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Black Tie International:
The
American Museum of Natural History |
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THE
AMERICAN
MUSEUM
OF NATURAL HISTORY ANNOUNCES
THE World’s Largest Dinosaurs,
An INNOVATIVE exhibition about
THE SUPER-SIZED Sauropods,The
most colossal DinosaurS
to walk the earth
Exhibition Opens April 16, 2011
and Remains on View Until
January 2, 2012
The
American Museum
of Natural Historytoday
announced a major new
exhibition,The
World’s Largest Dinosaurs
(April 16, 2011-January 2, 2012),
which will take visitors beyond
the bones and into the amazing
anatomy of a uniquely
super-sized group of dinosaurs
who thrived for 140 million
years: the long-necked and
long-tailed sauropods, which
ranged in size from 15 to 150
feet long. Drawing on the latest
science that looks in part to
existing organisms to understand
these long-extinct giants,
The World’s Largest Dinosaurs
will answer such intriguing
questions as how an extremely
large animal breathes, eats,
moves, and survives by
illuminating how size and scale
are related to basic biological
functions. Innovative
interactive exhibits—including
the centerpiece, a life-sized,
detailed model of a60-footMamenchisaurus—will
take visitors inside these
giants’ bodies, shedding light
on how heart rate, respiration,
metabolism, and reproduction are
linked to size.
“The Museum has long been known
for its pioneering
paleontological research and
extraordinary dinosaur
collection, one of the world’s
largest,” said Ellen V. Futter,
President of theAmericanMuseumof Natural History. “This exhibition
will offer visitors an entirely
new perspective on this
fascinating group of animals and
showcase recent development in
our understanding of how some of
the largest organisms ever to
walk the Earth actually lived.”
Distinguished by their colossal
size, sauropods included animals
of diverse size and shape,
including the giganticApatosaurus,
formerly known asBrontosaurus.
Focusing on the sauropods’
biology and behavior, the
exhibitionwill examine the tools
and methods paleontologists use
to unlock the mystery of how
these massive animals were able
to survive so successfully for
tens of millions of years: how
and why they grew to be so
large, how much they ate, how
they moved, and how their
gigantic bodies worked so well
in their environment.
Standing 11 feet tall and 60
feet long—approximately the size
of a tractor-trailer—the
centerpiece of this exhibition
will be a life-sized,
fleshed-out model of a femaleMamenchisaurus,
known for its remarkable 30-foot
neck. The model will feature
details such as skin texture on
one side, while the other side
will let visitors glimpse a
sauropod’s anatomy through video
projections that provide a look
at a dinosaur’s body cavity.
Additional interactive exhibitsand
hands-on activities will offer
visitors of all ages engaging
opportunities to discover how
sauropods compare with living
animals and learn about how
studying modern organisms can
shed light on extinct species.
Examining sauropod teeth next to
those of modern plant-eaters and
carnivores, weighing a
sauropod’s vertebrae and a
giraffe’s vertebrae to discover
which is lighter, and other
interactive opportunities will
show what can be gleaned about
dinosaur behavior and biology
through indirect evidence. In
another section that examines a
sauropod heart and circulatory
system, visitors will have the
chance to control a pump linked
to a computer-generated dinosaur
to see how much blood pressure
is needed to distribute blood up
through the animal’s long neck
and throughout its entire body.
The exhibition will also include
specimens from the Museum’s
world-renowned fossil
collection, including sauropod
limbs and brain endocasts,
vertebrae, skin impressions, and
a variety of other ancient
specimens. An excavation at the
end of the exhibition will
introduce visitors to how
dinosaurs are discovered in the
field through a replicated dig
site.
The World’s Largest Dinosaurs is
curated by Mark Norell, chair of
theDivision of Paleontology at
theAmericanMuseumof Natural History,
and guest co-curated by Martin
Sander of the University of
Bonn, Germany. The exhibition is
designed and organized by the
AmericanMuseum of Natural History,New York(www.amnh.org) in
collaboration with Coolture
Marketing,Bogotá,Colombia.
AmericanMuseumof
Natural History
The
American
Museum
of Natural History is one of the
world’s preeminent scientific,
educational, and cultural
institutions. Since its founding
in 1869, the Museum has advanced
its global mission to explore
and interpret human cultures and
the natural world through a
wide-reaching program of
scientific research, education,
and exhibitions. The Museum
accomplishes this ambitious goal
through its extensive facilities
and resources. The institution
houses
46 permanent exhibition halls,
state-of-the-art research
laboratories, one of the largest
natural history libraries in the
Western Hemisphere,
and a permanent collection of
more than 32 million specimens
and cultural artifacts. The
spectacular
Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest
Rose Center for Earth and Space,
which opened in February 2000,
features the rebuilt Hayden
Planetarium and striking
exhibits about the nature of the
universe and our planet. With a
scientific staff of more than
200, the Museum supports
research divisions in
anthropology, paleontology,
invertebrate and vertebrate
zoology, and the physical
sciences. With the launch of the
Richard Gilder Graduate School
at the Museum in 2006, the
American
Museum
of Natural History became the
first American museum with the
authority to grant the Ph.D.
degree.
The Museum this year welcomed
approximately 5 million on-site
visitors from around the world
and has produced exhibitions and
Space Shows that can currently
be seen in venues on five
continents, reaching an audience
of millions more. In addition,
the Museum’s website,
www.amnh.org
,
extends its collections,
exhibitions, and educational
programs to millions beyond the
Museum’s walls
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joyce@blacktiemagazine.com |
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