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All Events | After Dark | Just for Kids | December Nights

Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries

Mar 27, 10 thru Sep 6, 10

Just as technology has drastically altered the way we see the world around us, a new exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum reveals how much state-of-the-art research tools have significantly changed the way scientists now view the age when dinosaurs ruled the planet.

Offering an apt prelude to the blockbuster exhibition, a rather lifelike full-scale animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex greets visitors to Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries in the museum’s atrium. Once inside the exhibition, visitors are treated to a full-size cast skeleton of T. Rex. Here they can also review the latest findings from the field of bioengineering that challenge prevailing theories that regarded T. Rex as a fast runner.

At a time when new fossils are being discovered at an unprecedented rate, CT-scans, digital computer modeling, and the input from other scientific fields are deepening paleontologists’ understanding of how dinosaurs behaved, moved, and appeared on the outside. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the well-preserved fossil of a Bambiraptor, a diminutive specimen that provides strong evidence of the connection between dinosaurs and modern birds.

But while T. Rex would normally hold center stage in any dinosaur exhibition, this exhibition’s centerpiece is actually a 700-square-foot diorama that brings to life the rich Mesozoic ecosystem in the region of Liaoning, China, a hotbed of dinosaur fossil discoveries. Here visitors are immersed in the most detailed re-creation of a prehistoric environment ever constructed as it appeared 130 million years ago, complete with faithful recreations of 35 different species of dinosaurs, reptiles, mammals, insects, birds, and plants.

Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries concludes with the latest theories on what caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, revealing that many of their descendants still walk—and fly—among us today.

San Diego Natural History Museum

	Hours: Museum is open daily 10am-5pm.
	Contact: (619) 232-3821 http://www.sdnhm.org				Directions: Map to Park Location 16