Utah Welcomes New One-of-a-Kind Museum and Dinosaur Exhibits

The new museum and exhibits create accessible scientific experiences for families and educating them on the state's unique history, landscapes, wildlife and other natural wonders. A new dinosaur exhibit at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site. These new authentic landmarks will create a place of learning and inspiration for people of all ages and showcase Utah's awe-inspiring environment. Stunning architecture, experiential stories and guided tours will take families on a trip through time, allowing them to discover an invaluable part of Utah's past.

Natural History Museum – Salt Lake City, UT

The Natural History Museum of Utah, set to open in its new home, the Rio Tinto Center, this fall, will provide a portal into the state's diverse history and make science come alive through all new interactive exhibits and programming, immersive design and public spaces representing different time periods. Located on a beautiful site above the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, visitors will be taken on a journey through space and time with themes such as Sky, Life, Native Voices, Past Worlds, First Peoples and the Great Salt Lake, as well as experience outdoor exhibits and performance spaces. As the state's designated natural history museum, the Natural History Museum of Utah will celebrate Utah's native peoples, cultures and extraordinary ecology and demonstrate links connecting the past, present and future.

The unique design of the new Rio Tinto Center embodies the Museum's educational and scientific mission to stimulate discovery, curiosity and excitement of the natural world and the place of humans in it. The visionary architecture, which blurs the boundaries between built and natural environments, was conceptualized to represent Utah's landscape and geology over time. In addition to educating and inspiring visitors, the new museum will have appropriate storage cabinets, temperatures and lighting controls to better preserve and protect the 1.2 million objects enclosed within its walls and cared for by Museum experts, including dinosaur bones, rare insects and pre-historic pottery and tools. Striving for Gold LEED-certification, the new building will encompass green values to increase energy efficiency and promote green behavior, as well as save money and resources. For more information, visit https://umnh.utah.edu/.

Dinosaur National Monument – Jensen, UT

The Quarry Visitor Center and Quarry Exhibit Hall in the Dinosaur National Monument, closed since 2006 for renovation and set to debut early October 2011, will offer the state's most dramatic dinosaur display, with the fossilized remains of over 1,500 Jurassic dinosaur bones preserved in a 200-foot-long wall. The Quarry, encompassing less than 100 acres, is the only place in the 210,000-acre monument where the public can easily see dinosaur fossils embedded in rock. The restored Exhibit Hall will feature all-new exhibits addressing the dinosaurs' life on Earth, including a large mural which will portray Dinosaur National Monument as it may have looked 149 million years ago, depicting more than 50 different ancient species. Beyond the Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument offers trails, tours and activities which highlight the area's sweeping scenery, rushing rivers, dramatic canyons, unique geology and a rich cultural history. For more information, visit www.nps.gov/dino

St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site – St. George, UT

Also new on Utah's dinosaur scene is the Scelidosaurus dinosaur exhibit at the 200 million-year-old St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. The museum, which preserves dinosaur tracks, fossils and other remains, is now home to a replica of the English dinosaur Scelidosaurus and the only place in the Americas the dinosaur has been on display. Since it was first discovered in 1851, only about a dozen, mostly incomplete specimens of this dinosaur have been found, but in 2000, a virtually complete skeleton was discovered near the town of Charmouth, England, its hundreds of armor plates and spikes preserved in their life positions. The Scelidosaurus was able to maintain such extraordinary detail because it was preserved in a hard nodule of rock that formed before the bones had a chance to fall apart. It made its way to St. George because of a generous donation from local lawyers Virginius "Jinks" and Barbara Anne Dabney, who appreciated the uniqueness of the dinosaur, saw that it would fit well with the other dinosaur fossils featured in the museum and volunteered to sponsor its arrival to the US. For more information, visit www.UtahDinosaurs.com.

For more information on museum offerings throughout Utah, visit www.arts.utah.gov