Hairy Museum of Natural History

Part Three: The Art of Ghost Ranch, an O’Keefe-less Overview

Ghost Ranch is, perhaps, most famous as the home of twentieth-century painter Georgia O’Keefe. But among those of a more paleontological stripe, Ghost Ranch’s claim to fame is the Whitaker Quarry, where researchers have unearthed dozens (hundreds?) of beautifully articulated skeletons from the little dinosaur Coelophysis. These and other Triassic fossils from the area have inspired their own share of painting and sculpture, and the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology at Ghost Ranch contains some must-see gems for the devotee of Triassic paleoart.

Last Wednesday morning (well, two Wednesdays back now), while we were waiting for the last coat of plaster to harden on the big block, part of our Snyder Quarry crew made a brief visit to the museum to check out their exhibits. When we arrived, curator Alex Downs was doing his best to introduce a group of students to the fossil vertebrates of the area. He greeted us warmly and pointed out the museum’s newest acquisition, a life-sized sculpture of the bipedal crocodylomorph Effigia okeefeae (now considered by some to be synonymous with Shuvosaurus inexpectatus).

Phil Bircheff’s sculpture of Effigia okeefeae

The sculpture had some nice details, especially the scale patterns along the ankles and feet. Unfortunately, its butter-yellow coloration washed out much of the sculpture’s relief in the brightly lit display. Still, it gave a good sense of the overall proportions of this bizarre dinosaur-mimic, and it is a worthy restoration by sculptor Phil Bircheff.

More pictures from the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology below the fold:

The Effigia sculpture was placed within a large, diorama-style display at one end of the small museum. The display also contained a reconstructed skeleton of a large phytosaur:

The mounted skeleton of a phytosaur at the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology

Although they resembled the crocodiles of today, phytosaurs were only distantly related and evolved their crocodile-style looks and habits independently. You can easily tell the difference between phytosaurs and crocodiles by the location of their nostrils—the nostrils of a phytosaur are located on top of their skull just in front of their eyes, while crocodiles kept them at the tip of their snouts.

Also included in the diorama was a sculpture of a sleek Coelophysis, somewhat reminiscent of a roadrunner. I’m sorry to say I didn’t notice who the sculptor was, but it could be Dave Thomas, who sculpted Spike and Alberta, the life-sized dinosaurs at the entrance to the NMMNHS.

A roadrunner-like Coelophysis

The foreground of the diorama contained several bits and pieces of Triassic fossils, plastic ferns and horsetails, and several horseshoe crabs scuttling across simulated tracks of dinosaurs:

The background mural portrayed a Triassic riverbank, with the eyes of partially submerged phytosaurs glittering in the moonlight. Along the banks, an armored aetosaur hunkered down for the night, while several Coelophysis peered out from the edges of a conifer forest.

The mural was designed by Margaret Matthew Colbert, an accomplished artist and wife of paleontologist Edwin Colbert, the man who first excavated the Coelophysis bonebed at Ghost Ranch 60 years ago. Prior to her work on this piece, Margaret Colbert painted two other murals depicting scenes from the Late Triassic of the southwest U.S.: the first for the Petrified Forest National Park and the second for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History (surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be good reproductions of either available on the web).

The mural at the Ruth Hall Museum is the last and largest of the three, and Colbert’s design was executed by muralists Dan and Mae Hitchcock. The rendering of the flora and fauna is somewhat less convincing than in the other two Colbert murals, but its size and perspective give it the greatest sense of depth of the three, and its dark, steamy atmosphere sets off the foreground fairly well.

The head of Effigia, next to the signatures of the Hitchcocks and Margaret Colbert on the mural

Of course, if you’re looking for the dark, steamy atmosphere of the Triassic, any paleoart aficionado will point you toward one person: Doug Henderson. I was pleasantly surprised to see one of Doug’s originals on display in the museum: a pair of Coelophysis trotting beneath the mossy, sun-dappled trunks of the giant Triassic conifer Araucarioxylon.

A Coelophysis painting by Doug Henderson, on display at the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology

Finally, one of the most unique pieces in the museum. In a display case adjacent to the large diorama were two more sculptures by Phil Bircheff. The first was the crocodyliform Hesperosuchus, which I didn’t get a good picture of, but look here for an image of the same sculpture cast in bronze from a show put together by the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum.

The second depicted a strange, sinuous little animal that resembled a cross between a pangolin and a Chinese dragon:

Phil Bircheff’s Vancleavea sculpture, left side view and detail of the head

This is Phil’s take on Vancleavea, an enigmatic little reptile whose leaf-like armor plates have been found in Triassic sediments across the southwest. Researchers have long puzzled over what sort of animal this armor belonged to, until a beautifully preserved skeleton with Vancleavea-style armor was discovered in a block from the Whitaker Coelophysis Quarry currently being prepared at the Ruth Hall Museum. The specimen has yet to be formally described, although some photos and casts are on display at the museum. This find formed the basis for the sculpture, which portrays Vancleavea as a meter-long aquatic predator covered in a thick armor of overlapping scales.

Although the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology is relatively small, this was only a portion of what they had on display. Since we were anxious to get back to our dig, we cut our visit short after about a 20-minute whirlwind tour. There are other museums at the Ranch, covering the area’s history and culture, but sadly, I didn’t even take a cursory glance at their exhibits before heading back to the Snyder Quarry. I guess that just gives me all the more reason to cruise back up to Ghost Ranch before too long.

In the next installment: Back in the Trenches

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Dinosaurs, Museumabilia, Paleo-Pop, Reptiles, Triassic.