At night in the museum, a Neanderthal skeleton leaves the vault
Natural history museum studies rare example
WASHINGTON - It is night at the National Museum of Natural History. In the Hall of Human Origins, the lights are dimmed. The audiovisual displays that fill the exhibit with apelike grunts and lectures on human evolution switch off in unison. Parents corral their children, and a security guard sweeps through the exhibit to shoo out stragglers. "You can come back when the museum opens at 10," she says, her tone stern. Then there is quiet.
But not for long. Night at the museum means it's time for one precious skeleton to leave its case.
That skeleton is brought out for Martin Haeusler, of the University of Zurich, who asked the museum to open the glass cabinet housing the 65,000-year-old Neanderthal bones. He has flown here from Switzerland, toting a 3-D scanner in a heavy black case, for a chance to survey it.
Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program and museum specialist Jennifer Clark enter the hall with chief of exhibit design Michael Lawrence, who carries an allimportant key to the Neanderthal case.
"You ready to go?" Potts asks Haeusler, who nods. "Then let's get started."
The skeleton, named Shanidar 3, is the only original Neanderthal skeleton displayed in the United States, and it's one of few ancient hominin specimens in the world on public display. These remains are rare, fragile and vulnerable to damage and decay. They're also human — they were part of a person not unlike ourselves, a member of a closely related species that lived at the same time as our ancestors.
The process for removing the specimen from the case is a closely-held secret. Before Lawrence opens it, he makes the onlookers promise not to discuss what happens next. Everyone — including this reporter — solemnly agrees.
Many ancient hominin remains are kept in safes in highly secure labs, accessible only to top scientists. Debates about how and when they're moved can get contentious: In 2008, several museums, including the NMNH, refused to participate in a U.S. tour of the Australopithecus skeleton known as "Lucy" because of the potential for the bones to be damaged.
"There is an interesting tension that exists between wanting to display original fossil human specimens and maintaining the ability to care for them, to make them secure, to protect them for as long as possible and to make them available for study," Potts says.
That last point is crucial, according to Potts. A fossil is not like a piece of art, existing mainly to be looked at. Making specimens available for research that can explain who we are and the world we live in is the whole point of having them.
"It's a way of honoring them and remembering who they were on their own terms rather than just treating them as objects in a museum," Potts says.
In 2010, the NMNH debuted a display that would enable Shanidar 3 to be both admired and understood. The skeleton is stored in a temperature-controlled case behind two panes of glass and multiple sets of locked doors that can be opened for visiting researchers. Potts estimated that scientists come to examine the specimen roughly once a year.
Museum officials are confident that these measures make the display case as secure as any locked laboratory vault. But that doesn't mean they're willing to share the details of how the bones are protected with just anyone.
While Lawrence opens the case, Haeusler has been busy turning the empty exhibit hall into a makeshift lab. On a table in a corner, he sets up his 3-D scanner — a complicated contraption of wires and lasers atop a tripod — which he will use to make copies of each of Shanidar 3's fragile ribs, hip bones and vertebrae.