Coming Attractions/News/Unscripted Thoughts: Big John at Glazer Children's Museum


The Tampa Bay Times published an article I just had to comment on because it piqued my interest, and it will pique yours too.

The basics: Florida Man donates contraband dinosaur to glorified soft play.

Concept art from the press release

Long story more long, two years ago, the world's largest known specimen of Triceratops (first found by a private group in 2014) was put up for auction in Paris after display in Trieste, Italy for a while, then sold for a whopping 7.7 million and attracted a large outrage from paleontological circles, not wanting a valuable specimen to be lost to science. Now, it has resurfaced as its owner have come forward as Floridian entrepenuer Sidd Pagidipati, and he's apparently going to loan it to the small Glazer Children's Museum in Tampa, FL for three years (or more), now renovating an entire floor and education centre to help accommodate it.

I'm quite mixed on the news. On one hand, I'm glad such a magnificent specimen got into a museum after all, assuaging fears, where it can potentially be studied in greater detail at last, instead of rotting in some rich SOB's mansion as a glorified art piece, which dinosaurs are not. That brings me to the other hand.

I'm very critical of selling dinosaurs and fossils at auction. These are valuable specimens that science and the public deserve to study and observe, not treated as mere luxury decor; without the proper scientific rigour, privately-mounted specimens can be improperly prepared and lose crucial details. That's not getting into how many are stolen from Native Americans' lands, as artist Kent Monkman noted in his art exhibit Being Legendary. The fact that it's one of the many in recent that are fetching exuberant prices does not help at all, and many have feared it will set a bad example and legitimatise a terrible industry, and beyond a few famous exceptions, most museums aren't willing to pay up to stop them. I therefore don't think it should ever been sold at all, let alone took into the hands of a private group, instead just go straight to a museum or university. Even its excavator has expressed regret where it went (Pioneer 2021).

I'm also not a fan of where it went to, or at least I'm surprised it went there. of all places I would have preferred one of the larger museums worldwide let alone stateside, not a relatively small children's museum that mostly caters to small children and regional families through play. Adding to the incrediuty it's in a state not known for dinosaur (though not fossils as a whole) museums*; hell, I even thought it would be going to the nearby Museum of Science and Industry at first, which does have a dinosaur exhibit of its own. Not that there's precedent for dinosaur mounts in children's museums (just look at Children's Museum of Indianapolis), but they are usually much bigger and grand, and if it weren't for Pagidipati being a Tampa resident I'd still be really baffled at the choice. Or maybe it's just my local emphasis side talking.

* This is changing however, as according to Cary Woodruff Jr., the Frost Museum in Miami is developing a public one. There's also Palm Beach Museum of Natural History... but since its involved with plagiarist fuckshit Robert DePalma, I don't want to discuss it.


As for the exhibit itself, I think it seems nice enough, especially the tunnel for kids. I wonder if it will add additional fossils to it, either as casts or genuine ones, or live reptiles or fish exhibits that stand in as living fossils (it helps that alligators or gars are plenty in Florida).

Overall, my thoughts on Big John's loan to the Glazer is that of cautious elation. The circumstances have not been the best for the specimen, and it should have just been taken to a public museum in the first place rather then the conveluted and damaging route taken instead. But hey, better late then never, as in never going to a museum period and in private irresponsible hands. I'll keep tabs on it, hoping science can learn more about it at last.

Anyway, Big John at the Glazer comes May 29, Memorial Day weekend.

Oh, and the exhibit's press release reveals another museum opening in 2024 by John's original discoverer Walter Stein and his private company in question PaleoVentures, titled "Dinosaurs of the Hell Creek Museum". Sounds nice.

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