Pittsburgh unveils new dinosaur exhibit

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," 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."

Dan Pickering, a scientific preparator and artist, has spent years in the museum's glass-encased PaleoLab that is visible to the public, chiseling away at bones and skeletons, reviewing books and illustrations and forming in clay the missing bones to piece together the dinosaurs in the new exhibit.

Huddled over a desk, his favorite tool in hand -- a silicon-tipped pencillike instrument -- Pickering scrapes away at the delicate materials he has received from Allen Shaw, a colleague who carefully removed the rocks, mud and stone that surrounded the fossils for millions of years.

"There's sort of like a subtraction, bringing it back down to just the real bone, and then building it back up to reconstruct and get the whole animal again," Pickering said, explaining the process of putting together an elaborate museum exhibit.

Aside from the skeletons, bones and ecosystems, Lamanna and his staff have created multimedia displays, interactive touch screens and short movies to make the exhibit friendly to those who likely will enjoy it most -- the children.

"We think that will really help kids engage with Mesozoic worlds," Lamanna said, referring to the age when dinosaurs ruled the world.