KEY Magazine Fort Worth

New Dinosaur Exhibit Allows Total Immersion in Scientific Discovery
Exhibit also showcases new species - yet to be named - found in North Texas

“Lone Star Dinosaurs,” a major new exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, invites visitors to immerse themselves in the science of paleontology and experience the thrill of authentic discovery.

The new, permanent exhibit gives children and their families the chance to use the skills and tools of paleontology in a dynamic, 8,000-square-foot space featuring a quarry-like field site, laser technology, multimedia computer laboratory, documentary videos and loads of bones and fossils from the Lone Star state. The exhibit also showcases five newly discovered dinosaur species, two of which are in the process of scientific review and have not yet been named. These new species were unearthed in Fort Worth and Flower Mound, Texas, and Parker, Hood and Comanche counties in Texas over the past two decades.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a $1.38 million grant for the exhibit after an extensive peer review by a panel of museum experts across the country. “It’s gratifying that the National Science Foundation views our Museum as a kind of learning laboratory for so many young Texans,” said Van Romans, the Museum’s president. “NSF only funds significant programs that are innovative and have broad impact. This funding means the exhibit has national implications for learning about paleontology.”

The NSF provided support because of the “new approach that lets visitors play the role of scientist and learn about the research process,” said David Ucko, head of the NSF’s science literacy section.

One of the new species that is being studied and named by the Museum’s colleagues at Southern Methodist University, is a small plant-eater found in 1985 near Proctor Lake in Comanche County. The other is the first nearly complete skeleton of a large four-legged plant-eater, temporarily known as Pleurocoelus, found on a ranch in Hood County by students from the University of Texas.

“This exhibit is really about the process and science of paleontology - about ‘how do we really know?’” explained Jim Diffily, the Museum’s vice president and curator of collections. “It takes the visitor through the experience of doing field work, of going into the lab and making sense of field data and creating an image of the place and time the Field Site represents.”The exhibit, geared toward older elementary students and their families, contains four distinct areas:

The Field Site, a 3,000-square-foot rendition of an actual dinosaur quarry. Here, visitors slow down, observe, and gather clues in a rocky environment where fossils and bones can be found. Visitors can do rubbings of fossils and sedimentary rock patterns, which they can later take to the Lab for further investigation. They can do basic mapping, both horizontally and vertically. Visitors learn to observe patterns in bone beds, fossils and sedimentary rock formations and then record their data in “field notes.”

The Lab. Here, visitors are able to make sense of the raw data they gathered in the Field Site, such as rubbings and measurements. Using computer programs, powerful microscopes, fossil, bone and teeth collections, visitors engage in science to identify what they discovered in the Field Site. The culminating experience in the Lab is the Imaging Station, where visitors can create a digital image that summarizes their own particular findings.

Finally, on the Texas Road Trip, visitors travel from station to station to see five dinosaur species from the Cretaceous period discovered within an hour of Fort Worth over the past 23 years. Highway signage is coupled with prehistoric markers to show where the species were unearthed. Visitors can dig deeper to find out more about the individual species at the “Visitor Information Center” where they will find online access to photo displays, scientific papers, and other in-depth information.

The Museum will produce small satellite exhibits and educator kits for several Texas museums and science centers. Scientific advisors to the exhibit included two vertebrate paleontologists Louis Jacobs, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Study of Earth and Man at SMU and Dale Winkler, Ph.D., director of SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology, along with Bonnie Jacobs Ph.D., a paleobotonist and director of the Environmental Science Program at SMU.

It is expected that Lone Star Dinosaur exhibits and educational programs will reach at least 1.5 million people annually. For more information, including hours of admission and ticket prices, visit www.fortworthmuseum.org or call 817-255-9300.

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