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Dinosaur Exhibit Opens at NYC Museum

Posted on: Wednesday, 11 May 2005, 07:34 CDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- The bones? Waayyyy old. The discoveries, research and technology? Brand spanking, up-to-the-minute new. An exhibition opening this weekend at the American Museum of Natural History introduces viewers to the latest research being done on a perennial favorite subject - dinosaurs. "Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries" opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 8.

Through new technologies like computer modeling and robotics and tried-and-true standbys like fossils and a 700-square-foot diorama, visitors will gain a new appreciation of dinosaurs and the methods used to study them, curators said.

"I think what we want them to get is a sense of paleontology as a dynamic science, with a lot of new discoveries, that relies on new technologies," said Michael Novacek, senior vice president and provost of science at the museum. It's "meant to give a sense of the excitement of scientific research and what it's like to be a scientist."

After New York, the exhibit will travel to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the California Academy of the Sciences in San Francisco, the Field Museum in Chicago and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

The exhibit is separated into sections. One of them looks at the biomechanics of dinosaurs, how they moved. Visitors get a chance to play with interactive computer screens, which allow them to change variables of a dinosaur's physiology to determine the effect it would have on its running speed or range of movement. This section also contains an animatronic cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex, to show how the creature walked, and a 60-foot-long model of an Apatosaurus skeleton.

Another section looks at dinosaur behavior, featuring a recreation of dinosaur prints found in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s to show herd movement and a wall of mounted dinosaur skulls from the horned Triceratops to the dome-skulled Pachycephalosaurus. The text accompanying the skulls presents the latest theories on what those various horns and crests and frills and domes seen on various skulls could have been used for, whether mating rituals or defense.

The foot section of a working six-foot-long mechanical model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton is shown during its preparation at New York's Museum of Natural History. Credit: AP

The last section looks at extinction theory, positing that perhaps many dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago from a number of factors, including the commonly known asteroid theory, heavy volcanic activity and climate changes brought about by receding ocean waters.

Each section includes videos from scientists working in the field talking about their endeavors.

"This show is as much about how we study dinosaurs as it is about what we've learned studying dinosaurs," said Mark Norell, who curated the show.

The museum has planned a number of performances, workshops and forums to go along with the exhibit.

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On the Net:

American Museum of Natural History: http://www.amnh.org/

Source: By DEEPTI HAJELA

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