Fossil fuel

HOLY PSITTACOSAURUS! The AMNH unveils some freaky dinos.

What has a parrot's beak, a dragon's tail, an eagle's talons, bristly porcupine quills and, oh yeah, horns shooting out the side of its face? No, it's not the latest beast conjured by Professor Snape to battle poor Harry Potter. It's a Psittacosaur—just one of a boatload of freaky looking prehistoric animals brought to life (well, almost) in "Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries," the American Museum of Natural History's latest Mesozoic-era extravaganza.

On a recent behind-the-scenes visit to the museum, where preparations for the show were in progress, we saw a life-size three-foot model of Psittacosaur (SIT-ah-co-SAWR; it literally means "parrot lizard"). It was still putty-colored and waiting for a final coating of orange and black paint. Tail outstretched, head low and slightly turned, the creature looked as if it were about to glance over its shoulder.

Why the inquisitive look? "She is just starting to realize that a Repenomamus giganticus wants to eat her babies," says Jason Brougham, a principal preparator for the museum's exhibits department. Brougham is one of several artists working furiously to construct dozens of life-size models of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, insects and plants for the 700-square-foot walk-through diorama that will depict a day in the life of China's now-extinct Jehol Forest some 130 million years ago. The region has recently produced some of the most excitingly detailed fossils ever unearthed. The exhibition will show painstakingly accurate re-creations of many of these new findings, among them a primitive cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, Dilong paradoxus, which is covered in roto-feathers—precursors to the feathers found on modern-day birds.

Off in the large exhibit room, artists Sean Murtha and Mike Tomeo are midway through painting the 70-foot-long, 10-foot-tall mural that will serve as the diorama's backdrop—one of the largest in the museum's history. Even though no one knows for certain what the Jehol landscape looked like back in the day, plant fossils indicate that conifers not unlike today's pine trees dominated the forest. Believe it or not, the region didn't look too different from the New Jersey Pine Barrens (which is exactly where the museum's paleobotanists and exhibit artists scouted for ideas). "It's not exactly the most exciting landscape out there," concedes Murtha, "but it's always best to use something real."

Sitting in what must be the coolest office in the whole city—a large circular room in the top of a turret with sweeping views of Central Park, a killer surround-sound system and ancient fossils spread out willy-nilly—Mark Norell, the lead curator of the exhibition and chairman of the museum's paleontology division, discusses why he's so excited about the upcoming show.

"In the old days, anyone could say anything they wanted about dinosaurs—and a lot was said—because they didn't have any data," says Norell. "Many people said dinosaurs were scaly animals; now we know that many of them were feathered and the ones that weren't feathered probably had skin that much more resembled the skin on the foot of a chicken as opposed to that on a crocodile or a lizard."

Norell, who's led dozens of digs, has discovered and studied many critical fossils, including the 130-million-year-old proto-feathered Dilong fossil. The new exhibition, he says, is centered around a "How do we know?" theme. It includes many interactive stations where visitors can see for themselves how paleontologists use technology to answer decades-old questions about dinosaurs—among them, how the creatures might have walked and what they looked like. Also in the show are computer simulations of dinosaur herding behavior (based on fossil footprints found in Texas in the 1930s) and large-scale animatronic models that demonstrate the biomechanics behind these gigantic beasts' movements—visitors will be able to alter the way the models move by changing physical characteristics. There's even a trophy wall of dino heads that highlights the current thinking on why they had all those crazy horns, frills and crests.

This is not to suggest that scientists have figured everything out. "Our sampling is pitiful," laments Norell, referring to the dearth of good fossils out there. And even if discoveries are set in stone, it doesn't always mean that explanations are long lasting. "There are no ultimate truths," says Norell. "One of the things that we hope to show people in the exhibit is that there's a lot we don't know." New discoveries, such as the existence of dinosaur-eating mammals, can shatter old theories like brittle bones.

Take, for example, the standoff between the mommy Psittacosaur and the hungry Repenomamus (a small-dog-sized mammal) that's depicted in the diorama. The scene is actually based on scientific evidence. After paleontologists found the bones of a baby Psittacosaur dinosaur in the belly area of a fossilized Repenomamus skeleton, their ideas about early mammals changed radically; previous notions had pegged them as rat-sized vermin that hid in the shadows of dinos, scavenging off their putrid leftovers.

The finding underscores that the story of evolution is a changing one; in fact, the next big dino exhibition that the museum mounts might contradict assumptions in this one. "We are constantly discovering more and having to reinterpret things we said a few years ago in the face of new evidence," says Norell. "That's what keeps it fun."

"Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries" opens May 14 at the American Museum of Natural History.