Dinosaur rEvolution: secrets of survival

This exhibition is now closed.

Walk among the dinosaurs at QVMAG… an interactive experience to ignite your imagination! Explore prehistoric times at Dinosaur rEvolution: Secrets of Survival from 1 June  - 20 October, 2019. 

Dinosaur rEvolution was designed to appeal directly to families, dinosaur enthusiasts and educational groups. Children’s interests and school curricula framed the exhibition approach. With these considered, all exhibition text keeps scientific terms and jargon to a minimum. The Dinosaur rEvolution exhibition is rich in natural history specimens and had a large number of colourful artworks to illustrate scenes or ‘windows’ into dinosaur life.

All fossilised objects displayed were casts. The use of casts aids in the interactive nature of the show and allows people to touch and get close to the specimens. Over 30 different dinosaurs and 5 animatronics are represented in the exhibition.

Today we know that Dinosaurs are not all “big and extinct”. They reigned in widely different environments all over the world for 169 million years and vanished 65 million years ago when the Earth was struck by an asteroid. But did all of them go extinct? For years many had suspected that birds were linked somehow to dinosaurs.

Bones, scales and armour sometimes fossilise well, but other soft tissues are more difficult to preserve if the conditions are not perfect. Exceptionally well preserved fossils found in China have shown for the first time dinosaur skin and soft tissue, and even feathers and quills. This would change our image of dinosaurs forever: Dinosaurs were diverse and strange, and birds were the last branch in the Dinosaur family tree, living with us today.

HORNS, SPIKES, QUILLS AND FEATHERS. THE SECRET IS IN THE SKIN!

Not long ago, our knowledge of dinosaurs was based almost completely on the assumptions we made from their internal body structure. Bones and possible muscle and tendon attachments were what scientists used mostly for reconstructing their anatomy. The rest, including the colours, were left to the imagination… and needless to say, the skins were lizard-like and the colours grey, green and brown prevailed.

We are breaking the mould with this Dinosaur rEvolution!

Thanks to a vast web of new research, that this time emphasises also skin and ornaments, we are now able to get a glimpse of the true, bizarre and complex nature of the evolution of the Dinosauria.

This two-tier exhibition is like no other: it will follow the two separate paths of dinosaur evolution that will meet at the end in a massive and dramatic battle, that, in evolutionary terms, could only be really won by flying away.

Exhibition illustration by Luis V Rey.