The Canadian Museum of Nature is taking a novel approach to engaging with its visitors, staging a month-long competition called Dino Idol in which they will decide which dinosaur fossil the Ottawa institution will study next.
The five candidates 鈥� dubbed Mystery Jaw, Stumpy, Regal Ed, Headrosaur and Canadian Club 鈥� are still embedded in rock. Each is also encased in the protective plaster "field jacket" applied after being excavated in Alberta about 100 years ago.
The plaster casings have been put on display alongside text panels explaining what the museum believes is contained inside. The one getting the most votes between Feb. 16 and March 17 will be opened up and examined by researchers in a process lasting up to a year and accompanied by periodic blog updates.
Paleontologist Jordan Mallon, who came up with the Dino Idol idea and will lead the research, said the aim is to give Canadians a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes at the museum, which holds more than 10 million natural history specimens covering four billion years of Earth's history.
"People come to the dinosaur galleries, they see these dinosaurs on display and they think that's all we do 鈥� we collect dinosaurs and put them on display," he said.
"We're going to be updating online some of the research progress and hopefully the public will be following so they'll learn more about what we do."
The museum has over 200 such plaster packages in storage, most of them collected in the early decades of the last century by a team of American fossil hunters, Charles Sternberg and his three sons, who were hired by the Geological Survey of sa国际传媒, the museum's predecessor.
"They were arguably the best dinosaur collectors in the world at the time," said Mallon.
The Sternbergs' field notes give an indication of what's inside each plaster casing, but the museum won't know for sure until it opens up the top vote-getter.
Canadian Club, for example, is believed to contain the hips and tail club of an ankylosaur. Stumpy 鈥� the candidate Mallon said he is most partial to 鈥� could be the skull of a rare horned dinosaur called Arrhinoceratops.
"Whichever one is picked will offer something new for research and will contribute to our understanding of dinosaur evolution," he said.
Size was a key factor in selecting the five candidates, since "no one would follow" a process lasting many years, Mallon explained.
"We've got a giant Triceratops skull, for example, in the collection, but that would take a few years to hack away at."
