Sam Noble Museum Trip
The Territorial Legislature of the future state of Oklahoma founded a natural history museum on the campus of the University of the Territory of Oklahoma in Norman in 1899.The museum is now part of The University of Oklahoma. The museum has had a long and distinguished history since 1899, including being known as the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History opened the doors on May 1st, 2000. The building is a 198,000 square foot facility housing labs,12 collections, offices, libraries, and exhibit. There are 50,000 feet of galleries opened to the public that hold over 4 billion years of Oklahoma’s natural history are featured in thousands of artifacts. The museum offers the public natural and historical exhibits that are constantly being updated and added onto as scientists keep uncovering more historical evidence every day.
Museum staff are constantly making scientific investigations to preserve and develop a greater understanding and appreciation of natural resources and human cultural heritage. The museum staff also put their hearts into creating exhibits that explain, interpret, and illustrate the natural history of the state and surrounding area to help visitors get an “up close” experience, which beats just reading a textbook or history book any day.
Our experience at the Sam Noble Museum was all behind the scenes with the Director of Collections, Katrina Menard, and the Collection Manager, Melissa Sadir, where they could answer any questions we had. They took us up to where the insect collections are kept in the museum and showed us around the two rooms where they had their collections split up. The first room we went into had just rows and rows of cabinets that were full of pinned insects in drawers. It was incredible, it was like a library but with no books, just insects. This library of insects encompases a collection of over 500,000 insects from over 100 different countries! The cabinets were put in order by their Order and their Families. They showed us insects that are native to Oklahoma, which was very helpful knowledge for bettering our own insect collections. We even saw the infamous Camp Bond Bug inside their collections. Dr. Menard and Melissa Sadir were able to answer any of our questions and were glad to show us any of the insects we asked about. They showed bugs that had been pinned several decades ago and insects that had just recently been pinned the day before. Sam Noble Museum Trip
When they took us to the second room it was more of a preparation room and storage, but they did have dozens of jars filled with insects and alcohol. The soft bodied insects have to be kept in alcohol to better preserve them. They are much harder to pin because of the fact that they will shrivel and shrink with time if they are pinned. Insects with a hard exoskeleton can be preserved for several years. While in the second room, we were shown how to pin insects and what the best techniques for this were. We were also shown how to point insects, because some insects are too small to be pinned but you don’t want to preserve them in alcohol either. The pointing process sounded more difficult, in my opinion, than the pinning process. We also got to take a closer look at some of the insects. We were allowed to look at any of the insects in the jars, and they had some that had just been pinned. Others were still in a case, but we got to look at them under a microscope or magnifying class. They were really informative and welcoming to us. It was an incredibly useful learning tool and an overall great experience.
Contributors: Tyler Sousa, Hannah Warner, and Bree Davis 
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