No bones about it: Display shows dinosaurs really were early birds
The beast was horrifying: Thirty feet long, with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and a 1½-ton body coated in spiny quills.
It resembled a cross between a
and a porcupine — and, indeed, was actually a distant cousin of
The creature, discovered about six years ago in northeastern China, helps reinforce how a branch of dinosaurs evolved into modern-day birds — a fact that serves as a primary focus of an exhibit opening Saturday at COSI Columbus.
“American Museum of Natural History Dinosaur Gallery” is the long-awaited permanent installation courtesy of the New York
museum.
“Dinosaurs aren’t extinct; we just call them birds now,” said Mark Norell, chairman of the New York museum’s division of paleontology, who curated the COSI exhibit. “I think most people know that. But what we’re trying to do here is talk about the evidence.”
To that end, the first half of the exhibit — featuring skeletons of the more traditional and — might draw people in, but the latter half will probably prove more eye-opening.
That’s where fossil displays and not-too-technical signage help visitors understand that dinosaurs had feathers, beaks and wishbones long before any modern-day birds had appeared.
too, had a wishbone (technical name: “furcula”). That’s how scientists know the bone had nothing to do with flight, as once was thought.
Another exhibit highlight is a diorama of various smaller dinosaurs mingled with familiar-looking reptiles, mammals and birds in a temperate forest setting. (Norell said he wants to dispel the myth that all dinosaurs lived in swampy, tropical climates.)
Many of the specimens on display were unearthed during digs that Norell supervised — in China, Romania, Germany and Mongolia, among other countries.
“You look around this room, and I think 20 years ago no one would identify any of these animals as birds or related to birds,” Norell said.
COSI and city officials have been excited about the exhibit since it was announced in September 2016.
In the big picture, the dinosaur exhibit symbolizes the effort to revitalize the Scioto Peninsula. What once was a parking lot directly west of COSI now is a newly opened park, with its green space and playground
equipment (and parking underground).
Officials plan several activities for opening day, including a chance for kids to search for fossils in shale and a balloon-sculpture artist who will make a giant
Dinosaur exhibits aren’t new to COSI: Since 1987 and through 2011, various traveling exhibits have been predictably popular.
COSI President and CEO Frederic Bertley recently shared his own love of dinosaurs, dating from his childhood.
“My favorite cartoon was ‘The Flintstones’,” he said. “It was the coolest thing. They had a pet dinosaur named Dino, and every day Fred would go to the quarry and get on the back of a dinosaur.