Gnatalie is a sauropod now in display at the Natural History Museum of L.A. County.
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Courtesy Natural History Museum of L.A. County
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Topline:
Gnatalie the green fossil is L.A.’s new community dinosaur. You can see it for free, starting Sunday.
The G is silent: Gnatalie is a 150-million-year-old sauropod that took 15 years to dig up from a hillside in Utah. From head to toe it’s about the size of two-and-a-half school buses.
Why Gnatalie is green: The fossilization process over millions of years replaced some of Gnatalie’s bone material with celadonite, a soft sea-green colored mineral.
The museum’s “front porch”: Admission to the NHM is $18 for adults and $7 for children 3 to 12 years old. Admission to NHM Commons is free in order to help remove any barriers people may have to stepping into a museum.
The Natural History Museum of L.A. County on Sunday will unveil a 75,000-square-foot renovated wing the museum hopes will attract more visitors. It’s called NHM Commons, a bright and airy two-story space with a café on the first floor and exhibits on the second floor.
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Gnatalie the green dinosaur to debut at the Natural History Museum
That space includes Gnatalie, a brand new species of sauropod and the first ever green dinosaur skeleton mounted for display, according to Lori Bettison-Varga, the museum’s director and president. The museum held a preview event on Wednesday.
Gnatalie (the “g” is silent) is a big deal. It took scientists 15 years to dig up Gnatalie from a hillside in Utah. From head to toe it’s about the length of two-and-a-half school buses, its head looking out two south-facing windows. No other sauropod like it is on display.
Yes, its fossilized bones have a green shade. That’s from the celadonite mineral that replaced its bones over 150 million years.
Erika Durazo, paleontological preparator with NHM’s Dinosaur Institute, worked on the project that unearthed Gnatalie.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist
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Gnatalie's bones have sea-green layer from fossilization.
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Jason Rodriguez/LAist
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“The color is beautiful,” said Erika Durazo, paleontological preparator with NHM’s Dinosaur Institute. “[The dinosaur] is in the center where the sun hits it so I can imagine that throughout the day, the green coloring will be highlighted differently."
The museum’s ‘front porch’
The Natural History Museum is L.A.’s first museum. It was founded in 1913 in Exposition Park, south of downtown. It has other dinosaur bones on display, but museum leaders emphasize that it also has important insect, gem, and historical collections.
NHM Commons is a new, 75,000 square foot new addition to the Natural History Museum of L.A. County.
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Jason Rodriguez
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LAist
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The plaza in front of the renovated wing was designed to include rocks and plants in consultation with the museum’s Native American Advisory Council.
Museum leaders want the new NHM Commons to be the museum’s “front porch” that welcomes everyone, in particular working class residents of South L.A., some of whom may not know what the building is and are hesitant to approach and wander into it. There is no entry fee for NHM Commons.
Admissions: The Commons is free. Tickets to go deeper into the museum are $18 for adults, with discounts for children, students, and seniors. Children 2 and under get in free.
Good to know: Parking is available for $18.
More recent LA history on display
The museum hopes visitors see themselves in a 16-foot-tall and 80-foot-long mural across from Gnatalie that tells L.A.’s history over the last several hundred years, called L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective. The 1981 mural was painted by local artist Barbara Carrasco, but it remained in storage for decades.
“We are building more and more bridges with our community,” said William Estrada, NHM curator and chair of NHM’s history department.
"L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective" is a 1981 mural by Barbara Carrasco, pictured, that is on permanent display at NHM Commons.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
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LAist
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The mural depicts Native Americans who lived in this region before the arrival of Europeans, a massacre of Chinese residents in 1871, 19th century Black entrepreneur Biddy Mason, orange groves, and the Hollywood sign.
“I think this mural, really, is one of those bridges that speaks to this museum being a museum of, for, and with Los Angeles,” Estrada said.
