Children’s Museum of Indy: Back to the Jurassic Mission

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis said the Dinosphere exhibit is the venue’s most popular gallery.

Executives of the museum at 3000 N. Meridian St. are now looking to change things up by adding more fossils to the 15-year-old exhibit. The $28 million project features a new team returning to Wyoming for more fossils. It’s being called Mission Jurassic. 

Jeffrey H. Patchen, president of the museum, said, “Instead of just acquiring them in some way, actually find some land in this formation called the Morrison formation in Wyoming and Montana that have some of these fossils.” 

A few years ago, the museum sent a small team of scientists out West to dig. 

“So far, we’ve found all sorts of things, everything from the Sauropod dinosaur, these giant long-neck, long-tailed dinosaurs, as well as some predatory dinosaurs,” said museum paleontologist Victoria Egerton. 

Museum paleontologist Phil Manning added, “Just by the sheer number of dinosaurs, the diversity and not only getting the bones, but trackways, plants, its the full ‘Jurassic Park’ really.” 

Nearly 600 specimens have been collected; that’s almost 6 tons of fossils. It’s so much to go through, the museum had to call in help from 100 scientists from three countries.

The hope is for The Children’s Museum to work closely with museums abroad to share past discoveries that could help break down new ones. 

Professor Richard Herrington of the Natural History Museum in London said, “It’s a very complex world back then and it’s not in the brief of one of our institutions to be able to tackle this.” 

Manning joked, “I’m so excited about the heat exhaustion, the mosquitoes the size of pigeons, the rattlesnakes and all the excitement that goes with being a paleontologist.”