Dinosaurs Around the World, a new exhibit at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, offers an immersive and educational way to experience dinosaurs.
Visitors learn not only about dinosaurs but how plate tectonics, volcanic activity, land bridges, and sea level fluctuations played a role in the dinosaurs’ lives.
Science Museums
Find more local science museums here.
“This exhibit really puts the individual animals in the time and places that they lived,” says Mike Kaczmarczik, assistant manager of outreach programs for the Academy of Natural Sciences. “You not only see their habitat but how their adaptations associated with that habitat.”
The exhibit room is filled with nine animatronic dinosaurs, which include a spinosaurus, velociraptor, and a protoceratops.
Campers from the Bright Horizons summer camp program look at an animatronic Protoceratops in the Dinosaurs Exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences on June 28, 2019. (Photo by Colleen Claggett)
When families enter the exhibit, they are offered a passport to Pangea, where kids and parents are challenged to find each dinosaur listed and the continent on which they originated.
Visitors can also touch real dinosaur fossil casts, discover and name your own dinosaur, and even learn how to find modern-day dinosaurs in your own backyard.
A dinosaur fossil is displayed in a glass case at the Dinosaurs Around the World Exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on June 28, 2019. (Photo by Colleen Claggett)
Senior Exhibits Director Jennifer Sontchi says that while the exhibit may pique the interests of children, parents will find it interesting and fun as well. “Lots of adults are fascinated by dinosaurs or loved them as a kid and still do, so we still find adults will come to exhibits like this and enjoy them with their kids,” he says.
The Dinosaurs Around the World exhibit, along with the two animatronic dinosaurs sitting near the academy on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, will be open to the public until January 2020.
Emma Kuliczkowski and Colleen Claggett are MetroKids interns and students at Temple University.
A camper from the Bright Horizons summer camp program compares dinosaurs in their “passport to Pangea” to the Herrerasaurus in front of them at the Dinosaurs Around the World exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on June 28, 2019. (Photo by Colleen Claggett)
