Art and science seem like an odd couple—like two very different types of people attracted to each other in unusual ways. Oddly enough, art and science have become friends in a spectacular new Nevada Museum of Art exhibition, “Deep Time: Sea Dragons of Nevada,” which incorporates multivisual inspiration from a groundbreaking fossil discovery from the region.
The creature for which the new exhibit is being created is not only the namesake of a local Nevada beer, but also the nickname of a prehistoric sea creature called an ichthyosaur, some species of which had a head the size of a wing and a body the size of a locomotive. Some scientists believe they are the largest reptiles to ever walk the Earth. The “Icky,” as it is called, inhabited the primordial ocean that covered most of the Earth (including present-day Nevada) about 250 million years ago for 160 million years before becoming extinct.
This sea monster from the deep lived in the prehistoric ocean that covered the entire area of present-day Nevada. Recently, large ichthyosaur fossils were discovered in the Augusta Mountains in the Silver State, literally in the middle of nowhere – somewhere between Austin and Winnemucca.
There, renowned paleontologist Professor Martin Sander of the University of Bonn in Germany discovered the large ichthyosaur in the desolate mountainous area that now encompasses most of Nevada. He is co-creator of the new exhibit, which opens to the public on September 7 at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Visitors can hear from Dr. Sander details of his 30-year odyssey of excavating fossils in Nevada’s Augusta Mountains. They will hear his stories of hiking up mountains for fossils, digging up countless pounds of ichthyosaur bones and transporting them to the lab by helicopter and in a beer truck. Museum visitors will learn what Sander’s study of these giant animals teaches us about evolution, life on Earth and Nevada’s place in the global scientific community.
From 2022: Ichthyosaur fossil found in Nevada named after brewery founder
I know I got a dinosaur-sized education when I took a trip with other journalists and museum staff to the paleontologist’s dig site in the middle of nowhere Nevada last week. We camped and hiked with the good professor between the rocky slopes and the site of his many ichthyosaur discoveries. Martin often paused, overwhelmed with excitement and wonder at all that nature teaches him. Like a young person, the ichthyosaur expert exudes a childlike joy at each of his groundbreaking discoveries about the known and the unknown.
As someone who spent most of his childhood in the Army or playing backyard baseball, I felt like a child again, discovering the knowledge of the world that ancient fossils teach us about our present and the future. As Professor Sander told me on our three-hour walk back down the cliff-lined ridge he explores daily to his beloved fossil bed, “Science is driven by beauty.”
Legendary science fiction writer Isaac Asimov agreed, saying, “Science is an art, and art is a science. The two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.”
Ann Wolfe, chief curator of the museum and co-creator of the exhibition, agrees.
“Nevada is a global epicenter for the study of these massive creatures we call ichthyosaurs,” she said. “Given the Nevada Museum of Art’s track record of organizing exhibitions that help deepen Nevada’s stories, it’s only logical that we organize this dazzling exhibition that brings together paleontology, art, history and culture.”
Art, science and a discovery playground for children of all ages await those who stroll through the exhibition rooms filled with real skeletal remains. It is a digital and musical journey through the prehistoric marine world of ichthyosaurs and includes a walk through a collection of old toy dinosaurs that Jack Arata has amassed over the course of his life, inspired by his childhood visit to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada in 1956.
Nik Hafermaas from Berlin is the designer of the museum’s new exhibition. He spoke to me about his vision for the project.
“As humans, we are drawn to beauty, wonder, and the feeling that there are things bigger than us,” Hafermaas told me. “In my design, I evoke a sense of awe at the gigantic size of ichthyosaurs relative to our human scale, their fascinating discovery in the Nevada desert, and their existence in the unimaginably distant past. This immersive show makes the abstract tangible – and it’s an awe-inspiring experience.”
It is true that art is inspired by scientific concepts and incorporates them into artistic expressions. Artists and scientists share a common emphasis on observation and perception to capture details and understand the world.
Objects like fossils teach us about life. The ancient Greeks began to wonder about the physical history of the planet when they discovered seashells on the ancient mountain peaks they climbed. Fossils like the sea dragons (or giant lizards) of Nevada help us understand where life and people came from, show us how the Earth and our environment have changed over geologic time, and how continents that are now far apart were once connected. Fossils provide important evidence of evolution and the adaptation of plants and animals to their environment.
Time itself is a mystery. Deep time is even more so. It is described as the period of several million years during which scientists believe the Earth has existed. This is supported by the observation of natural, mostly geological phenomena.
Paleontology, the kind of work that Martin Sander and his scientific colleagues do, is the study of prehistoric life through fossils and opens a window into prehistoric times. It is almost impossible to imagine billions or even millions of years in the past. As the exhibition shows, one way to understand prehistoric times is to imagine the entire history of the Earth as a single year, with humans emerging on the evening of the last day of the year, December 31st.
Last week, as I slept next to Dr. Sander in my tent in the willow-strewn pasture beneath his prehistoric dig site, I heard him rustling in the middle of the moonlit night we spent beneath the Augusta Ranges, probably imagining how excited he would be when his next discovery of Nevada’s ancient sea creatures was made public.
We will all get to see it soon, just as local geologist, citizen scientist and brewer Tom Young did when he accompanied and funded Martin Sanders’ work by transporting some of the first fossils in his Great Basin Brewery beer trucks.
I’m looking forward to my own visit to the museum’s newest exhibit, which is sure to be a hit with children of all ages. I can’t wait for my grandchildren to visit again, as I know how fascinated they are by things that lived a very long time ago.
That’s why I hope you’ll join me in getting “Icky” at this fascinating glimpse into Nevada’s paleontological past and the hope we all share today for a sustainable future.
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“Memo from the Middle” is an opinion column by RGJ columnist Pat Hickey, a member of the Nevada State Legislature from 1996 to 2016.
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