While the coyotes howled on the outside, the dinosaurs stood silent on the inside.
At the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the goal is to tell the story of Earth and its inhabitants, regardless of whether they are alive today or they walked the planet many millions of years ago.
The coyotes howl in a museum wildlife center designed to show some of the animals which live in this region of the country and how humans share the time and space with them. The coyotes and several other animals all have special stories where they need human hands to help them.
"They're perfectly healthy but they ended up too tame and human-oriented," said Harvey Webster of the museum.
He tells the story of how the mother of the several coyotes was hit by a car and killed. She was pregnant, but the a knowledgeable person was nearby and gave the dead coyote a c-section, saving the litter. They have required human help ever since.
As for the dinosaurs in the museum, their voices and movements have been silent for millions of years. They fill up the room set aside for the huge creatures which walked the Earth long before humans appeared. The bones of the huge reptiles were discovered and dug up with much patience. Scientists put the bones together again and the dinosaurs stand in menacing poses in the museum.
But they are just poses. Their roars, bites, and movements have long been stilled, of course. Still, there is much that can be learned from their bones and from the specialists at the natural history museum.
"We try to create a deeper shared understanding of the natural world around us and our place with in it," said Evelyn Gates, executive director of the Cleveland Museum.
The Cleveland Museum covers a lot of history. It tries to chronicle the time from the beginning of the planet to the present day. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is located at 1 Wade Oval in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland.
Its website is www.cmnh.org.
