Dinosaur Defense
The Apatosaurus skeleton currently in Dinosaur Hall will be positioned in a tableau with a never-before-exhibited juvenile Apatosaurus, protecting it from an invading predator (Allosaurus).

Dinosaur Defense (side view)

The Great Interior Seaway
The new Cretaceous Hall will feature a recreation of the remarkably diverse life that existed in a vast seaway that extended across western North America from today's Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Monstrous marine reptiles and giant sea turtles will share this part of hall with other incredible animals, such as strangely coiled ammonites and massive coral-building clams.

Predation vs. Scavenging
The museum will pose two Tyrannosaurus rex fossils, including the actual skeleton of the first one ever discovered, battling over an Edmontosaurus setting the stage for an investigation into carnivorous dinosaur behavior.

Jurassic Hall (163 - 144 million years ago)
Plants that thrived included primitive ferns and many evergreens. The dinosaurs had reached a high level of diversity. While tiny mammals, turtles, frogs, lizards, and snakes scurried about in their shadows.

Overhead view

Triassic and Jurassic Halls

Jurassic Atrium
A soaring new atrium will more than double the size of our exhibits and add several new fossil dinosaurs to our already world-famous displays.

Cretaceous Hall (115 - 65 million years ago)
The early Cretaceous witnessed a very important event - the origin of flowering plants. Mammals were still small, but becoming more diverse. Feathered non-flying dinosaurs trudged the earth, while their relatives, the birds, soared in the skies. Pterosaurs developed into incredible flying machines with some having wingspans of nearly forty feet.

Cretaceous Seaway
In the late Cretaceous, North America was divided into two parts by an immense shallow seaway that extended from the Arctic to what is today the Gulf of Mexico. These seas were teeming with life, including immense marine lizards - the mosasaurs - and many kinds of bony fishes.