Sadly, there are none, YET here in the Phoenix metro area. BUT some entrepreneurs developed a wonderful butterfly exhibit a few years ago, in Scottsdale. It is fabulous all year around (Butterfly Wonderland). The same group are in the planning stages of an aquarium and exhibition called Ocean in the Desert. This will be adjacent to the butterfly exhibition. ASU's School of Life Sciences is in opening stages of talks with these people to try to get some of our shells displayed up there. I'm hoping we can train docents to give little talks about the creatures. Hopefully we can get this to work, and get the enthusiasm for shells raised. We do at least have land snails here in the desert, and the coasts of California and Mexico are just 5-8 hour drives from here.
We need to do something, because I had some people ask an unreal question at our last Science Night of the Open Door on March 1.
Its pretty bad when school age children ask what made the pretty shells. But when ADULTS ask "Are these made by people?" you can believe we are in serious trouble.
---- Ellen Bulger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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Does anyone have a comprehensive list of museums and parks with shell
exhibits?
I know of Bailey-Matthews on Sanibel, for sure. And there is the Brevard
Museum of Natural History with its excellent Johnson Cordy Hall of
Mollusks.
But what about other parts of the country? I've been teaching after school
science classes and I don't even know where to send my students. Yale's
Peabody here in New Haven used to have an excellent shell exhibit, back
about FORTY FIVE YEARS AGO! So the kids have not seen very many shells.
When they have been exposed to nature, it's more likely to have been on the
Discovery Channel than IRL.
In New Haven, at least, we have beaches. Okay, maybe not Florida beaches.
The water is cold and murky (I was going to say polluted, but no more than
Florida, really.) and dark. But there are beaches and tides and life and
wrack lines. Still, the kids don't even think to poke through them. And I
reckon they need a jumpstart and an exhibit can do that. I hand out take
home materials and it would be great to have a list of shell-exhibit
destinations for the parents to bear in mind for summer vacation. I would
also like to include it on the Astronaut Shell Club Blog that we are
putting together astronauttrailshellclub.blogspot.co m
In the meantime, we need to make do with what we got. If I was in Florida,
I could take them to a warm beach with white sand. I could take them to
Sanibel or to the Brevard Museum (and tomorrow, at Brevard, I wouldn't even
have to pay because it's the open house).
Anyway, I'm working on making new converts to our hobby. My kids can tell a
bivalve from a gastropod and my personal supply of spare shells has been
doled out. I dump out a BIG piles of shells and tell the kiddies, if you
can ID* it, you can take it home. Great motivator!
Man oh man, they love those sunrise tellins!
* and by ID, I mean even come up with a reasonable wild guess...
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