Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Triassic New Mexico
8:46 am
Today’s the day! Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Triassic New Mexico opens at 9:00 sharp at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. I (and many other talented staff, volunteers, and contractors) have been working on this exhibit for a couple of years now, and I’m proud (and more than a little exhausted) to say that everyone’s hard work came together beautifully this past week.
I’ll be at the museum for an exhibit poster signing from 9:00 to noon, so if you’re in the vicinity, stop by and say hi.
If you aren’t anywhere near Albuquerque, there’s still a portion of the exhibit tailor-made for you. There hasn’t been any press on this yet, but if you swing by nmstatefossil.org and poke around, you’ll find a wealth of information on New Mexico’s most famous fossil resident, the little dinosaur Coelophysis. The NMMNHS has gotten permission from several authors, publishers, and other museums to distribute much of the primary literature on this Triassic theropod, so digging deep into the site will allow you to access a couple dozen PDFs of technical and popular articles.
The site was put together by Ideum, a fantastic group of interactive developers in Corrales, NM. They also worked with us on an in-hall interactive to interpret our two-ton Coelophysis block from Ghost Ranch:
The touchscreen display features a drag-and-zoom viewer that allows visitors to get a detailed look at the block, a series of highlighted features that can be toggled on and off, video segments of the block’s preparator explaining the features in detail, and an overlay showing the death positions of 7 of the more complete Coelophysis preserved in the block. More info about the interactives can be seen at Ideum’s blog and portfolio site.
And some quick pictures from before I dash out the door:
The skulls of Triassic amphibians. Clockwise from the top: Eocyclotosaurus (cast), Hadrokkosaurus (cast), juvenile and adult Buettneria (fossil), and Mastodonsaurus (cast).
A touchable bonded-bronze cast of the aetosaur Typothorax coccinarum.
Phytosaur skulls (Pseudopalatus buceros) from the Snyder Quarry near Ghost Ranch.
The tiny braincase of the earliest-known mammal, Adelobasileus cromptoni.
Wow! This looks absolutely stellar. Can you guys send this stuff on a traveling exhibition to Maryland? I’ve never seen that many Triassic fossils in one place.
Thanks Adam -
Believe me, these pictures don’t show half the fossils from the new exhibit. It’s a fantastic collection of Triassic fossils, and the best on display anywhere in the U.S., I think.
I don’t think there’s any plans to develop a traveling exhibit, but our preparators & mountmakers did mount up a copy of the reconstructed/cast skeleton of the 16′ long phytosaur Redondasaurus for the Carnegie Museum that should be on display in their new Dinosaurs in Their Time exhibit. That might be a bit closer trip to get a Triassic fix!
What a wonderful exhibit, Matt! I assume it will stay in your museum permenantly? I ask because I’d like to come and visit it sometime, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to make it down.
The phytosaur skulls are absolutely beautiful! Do you have any skeletal material of Effigia on display?
Hi Zach -
Yep, this is a permanent exhibit. So you should be safe anytime within the next decade, and its a good bet that it’ll remain relatively unchanged for 20 years or so.
No Effigia in our display, I’m afraid. Although there are some interesting non-Coelophysis bones in the block….
What did the rest of Haddrokosaurus look like? That’s a very weird skull.
My mistake, Mike - I should have spelled Hadrokkosaurus with two k’s and one d (corrected now). Not that that provides much more info on the web.
I know very little about this Moenkopi amphibian…that cast of the skull (from Arizona) is the only bit I’ve ever seen. But one of my colleagues in the Exhibits Dept. noted that it bears some resemblance to the taxon pictured here.
Woah, Matt! This looks great! Kudos to you and the rest of the NMMNHS staff on having such a great display as the fruit of your efforts! I’ll be heading for New Mexico this July; can’t wait to stop by and see this!
I’ll send me readers to see the exhibition it looks really great. I’m going to be in New-Mexico in the summer so I won’t miss it for the world