{"id":1008,"date":"2009-04-18T00:15:27","date_gmt":"2009-04-18T04:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2009-05-31T19:28:44","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T23:28:44","slug":"florida-museum-of-natural-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1008","title":{"rendered":"Florida Museum of Natural History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Took a day trip up to Gainesville Friday to look around. I spent quite a bit of time at the Florida Museum of Natural History<\/a> and really enjoyed it! From the outside the museum doesn’t look like much, and I admit to feeling afraid that the hour and a half drive had been a waste. But the ol “don’t judge a book by its cover” cliche is true here. What’s inside is wonderful. It’s a professional museum from start to finish. There is a ton of information that would certainly take much longer to absorb than the couple of hours I had available. I was just starting to really explore the fossil hall<\/a> in depth when I had to leave.<\/p>\n

The butterfly exhibit was awesome. Even my teenage boy was mesmerized by the dazzling array of critters flittering right in front of our noses. I had one blue butterfly hitchhike on me for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

I split my limited time between the fossils and butterflies, giving the rest of the place little attention. I took a quick tour of the other exhibits, and they were creative, professional and educational. But I had to break away from the family to spend more time playing in the fossil hall. As I went along, I did a bit of tweeting<\/a>. You can check out a few of the things I learned at my twitter page. (Strangely, I lost quite a few followers today. I didn’t twitter much, and the messages I sent were as interesting as I could make them in 140 character. I don’t know what I did to send those folks away. Oh well.)<\/p>\n

Last year when the big fight over evolution in the state science standards was raging — both in the board of education and the legislature — I had mentioned a few times that these decision makers need to visit this museum that’s right here in our own state. Now that I’ve finally had the opportunity to visit for myself, I will definitely be harping on this even more the next time idiots try to claim that evolution needs “critical analysis” or other such smelly crap. Spend a solid hour or more truly studying all that the fossil hall has to offer and there is no way a person can leave there thinking evolution is on shaky ground. To still think so would either mean the person is maliciously lying or willfully ignorant. Period.<\/p>\n

So, take a trip to Gainesville to check out this state treasure if you ever have the opportunity. It’s well worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Took a day trip up to Gainesville Friday to look around. I spent quite a bit of time at the Florida Museum of Natural History and really enjoyed it! From the outside the museum doesn’t look like much, and I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-gg","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1362,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1362","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":0},"title":"Escalating vandalism at Florida Museum of Natural History","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something unsavory, and I dare say cowardly going on behind the Florida Museum of Natural History. The facility located at the University of Florida, Gainesville is a gorgeous one with an entrancing butterfly rainforest exhibit and a Hall of Florida Fossils that a person can easily spend an entire\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 32 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 32 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1362#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/df-DSCN4343x-300x207.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":223,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=223","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":1},"title":"Florida twist on Creation Museum","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"An article in the Orlando Sentinel talks about a theme park designer who made rides for Universal and had also made displays at the new Kentucky Creation \"Museum.\" Sad, sad stuff, but some good quotes from professor Lawrence Krauss. And the headline is funny: Inherit the spin. \"We don't find\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":239,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=239","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":2},"title":"Dig site needs volunteers","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A Florida fossil dig site is looking for volunteers. NEWBERRY -- Now that the second field season of excavating fossils at a site in Newberry has ended, Florida Museum of Natural History paleontologists are gearing up to begin work on the approximately 220 skeletons and literally thousands of specimens uncovered\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Science in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=5"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":290,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=290","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":3},"title":"Dinosaur Month","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently, it's Dinosaur Month! This newspaper has a good list of places in Florida participating in some way. My favorites: The Florida Museum of Natural History: Just in time for Dinosaur Month, the museum has opened \"The Hall of Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life and Land.\" The exhibit will feature\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":614,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=614","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":4},"title":"Butterfly, motivation, Lucy, controversy","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"==> Sometimes I just sit back and think, \"well, yeah, I guess they have to come from somewhere.\" Butterflies used in science classes have to come from somewhere, but it's just not something I've ever thought about before now. Meet the Cousins. They run a butterfly farm. As butterfly farmers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=614#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":698,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=698","url_meta":{"origin":1008,"position":5},"title":"Gainesville event: Evidence for Evolution","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"September 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Caf\u00c3\u00a9 Scientifique Gainesville presents ... Evidence for Evolution: A Tour of Fossil Hall and Panel Discussion Saturday, September 13 1:30 pm to 4:30pm Florida Natural History Museum and Harn Art Museum Caf\u00c3\u00a9 Dr. Bruce MacFadden, Florida Museum Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, and graduate students will lead a tour of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science Cafes"","block_context":{"text":"Science Cafes","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=19"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}