South Florida Museum Bringing Dinosaurs to Southwest Florida

Florida may be a hotbed of cool fossil finds -- from ancient sharks' teeth to Priscilla, the giant mastodon that graces the South Florida Museum's Great Hall. But when it comes to dinosaur fossils, we're out of luck: Florida is among just a handful of U.S. states that missed out on the dinosaur age.

Until now...

Curators at the South Florida Museum are excited to announce the Museum's newest exhibit:

Dinosaur Discoveries: Ancient Fossils, New Ideas, which will open on Sept. 17. This exciting exhibit from the American Museum of Natural History, which is included in the cost of regular admission, casts a vivid picture of what living, breathing dinosaurs were really like and shows how current thinking about dinosaur biology has changed over the past two decades.

"Because the Museum focuses on Florida fossils, we don't get to do a lot with dinosaurs," said Jeff Rodgers, the Museum's Director of Education. "Dinosaurs lived on land, and Florida was underwater when dinosaurs roamed the earth. That's why we're so excited to bring this special exhibition to the state. Not only does it offer the opportunity for our guests to learn the most up-to-date information about dinosaurs, the exhibition also gives great insight into how paleontologists do their work."

The exhibit is organized by leaders in the field of paleontology: the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; The Field Museum, Chicago; the Houston Museum of Natural Science; and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh.

"As the county's biggest cultural attraction drawing more than 90,000 people annually, we know that residents and visitors rely on the South Florida Museum to provide them with an exciting, educational and fun experience," said Museum CEO Brynne Anne Besio. "That's why we're proud to bring in such high-quality special exhibits and give everyone a new reason to come back for a visit. It's also why -- as part of our Master Campus and Programming Plan -- we will be renovating our exhibit spaces and transforming the way students and visitors interact with and experience history, space and the natural science."

The South Florida Museum's ambitious Master Campus and Programming Plan positions the Museum as a regional leader in its field and focuses on creating new, dynamic experiences for visitors while enhancing our public spaces. The early priorities of the Plan will be paid for by funds raised through the Connect Campaign. Fully implementing the Master Campus and Programming Plan will require meeting additional fundraising goals.

The South Florida Museum's latest exhibit, Dinosaur Discoveries, uses a combination of major fossil finds, captivating computer simulations and provocative models to create a detailed examination of recent scientific sleuthing about these fascinating animals. The exhibit showcases the array of investigative tools -- from bioengineering computer software to CT scans -- used by modern scientists to reinterpret many of the most persistent and puzzling mysteries of dinosaurs: what they looked like, how they behaved and how they moved. It also explores the complex and hotly debated theories of why -- or even whether -- they became extinct. The exhibit even explores the idea of how dinosaurs' descendants may still be walking the earth today.

Dinosaur Discoveries also includes a depiction of the Liaoning Forest, a rich forest on the Chinese Province of Liaoning that has yielded a wealth of discoveries and shed light on the origins of birds, mammals, feathers, flight and even flowering plants.

"This exhibition illustrates how scientists are using new ideas, new discoveries and new technologies to revolutionize our understanding of dinosaurs," says Mark A. Norell, curator of Dinosaur Discoveries and Macaulay Curator in the Division of Paleontology and the division's chair at the American Museum of Natural History.. "Our work reaches across many disciplines involving paleontologists, biomechanical engineers, paleobotanists and others to showcase how we go about reconstructing the mysterious life of dinosaurs."