Are You Sure That Enclosure Will Be Enough? New Dinosaur at MJC's Great Valley Museum!

I couldn't help but recall a certain famous movie opening: guys in hardhats unloading a dinosaur at a new park named after a geological time period...Cretaceous Park or something like that. Things went scarily wrong, and movie history was made.

Today's experience didn't end badly though, since the dinosaur in question was a plant-eating Parasaurolophus and it wasn't a living specimen. It was one of the final additions to the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab at the Great Valley Museum on the campus of Modesto Junior College.

The exhibit commemorates a little-known fact about our county: it was the site of the first reported discovery of dinosaurs in California. Back in 1936 17-year-old Al Bennison was exploring Del Puerto Canyon in the Coast Ranges along the western part of Stanislaus County looking for shell fossils when he found bones scattered on a slope. He showed them to his science teacher who reported them to the paleontologists at U.C. Berkeley. It proved to be the partial remains of a Saurolophus, which was one of the last dinosaurs that ever lived on our planet, one the last groups in existence when the gigantic asteroid hit the planet (or when the volcanoes blew, or whatever else did them in). They lived in the latest part of the Cretaceous Period, which is well represented by sedimentary rocks in our region. The rocks are marine in origin, which tend not to be good places to search for dinosaurs, but sometimes a carcass would float out to sea, as this one did.

The creatures were gigantic, on the order of thirty to forty feet long, weighing several tons (our model is a 1/2-sized replica at 16 feet long). They were plant-eaters, with teeth well-adapted to grinding twigs and leaves. Whether they swam or not has been a topic of discussion and debate. Some argue that they had few other defenses from predators, so that swimming was necessary to escape from being eaten. Others suggest that they lived in herds that provided protection. California designated a species of Saurolophus, Augustynolophus morrisi, as the state dinosaur in 2017.

For comparison purposes, here is what the Saurolophus looked like. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurolophus

We thought it was important to put a dinosaur on display as we planned for the new Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab. Dinosaurs certainly capture the imagination of our children (and not a few of our adults), and it is a good thing for our students to know that our county played an important part in the paleontological discoveries in our state. When students realize that one of their own (however long ago) made an important find, they also can visualize themselves as a paleontologist or geologist making important contributions to science. The concrete squares covered by orange tarps are mock paleontological digs where students can experience the sense of discovery that all paleontologists live for.

So why a Parasaurolophus, and not the Augustynolophus morrisi or other 'real' Saurolophus? That's easy: none of the marketers of dinosaur replicas offer any for sale, at least far as I could find. We figured that a similar species was better than none at all...

Trying hard not to be trampled to death 

What a great day for geological education in our county. I just hope the containment structure works! It just won't do to have wild dinosaurs running around on our campus...
 

The 35 Year Wait is Over! The Ribbon-cutting for the Great Valley Museum Outdoor Nature Lab is Wednesday!

Ever since the origin of the Great Valley Museum decades ago, there has been a desire on the part of the faculty of Modesto Junior College and Great Valley Museum staff to have an outdoor education area that would complement the nature exhibits inside the museum. For decades the museum operated out of a former house across the street from the MJC East Campus, and other than a few plants alongside the building, there was no outdoor component to a museum visit. Big changes came with the passage of Measure E in our county that led to the construction of the Science Community Center with a vastly expanded Great Valley Museum that included a planetarium, Science on a Sphere, and other innovative exhibits. However, the Outdoor Nature Lab was one of the last of the Measure E projects to receive funding, and for several years the very existence of the lab was in question.

But that finally changed and two years ago we finally broke ground for the construction of the outdoor lab, after a wait of at least 35 years. There are a few finishing touches still to be added (interpretive signs, and believe it or not, a big dinosaur), but it is officially opening to the public this week. It's fair to say that it opened up to nature months ago...a pair of Killdeers raised a family during the early summer, and other animals are taking up residence. But the official opening is this week for we humans.

Please join us! The ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place on Wednesday, August 14, at 9:00AM. The GVM Outdoor Nature Lab is on the north side of the Science Community Center on MJC's West Campus. It's been a long journey and we can't wait to share it with you!

The Great Valley Museum Outdoor Nature Lab Stands De-fence-less!

Something special happened yesterday at Modesto Junior College and the Great Valley Museum. The Outdoor Nature Lab, which has been completely fenced off for most of the last year became "de-fenced". The construction process has not been finished, but the basic structures, the rocks, the plants, pathways, greenhouse, and irrigation/lighting are in place, and visitors are now able to wander through the newest addition to the Great Valley Museum.

The picture above is how the site looked in January shortly after the fencing went up. The field had been barren for three or four years after the construction of the Science Community Center. Some in the administration had wanted to plant the field with grass while we waited for the funding of the Outdoor Nature Lab to be approved, but the faculty and staff of the Center resisted. We were aware that it would make it easier for the funding to "disappear" if there was a nice grassy area. We chose to have a barren lot. The funding was precarious, as the lab was one of the final projects to be funded by our Measure E bond from a decade ago, and a cost over-run in other areas could have eliminated the project entirely.

The parade of constantly changing administration officials who had occupied their offices for only a few years sometimes had trouble understanding how important the Outdoor Nature Lab was to the museum and faculty at Modesto Junior College. It has been a dream for more than three decades that we would have a microcosm of the Great Valley natural environment adjacent to our facilities, with the native plants and characteristic rock types (as well as a greenhouse and demonstration gardens). Many of our students and visitors have barely ever traveled outside the city limits and are unaware of the incredible world that still exists in the corners and edges of our valley.

We were thrilled yesterday to find that along with the disappearance of the fencing that some of the natural environment was already arriving to occupy our small natural landscape. Killdeers were wandering over the site, and we suspect there might even be a nest nearby. The Killdeer is the mascot of the museum and center, appearing on our logos. It seemed a good omen, like a blessing.

Spring is still going on at the outdoor lab as well. There were delays with the planting so the worksite missed any kind of natural wildflower blooms back in March and April, but we have a great many newly-planted trees, and they will have to be irrigated until they can mature and put down an adequate root system. Natural wildflowers were also planted, and they are blooming right now.

Pathways wander throughout the lab, providing a serene place to walk or wait between classes, especially as the trees grow and mature. Interpretive signs will be installed soon that explain the identity of the plants and rocks, and the relationships that make up the Great Valley biome.

Part of my role in the design of the lab was the selection of rocks that we chose to represent the lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I was able to select somewhere around 30 tons of boulders that now crop out in the eastern part of the lab.

At the north end where visiting students will disembark from their school buses, we've placed boulders of the Table Mountain lava flow. It is a relatively rare rock called latite, but being black, and originally highly fluid, it can be thought of as a form of basalt. The lavas emerged from vents located today high in the Sierra Nevada near Sonora Pass (the Dardanelles) and flowed west for nearly 60 miles to the Knight's Ferry area. As the mountains later rose and tilted west, erosion removed the rocks from around the lava flow, but the lava flow resisted the forces of erosion and ended up as a ridge that retained the sinuous path of the ancestral Stanislaus River.

The boulders are covered by a veritable ecosystem of lichens and mosses. When I picked them out last October, they were drab and dried out. When the rains came the surface of the rock came alive with color. It's a marvelous place to see the weathering of rock and formation of soil happening right in front of your eyes. The lichens produce acids that slowly break down the rock into clay and nutrients.

At the south end where students will be walking into the museum, we've placed "tombstone rocks". These are some of the oldest rocks found in our region, metamorphic slate and phyllite that started out as mud and silt on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Plate motions carried these sediments into the subduction zone that once extended from Canada to Mexico. The sediments were scraped off the ocean crust and added to the edge of the continent. In the process, the mud and silt were subjected to intense heat and pressure, and they were tilted to a vertical position. Differential erosion removed the softer layers, leaving the harder slabs to stand out like a ill-kempt cemetery plot.

Other rocks on the "upper" trail include marble boulders, the host rocks for the Mother Lode's spectacular caverns. We also have a huge chunk of quartz, the host ore for the gold that was responsible for the most transformative events in the human history of California, the Gold Rush of 1848.

In a few months we expect to see a scaled-down model of a Saurolophus, the first dinosaur ever to be found in California, erected in the barren area on the lower left corner in the picture below. It was discovered by a teenager named Al Bennison in the 1930s right here in Stanislaus County, up in Del Puerto Canyon. Few of our children are ever taught about the rich paleontology of our valley and the many kinds of fascinating creatures that used to live here in the valley, including Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, Hadrosaurs, and in much younger rocks, Sabertooth Cats, Mammoths, Short-faced Bears, Giant Sloths, and Dire Wolves. To help their imaginations, we are installing a mock paleontology dig at the western end of the nature lab.

It's an exciting time for our faculty, staff, and volunteers. It's not complete, but for the first time we are able to wander about this wonderful little microcosm of the Great Valley. For some of us it has been a three-decade wait, but it's been worth the effort. A lot of people have worked very hard to make this unique educational experience a reality.

The First Wild Arrival at the New Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab

The Great Valley Museum's Outdoor Nature Lab is reaching the final stages of completion! The area includes a native vegetation of the Great Valley, characteristic rocks of the valley and Sierra Nevada foothills, a mock paleontology dig, vernal pool, and a greenhouse. The rocks have been in place for several months, and now the vegetation is in, and some of the trees have grown leaves. And that means our outdoor lab is starting to attract wildlife. I saw my first official species today when an American Robin landed in one of the newly planted trees.

The lab does of course still looks somewhat barren, given that the grasses and shrubs have yet to start spreading, and the trees are still very small. In a couple of years, the lab will be an incredibly attractive place to learn about the fascinating natural history of our valley.

For we "older" faculty, this has been a long wait. The idea for an outdoor lab had its beginnings three decades ago, and we had some "near-misses" when funding was thought to be in place, but plans continued to fall through. But then Measure E was passed by our community, and the outdoor lab barely survived the budget process, being the last, or nearly last project to be approved by the powers-that-be. And now it is almost done!

The lab will continue to be improved as the plants mature, and as interpretive signs are developed and installed. We will even have an "almost" true scale dinosaur by the mock paleontology dig site. Our county was the site of the first ever dinosaur discovery in California. It's about time that our residents became aware of this awesome fact!

And being a microcosm of our valley environment, I'm hoping to see lots more creatures making the outdoor nature lab their home!

Is it a Fossil Smuggling Conspiracy?? (Answer: No, it's something fun)

There's this suspicious storage container on our campus. It's been there for months, all through the construction of our much-anticipated Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab. It's always closed and locked up and I've never seen what's inside. It's makes one wonder what could be stored there...

The other day though, workers were inside moving things around when I walked by. It was time to do some detective work, so I nonchalantly walked up and acted like a supervisor and looked inside. I was SHOCKED! There were fossils! Lots and lots of fossils! There was what seemed to be a Mosasaur, a T-rex skull, some ammonites, and many others. Had I stumbled upon some kind of fossil smuggling operation? Were we being used to hide ill-gotten paleontological discoveries?

Oh, for heaven's sake. It's not that at all. Can you see that pair of cement enclosures above? Those pits will eventually be mock paleontology dig sites where our children visitors can experience the thrill of discovery. The kids will be using shovels and brushes to uncover these treasures of the past while they learn of the natural history of the Great Valley here in California.

We've been waiting for thirty years for our Great Valley Museum to have an outdoor component that will bring alive the fascinating history of the natural ecosystems of our unique valley. Before it became the premier agricultural center for the continent, the Great Valley was an extensive prairie environment with Tule Elk, Wolves, Grizzly Bears and other interesting creatures. In the geologic past, the valley was an ocean environment that hosted sharks and swimming reptiles like Mosasaurs, Ichthyosaurs, and Plesiosaurs. The Outdoor Nature Lab will be a wonderful learning environment for our local children. There are just a few more weeks to go before it is "complete" (the newly planted trees and shrubs will take years to mature, of course).

The Outdoor Nature Lab at the Great Valley Museum Takes Shape

For thirty years it was nothing more than a dream, something hoped-for, but never realized for lack of funds. Ten years ago it became a possibility when our country passed Measure E to redevelop the campus of Modesto Junior College. But there were many, many projects, more than the measure could pay for. But there was still enough of a dream that the faculty and museum staff requested that the vacant lot north of our Science Community Center not be developed in any way in hopes that the last of the Measure E funds might be utilized to construct the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab (some administrators wanted to put in grass along with irrigation and walkways; we knew if that happened, the lab would never come into being).

The decision was finally made a year or two ago. The last of the funds would be devoted to the Outdoor Lab! Then came the proposals and planning. Then the budget realities and deciding what parts had to be cut. And finally at the end of the summer the construction began.

There was the very fun business of selecting many tons of boulders and watching them get dropped into place. When I left for the holiday break there were only hummocks of dirt but when I returned this week the concrete walkways had been completed. With the boulders in place, the irrigation system could be installed and in the next three weeks or so an entire woodland of native vegetation will be planted.

The greenhouse is coming along, as are the two mock paleontology dig sites. We have hopes of adding a dinosaur to the landscape, a reasonable facsimile of an Augustynolophus Morrisi, the state dinosaur. The first dinosaur ever found in the state was discovered in our county (it was a Saurolophus of some sort, possibly an Augustynolophus). Interpretative signs are being designed.

Many of the children in our region are not able to visit the wild areas that remain in the Great Valley and adjacent Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. The Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab will be a microcosm of the valley and foothill ecosystem, with native vegetation, native rock outcrops, and a vernal pool. It is our hope that the native birds, reptiles, and other animals will start making a home in our little microenvironment.

It is a marvelous feeling to see a decades-long dream coming at last to fruition. It's an exciting time for us! More updates to come...

How to Make a Rock Garden: Update on the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab

How to make a rock garden:

First, you have to find rock seeds. Try for variety, a mixture of igneous and metamorphic, maybe some sedimentary. Local rivers are good places to look. They're even shaped a little bit like eggs.

Then you have find a good place for your rock garden. Any vacant lot has potential, but some are better than others. I picked this one because it is right next to the Great Valley Museum at Modesto Junior College. If we can get a good rock garden going, it can enhance the mission of the museum and college by providing a microcosm of the geologic environment of our region.

Then you plant the rocks...after a few weeks you might notice that the ground is starting to ripple and develop bumps and hummocks. This is a natural progression as the rocks start to grow. But something is missing...

Ah! Water. For the rock garden to truly thrive, try adding lots of water. That will really get those rocks sprouting. And now we wait.

And we wait. You can even walk around the hummocks to see if any of the rocks are peeking though yet. But don't cheat and try to dig them out ahead of time. They might stop growing entirely.

Then comes that magic day when you arrive at work and find that the rocks have sprouted! They're huge!!

It's now safe to wander about a little, seeing what kind of rocks have germinated. I saw some tombstone rocks like those of the Mother Lode foothills, giant boulders of marble from the Calaveras Complex, and even a giant chunk of quartz, the ore-bearing rock of the Mother Lode gold veins. There were also some volcanic rocks from the Table Mountain Latite and the rhyolite tuff of the Valley Springs Formation. It's a great crop, which is good because no one is going to want to try moving these rocks once they've grown.

Finally you need the skilled rock farmers, who like bonsai tree tenders adjust the location of the boulders and plant some of them a little deeper so they won't fall over on anyone. And that's how you make a rock garden!

I understand that some of our botanists and biologists are intending to...um...plant plants on these beautiful rocks. I have mixed feelings about this, but they say it will enhance the education of the children who visit the museum every bit as much as the rocks will. I guess time will tell.

Things are happening pretty quickly now. Once the rocks are in place, the pathways will be put in and the planting will commence. It is actually just a few short months before our Great Valley Natural Outdoor Lab will be a reality. It's kind of interesting to compare the reality of the moment with a sketch I made during one of the early planning meetings:

Wait a Minute...What Happened to the Rocks I Picked Out?

Something kind of extraordinary happened on campus this week. I was pausing between classes and saw a large truck and a crane downstairs in the staging area for the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab. The crane was dumping gigantic rocks onto the ground. "My" rock collection had arrived!! You might remember that early last month I went 'rock collecting' in the Sierra Nevada foothills for the rocks that will be part of the displays and landscaping of the outdoor. All 60 tons or so...

Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/12ScDYWbP4yoBq/giphy.gif

My response about their arrival on campus was predictable...

But if you remember the scene in "Elf" when Buddy thought Santa was in the store only to discover he was a fake, well, I had that moment too. I saw that something was off about the rocks I had selected. Something was different about them. Below was the rock that I selected a month ago, when it was 85 degrees out, and rain had not fallen in months...

And here (below) is the rock they claim I picked out. This after nearly two weeks of rain and cooler temperatures. This rock is clearly on a PALLET of LIES!

Well, okay, maybe it isn't on a pallet like the others, and maybe it is the same rock I picked out. But you can now see one of the main reasons I picked it, and why it will be sitting in a position of honor by the entrance sign to the outdoor nature lab. Not only is it a unique rock that is found in our region (the latite of Table Mountain), it is also a miniature ecosystem of mosses, lichens, grass, and other organisms. To see it, just add water!

In any case, we now have an astounding variety of the rocks that are found in our region. There is marble from the Calaveras Complex, the host rock of the many caverns that are found in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

There is a gigantic chunk of the quartz from the Mother Lode veins, the source of the gold that played such a huge (and devastating) part in the history of California. Sorry, no visible gold (although I'll keep looking).

One of the most striking rocks are the "tombstone rocks" of the Foothills Terrane, large fins of slate and phyllite that were once mud and silt on the ocean floor. The rocks were crushed against the western edge of North America, metamorphosed, and tilted vertically. We'll be putting them in the ground in the same vertical orientation. It will be a dramatic sight at the southern entrance to the lab.

The next step comes at the end of the week. I'll get to help direct the placement of the rocks! I'll try not to be insufferably picky..."Could you rotate that one about four inches? Great! Wait...I liked it better the way it was...". An update will follow.