New Dinosaur Identified and Named at The State Museum

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on New Dinosaur Identified and Named at The State Museum After months of research and more than his fair share of sleepless nights, Steven Jasinski was ready to draft a new scientific study that would introduce the world to a recently discovered theropod dinosaur related to Velociraptor, which had flourished at the end of the dinosaur age 75 million years ago. All he needed to do now was name the small predator. Typically, paleontologists name a...
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Alfred King’s Forgotten Fossil Footprints

Posted by on May 11, 2015 in | Comments Off on Alfred King’s Forgotten Fossil Footprints The science of paleontology – the study of ancient life based on fossils – began in Western Europe about 1800. It soon cropped up in the United States, as the populace of a young and growing nation discovered many fossils. Among these early discoveries were those of fossil footprints, most famously found during the early 1800s in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts and...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on May 11, 2015 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Names and dates. To some they’re the dreaded stuff of high school history exams. To those of us who study and preserve history, however, they’re essential keys for understanding the past. As we continue our commemoration of the 50th anniversary of The State Museum and Archives Complex at PHMC, a clarification of certain names and dates may be in order for understanding exactly what...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Traveling the Pennsylvania Railroad: The Photographs of William H. Rau Edited by John C. Van Home, with Eileen E. Drelick Univer­sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2002 (272 pages, cloth, $49.95) In 1891 and again in 1893, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) – known to generations by its sobriquet, “the Pennsy” – commissioned William Herman Rau (1855-1920), a well known...
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William Wagner Portrait by Thomas Sully

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on William Wagner Portrait by Thomas Sully In 1836, eminent Ameri­can artist Thomas Sully (1783-1872) painted a por­trait of William Wagner (1796-1885), Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist, which had, until last year, remained in private hands. More than a century after its creation, the likeness has virtually returned “home” to the Wagner Free Institute of Science, founded by Wagn­er and his wife Louisa Bin­ney...
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Mississippian Amphibian

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mississippian Amphibian When people think of fossil vertebrates, they usually think of fossilized bones or footprints, the most common of remains. On rare occasions, paleontologists may come across other fossils that are truly exceptional, such as an entire body outline or impression. A recent rediscovery of a highly unusual specimen hidden away in the vaults of the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Berks County, has...
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Rising from the Muck: The Marshalls Creek Mastodon

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Rising from the Muck: The Marshalls Creek Mastodon For as long as I can remember, I have known of the little village of Marshalls Creek, near East Stroudsburg, in northeastern Pennsylvania’s Monroe County. My maternal grandparents, Bertha and Arthur Pflieger, rented a cottage each summer in the Poconos at the Cottage Colony, part of the Mountain Lake House, a popular resort for many New Yorkers and city dwellers during the 1940s and the...
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