The Museum of Idaho, Life in the Permian

We needed to have routine maintenance work done on our Suburu. So we drove over and made an appointment with our dealer in Idaho Falls. Spending the night, we decided to have my hearing aids at Costco,(free), repaired and decided to use the waiting time to visit the Museum of Idaho, The Museum hosts traveling exhibits, and the current one is, The Life of the Permian. As it fit our interests perfectly we had to see it!, (I taught High School and College Astronomy, Earth Science and Geology Classes). Entering the first room we were greeted with a fossil reproduction of an amphibian, Sclercephalus. Next to it was a three-dimensional model of what it was like. It moved and roared and its head followed as you moved around the display. As it was an amphibian it laid its eggs in the water, (By the way paleontologists know that the amniotic egg came before the chicken).

Next was a dimetrodon, which has a sail-like structure, that may have been used as a way of heating and cooling its body temperature, (moving in and out or sideways, the direct sun would have caused its huge top fin to act like a radiator).

The room also contained an Edaphosaurus, pavement lizard, and a Cotylorhynchus, which was called a cup lizard. Both of these survived the Extinction event but did not last long as the dinosaurs, reptiles, became the dominant life form.

There were also ammonites and lots of other life forms that survived this mass extinction but not the one at the end of the Cretaceous. One interesting fish was this shark with a row of teeth that looked like a rip saw, nightmares anyone?

The exhibit continued upstairs, and had several small mammals that developed, the creatures that we evolved from, (but not the one in this picture. Another of my favorites was the Crowned Alligator.

Probably most of my readers have already fallen asleep, but the Museum continued with other great Permian Exhibits. It then continued with exhibits of people, their accomplishment and tools used during Idaho’s settlement.

The last exhibit was a life size reconstruction of a Columbian Mammoth. This was of special interest to me as I collect fossils and have a partial skull section and scapula from one of these Giants. If you find yourself in Idaho Falls there are many other things to do but I really urge you to make a stop and visit The Museum Of Idaho! Clear skies Ps the dealership in Corpus Christie said we needed over three thousand dollars of maintenance work, our bill at our dealership was eight hundred and eighty-eight dollars……