The Morrison Natural History Museum celebrates the distant history of the Front Range today with “Cretaceous Day,” featuring hourly tours and special activities.
This small teaching museum highlights locally discovered fossils, such as a Jurassic stegosaurus, a Cretaceous Tyrannosaurus rex and Ice Age mammoths.
“We are all about the vanished life and landscapes of the Denver metro area,” says Matthew Mossbrucker, director and chief curator of the museum. “The Cretaceous period in particular illustrates dramatic geological change.”
During today’s celebration, visitors can learn about the 80-million-year Cretaceous period, which spanned from 145 million to 65 million years ago. Mossbrucker says the sweeping changes of the Cretaceous period took what is now the metro area from an “almost Australian outback” landscape — hot, dry and flat — through a period when the region lay beneath a warm, saltwater sea. “Morrison was beachfront property 100 million years ago,” he says.
The Rocky Mountains appeared toward the end of the Cretaceous period, around 70 million years ago, along with dinosaurs such as T. rex and triceratops. The region would have resembled a “Louisiana-style bayou” during that time, Mossbrucker says.
Museum staff encourage hands on. “It’s OK to pet our T. rex,” says Mossbrucker. “Just don’t try to move it.”
Visitors can explore a massive T. rex skull, or practice chipping stone from bone in the on-site lab. Children can sift through the “dino dig pit,” an indoor sandbox where pint-sized paleontologists can search for small fossil replicas. A special painting station will be featured today, as well, where kids can color in a model of a T. rex footprint to take home.
All of the museum’s “Fossils of the Foothills” displays are drawn from area dig sites, including the first stegosaurus fossils ever found, discovered in 1877 in the nearby prolific quarries of Dinosaur Ridge.
Mossbrucker himself found what are the only known baby stegosaurus tracks, which are on display at the museum along with many other important finds.
Mossbrucker’s goal for the museum is to provide a direct connection between field science and education as more discoveries are made each year. “Just last summer we discovered a new species of Jurassic pond turtle,” he says.
Other discoveries include a set of infant sauropod tracks that suggest increasing speed and shed new light on the animal’s abilities.
“These are hugely important to scientists,” Mossbrucker concludes. “Before we found these, we really didn’t know the apatosaurus could run.”
The Morrison Natural History Museum (501 Colorado 8) is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Today’s events are included with regular museum admission: $7/adult, $6 senior/teen (ages 13-17), $5 youths (ages 4-12) and free for children 3 and younger. For information, call 303-697-1873 or visit .
