Opening times:
The exhibition, which will be open until August 2018, is the largest about dinosaurs ever to be mounted in Chile. It includes models of the skeletons of the most representative South American dinosaurs as well as of the Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, one of the most interesting dinosaurs ever discovered, some of whose fossils are on public display for the first time.
The Chilesaurus diegosuarezi is now thought to have been a plant-eating dinosaur, closely related to birds, which lived in Chile in the late Jurassic period, or some 150 million years ago. When the first fossils were discovered in southern Chile’s Aysén Region in 2004, it was initially assumed to have been a carnivorous species like Tyrannosaurus rex and the discovery that it was, in fact, a herbivore challenged international scientific thinking about the date at which dinosaurs may have become plant-eaters.
The exhibition, designed for both adults and children, is organized around three key themes:
- The origin, diversification and extinction of dinosaurs
- The evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded
- The origin of birds.
As well as providing the latest scientific information, the exhibition allows visitors to follow the dinosaurs through their evolution and on into birds and to learn more about the most important types of dinosaurs that inhabited South America.
Thanks to the use of augmented reality, visitors can also see dinosaurs in movement and imagine how they lived. Further attractions of the exhibition include an application for mobile devices that can be downloaded free-of-charge and interactive games for children in both the Museum and outside in the Quinta Normal Park.
