quest's end... (museum quest CONCLUSION!)

Location: Auckland

Baskets Left: 1
_

i'd failed my mission to dispose of the three kete o te wananga (the tombs of all maori mystic knowledge) baskets... though i'd managed to alert ms. rhonwyn of the situation i didn't think there was much hope of her salvaging my bungle up...

_
whiro, maori god of suffering and darkness, had caught up with me in auckland. this was the end of the quest for more than one reason.

the most obvious being with him on my tail (nearly literally) there was no way i could safely hold onto this basket. besides that i had no way now of getting rid of it. i'd hit every spot on the list ms. rhonwyn had given me...

okay all but one. however picton (which i had to skip due to the LAST time whiro caught up with me) was halfway across new zealand. now i was out of tickets and money to get around the country. meaning i was stuck on my own two feet to get me anywhere, and with a tireless immortal deity chasing me down my odds of making it out of auckland, that alone to picton were pretty much 0%.

in desperation at the auckland war memorial museum i'd come up with a REALLY stupid off the cusp plan. one that almost seemed to be working. not that i knew how it was going to actually save the basket... and there certainly was no chance i was going to live through it. that was for sure.

the key to my plan was that whiro chase me. which could only end in him catching me...

the reason i say this is that after running dozens and dozens of blocks through auckland i couldn't run anymore!

i'd done pretty good if you ask me. i'd managed to keep ahead of the immortal whiro, with his seemingly never ending supply of energy, and for a guy with supernatural powers he runs like an edmontosaur! with the speed advantage i had on my ornithomimid-like juvenile tyrannosaur body, i'd nearly lost whiro three times. the problem was that was me sprinting, and i'd of course have to slow back down to regain my energy. at which point he'd catch up...

till i finally reached a point where i couldn't run anymore at all. my legs were dead, and i could hardly stand up because of my gasping for air. the spot was actually pretty cool (though i never did learn what it was called). it was a stadium of some sort, and in front was a polynesian style totem pole. had it been different circumstances this would have been a great spot...

but as craig used to say "this is the way it is." whiro was once again caught up with me, and there was NOTHING i could do about it...

i'd fallen in an exhausted pile at the base of the totem pole which is where whiro caught up to me.

looking at this photo i didn't realize how well i could have camouflaged with the flowers just beside the darn pole!!!

"you have given me a good hunt kauwheke te kura [ancestor of the moa], but you're lack of courage here at the end disgusts me. could my brother tane not find a more brave warrior to be his champion and face me in battle?" whiro seemed to complain as he close in on me. wielding his mere or maori jade stone club he showed his intent to end my existence...

i let out a scream... not that it mattered the stadium was quite abandoned during this dull afternoon.

whiro laughed. "i shall not lie to you kauwheke te kura, i take great pleasure in this deed. not just for the trouble you have caused me in recovering the kete o te wananga i rightfully deserve, but because of this pathetic display of cowardice you give me now!"

he was right i realized out of my fear. i stopped screaming, and suddenly i had an odd calm about me. it was scary people of the web wide world. suddenly i didn't care i was about to die. i'd accepted it as matter of fact, and just started thinking through very detachedly how the last few seconds were going to play out...

"very well," i agreed. though i was exhausted, i stood up before him. "i shall face you at least standing on my own two feet."

whiro made an audible sound of satisfaction. he seemed to take a moment to savour the anticipation of the kill...

however my fight or flight instinct had kicked back in, and for once... my suppressed tyrannosaur instincts must have been stirred... i wasn't opting for flight now. i was going to fight!

it was almost like slow motion, but not really. my brain just registered stuff really fast (definitely unlike normal!!!) as they happened. whiro gripped his greenstone club tighter, and started to draw his arm back for the killing strike. as he started to advance on me i lunged at him. bearing my full killer crushing jaws at his chest...

had he not been made of greenstone himself, and not immortally or magic (i'm not sure which one) invulnerable, my bite would probably have killed him dead as i punctured his chest with my teeth and crushed his ribs with my incredibly strong bite. sadly though he was made of greenstone and he was invulnerable.

i just slammed off his torso as though i'd run into a brick... er greenstone wall (though in my defense i was defending myself. normally i'd never run into a wall). some of my teeth broke... its a good thing that in my case they'll grow back.

whiro stopped for moment. "i'm impressed their is a spirit of warrior buried somewhere within you," he stopped and starred at me. a long penetrating glare as though he was reading my very essence. "yes. under all that pākehā [maori word for european... though i think whiro used it here to mean modern society vs. traditional mysticism fearing cultures] conditioning lies a monster's soul waiting to be unleashed. in fact it is ready to come out any moment."

was he referring to my tyrannosaurid ways i'd been spending my whole life to avoid?

suddenly stopping whiro became very distracted by something afar. he turned to face it. just as i contemplated running again, whatever it was hit me too...

it was as though a shock wave from a nuclear blast had hit me... but yet not. i was unbelievably dizzy. something majorly magic had just happened! i suspected i knew what it was.

indeed my suspicion was correct... for back at the auckland museum part of my plan had panned out in a way i'd never anticipated...

remember that panel i'd been really stressed about in the marae. well there was a very good reason i was stressed about it. take a really close look at the picture...

did you notice the kete basket i'd hidden in the panel? well that's what i did.

the plan had been to hide it there, and hope i could distract whiro long enough for ms. rhonwyn to arrange for someone else to go and retrieve the basket and get it to picton.

only something very unexpected happened...

despite my having spent a few hours in the auckland museum and it doing nothing, now the basket suddenly decided that there was actually enough mana in the marae and that it was going to finally phase out of our reality...

somehow my plan had worked!!!!!!!!!!

i certainly wasn't expecting any of that to work out.

I'D ACCOMPLISHED THE MISSION!

not that i was going to get to enjoy the fruits of my victory.

as the pulse wave from the basket disappearing subsided (i'm thinking it was that much stronger a pulse of magic because the whole set of baskets had now gone) whiro snapped around to me. there was no need to guess what was going through his rock head.

gone was the composed god. before me was a crazed beast. he hunched over in a frightful manner, and emitted a most vicious growl. in this feral stance he advanced on me, mere posed before him.

as he closed, whiro pounced into the air to bring his entirety down upon me for the finished strike...

my life flashed before my eyes... wow had i seriously done so much and yet so little in my nearly five years of life?!?

i can remember in vivid detail, him descending on me in slow motion. my magic sense kicked in as an intense dizziness hit me once more. i thought this was my detecting my mystic natured doom finishing my existence...

little did i know behind me something was materializing...

before i know it a second greenstone figure swung in from over top me, and smashed whiro out of mid air! it was the awesome combat move i'd ever seen! (probably because it saved my life rather than it's kung funess). this new atua's (god i was assuming) hit sent whiro flying back several metres, and his mere flying from his clawed hands.

the comer took up a clearly aggressive stance between me and whiro (i smartly hid behind that statue). "you are to cease this at once whiro, and depart this realm forever!" it commanded in a really pissed off voice.

whiro's voice hissed in reply "so you finally dare to show yourself brother," ah i was right, the new comer was a god... as all the maori gods were related to each other. "this was your doing wasn't it. sending the kete back to the upper heavens. you and you're pathetic champion may have thwarted my reclaiming them, but neither of you shall live to enjoy your victory!!!"

suddenly a loud buzz filled the air as a great shadow fell from the sky to surround whiro. it was a massive army of his minions, the mosquitoes and sandflies, just like the ones that had attacked me in rotorua only there were way more of them here!... for a moment they menacingly, and very intimidatingly swarmed above their master...

than in unnaturally organized columns the legion of bugs charged my defender full on. sending him reeling from their impact. within seconds he was overwhelmed by the pests. though individually they were nothing. as an army their power was incredible. as the buzzing of their efforts grew deafeningly loud one could hear over the crunch and crack of rock... despite his greenstone composition my guardian was literally breaking under their assault!!!

just as all hope seemed lost for both him and me there came from under the buzzing and crunching a echoed voice, that despite being quite inaudible, resounded.

there was a great light, and my magic dizziness went into overdrive, as my defender finished casting his spell or incantation. the swarm of insects ignited as the powerful enchantment simply vaporized them (or something... i'm no wizard, and couldn't tell you the technical terminology for it... all i can say is they weren't there anymore).

my defender pulled himself off the ground. the breaks and fissures in his once smooth flawless greenstone body were now evident as this damage caused him to creak and crack as he moved.

"i warned you whiro," he bellowed in a both furious, but yet sadly disappointed tone. "just as i did thousands of years ago. once again you leave me no choice but to use the kete tuateu against you."

whiro who till now had been amazed and shocked into inaction by the destruction of his minions once again snapped into his bestial state and blindly rushed his brother.

once again my defender began his unearthly echoing chant, and a very very intense spell shot forth... striking whiro...

i could just make out through the humming of the spell, and the loud echo of my guardian's chanting whiro scream "i will not return to rarohenga [maori underworld]!" with this resolve he seemed to shoulder off the blast for a moment, but than the chanting increased volume and whiro started to demateralize!

moments later it was done whiro had been engulfed and swallowed by the blinding energy.

just like that the quest was over. both the kete AND whiro were gone... yet there remained something to remind me of what had just been happening.

my guardian walked over to me as i lay on the ground in a my exhausted, terrorified, and quizzy pile. looking up at him i expected him to speak. yet he said nothing. he just tilted his head so that it was alined with my own.

there we stayed for, what felt like anyway, a few minutes.

than from behind my saviour a bright glow erupted from... well it looked kinda like a crack through... thin air. he started to turn towards it as though to make his exit...

in all the confusion, action, and near death experience i hadn't pondered with my small brain who this might be. suddenly my neurons fired up on the subject, and i figured it out quick! like normal big brained human quick!!!

could this be tane? maori god of the forest. the one who had acquired the kete o te wananga in the first place.

rather than answer my questions about my guardian it simply raised more.

• why had he saved me?
• why hadn't he intervened sooner?
• if he could have sent whiro back to the underworld why hadn't he done that sooner?
  
• if he didn't want the baskets to fall into whiro's hands why hadn't he just taken them?
• why were the baskets going back the higher plains of reality now after being on earth for so long?
• was ms. rhonwyn in on all this?
• could he help me with my new magic problem?
• what was going to happen next? was i going to have to worry about whiro escaping?

as the glow increased, and he started to walk into it desperate for some answers i called out. "tane?"

with his back still turned to me the god stopped for a moment. rather than answer my question it simply said "i thank you."

it than resumed walking into the light which was incredibly intense now. a second later snapped off as though by a switch, and the god (tane???) was gone now just like whiro and the baskets...

THE END...

of the museum quest anyways... my life would go on... and in ways i couldn't possibly imagine. which is saying something considering what i saw today!

(Production Note: So now begins Traumador: Year 1.5)

no where to run... (museum quest part 26)

Location: Auckland War Memorial Museum

Baskets Left: 1

it should have been over people of the web wide world...

i'd hit (nearly) every stop on ms. rhonwyn's list, yet i still had one of the flax artifact baskets. even after going round the auckland museum's maori hall twice it was still here...

this was a big problem, though not an entirely unsolvable one mind you.

i'd been forced to skip all my stops in picton, by what i think most would consider acceptable reasons. if i could figure out a way to get back to picton than i'd probably be okay. not that it was going to be easy. ms. rhonwyn had given me a set of rental vouchers, free tickets, and money to get from one end of new zealand to the other. all of it was gone now. she'd been specific that i not miss stops so i won't have to back track...

now i was half a country from where i needed to be.

that was just the problem if i were keeping it solvable mind you... of course it wasn't anymore.

due to a brand new factor, literally walking onto the scene.

whiro the maori god of darkness had finally caught up with me... which was almost an extraordinary event (if not for the peril it caused anyway). i hadn't seen him on the north island at all... only his minions... i'd been wondering if he'd been able to make the crossing to the north island or not. apparently he could it would seem.

the only good bit of news out of all of it, was that whiro didn't know where i was in the museum.

i'd managed to hide just in time when he arrived (if not for my newly acquired "magic sense" i'd have had it!). not that it was going to really save me for long...

he seemed to have an uncanny ability to track me... the only time i can think of that i lost him was at the mirror lakes (he just walked off into the woods for some reason)... so even if i managed to sneak past him out of the building he was bound to catch up quick.

that wasn't even mentioning i had no transport. i'd returned my last rental car when i got into auckland. meaning i'd have to find a car or something out of town... which would take time... last time i had whiro right on my tail there was no way i would have been able to get to rental place and hit the road. so i didn't see how this time was going to be different.

i suddenly realized all this thinking had distracted me for a good minute. i peeked around from my hiding spot to discover whiro was no where to be seen...

stupid tiny brain! heavy thinking like this always slows me down big time...

i reminded myself not to panic. it was important not to panic. the good news was whiro obviously couldn't pinpoint me in the museum... though for how long that was true i wasn't sure... to be fair he could also have been toying with me.

i needed a plan of action, and i needed it yesterday!

the weird part as unlike normal i didn't need huge amounts of time to think. for whatever reason, probably the panic, i came up with a really fast plan.

even right at that moment i thought of it, that alone thinking about it now, it was the worst plan i'd EVER come up with!

what choice did i have though???

okay don't actually answer that people of the web wide world... the obvious choice was to take a few minutes and come up with something better... but its always easier when looking back in time. for all i knew whiro was about to pounce, and let me assure you he may not be scary to read about, but he sure is scary in person!

so off i went to enact the first foolhardy idea i'd come up. even i could tell i was doomed from the start...

i sprinted to the maori gallery trying to get to the marae, but you'll never guess what i nearly ran into... yeah it was whiro... okay that was a lame game of guess who i admit, but considering the stress of today please cut me some slack people of the innerweb.

despite nearly barrelling into him, whiro didn't notice me. which is pretty amazing considering the loud screech i made clawing my way to a halt on the slippery tiled floor.

i stumbled around for what must have been the age of the earth to find a hiding spot... though in a review of the security tape i'm told 24 seconds... when i finally found one i was still amazed that whiro hadn't taken notice.

in fact as i watched him, whiro seemed very distance. zoned out in fact. it was like he was... this will sound stupid, but it's true... following his nose. wait why'd i say that... pretend i hadn't written that last bit, and this is what i said instead of the nose thing... like he was following an invisible trail.

i realized after watching for a couple minutes that whiro was seriously following my path through the museum. somehow he was taking the EXACT same route as i had... wait i'd seen this before. when he tracked me down at the mirror lakes... somehow he was either sensing something me or the baskets were leaving behind.

suddenly my plan altered a little bit... which i knew even then, must mean i was even more doomed than before. if my plan could be that easily changed... too late though.

finally whiro wandered out of the maori court, and i snuck into the marae.

here was the moment of truth. either i go through with my more than likely critically flawed scheme or listen to sober second thought and try and think of something intelligent...

so of course i opened the dare basket!

immediately i was dizzy and tingly. than just like it had the first time i'd opened a basket the dosage of mystic gradient energy turned up... or sorry mystic gradient energy is fancy sciency talk for magic...

again i could feel the magic flow through every millimetre of my body. there is nothing grosser or more uncomfortable than feeling all the organs and soft gooey parts of your body people of the innerweb. seriously i felt everything down to the little ends of my nerves.

i also once again got a massive flashback/slide show version of maori mysticism. for a moment i knew it all as though i had the brain of a smart person. sadly i lost most of the knowledge when the effects of the basket wore off. with this peek i can safely say this was kete tuateu the tomb of all the maori black arts and deadly magics (what little i remember typically shows up in my nightmares...)... this was the same basket i'd opened up before.

the secrets of the maori dark arts, i definitely didn't want whiro getting his hands on these!.. and what had i done. turned on the loudest mystic beacon i could as to my whereabouts!

instantly after the basket had finished bombarding me and the room with mystical gradient energy, the place went insane! i'd seen what baskets could do to a place while their magic was sealed up in wellington (here and here). i sure wasn't prepared for the effect it'd have on maori artifacts (though i really shouldn't be surprised. the baskets did make pearl harbour new zealand into the best war reenactment of the movie ever!)

suddenly all the dozens of totems and statues of the marae were really animated. well okay fortunately just their mouths. otherwise i would have been in trouble... cause they were all really mad at me!!!

from all around me (the walls were made of these guys after all) came a none stop chatter of them screaming stuff like: "you foolish mortal!" "what have you done kauwheke te kura?" "you have broken tapu!" "may the gods curse you forever!" "you dare release such terrible powers on the world?!?" at me.

though it was quite insulting and frankly irritating (i now know what the phrase "if these walls could talk" means!) i was relieved. it was kind of part of my plan. though i'd never imagined the building itself would become such a character in all this. i'd just been counting on a magic over dose... i was suspecting that was how whiro had been following me the entire quest.

he hadn't picked up my trail until i'd stupidly opened the basket. had i never done that than he'd probably never have found me in this big country... to late to cry over spelt magic though.

the only part of my plan that made sense was to use his magic hound sense against him.

quickly i ran over to the wall furthest from the door. the wall totems really didn't like that, and i had to not lean too close or they'd bite at me. several of them had sharp carved teeth!

i prepared the key part of my plan.

though i finished with time to spare it couldn't have been long enough really. a few minutes later a familiar clicking sound of stone on tile could be heard getting closer, and moving very quickly towards the marae.

whiro appeared at the entrance, but cautiously entered as though adjusting to the dark...

as he stepped inside the totems on the wall all began to register their hatred and fear of whiro. well apart from one or two interestingly. they were deity butt kissers, who clearly didn't like him, but were trying to kiss up to him...

even though the totems had all seen what i'd done, not a single one ratted me out though. phew! it'd have been game over if they had.

"silence you fools!" whiro hissed above their combined chatter. instantly the totems all quieted down some visibly recoiling despite being unable to actual move. "you dare address an atua such as myself in this manner?!? do you not realize what i in my infinite power could do to you?" i wasn't sure how much of his talk was just for show or not, but these carvings of great ancient warriors and demi-gods clearly were really scared of him.

"why i should not invoke tapu upon you now i do not know. it is because of your ancestors and iwi abandoning the old ways we gods have been brought to brink of oblvion," whiro contemplated aloud. than i realized why. he was trying to scare them into helping him. "it is so bright in here. if one of you tell me where the kete is that i seek you shall be rewarded in my ascession."

no i just realized, he was overcome by the crazy amount of magic inside not the dark! he couldn't see properly because of my bombarding the place... just like i'd planned!

wait a second. he'd asked the totems to tell him where the kete is, and i wasn't prepared...

as whiro walked into the middle of the room awaiting an answer, i crept towards the door. as i went i very anxiously looked back at the panel where i'd been "hiding". me as my brain and limbs went numb as fear and doubt overwhelmed me... everything depended on that one panel. the stupidity and recklessness of my "plan" hit me all at once as i stepped into the doorway...

than like that i had to get into game mode.

one of the sucking up totems spoke up. "oh great atua, whiro, the kete which you seek..." it started. oh no!

fortunantely a few of the other nobler and braver totems began screaming at and over the cowardly one drowning out the rest of the sentence. if i was going to keep my so far working plan on the tracks i had to kick it into high gear now!

as i got into the door i purposely tripped. i was rewarded with a very unearthly frightening growl (it made gozer's roar in ghostbusters seem like a little girl growling!) as whiro noticed my attempted escape.

with my juvenile tyrannosaur legs (which are of course built for speed compared to the heavier adult) i bolted out of there. much to the shock and annoyance of the normal visitors to the museum. they couldn't see whiro though. i'd noticed most peope don't seem attuned to magical stuff unless their exposed to it properly.

trust me though, if you'd seen him sprinting after me you'd have been terrified too!

as i ran from the museum i could hear him on my tail till i got out the front door (or was it back? auckland has two main entrances...)

as i made it halfway across the grass i realized i'd lost him... why?

as i stood panicedly thinking the situation over, and what i was going to do next... i needed him to follow me away from the museum... i clawed anxiously at the grass.

the soft vegetation under foot was kinda soothing despite the dire situation i was in, and it made me crave a nice lay down back home in the botanic garden in dunedin... i could just imagine lying my head down on that nice soft moss pillow and closing my... wait a second! MOSS that was it!!!

there was moss at the mirror lakes... oh sorry people of the innerweb, euphorias muck up my at the best of times strained thinking... remember when whiro had me trapped at the mirror lakes, and followed my trail perfectly till it came to the bit off the path... well this was just like that.

he'd been following me in the museum fine, but now that i was in "nature" he seemed to be unable to get my "scent"...

i couldn't let him back track and figure out what'd i'd been up to it would have been game over...

but how was i going to get his attention now?...

than it hit me. ms. rhonwyn had said not to phone after mystic gradient radiation exposure because the phone connection applified it into a magical becon...

so guess who i dialed?

ms. rhonwyn answered the phone with no rings. "traumador our tracking sateillites have been picking up spectacular MGR spikes in auckland. does this mean you've completed the mission?" she sounded hopeful

i couldn't lie or even pretend my plan was going to work. "no, i've failed," i sadly admitted thinking through the situation one more time.

"ms. rhonwyn i'm so sorry i couldn't pull this off for you, and i hope you forgive me when i'm gone," which i suspected would right after this phone call. "i failed in the marae at the auckland museum. send someone to follow up my efforts there, and there might still be some hope."

"traumador?" ms. rhonwyn's voice was completely shocked. i could tell she knew what i mean, and that she had realized this was quite possibly the last time she'd ever speak to me again.

i tried to think of something kinda touching or fitting to say... you know like the people in the movies do. famous last words or something... when i looked up and saw something that made me drop the phone...

the weird black statue that'd given me the weird feeling when i got to the the museum. the weird feeling was back... kinda like deja vu... only i knew that something pivital was ABOUT to happen...

suddenly from behind me there came another great unearthly growl just like in the marae.

you see while running through the museum i'd lost whiro initially due to his making a stop at one of the exhibits...

a rather destructive one at that. he spotted an artifact that could be of great use to him. so he simply took it...

now armed with a particularly renowned mere, or short club, with which to hunt me down once and for all whiro resumed trying to hunt me down.

only by this time i'd hit the lawn, and he lost my trail...

with my phone call, whiro literally lept back into action!

at which point i saw the statue... only to have him come up behind me, and emit his bone chilling battle cry.

with him now "safely" on my tail again i proceeded to run away from the museum.

the only thing was i had no idea why at this point!

my plan really hadn't been the solid to begin with. i'd never anticipated getting this far with it, and now with whiro chasing me there was little certainty that i'd live to tell the end of this tale. that alone whether my small hope of keeping him from the basket would pay off...

to be CONCLUDED!!!

a proper fossil hall (the last museum part 4)

Location: Auckland War Memoiral Museum

Gallery: Natural History

having finished off new zealand's modern natural history on the second floor of auckland's ginormous museum, i came across the most wonderful surprise as a conclusion to the natural history section...

it started with a nice moa display. again nice, but if you want the best in the country you'll have to come see ours at the otago museum. having now seen every major museum in new zealand's moa display you'd have to combine any of 3 of them to get as many moas as we have (with the exception of auckland and te papa, if you combined just these two you'd match us).

though in a seperate case was a mounted skeleton of Dinornis giganteus the largest species of moa that we know of. that was cooler than any of our singular moas at the otago... though we still beat them overall on numbers and variety, but we don't have a Dinornis.

they also in this display had a bust of sir richard owen, the guy who not only described moas but us dinosaurs.


so this made it into my top 10 individual displays of new zealand.

adding to the amazing factor of auckland was a fully restored model of Dinornis just around the corner! look at how tall it is compared to that child in the background.

than came the fossils, and i have to say (as you'll see people of the innerweb) this was new zealand's best display on the prehistoric past.

we started off with a bunch of palaeozioc era critters. my favourite among these were the placoderm or armoured fish. a few of them were from new zealand...

there was also a cast of new zealand's biggest ammonite. i'd seen this is already at the museum of caves in waitomo, but it was cool to see it in a big fossil gallery like auckland's.

speaking of auckland's big fossil gallery, it definately was the best in new zealand. part of the reason though is that they took a different approach to filling it than the other museums in new zealand (apart from christchurch's canterbury museum) which was to get specimens and casts of prehistoric critters from elsewhere in the world.

i can't say i blame them, the reason te papa doesn't really make an impact for its fossils, where it is an AMAZING museum for everything else, is that due to its only displaying new zealand material it doesn't have much to display in the line of fossils (due to NZs very volcanic history).

the coolest was the cast skeleton of a pteranodon. i'd never actually seen the skeleton of one before.

in fact come to think of it... this was the first mounted pterosaur skeleton i'd ever seen! most places like the tyrrell and te papa have fleshed out restorations and i've seen tons of those... but most places i just realized don't do skeletons for some reason... must be because they don't perserve that often and their so fragile...

than came probably my favourite display of the whole trip, and it couldn't have been better timed than here at the (hopeful) end of my quest. a case with a cast of every single dinosaur bone of new zealand (well okay minus the cathlam island theropod, and the brand new titanosaur).

don't get me wrong. i still love te papa's similar display in their geology hall. at the same time it doesn't quite do the same trick. though their's displays only real bones (and thus only the dinosaurs in the te papa collection) this is only about half of new zealand's dinosaurs. further more te papa also added pterosaurs and marine reptiles to the display case thus adding confusion to these reptiles NOT being dinosaurs!

auckland's case of nothing but dinosaur bones was cool because with a simple glance you knew what you were getting, and that it was complete (except of course the titanosaur as its brand new to science this month! or the cathlam island theropod due to its being across the "ditch" in australia). at the same time it was sad just due to new zealand having so few dinosaurs that they'd all fit in a case the size of a dresser draw.

due to the time crunch of trying to finish the museum quest people of the innerweb i won't be palaeo FACTing about the rest of new zealand's dinosaurs today... however stay tuned as i'll putting together this follow up post SOON!

there was a small selection of complete dinosaur skeletons borrowed from elsewhere in the world. i noticed how all of them were at least similar to some of new zealand's known dinosaurs.

a dryosaur from america was a great reference to get an idea of what the kiwi hypsilophodontid would look like.

a malawisaur titanonsaur is a good generic cretaceous saurpod which either of new zealand's two known saurpods could have resembled (Palaeo FACTs for one of them here and the other here).

i suspect the cryolophosaurus of the early jurassic was picked more because it was from the close to new zealand continent of antarctica, rather than it's being a likely model for the few known kiwi theropods (Palaeo FACT here). as new zealand's dinosaurs are all cretaceous, other than a single small theropod (getting FACTed soon!), there is very little chance they were much like the primitive cryolophosaurus especially with its very unique head dress.

all these dinosaurs were ubber awesome to see as i'd never gotten the chance to see them in canada. typically in my neck of the woods back there we only get north american and chinese cretaceous dinos. the cryolophosaur in particular was really cool to see as dr. phil currie of the tyrrell helped complete excavate it in my birth year of 2003 (him telling everyone at the museum this story of adventures is one of my foundest memories from my childhood!).

they also had a nice cast of te papa's prognathodon overtoni mosasaur.

though continuing the trend of the dinosaurs for every new zealand partially complete specimen they had here at auckland, they had a nice complete cast skeleton of a similar creature from elsewhere in the world.

hanging from the roof for comparison a nice mosasaur skeleton (though i was a little annouyed they didn't say what exact type other than it was from kansas... like that's a big help narrowing down mosasaurs! half of known types are found in kansas for crying out loud!!!).

they also had a lovely cast of... you guessed it... te papa's tuarangisaurus keysi elasmosaur.

though they didn't have a fully mounted pleisosaur skeleton to compare to, they made up for it with not one cast of an in situ (that's fancy sciency talk for a fossil in the ground as we found it) plesiosaur...

but two of them!

they also had a cast of a mega huge paddle of a pliosaur (a type of short necked plesiosaur)... sadly it too was not labelled properly in the display, but i'm guessing probably an australian kronosaurus or maybe liopleurodon.

you'll also note the tiny little cute ichthyosaur above the paddle...

they had a REALLY nice partial skull and jaw of a kiwi ichthyosaur.

plus another cast in situ skeleton (the second being that one above the paddle mentioned a second ago...)

concluding the fossil hall was a really cool display on the process of fossilization, and kinda uniquely strata. these days science gets 80% of the key information about a prehistoric creature from the rocks that it is found in. this display in auckland did a great job of illustrating how these layers help us tell the story of life on earth... i've never seen a display quite like it, but i recommend it for all museums!

wrapping up the second floor meant i only had the first floor to do before my clean sweep of auckland was done. the baskets still hadn't reacted to anything, but that was okay. the first floor housed the most likely to jive with the kete. it was the maori hall...

next the last gallery of the quest...