How Petrified Forest’s public fossil lab kept visitors connected through COVID-19

Visitors to Petrified Forest National Park’s Painted Desert Visitors Center can walk past a courtyard and watch paleontologists prepare real fossils. This NPS article, from the spring 2022 Park Paleontology News, shows how that Museum Demonstration Lab (the Demo Lab) kept going through the COVID-19 pandemic, staff turnover and construction.

What the lab is for

The Demo Lab was designed to put the park’s paleontological discoveries and museum collections into public view. Park paleontologists work with academic partners to reconstruct life in the Late Triassic, and the lab is the main place where staff share new finds, often showing fossils before they go on exhibit or into collections. Common fossils such as phytosaurs and metoposaurs may be on the bench, but new and significant specimens are more likely.

Recent items on the bench included:

• field jackets holding bones from the first azendohsaur, an extinct Triassic reptile distantly related to crocodiles, found in North America, with a manuscript under review at the time;
• new species of reptiles, lizards, fish, amphibians, freshwater sharks and other animals from the Thunderstorm Ridge microvertebrate locality, which shows a previously unknown diversity from the Late Triassic Chinle Formation;
• a well-preserved partial skeleton of the aetosaur Calyptosuchus wellesi, nicknamed “Gloria”;
• material of Revueltosaurus callenderi, including a partial articulated skeleton and skull;
• skulls of the metoposaur Anaschisma browni, including the world’s largest and the park’s most complete, with 100+ teeth still rooted in the upper jaw.

Before and after March 2020

Staff had converted a vacant room in the old school building, with two south-facing windows, two work benches with microscope stations and a flammable-storage cabinet. Before the pandemic, visitors came in through an outside door and talked with staff, and a monitor showed a live microscope view. In March 2020 the pandemic closed the park and the lab, giving staff a chance to restructure.

With visitors no longer allowed inside, staff tried a two-way baby monitor, then installed a hands-free intercom with a wireless microphone and an outdoor TV monitor linked to the microscope camera. Because the visitor center complex has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2017, changes could not harm its historic integrity. Staff can now work with both hands while explaining the screen in real time, and visitors stay longer and interact more meaningfully.

Outside the Demo Lab: the TV monitor to the left of the door, and the hands-free intercom with wireless microphone now used with the two-way baby monitors. NPS photos.

Other changes:

• Finding the lab. The lab sits at the back of the complex, so new sandwich-board signs were made and later updated for the temporary relocation of the main lobby during construction at the end of 2021.
• Looks and comfort. Custom curtains hide shelf contents, and the second bench shows larger items such as phytosaur skulls and big field jackets. The south windows turned the room into a greenhouse, so after fans and a swamp cooler a standing air conditioner was installed with its vent routed through an existing window, avoiding changes to the historic structure.
• Tools. A new air compressor for pneumatic tools, a small dust collector and additional microscope parts let preparators tailor stations and take on more varied projects.

Changes to the Demo Lab between March 2020 (left) and February 2022 (right). NPS photos.

Visitors

The 2020 lull let staff try new outreach, including #fossilfriday social media posts and a seven-part YouTube mini-series made for National Fossil Day in October 2020 and 2021. Winter is slower, and visitation was expected to rise from mid-March with spring break.

Next

Staff hoped to reduce window glare and reflections, add tool capacity, keep improving wayfinding, keep the Interpretation Division informed of the lab schedule and add a 3D scanning and printing station. Many visitors say the lab gave them their first sight of someone handling fossils, let alone a completely new species.

Sources

• National Park Service, Petrified Forest National Park, “Small but Mighty: Petrified Forest National Park’s Public Fossil Preparation Lab Grows Despite COVID-19 Pandemic”, by Diana Boudreau, Fossil Preparator, Park Paleontology News, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 2022; the photographs of visitors and a children’s group are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.