DINO SIGHTINGS!: Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

How would you like to go back in time to the Cretaceous (Kre-TAY- shus) period, when dinosaurs last roamed the earth? Now you can! Welcome to Dinosphere-the awesome new exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, featuring one of the world’s largest displays of dinosaur fossils!

Meet Bucky, the teen Tyrannosaurus rex named after Bucky Derflinger-the young rancher who first discovered the T. rex bones on his ranch in South Dakota.

Bucky is the sixth most complete T. rex ever found. He’s 34 feet long and more than 10 feet tall. While many of his bones were unearthed together, like the ten tailbones found in a row, many other bones have been so spread out that scientists keep making the excavation site bigger as they continue their search.

Hands-On Fun

There’s plenty for kids and families to do. Have fun at a simulated dino dig, uncovering casts of fossils. You can learn about the tools and technology used by real scientists! Then work side by side with real paleontologists at the Paleo Lab. You can help them clean dinosaur fossils! This and much more awaits you at Dinosphere.

You will also see:

* Baby Louie: An Oviraptor with birdlike characteristics;

* Kelsey: A young Triceratops with a skull more than 6 feet long;

* Frannie: A Leptoceratops (cousin to the Triceratops) the size of a large dog. It had a parrot-like beak used to feed on low- growing plants;

* Maiasaura: A plant-eating duckbill dinosaur, whose name means “good mother lizard”;

* Gorgosaurus: A fierce predator and cousin to the T. rex;

* Hypacrosaurus: An adult, juvenile, and baby. These were large, duckbill plant-eaters.

Copyright Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society Sep/Oct 2004