The Florida Museum of Natural History will unveil its new fossil exhibit Saturday, complete with fossils, artwork and a lab.
"Crusin' the Fossil Freeway" with artist Ray Troll and paleontologist Kirk Johnson opens this Saturday, Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. and is expected to bring in about 1,500 people for the day.
"People are always excited about dinosaurs," said Paul Ramey, APR assistant director of marketing and public relations.
The exhibit will have a complete skeleton cast of a 9-foot-tall triceratops and an albertosaurus, which resembles a small tyrannosaurus rex. The Triceratops was transported to the museum from a warehouse a couple of miles away on a trailer down 34th street and the albertosaurus was assembled at the museum.
There is debate in the scientific community about whether the triceratops is a separate species or a young torosaurus.
"An exhibit like this just gives the museum an opportunity to put some of these other fossils on display that people wouldn't normally get to see," Ramey said.
Also on display will be a tyrannosaurus rex skull, petrified wood, a dinosaur egg from China and a variety of 30 fossils from mammals, reptiles, other dinosaurs, fish and invertebrates.
Through a Plexiglas wall, visitors can observe as paleontologists prepare fossils collected from the Panama Canal and the Thomas Farm site in Gilchrist County. Nineteen color prints and five murals by Ray Troll and Kirk Johnson will also be exhibited.
The Toomey Foundation for the Natural Sciences Inc. helped sponsor the exhibit and paid the $8,000 lease. The Burke Museum at the University of Washington organized the exhibit.
The exhibit will run from Feb. 4 to Sept 3. and opens daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with guided tours at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 for adults, $4.50 for Florida resident seniors and college students and $4 for ages 3 to 17. Admission is free for museum members.
