One of the best parts of being a travel and adventure writer is when my two main foci—skiing and science—somehow intersect. While it tends to happen by happenstance, it’s reaffirming of the interconnectedness of everything, and I’m quick to make journalistic hay of it.
For instance, I began a book about the study of reptiles and amphibians with a strange vignette from a Finnish ski resort high above the Arctic Circle where, in spring, venomous European vipers emerged from hibernation to sun in exposed groundcover next to the T-bar. I hadn’t known of this phenomenon when I’d been sent there, but every local who rode that lift in May was well-apprised, sliding casually by the coiled creatures and paying them no attention. What? Me, I was a kid in a candy store. How did they survive so far north? Was this where the expression snow snakes originated?
On rare occasions, I have chance to facilitate the intersection myself. As I finalized plans for a ski assignment in Switzerland this spring, I was simultaneously researching a story for Canadian Geographic on how technology has radically changed what we know about dinosaurs—from their feathered coverings, colours and patterns to their egg-laying, development and parenting habits; from their growth, posture and gait to their food, digestive habits and environments. Deep in my reading I found reference to a Swiss paleontologist who’d created a one-of-a-kind dinosaur museum outside Zurich. As that was where I’d land, of course I would visit.
On a rainy Sunday in March, the Sauriermuseum in Aathal, occupying a one-time textile factory, had already seen a thousand visitors, literally bubbling with childish squeals of delight and excited chatter. Outside, the building is marked by a colourful model of Spinosaurus, the bizarre, gigantic amphibious predator first described in 1915 whose land-versus-water habits are still hotly debated. With this summer’s upcoming instalment of the never-to-go-extinct Jurassic Park movie franchise—Jurassic World: Rebirth—featuring a Spinosaurus for the first time, this seemed portentous, and an opportunity to revisit humanity’s endless fascination with these talismans of an ancient, lost world that we’ve only begun to fathom. And what better way than through the eyes of a man who has dedicated his existence to the cause?
When we meet, visionary proprietor, HJ “Kirby” Siber, is naturally happy to see his museum full. “It is my life’s work,” he tells me, “but that’s not what gives me most pleasure.” Because museum revenue allows his team to continue their work as one of the world’s pre-eminent commercial dinosaur discovery and preparatory institutions, Siber can indulge his true passion. “Without days like today we couldn’t do the work we do, but what I still love most is discovering intact fossils that are scientifically significant. It’s hunting for and then discovering treasure nobody has seen before.”
As I soon discover, Siber is also a big-picture thinker on the evolution of planet Earth, from its birth coalescing out of stardust, to its two billion years of lifeless solitude, slow geologic evolution, first appearance of life, and all that each has meant to the planet in terms of what it wrought to what appeared when and why—including ourselves.
I will eventually see galleries that touch on all of these topics, but Siber tours me first through the museum’s current special exhibit, “T. rex Trinity,” a massive creature that causes visitors to simultaneously cringe and jaw-drop. Wow is clearly the same in any language.
Other galleries focus on Stegosaurus, the diversity of hadrosaurs (those crested, duck-billed guys), carnivorous therapods and the feathered dinos and earliest birds derived from them. There are giant sauropods like Diplodocus, dinosaur eggs and babies, and fossilized footprints. Not only do they comprise some of the most exquisitely prepared and displayed fossils and casts I’ve ever seen, but they’re accompanied by a trove of dinosaur iconography and memorabilia that includes collections of T-shirts, movie posters, toys, jewelry and products ranging from motor oil and foodstuffs to a dinosaur-tipped condom mounted on a banana.
If you’re a dinosaur nerd, it’s the place for you—much what motivated Siber in the first place.
His first love was mineral and crystals, early interest in fossils a loose one until he read a book that tracked these from primitive one-celled animals to trilobites to dinosaurs to humans, opening his eyes to the incredible history of life. Returning from a scholarship at the University of Montana in Missoula, Siber had wanted to become a movie director, a medium he loved but which had no commercial foothold in Switzerland. With his cinematic mind piqued by paleontology, however, he saw a museum as a way to look at the crucial moments of Earth’s evolution as a series of vignettes; a movie starting billions of years ago.
With the diversity of material in Siber’s museum covering literally everything, it’s clear his 30-year mission has been like storyboarding a movie. “Now I’m ready to make this exhibition that I dreamed of,” he tells me. “In a flash I saw how all this was connected, and from then on felt both ambition and duty to explain this interconnectedness. It gives you a different perspective on every life form, every mineral crystal, every meteorite from the far reaches of the universe. And we’re really the first generation of humans who can grasp this.”
He also notes that while it’s great kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, these animals are but one point of entry for this immense world of millions of life forms that have existed through time. “The field of paleontology is evolving rapidly, and it’s fun to be part of it,” says Siber. “Every week there’s new information published on dinosaurs, and every beast we discover is another part of the mosaic that helps to complete the picture.”
A picture I’m glad I stopped to look at.
Leslie Anthony is a biologist, writer and author of several popular books on environmental science.
