museum

Dr Luis Chiappe, a co-lead author from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, added the discovery showed some of the birds flying over the heads of dinosaurs had a fully modern skull geometry more than 80 million years ago.

Researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, identified the fossil bird - which was roughly the size of a starling - from the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs.

As inspirations, the guitarist cites Christo and Jean-Claude’s 2021 wrapping of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe as well as Culver City’s Museum of Jurassic Technology, which he calls one of his favorite places in Los Angeles.

Originating in the KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa, on the Eastern Cape, the bird of paradise found its way to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino sometime before 1932, when the institution’s record-keeping began, explains Kathy Musial, senior curator of living collections.

Yoakam contacted Steele after watching him perform at a benefit concert in October 2018, when the long-shuttered Palomino Club in North Hollywood briefly reopened to raise money for the Valley Relics Museum.