Logan Ramsey
News Editor
What stories can skulls tell us? Some are lost to time, but through art and science, we can understand more than we ever have before.
This is an idea that fascinates Brandon Peecook, the new Curator of the Idaho Museum of Natural History and Curator of Paleontology, and a part of the inspiration for the newest exhibit Skulls: Everyone’s Got One.
‘Skulls’ opened on September 19 and will be open to the public until next September.
“Skulls are super dynamic. We all have them so we’re inherently interested in them and you can tell a million stories,” Peecook said.
As they were working with a small space, Peecook didn’t know what to do for a new fall exhibit until he realized how many fascinating fossils they had in the basement.
So they unearthed the fossils for a second time and packed the exhibit space with a combination of those fossils and 3D printed models, created by the Idaho Virtualization Laboratory (IVL).
“This exhibit is incredible to me because it is a mysterious art and science combo,” Peecook said.
As soon as Peecook officially started the project, the IVL got to work creating realistic models of skulls from all sorts of places on earth and vastly separate time periods.
They began their work before COVID-19 spread around the globe, and Jesse Pruitt, the IVL Manager, said that it didn’t make much of an impact on their work. They began working remotely and Pruitt brought the 3D printers to his home and printed from there.
The part that was challenging was the timeframe they had to be finished by.
“We have budgetary constraints and time constraints so getting these skulls to look as realistic as possible within budgetary and time constraints was pretty interesting,” said Pruitt.
Normally they use airbrushes to create detailed painting, but the timeframe didn’t allow that as they were still doing work on 3D modelling, “up until the last minute.” To ensure they finished the project on time, they had to use rattle paint.
Despite those challenges, they were able to create a packed exhibit with something interesting for everyone. In some cases, the models are nearly indistinguishable from the fossils.
One of Peecook’s favorite aspects of the exhibit is that no one specimen is the centerpiece. Everyone can walk in and find something that excites them.
“The marriage of people who have a scientific background and people who have an artistic background is what made this as awesome as it is,” Peecook said.
This exhibit is the only place where you can find many of the specimens featured.
Evelyn Volmer, a CPI Student, designed the model of Tiktaalik, a lobe-finned fish from the Late Devonian Period. The model is the first reconstruction of its kind.
Technology Specialist Timothy Gomes designed the model of the Sabertooth Salmon, a fish that went extinct in the late Miocene, from “basically nothing” because of damage to the fossil remains. ‘Skulls’ is the only place where you’ll find this model.
Walking through the exhibit, one wonders what experiences these skulls carry that have been lost to time. What stories could they tell us? Every fossil once belonged to a thinking creature with a life to live.
Although we can’t know every step they took, we can look at their skulls. It’s what remains of them and something they had that connects all of us.
