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The Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth will contain over 130 rocks, many of them weighing more than 500 pounds. Museum scientists have been collecting them over the past three years, on expeditions all over the world. Each rock records a chapter of the Earth's ongoing story, and contains answers to major questions about our planet.
Expeditions require a huge amount of effort and planning. Lead scientists have many responsibilities. They must determine where to look for the rocks that will answer specific questions; obtain permission from local authorities and landowners to collect samples; coordinate the right crew, including Museum colleagues, experts on local geology, a photographer, and sometimes a videographer. They must also make flight, lodging, and ground transportation arrangements; and arrange special equipment for obtaining and transporting the huge boulders.
Even the best-organized expeditions rarely go according to plan. Museum geologists have had to face a variety of challenges in the field. Here are a few examples:
- Geologists couldn't locate the particular type of boulder they'd gone looking for in northern California;
- a boulder being loaded at a quarry in upstate New York was so heavy it severely damaged the flatbed truck;
- the team got locked into excavation site in southern Italy;
- customs officials in western Africa wouldn't let the geologists across the border;
- goverment instability in southeast Asia.
 Click on one of the questions on the rocks to the right to find out how an expedition tackled it, what challenges the expedition posed, and how the scientists resolved them in the field.
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