[upbeat music]
(Speaker) The Yale Peabody Museum,
I really think is an icon for the city of New Haven,
for the state of Connecticut and for New England.
It's where so many people and I count myself as well,
learned about the world around us,
understood our place in the universe.
♪
(Mariana) Fossil collections at the Peabody are amazing.
They just are.
But also, we have a lot of firsts,
and not a lot of museums can say that.
We have a lot of what are called holotypes.
So it's the first specimen
ever found of that dinosaur, for example.
And that is, first of all, very exciting.
And second, you start thinking about it
and it's every single other one that has ever been found
has been described based on our collection.
One of the key
parts of this whole project
is the Fossil Hall.
Burke Hall is the heart of the Peabody Museum.
[wrench sound]
Some of the first ever fossil mounts
are being reworked to be displayed to,
you know, the next generation of museum visitors.
(Vanessa) With regard to our upcoming renovation due to open in 2024,
we've had the fortune of working with
Research Casting International
who's based up in Trenton, Ontario, Canada,
and they're a professional firm who brings to us expertise
and skill in mounting specimens, particularly
the very large mounts that are here at the Peabody.
They helped us with deinstallation,
removing these large specimens from their original mount
posture in the hall, and also with the conservation.
We're working with them to revise the pose
as well as integrate new materials
into these mounts to make them the most complete possible.
The reason why we want to do this is,
first of all, we want to update our knowledge.
The science doesn't stop, and so we want to be updated.
Second, all materials age,
and so I think we came in at the right time
to do a lot of this work, a lot of this treatment
and preparation to prevent any damage
that could have happened in the future.
[tranquil music]
(Speaker 1) Trenton, Ontario
is a small town about an hour and a half east of Toronto.
We're located on the Bay of Quinte,
which is kind of the gateway to the Trent-Severn Waterway.
[stream water running]
(Speaker 2) Very scenic.
A lot of tourists come here in the summer.
It's away from the sound and the hub of Toronto, we're like a
nice, quiet community.
(Speaker 1) It is a bit of a contrast what we do in here
and what the scenery is like outside.
It's like a boating and kind of vacation area
[heavy rock music] [machine noise]
and then we have heavy steel work going on
♪
and giant dinosaurs and all sorts of creatures.
A lot of people are surprised when they hear
what we do in here.
I don't think anybody realized what we actually do.
♪
We are Research Casting International.
Right now we're about 50,000 square feet, 40 employees
and we've been in business 35 years.
Companies that do what we do, you probably
count them on one hand.
Of all the companies in the world
that do this sort of thing, we're probably the largest.
(Matt) For the Yale Peabody project
we're doing a number of specimens
which are pretty amazing, like this archelon
we've been looking at
for a long time it's one of our favorite specimens
and one of mine
specifically is the brontosaur that we're doing and you know,
having things that were collected by Marsh
and getting to work on them
are a pretty amazing thing to be able to do.
It's pretty iconic I think.
It's just because we get to work on these massive creatures and
the brontosaur itself is,
when I think of a dinosaur, that's the first dinosaur
I think of and a lot of kids feel that way.
We're very excited to work on it.
It's pretty cool work.
[upbeat rock music]
When we start a project,
we do all the cleaning, conservation, preparation first.
Each person has their own station
and they work on an individual component of a specimen.
We usually start off by cleaning the dinosaur bones
with chemicals like acetone, ethanol and sometimes alcohol.
So we start by removing
any of the grime or dust
that has been built up on the specimens
and then sometimes we use an air scribe to remove old plaster
that's been covering the bones.
There's lots of steps involved, and then that would go
to the blacksmiths.
[machine noise]
(Brian) Once the bones come from the preparators
and they're all cleaned and consolidated,
they store them in the storage area in our room
and we move them to our sandbox as you can see here.
They're supported in the sandbox
and then we start measuring for an armature.
Obviously, this being a historically significant fossil,
we have to take a lot of care to preserve it and preserve all
the numbering and markings on it and the history behind it.
These armatures protect the bone.
It also doesn't destroy any of the fossil.
It's noninvasive,
and you can remove any bone from the mount that way.
[lift machinery] beep, beep, beep
After all the armatures are done,
we build the support steel for it
and we start building the pose.
[sound of welder sparks]
into the desired pose.
It's going to look a lot more dynamic.
It looks more in motion than it did before.
(Vanessa) We want the specimens to be interesting and lifelike,
even though they're static,
and so that can just take very small changes
in the way that the head is positioned
or that the tail is bent and turned.
This is revised by new research
and it's informed by new collections.
We try to find fossils and increase the data set
available to us to study and interpret
how an organism may have changed through time,
what its paleoenvironment may have been like,
what its locomotion may have been like.
[warm relaxing music]
(David) All of the tremendous science that's been done over the past
many decades is informing what we're able to do for this
this next generation of display.
We've got great partners who are helping us do that.
Working with RCI has been a really smooth experience for us.
Their approach to their work is one of the highest standards
when it comes to the materials and the techniques that they use
and the care that they bring to our materials.
We as an institution have entrusted RCI with
our most precious specimens, and they in return
are really taking this material to the next level
and presenting it to the world in such a way
that it will be enjoyed and learned from for years to come.
Knowing that the work that I'm doing now is going to be up
for another century.
Is, it's pretty humbling that I've been given this opportunity
to work on such a historically significant animal and
it's pretty amazing that my work is going to outlast me.
I just hope that 90 years from now,
people like me and paleontologists
will look at it and be like they did a good job.
(Peter) Working on the Yale Peabody project has been a blessing.
Yeah, it's been a really, really nice project to work on.
This was the beginning of paleontology
and these specimens
that we're working on were the specimens
that started paleontology on that road.
All the history behind it all, in my mind, it's just amazing.
♪