MODULES & COMPONENTS

Incredible Invertebrates

Examine 15,000 touchable trilobites. Learn what an invertebrate is. Find out about the world’s largest invertebrates, and why they got so big.

Fantastic Fish

Explore touchable models of early armored fish. Discover what a vertebrate is. Compare a human hand to a fish fin.

Amazing Amphibians

Extinction happens all the time. Take a look at some of the animal oddities that lived when life on Earth was nearly wiped out.

Radical Reptiles

See how scientists use bones to determine how animals are related to each other. Once upon a time, sea, land, and sky were taken over by reptiles. See how diverse and strange Dinosaurs are.

Bizarre Birds

Prehistoric birds developed into many diverse and wonderful forms. See how gigantic “terror birds” evolved to fill ecological niches left vacant by the extinction of dinosaurs.

Marvelous Mammals

Bumps, Knobs, and tusks decorate many mammals—even today. Discover why they had them and what they were for.

Modern Marvels, Diversity of Life Video

You may not think that today’s animals are very strange—but take another look! Some pretty bizarre creatures live deep under the ocean, within the perpetual darkness of Earth’s caves, and even in your own backyard. A four-minute film celebrates the diversity of life on earth today. Short clips of interesting living animals highlight the unique and unusual.

The Creature Feature/ Natural Selection Game

This engaging computer interactive lets you be a force of nature—driving the process of natural selection as you select the features of your very own creature to determine the characteristics of future generations.

Raising the Dead

A 3 minute long film showing time lapse sequences of the prodution of some of the Bizarre Beasts featured in the exhibit.

Rubbing station

Make-and-take detailed crayon rubbings using four accurate, low relief fossil impressions.

Bone puzzle

Push and pull bones and joints into place, fill in the missing pieces of a small dinosaur skeleton.