MONSTER IN THE LIBRARY: A NOVEL PRESENTATION OF AN OLD MOSASAUR SPECIMEN

Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) opened a 'natural history' museum in 1871, with archaeological, ethnological, biological, geological and paleontological collections. With the rising importance of laboratory sciences in the 1900s, interest in the museum waned, and it was closed in 1957. By the 1970s, the stored collections had been severely vandalized, with thousands of specimens languishing in attics and subterranean tunnels across campus. In 2017, we started to recover specimens from storage, and curate them for exhibition and use in object-based learning. Our response to a challenge posed by limited museum space was to establish exhibits in different parts of campus, so we could reach a much broader university and town community than those a priori interested in natural history. We recently completed installation of our project “A New Look at an Old Mosasaur: Monster in the Library”. We custom-built a glass-topped table, mimicking existing library tables, displaying our 1870 Ward’s cast of Mosasaurus hoffmani Mantell in Wesleyan's Olin Library. The cast has been restored by students to closely resemble the original in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, France. We are expanding possibilities of hybrid in-person/virtual exhibits, especially relevant during the present pandemic. We included a laser-engraved QR code linked to an ArcGIS storymap (https://arcg.is/0LCjzK) accessible by scanning on electronic devices, providing details on the Mosasaur specimen’s discovery in 1780s, and the vagaries of history affecting this famous fossil, major taxonomic disputes, and stories on evolution, phylogeny and ecology of Mesozoic marine reptiles. The storymap allows visitors to choose to read curated exhibition content in which they are interested at their own pace. As with earlier exhibits of a cast of a Glyptodon and a Deinotherium skull, we plan to increase engagement in our fossil collections by non STEM-students through a naming contest for our Mosasaur. We will continue to highlight specimens from our collections through student-created novel exhibits, with inclusion of 3D scans, interactive screens, social-history themed displays and immersive sound experiences, so that our unique collections will be used to their full potential in engaging the interest of our campus and local community.