Museum unveils dinosaur exhibit

It offers a snapshot of life 150 million years ago.

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

PITTSBURGH — An Apatosaurus rears its head in anger, swinging its tail wildly, determined to prevent the predatory Allosaurus from attacking its baby. From behind, a second Allosaur bounds toward the scene, intent on helping his mate secure a snack.

The scene, played out with enormous skeletons, colorful murals and recreated ecosystems, is part of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s new dinosaur exhibit, a 21st-century attempt to use pictures, fossils and high-tech interactive displays to present a snapshot of life 150 million years ago.

“You might imagine that Allosaurus is probably suicidal going against an animal that is about 80-feet long and weighs about 30 tons,” said Matt Lamanna, the museum’s dinosaur researcher, as he looked up at the enormous skeleton with the love of a father looking at a child he’s coddled for two years.

“But if you look into the mural, there’s actually a second Allosaurus that’s meant to be sort of charging into the scene to help out ... in this big attack. Chances are he’ll lose anyway, but at least he’s got friends,” Lamanna said, laughing at the display in the museum’s new dinosaur hall.

The first part of Lamanna’s baby, the exhibit he began planning and researching years before construction began in 2005, was unveiled Wednesday. The display is three times the size of the old one and represents the latest scientific beliefs that dinosaurs were active giants who traveled in herds and cared for their young.

The museum’s dinosaur collection has a rich history that began in 1898 when steel baron Andrew Carnegie read about the extinct giants in a newspaper article. Enamored by the animals that were being discovered in the western United States, Carnegie decided he needed some for his Pittsburgh museum.

He sent his museum director a check for $10,000 — which would be nearly $235,000 today — and instructed him to put together a dig to go to Wyoming and later to northeastern Utah, where paleontologist Earl Douglas found a quarry with 350 tons of dinosaur bones.

“The reason our collection skyrocketed into one of the greatest collection of dinosaurs in the world was Andrew Carnegie’s original interest and the success of our early fossil hunters,” Lamanna said.

Until now, the skeletons — including an internationally renowned collection of Jurassic-era bones — were displayed with little regard for the years during which the dinosaurs actually lived, and looked like what Lamanna calls “a parade of dinosaurs.”

Taking a new approach, the museum has recreated ecosystems based on fossils of plants and other animals found near dinosaur bones. When the second phase opens in spring 2008, the museum will have 19 skeletons on display, 15 of them with real bones — 11 of those made up of more than 50 percent genuine fossil.

“The amount of real dinosaur skeletons we’re displaying puts us in very exclusive company, trailing only the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in (Washington), D.C.,” Lamanna said.

Russell Graham, director of Penn State University’s Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum, said the best part of the exhibit is that the dinosaurs are displayed in what scientists believe to be their true environment.

“That would be relatively new,” Graham said. “It will help people understand what the world was like when dinosaurs lived.”