Administrator
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Museum & Art Gallery will be hosting a special event celebrating the unveiling of the renovated gallery space from 4 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 25. The event will be held in conjunction with the Penn State Museum Consortium’s "Night at the Museums."
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It took a series of events for things to fall into place. First, a mastodon had to live its life in the rolling terrain of Iowa, fossilize and be exposed by erosion in a nearby stream some 13,000 years later. Chris Widga, a vertebrate paleontologist at Penn State, had to find a home as director of the EMS Museum & Art Gallery. And Kaitlin Dasovich, a student in geosciences, had to develop a spark for undergraduate research.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Chris Widga, director or the Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Museum & Art Gallery and research professor of geosciences, will give the talk, “Museums as partners in broader impact activities,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 3, in 112 Walker Building at Penn State University Park.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Night at the Museums — a biannual event that offers students, faculty, staff and the local community an opportunity to explore free of charge various campus museums and galleries during extended evening hours — will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. on May 1 at the University Park campus.
This event not only promotes cultural engagement but also reflects Penn State's commitment to community involvement and educational outreach, according to Rita Graef, chair of the Penn State Museum Consortium, which organized the occasion.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The world was mesmerized by Colossal Biosciences’ recent announcement that they had cloned dire wolf pups, a species of canine that’s been extinct for more than 10,000 years. While experts have debated the “de-extinction” of these wolves, which are far more genetically similar to living grey wolf than to the original dire wolf, one thing is certainly true: An undergraduate student at Penn State recently catalogued a jawbone from one of Pennsylvania’s few dire wolf fossils.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For the second year in a row, fourth graders in the State College Area School District have been learning about the earth sciences with the help of geosciences experts in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS).
Physical specimens and samples are a critical part of research and training in geosciences and related disciplines. As field-based scientists, we often collect specimens to better understand earth systems. Hand samples, sediment and rock cores, thin sections, field notes and photographs–these are the physical vouchers of field research that are often further sub-sampled and analyzed in laboratory settings to piece together our understanding of the world. Where do these specimens go after the research is complete and the papers are published? They are the raw data of earth science research. As such, they are incredibly important to reproducible science. They are also key to connecting data to physical specimens in educational contexts.
The research and educational potential of these collections is immense. Samples come from deposits all over the world, from mines that are often historically important but are often no longer accessible. Individual specimens voucher historic EMS research. Published sample numbers align with physical specimens in drawers. Specimens can be made available for teaching, and align with authentic, specimen-based training in earth sciences research.
Search our collections database of earth materials (PSU Network only), here.
This is a test page for the digital kiosk that will be installed in the museum gallery.