Museum of Idaho set to launch new exhibit exploring ‘Life Before Dinosaurs’
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IDAHO FALLS — From looking into the future with artificial intelligence to learning about mummies of the past, the Museum of Idaho ventures further back in time, before dinosaurs existed.
Life Before Dinosaurs: Meet the Permian Monsters, the museum’s newest exhibition, will open Saturday, Jan. 31, inviting community members on a tour of the Permian Era, nearly 290 million years ago.
The exhibit features an array of fossils, interactive displays and animatronics that show museumgoers accurate, life-sized models of the creatures from this time period.
The exhibit also features artwork by Julius Csotonyi that shows how these creatures lived and the area’s landscape.
Dino-nauts or proto-dinosuars?
Rod Hansen, director of exhibitions at the museum, says the creatures featured in Life Before Dinosaurs are not technically dinosaurs.
“This is looking back just a little bit further,” he said. “We’ve gotten used to how dinosaurs look, and they’re not so odd to us anymore. These are way different and extremely unique.”
For Hansen, what fascinated him so much about this time period was connecting the missing link between the creatures that lived in the ocean and the dinosaurs.
He said that this time period marks the beginning of the history of these creatures, as they branch into different paths and begin to look more like mammals and reptiles common in later periods.
Camille Thomas, the museum’s director of marketing, said the Museum of Idaho has done dinosaur exhibits in the past, but each focused on different prehistoric animals, such as its past exhibit Dinos of the Deep.
“This is kind of an interesting connection (to) dig deeper, past the dinosaurs, looking at what paved the way for them,’ Thomas said. “It’s just unlike anything (community members) maybe have ever heard about — a lot of people don’t know about the Permian period.”
Millions of years
With a focus on the Permian period, the exhibit showcases various creatures that lived over a 45-million-year timespan. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the length of time that these creatures existed, Hansen said, and many of the species on display weren’t around for the full 45 million years.
Putting all of Earth’s history on a 12-month calendar, the Permian period would start in “November,” according to Hansen.
“We have been here for such a minute amount of time, in the sense of the Earth and how long it’s been here in geologic time,” he explained.
Looking at the end of the Permian Era, the exhibit discusses the mass extinction event known as “The Great Dying.” Hansen said that event was responsible for 90% of all species dying out, including 96% of aquatic life.
And “The Great Dying” wasn’t a quick death; it took 80,000 years for the process to unfold.
“There were species that survived with the rise in temperature and the change in oxygen levels. … A lot of creatures went underground, and that prolonged their existence,” Hansen explained. “A few that went and survived into the Triassic period.”
Events for all
Thomas said that, along with the new exhibit, there will be programs for both adults and children to further educate and provide some fun. These are the museum’s events, like Museum after Dark and Little Learners.
A new program called Museum Mysteries will also debut with the new exhibit, with options for two age groups.
“They solve mysteries in the exhibits,” Thomas explained. “There’s like one called Mystery of the Giant Dragonfly; there’s one called Mystery of the Sailed-Back Hunter — really fun programs for kids and adults alike.”
Parts of these museum events are also offered in Spanish, Hansen said, and the exhibit has translated displays.
“We’ve been working so hard to let people know that this is their museum. Whoever they are, wherever they came from, this is all for them,” he said.
To learn more about Life Before Dinosaurs: Meet the Permian Monsters, visit museumofidaho.org.