>>MARK NORELL: Well, this exhibit is called Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils and New Discoveries and it really
highlights contemporary dinosaur research. Some of the big things in it are a robotic
Tyrannousaur, a highly accurate forest of the way Northeastern China looked about a
130 million years ago, and biomechanical models of animals, which really tell us a little
bit how these huge animals would have moved their necks, moved their bodies, and moved their tails.
>>MIKE NOVACEK: What we're trying to do is bring research, very current research together with public
programming, so people feel the excitement of science and that's what this exhibit is all about.
>>MYLES GORDON: Almost a half a million people came to this exhibition and I think a large part
of the attraction was to see what's new in dinosaur science.
>>NANCY LYNN: Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries was produced by the American Museum of
Natural History in New York in collaboration with four other leading U.S. institutions:
the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the California Academy of Sciences,
the Field Museum, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
The exhibition illustrates how scientists are using an incredible array of new technologies from software to
CT scans, along with new ideas and new discoveries to reinterpret the world of dinosaurs.
>>NORELL: New discoveries really permeate the entire exhibit and when I was writing the script, and deciding
what we would show, I really wanted to concentrate on things which have been discovered over
the last ten years.
>>LYNN:The introductory section features a relatively recent fossil discovery
of a small carnivorous dinosaur called Bambiraptor. Next to Bambiraptor, we have CT scans that
paleontologists have taken of the fossil, so right away, we're getting at the idea that
new technologies, new discoveries and new ideas come together to change the way we previously
viewed dinosaurs, and in this case, they're linked to birds. In the second section, we
look at how dinosaurs really moved, and we feature biomechanical studies that are being
performed by scientists in various parts of the world. There's a full-sized cast of a
T. rex looking down at visitors when they come in, there are computer interactives there,
wherein you can manipulate different parameters—the posture, the muscle mass of a T. rex—and then see
how fast your T. rex could have run.
>>NOVACEK: We also have a marvelous robotic. It's probably the
most accurate reproduction of how a Tyrannosaurus moved of anything out there.
>>LYNN: And a sauropod interactive
here allows visitors to experiment with a 3D engineering model, that allows them to
manipulate the neck movements of saurpods and a giraffe and compare them.
>>NOVACEK: You don't just see a sauropod raising its head as you manipulate the interactive,
but you learn that it can only raise its head so high
because of the restriction of the bones. And the interactive shows you
how those things work together.
>>LYNN: We incorporated a fantastic suite of educational hands-on
activities. These include a three-dimensional build-your-own T. rex—it's just very engaging and each
activity relates to points being made within the exhibition, of course.
For the third section of the exhibition, which is about how dinosaurs behaved,
we recreated a section of the Davenport Ranch Trackway Site in Texas.
>>NORELL: And Martin Lockley, a Colorado paleontologist has really been
at the forefront of a lot of this. Where he's been able to look at trackways like this one behind
me, dissect these almost like a crime scene, to be able to determine that there were herds
of dinosaurs moving across these areas and whether or not those herds had structure to them
in the way that modern large animal herds do.
>>LYNN: In one part of the exhibition, we see a large
trophy wall of mounted dinosaur skulls from the three-horned Triceratops to the dome-headed
Pachycephalosaurus and scientists are looking at what was the purpose, the evolutionary
purpose of these growths, these horns and frills and domes.
>>NOVACEK: People expect answers, and
they expect clear answers, definitive answers about scientific questions, but in reality,
there are lots of issues in science that we constantly debate about. We're not certain.
There are still puzzles, there are still questions. That's why it's so exciting. If all the questions
were solved, we would just have to go home.
>>LYNN: The piece de resistance in the exhibition
is a large diorama, exquisitely prepared, featuring the 130 million year
old fossil site in Eastern China called the Liaoning Forest, and within this diorama we've
painstakingly recreated the environment, including 35 different species of dinosaurs,
reptiles, plants, insects, mammals, all as they would have coexisted. One of the great
>>NORELL: One of the great things about the fossils that we found at Liaoning
is that aside from seeing great fossils,
occasionally we've even found things that reflect behavior. Like, we've found mammals that
ate baby dinosaurs.
We've found basically flocks of baby dinosaurs together. We've found animals sleeping in stereotypical
positions, the same as modern birds do. So, the diorama itself just brings a lot of the
other components of the exhibit sort of together and shows them in a living and thriving community.
>>NOVACEK: It's probably the most complete picture into the dinosaur world that we have. Not only
are dinosaurs exquisitely preserved, but their bones, their skin covering, even feathers,
evidence of feathers on dinosaurs, but we have mammals with hair, we have insects and
beautiful plant fossils. So, we have a direct, very clear window into the past. We can reconstruct
this environment with great precision.
>>LYNN: The final section of the exhibition explores extinction,
and the different theories that scientists posit about what ended the age of dinosaurs,
such as asteroid impact, global climate change, and massive volcanic eruptions. There were
a lot of creatures that survived—alligators and crocodiles, various types of birds, fish,
and so on, and so there's a wall of survivors. So again, we're showing that things are not
really as they've been always taught in he past.
>>NOVACEK: What we tried to do here is show the
visitor that there are certain issues, like dinosaur extinction, where not all questions are resolved, that
people are arguing, debating, questioning, very passionately with different points of
view about the evidence.
>>GORDON: I think we really created a very engaging exhibition. It's open,
it's friendly, it's welcoming. You look at the graphics, you look at the text, even this
diorama, it has no glass, it really is very inviting. And so, what we ended up with was an opportunity
for learners of all ages to explore their own questions, to learn new information, and
to be surprised.
>>LYNN: This exhibition received an incredible amount of media coverage. First
of all, it made the cover of Newsweek, it was in the New York Times, the Washington
Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters. It was on CNN, BBC, Spanish television. It's
just the type of project that gets international attention.
>>GORDON: To come in here and see high school
groups, and I think it's because of the focus on science. And then to come in here and see
families with little kids, adults, grandparents, all finding a way to learn something from the exhibition
>>LYNN: The exhibition doesn't stay the same over time, it was actually designed
to feature new discoveries when they're made, or to feature local scientists from whatever
city is hosting the exhibition. So, updatability is actually built into the exhibition, it
was conceived that way from the outset.
>>NORELL: It really gives you a chance to teach people
something a little bit about biomechanics, a little bit about functional morphology,
that might otherwise be a pretty boring subject, but because it is about dinosaurs, it really
brings people in.
>>NOVACEK: And we want the visitor to feel, in a sense, like a scientist. To
feel that sort of excitement, that mystery, that uncertainty, that puzzle-solving, that
really is a part of the wonderful work we call scientific research.