Steve and I are recent re-enrolled members of the always intriguing Nevada Museum of Art in Reno (it's a 60 mile drive and a whole lot of fun).

We trekked to experience the exhibit Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada. "Long before humans walked the Earth, Nevada was submerged beneath the waters of an ancient sea. Explore this underwater realm and meet the giant sea creatures—also known as ichthyosaurs—that called it home. These marine reptiles lived 250 million years ago and this exhibition debuts many of Nevada’s spectacular, but never-before-seen fossils." How totally cool, right?
How could we resist "Dive into Nevada’s prehistoric past through the display of original fossils, including a 33-foot specimen. Hear stories of Nevada’s early and present-day paleontologists and fossil hunters, including John C. Merriam, Annie Alexander, Charles Camp, and Martin Sander. And learn how Nevada’s extinct underwater animals connect us to a larger global community of scientific discovery."
"Through a unique blend of paleontology, art, history, and design, this groundbreaking exhibition explores the rise and fall of these ancient sea creatures, revealing how an understanding of the prehistoric past and evolutionary change over time may in fact help us to anticipate our own future."
I was mesmerized by this 84-foot long, 3-D, animated, amazing, immersive wall installation where an 80-foot ichthyosaur comes to life and responds to the visitor’s movement. The artist worked directly with the scientist Martin Sander, showcasing a collaboration between art and science which unfolded before our very eyes. Wow.
This exhibit was amazing as it allowed us to wander through displays representing Nevada mountain ranges where we ogled more than 20 fossil specimens excavated between 1868 and 2022.
Did you know that Nevada has a state fossil? It is the place where there is the largest number of species of ichthyosaur of anytime, anyplace, and it’s the place with the largest shape diversity—large, small, large head, small head, largest body size. All the interesting parts in ichthyosaur evolution happened in the Triassic, and the hot spot is Nevada.
I found this fossil of a pregnant ichthyosaur, with several baby skeletons, so interesting. It suggests that they gave birth to live young!

We met paleontologist Annie Alexander who, in 1905, joined an expedition to Nevada’s Humboldt Range in search of fossils. During the trip, her team excavated 25 ichthyosaur specimens, some of which were the largest and most complete of their kind ever discovered in North America. The museum shared her 1905 photographs and field journal pages. I need to learn more about Annie.

We also learned the story of fossil hunter Mary Anning, the first woman to discover an ichthyosaur fossil in Great Britain in 1811. She is considered the unsung hero of fossil discovery. Despite her growing reputation for finding and identifying fossils, the scientific community was hesitant to recognize her work. Male scientists - who frequently bought the fossils Mary would uncover, clean, prepare and identify - often did not credit her discoveries in their scientific papers on the finds, even when writing about her groundbreaking ichthyosaur discovery. How wonderful to see she is finally getting the recognition she deserves.
As we turned a corner, we were faced with a sign that read, "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING DEEP TIME. 250 MILLION YEARS AGO." We were asked to think of this room-sized artwork titled Swell as a portal or a time machine that took us to an ancient world where sea dragons ruled the oceans and humans were nowhere to be found.
I'm not 100% sure we were transported but we were certainly entranced by the imagery undulating before us. And humans were found.
The image 'popping' up is Steve's head. Just watching this gif cracks me up.
The next exhibit made my heart happy. FOSSILS TO FIGURES: A BOY'S DINOSAUR DREAM tells the story of a young boy named Jack Arata who traveled with his family from California to Berlin, Nevada, to visit the newly opened Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (in 1956). His family had read about the opening of the new attraction in Sunset Magazine.
After his visit, Jack's enthusiasm for fossils and prehistoric animals remained. He constantly drew and sketched dinosaurs and played with small plastic dinosaur toys from the local five-and-dime. Later in life, his childhood interest evolved into a fervent hobby: collecting vintage toy dinosaurs. Over time, his collection grew to include rare pieces, ranging from models made for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair to toys advertising early silent films and Sinclair Oil. From pewter and brass to rubber, ceramic, plaster, and plastic, each toy tells a story, reflecting the place and time of its creation. Today, the Arata collection is one of the largest vintage toy dinosaur collections in the United States.
Steve and I, along with Bob and Jenny, explored the fascinating Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in 2022 (blog link here). I think if I had been a young child when I first visited, like Jack, I too would have amassed quite the collection. So amazing.
This was fun as we were introduced to Great Basin Brewery when we moved to Tahoe in 2012. Interestingly, we learned that another not-so-ancient discovery during those digs led scientists to an enduring friendship and collaboration. It was a beer bottle from the Great Basin Brewery in Sparks—owned by Tom and Bonda Young at the time—that featured an ichthyosaur on the label.
What brought us to the museum on this particular day was its Art Bite lecture series whose title was The Birth of Icky IPA. "Tom Young, Founder and Brewmaster, recounts the origin story of the Icky IPA, its iconic logo and the history of the Great Basin Brewing Company." What a perfect tie-in with this exhibit!
A geologist before turning his attention to brewing, Tom named one of his first beers after the creature. When the Sander team sought him out, they found a willing and able partner in Young who even helped on excavations (physically and financially) and made Great Basin beer trucks available to the scientists to transport fossils and materials to and from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. In turn, Sander named the new species of ichthyosaur after the Youngs: Cymbospondylus youngorum.