In Which I See Things Bigger Than Me

On Saturday, my dad and I decided to go to the Science Museum of Minnesota.  We went and saw the new exhibit called Ultimate Dinosaurs.  The Science Museum has a permanent dinosaur exhibit, but this exhibit had some new, relatively recently found and put-together skeletons of dinosaurs (and sauropods) that I had never heard of before.

It was interesting to walk into the exhibit and come face-to-face with a video of how the world has changed over 200 million (plus) years.  I was familiar with Pangaea, which is what the super continent was called (basically, all of the continents that we know and love today were mashed into one giant land mass), but once the gigantic land mass spread out a little and formed Gondwana and Laurasia, and eventually into a world that resembled more of the layout we have on earth today.

The exhibit is laid out roughly in the order the dinosaurs existed, starting in the Triassic period, going through the Jurassic period, and ending in the Cretaceous period when something wiped out the dinosaurs.  It was neat to see how dinosaurs changed over the years-- arms got bigger or at least became functional, some dinosaurs turned from scavengers into gigantic creatures of death that we know and love.

They had some really neat technology in this exhibit.  When you went to the last part of the gallery to see Gigantosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex, there were screens in front of the skeleton.  When you poked the screen and moved it around, you saw an animation of the dinosaur you were in front of as they might have looked all those millions of years ago.  It was really cool!

Gigantosaurus

Tyrannosaurus Rex

If you love dinosaurs and if you happen to be near St. Paul, MN, I would recommend going to see Ultimate Dinosaurs at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  It's definitely a day trip, but it'll be a really cool experience.  Go and look before the exhibit is no more in a few months!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude