Pete
Buchholz
Senior Writer
The exhibit includes life-sized reconstructions of several pterosaur species. They include casts of tiny Pterodactylus and Rhamphorhynchus still embedded in limestone, and skeletons of many large species like Anhanguera flying overhead or Pteranodon launching from rocks, and models of how pterosaurs looked in life, all made by Triebold Paleontology.
But the star of the show is a 12-foot tall Quetzalcoatlus made in-house from molded and routed plywood that towers over visitors at the exhibit’s main entrance.
To complete the hands-on experience there are several augmented reality stations that let visitors dive into the lives of pterosaurs. They include a station that allows you to paint pterosaurs, trying out different color schemes. At another, visitors can see their own skeletons move and see the same arm bones in silhouettes of pterosaurs, birds, and bats. Two flight simulator stations (for novice and advanced flappers) allow visitors to guide a pterosaur on the hunt for lunch by flapping your arms. The full experience is capped with CGI films of “living” pterosaurs are projected onto one of the walls of the exhibit space.
