Good Bones: Inside the SECU DinoLab at NCMNS
For immediate release ‐ May 06, 2024
Paleontology
Contact: Jon Pishney, 919.244.7913. Images available upon request
Dr. Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The SECU DinoLab will show real scientists at work studying fossils. Photo: Joshua Steadman.
by Hampton Williams Hofer
This high-tech research lab within the museum is open to the public. It will showcase ongoing paleontological study of the Dueling Dinosaurs.
The new SECU DinoLab, which opened late last month, is a high-tech research lab within the museum that is open to the public. It’s unlike any in the world. “I conceived the Dueling Dinosaurs project to take the public on a live scientific journey, to illuminate how science works, to show who scientists are and what we look like, and to increase trust in the scientific process,” says Dr. Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the NCMNS. “At its core is a mystery, a moment lost to time and one of the most fascinating fossils discovered in North America.”
Typically, such fossils as the tyrannosaur and Triceratops would be excavated and studied behind the scenes in a research lab, with the bones or models reassembled and set up for display. But the Dueling Dinosaurs will be kept embedded in the sandstone in which they were discovered, allowing visitors to witness active research and even ask questions of the paleontologists at work, like Did the tyrannosaur have feathers? Is there evidence of soft tissue, even coloration? Were the two really interacting when they died? One dinosaur had a broken finger and a broken tail — how? “Science has an accessibility problem, and mistrust in science is rising. We have to bring science out of the back corners and basements,” Zanno says. “We need to throw back the curtain, get in front of the public, and let our community see who we are and what we do.”
Javan Sutton, the museum’s director of exhibits and digital media, helped design the Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit with the goal of fostering imagination. “With a working paleontology lab at the exhibit’s center, visitors will get to take part in the actual science in a way that has never been done before,” he says.
Read the full story at Walter Magazine
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