Discovery museum to open 'Dinosaurium'

From PhillyBurbs.com: Discovery museum to open 'Dinosaurium'
CHERRY HILL — Young paleontologists will dig the new Dinosaurium exhibit opening this weekend at the Garden State Discovery Museum.

Months in the making, the exhibit will feature a model Tyrannosaurus rex, whose ribs kids can tickle as they crawl through them, a Dino Dig and a Scientists’ Shack, where they can assemble skeletons and cast their own fossils to take home.

“We always thought of tipping our hat to the fact that New Jersey was where dinosaurs were discovered,” said museum director Kelly Lyons, referring to the 19th-century hadrosaurus find in Haddonfield.

Ron Maslanka of Howell, Monmouth County, is helping make the museum’s vision come true. He is a paleo-artist who makes dinosaurs out of fiberglass. He visited the museum to make a hadrosaurus for the lobby.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you had a dinosaur exhibit?” Maslanka suggested.

Lyons and museum co-founder Roree Iris-Williams agreed with Maslanka and the project got under way. One of the highlights of the 2,000-square-foot exhibit is a teenage-size Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that’s 35 feet long. An adult one would be about 50 feet, Lyons said.

A former teacher and set designer, Lyons said children have the urge to climb T. rex skeletons when they see them at natural history museums. That’s the experience she wanted to offer them at the Dinosaurium.

The wooden skeleton of the Discovery Museum’s T. rex is large enough for a young child to fit through its belly.

The children also can burrow through the “climbasaurus,” a 15-foot-tall wooden structure with a slide at the top, as if they were at a dinosaur excavation site.

They can hunt for bones in a large sandbox-type structure called the Dino Dig, which is filled with pulverized rubber bits hiding different types of dinosaur casts.

On a wooden balcony that overlooks the exhibit, children can try out the Roaring Room, where they can transform their voices into the calls of dinosaurs of different sizes, from the tweep of the tiny, chicken-size compsognathus to the ferocious bellow of a T. rex.

Nearby, a magnetic map of the United States — donated to the museum by WPVI Channel 6 — is used to show where dinosaur skeletons have been discovered throughout the United States.

“When kids come from out of town, they learn what was discovered in a place they know,” Iris-Williams said.

The map formerly was used by retired weatherman Dave Roberts in the days before weather reporting used computerized screens. Roberts will be on hand Thursday for the exhibit’s Fossil Fuel Cocktail Party, from 7 to 10 p.m., for those over age 18. Tickets are $20 for educators and museum members, and $25 for nonmembers.

The exhibit will open for members Friday and to the public Saturday.

After the new year, the Dinosaurium will be available to rent for after-hour parties.

The Garden State Discovery Museum on Springdale Road is a hands-on center designed to educate children from infancy to age 10 through a variety of interactive exhibits.

It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and until 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays from October to April. Admission is $10.95 for adults and children, and $9.95 for seniors.

For more information, visit www.discoverymuseum.com or call 856-424-1233.