Ignorance =/= Bliss

Okay, the saying is old, 1742, or thereabouts, but sometimes it’s not bliss, it’s just damned embarrassing.

Monday a couple weeks back I made the opportunity to visit one of my favorite places in town, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, for a “Behind The Scenes Tour” of the Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution exhibit.

So here’s the thing. I, like an awful lot of people I’ve talked to since, had very little knowledge of this critter, and, as I discovered, most of what I knew was wrong. The reality is one heck of a lot more fascinating and fun.

So… the first of several shots I’m going to post from the evening.

David Temple, Associate Curator of Paleontology (also occasional tour guide, Canon shooter, and generally nice guy) fronts for a coelacanth fossil from a Jurassic-period limestone quarry in Solnhofen, Germany. All the fossils in the exhibit, most of which I didn’t photograph for various reasons involving not wanting to hold up the tour, are from Solnhofen.

More pix to follow, including something unique, something SyFy, and, of course, Archaeopteryx! (Plus things I learned during and since, some of which are in their own ways just about as mindblowing.)

And, for Donna The Dragonfly Lady…

This one’s a bit older than most – something on the order of 150 million years. or so.

Enjoy. Weekend approaches. Go shoot.

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