase its potential in cooking.

Multiflora rose was brought here as a decorative plant and a form of erosion control, and was once approved by the United States Department of Agriculture. But it can have a detrimental impact on the environment, which will be shown through bird, tick, and mouse specimens.

These exhibits demonstrate how perceptions of plants shift over time. Not every invasive plant is currently banned—some are even sold at garden centers. An interactive plant stand highlights common invasive species sold in the plant trade, reminding   visitors to be mindful as they plant their own gardens.

The museum is also updating a few dioramas to include information about the three invasive plants featured so as to challenge “idealized views of nature,” Crawford explains.

The exhibition also spotlights how local organizations such as Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Allegheny GoatScape, and Garfield Community Farm are addressing invasive species.

Heberling and Reeb want visitors to feel empowered, not helpless, to manage invasive plants. It’s all about the small actions that people can take—such as planting native species in their own yards—that will have big impacts.

While human actions are the source of the problem, they’re also the solution, Reeb notes.

“These species are here today and are causing the specific harmful effects that they cause because of somebody else’s actions in the past,” she says. “And there are a lot of things that people can do to support overall environmental health, support biodiversity, and support their communities.”

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A sliver of rock at Carnegie Science Center is so priceless that it’s kept behind unbreakable glass and requires its own security protocols. This may seem excessive for a chunk of stone the size of a deck of cards but, per NASA regulations, the Science Center must fulfill vital requirements for its care.

This precious object—known as “Lunar Sample 15499”—has been on display at the Science Center since 2022 when it was unveiled as part of the Mars: The Next Giant Leap® exhibition. The process of applying for and procuring it from NASA, however, began nearly two years prior and involved a Science Center team member traveling to Houston to personally collect it.

The fragment spent most of its 3.4 billion years in existence embedded in a meter-sized boulder on the Moon. That is, until 1971, when crew members of Apollo 15—the fourth human landing on the Moon—extracted a few samples from the Lunar surface.

The sample isn’t all that different from rocks here on Earth—containing common minerals such as pyroxene, ilmenite, and metallic iron. But it’s an invaluable contribution to the Mars exhibition because it reminds us of what’s necessary for humans to set foot on the red planet, says Jason Brown, Henry Buhl, Jr., Director of Carnegie Science Center.

“In order to get to Mars, NASA would first build a stepping-stone base on the Moon, and then from that base send astronauts to go to Mars,” Brown says.

It’s rare for any museum or institution outside of NASA to have a Moon rock, partly because there isn’t much extra room in space vehicles to bring back Lunar treasures, Brown notes. There are only 170 lunar samples on display around the world, according to NASA spokesperson Victoria Segovia.

The celestial rock that NASA tagged Lunar Sample 15499 serves as a reminder of the possibilities of space exploration.

“The fact that we sent people to the Moon and they were able to bring something back is absolutely astounding,” Brown says, “and a testament to human achievement.”

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