Hairy Museum of Natural History

As is typical around HMNH HQ, when things get a little hectic, web updates are first on the chopping block. What is atypical is that this week is looking to be even more harried than usual (mostly due to lots of scrambling at the day job), but I’m going to make an effort to get a couple of posts online anyway.

There are a slew of great paleo-stories floating around out there, and all signs point to more coming over the next month. If you’ve popped in here, chances are you’re already a regular reader of The Boneyard, which has, since my last post, fledged the last bit of its downy coat, spread its newly feathered wings, and left the nest where it was hatched over at Laelaps. It has found fertile hunting grounds at When Pigs Fly Returns and The Ethical Palaeontologist, and keep an eye out for a new edition at Fish Feet this weekend. Check it out for the latest and greatest paleontology on the web whilst I struggle mightily to get the Hairy Museum’s act together.

What am I hoping to accomplish here in the coming weeks? A brief list of plans:

• Wrapping up the final post in the Snyder Quarry installments, and at least one more story for the Triassophiles in the audience.
• More illustrations and sketches as I experiment with a subtle shift in the focus of the HMNH frontpage.
• Probably a few more weeks of highly sporadic posting, as I prepare to upgrade my aging computer and undertake a much needed redesign of the site (it seems well past time to turn the saffron-o-meter down a couple of notches).
• And stay tuned for at least one jaw-dropping recommendation for your autumnal reading pleasure and/or holiday wish list!

And while I’m mulling over a few new ideas for the site, it seems like a good time to solicit comments from any readers who keep checking in. Is there anything that you’d like to see more of (or just plain see) at the Hairy Museum? Any directions that the site should (or should not) take? Anything I could get rid of, or are there parts of the site I should leave up at all costs?

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (5)

So, while I was making some corrections to this site’s code, I decided to take the plunge and add a couple of new navigation structures—the online equivalent of upgrading the museum’s wayfinding signage. If you’ll turn your attention to the left-hand column, you should notice a veritable rainbow of options to assist you, our valued visitor, in getting the most out of your Hairy Museum experience.

First up, a usable timeline. HMNH entries have been sorted by geologic time periods almost since the blog began, but they were never presented in any meaningful order or context. But now, everything is in the proper order, and we’ve got context coming out the wazoo! For example, pointing to the ‘Cretaceous’ link in the timeline will bring up a tooltip giving you the age of the Cretaceous Period, and clicking on it will load up every HMNH post about things that happened during that time.

The periods are nested, so that by clicking on the ‘Mesozoic’ link you can load up all entries in the ‘Triassic,’ ‘Jurassic,’ and ‘Cretaceous’ categories. And the colors are reasonable approximations of the hues specified by the Commission de la Carte Géologique du Monde for geologic maps and timelines. So it’s not just fruity, it’s international-standards-compliant!

Below the timeline is a table of categories arranged phylogenetically, or by evolutionary relationship. Right now it’s just the chordates—yes, there are a few invertebrate posts floating around, but for now this is a good start. These categories are also nested: selecting ‘Bony Fish,’ for instance, will load up every post on fish, tetrapods, reptiles, birds, and mammals. (For why this is so, look here.) As far as I know, there’s no international body specifying colors for taxonomic groups, so I just went with my aesthetic judgement on this one.

Feel free to poke through the new organization and see how it works. If anything seems unusual/erroneous/broken, or if you have any thoughts on how it could be made better, by all means leave a comment or send me an email. Enjoy your visit!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (2)

Apologies to all visitors who popped in today and found various parts of the site either missing, poorly arranged, or replaced with error messages. In the process of upgrading the HMNH blog to WordPress 2.1, I managed to break the comment functions, blogroll, and (briefly) the entire front page. I think I’ve managed to get everything fixed at this point, and hopefully the Hairy Museum is now back to its regular levels of disheveledness.

…at least for now. Poking through the site’s underlying code has inspired me to begin working on that clutter of categories over in the left-hand column. While that is going on, don’t be surprised if all the archived posts suddenly lose whatever marginal context they once had. I assure you, it will only be temporary, and with luck, things will be a little better organized soon!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (0)

So, its been exactly one year since I officially fired up the Hairy Museum of Natural History blog, and it seems like a good a time as any for a bit of a review. What’s happened in the past year at the HMNH?

• Surprisingly, this appears to be the 100th post! Nice bit of coincidence there.
• We’ve added three new galleries—my Permocarboniferous Sketchbook and Monkey-Lizards of the Triassic, and Ray Troll sang The Devonian Blues in his Hall of Ich-Theology.
• The Library hasn’t expanded much. I transcribed Henry Fairfield Osborn’s original description of Tyrannosaurus rex in honor of the dinosaur’s 100th birthday, but not long afterwards the American Museum generously made the original paper (along with many of their other scientific publications) freely available for download. Perhaps the HMNH Library should shift focus and start compiling links to similar resources…
• The only change to the Paleo-Pop Shop is that my stock in Coelophysis Madonna T-shirts has dwindled to the point that I really should start working on some new Hairy Museum merchandise. Any suggestions?

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this little experiment is that, in the past year, visitation to the Hairy Museum has increased sixfold. I’d like to pass along my sincerest thanks to all the new visitors for stopping by, the longtime patrons for coming back, and to everyone who alerted me to a story, sent some words of encouragement, or found something in this frazzled little corner of the web worth linking to. Thank you.

On to year two!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine.

Comments on record: (2)

BBC News has a stimulating story on genetic tinkering that allows bald mice to regrow fur, with potential applications for reversing human hair loss. As a formerly shaggy character now endowed with a certain scalpular prominence, I’ll be interested to see where this research goes.

Personal trichology aside, this study rates an HMNH seal of approval strictly for the dramatic before-and-after pictures of hairless to fuzzy mice.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Recent Discoveries, Rogaine.

Comments on record: (0)