On Display!

Science museums are wonderful places to explore Earth's ecosystems – both past and present. Museums can allow you to track a Stegasaurus through Jurassic forests, meet a mammoth that roamed the planet during the last ice age, or glance at a ginkgo that grew on Earth millions of years ago! Just what is involved in setting up museum displays?

Dioramas are one type of science museum display. These three-dimensional displays include a dark, curved or flat cloth background onto which a scene is painted. Then, flat or three-dimensional models of the plants and animals of an ecosystem are arranged in front of the cloth to give the scene a dramatic effect. Lighting from above or just one side heightens the display and makes the organisms seem to come to life.

Museum displays with which you are probably most familiar are skeletons, which are often made from casts of fossilized bones, teeth, and other hard parts of an organism. These structures are painstakingly assembled, piece by piece, and held together with wires, metal rods, and other types of supports. Often, the body covering of the organism is duplicated and carefully stretched over the metal and plaster skeleton. Once the organism is complete, it is placed in its habitat.

In order to be useful, any type of display must be realistic and accurate. If possible, each organism should be made to scale. Information about the geographic and geologic range of the organism, and the diet and mode of locomotion of the animals involved, must be legibly written and included in the display.