ENHANCING VISITOR PALEONTOLOGY EDUCATION AT JOHN DAY FOSSIL BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT

The purpose of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is to preserve and provide for the scientific and public understanding of the geological and paleontological resources of the John Day region, and museum exhibits, along with other non-personal services, are an important method for accomplishing this. For this project, we created new exhibits that will serve as a visitor-friendly introduction to the main fossil gallery of the visitor center, incorporating fossil specimens and casts of ancient organisms found within the park alongside paleoart of the animals and plants. The current exhibits in the Thomas Condon Paleontology and Visitor Center were first installed in 2004, and they have not been updated since. These exhibits have an excessive amount of text, outdated scientific information, a large number of technical terms in the wording, and an overall scientifically-dense presentation focusing on various subfields of earth sciences rather than presenting a streamlined “big picture” to visitors. The finished exhibits will consist of three sections focusing on how organisms adapt, migrate, or go extinct in response to changes in their environment, such as the dramatic changes in climate recorded in the rock record within the John Day Fossil Beds. Different animals represented in the John Day Fossil Beds were chosen to demonstrate these concepts: dogs and horses for adaptation; rhinos, elephants, and camels for migration; and oreodonts, brontotheres, and “creodonts” for extinction. The project involves selecting appropriate fossils and images for the new exhibits as well as creating new accompanying text, designing the physical layout of the exhibits, and constructing the new exhibits for public display. Two new fossil casts were made for the exhibits, as were three new paleoart drawings, while the project incorporated three recent pieces from a former artist-in-residence and preexisting fossil casts and some original paleontological specimens from the park’s museum program. The intention is that visitors, after viewing these new exhibits, will be able to enter the main fossil gallery with a better understanding of what types of fossils are present at the park and what can be learned from the fossil record about climate and evolution. Altogether, these new exhibits will provide visitors with a greater sense of wonder and appreciation regarding ancient life.