Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries opens at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on September 26, 2008.
The exhibit brings these new findings to life in exciting detail:
• A 700-square-foot diorama representing life 130 million years ago in China’s Liaoning Province, with 463 scientifically accurate models of ancient animals, including nonavian dinosaurs.
• Three large high-definition video screens showing a computer animation of a steel Apatosaurus skeleton that morphs into a fossil skeleton, gradually adding layers of muscle and skin to form a full-fleshed dinosaur.
• A life-size model of a primitive tyrannosaur, Dilong paradoxus, covered with branched protofeathers—precursors to the feathers found on living birds.
• A 15-by-10-foot re-creation of the famous Davenport Ranch Trackway, a collection of sauropod and theropod prints unearthed in Texas that have revealed new ideas about the herding behavior of these dinosaurs.
• A newly collected sedimentary slab, which clearly shows a thin layer of iridium, representing the remnants of a massive meteoroid that contributed to the extinction of more than half of Earth’s species.
Because the Denver Museum of Nature & Science is a leader in the field of paleontology, special enhancements will be added to Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries that will offer interactive ways to learn more about the Museum’s paleontologists and fossil collections.
Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with the Houston Museum of Natural Science; the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; The Field Museum, Chicago; and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh.
Presented in Denver by EnCana Oil & Gas
