Children's Museum's giant new dinos are here: 5 things to see at the revamped Dinosphere

Prepare to give a hearty welcome to several new Hoosiers. They're from out west — and they're throwing a housewarming party at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

After a yearlong closure for renovations, Dinosphere will reopen March 19 with two gigantic sauropods and an ancient predatory reptile, among other examples of life from the Jurassic Period.

Visitors will be able to see the fruits of a $27.5 million project called Mission Jurassic. Partnering with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands and the University of Manchester, the museum has led the dig over several years in a densely packed square mile outside Cody, Wyoming, in the Big Horn Basin. IndyStar visited the site in the summer of 2019 to report on the process.

The new-to-Indianapolis bones, trackways and ancient life are from about 150 million years ago. The additions will fill out the exhibit, which will continue to show long-beloved dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period, which spanned 145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago.

On Thursday, IndyStar got a sneak peek at the new Dinopshere. Here are five things you don't want to miss.

Two enormous sauropods

The museum has teased the arrival of these long-necked plant-eaters for a few years now. They roar at visitors on the ramp into Dinosphere. Their stature alone is awe-inspiring — each is about 65 feet long.

But there's more to them than that. An animated show sets the scene 150 million years ago with where they lived and how they ate. One of the sauropod friends had a particularly uncomfortable ending, too. Paleontologists found its bones trapped in a log jam in the bend of what would have been an ancient river channel, said Kim Robinson, director of media and public relations for the museum. The carcass remained and dried out.

Explore what they ate

Several parts of the exhibit allude to what the sauropods ate. To survive, they grew to weigh a lot — more than 15 tons each, in the case of the museum's duo — which helped them avoid the predatory Allosaurus.  

As it turns out, they spent all day eating to keep their energy up. With crayon-sized teeth, they scraped the leaves off plants and swallowed them without chewing. From there, kids can follow the food's journey through their stomach in an interactive. Other activities show how they grew so quickly.

A Baptanodon with a scary eye

The late Jurassic marine reptile had peepers the size of plates so it could see its prey in dark waters. Its jaw might have been toothless, but aided by a quick scoop, it caught squid just fine.

The Baptanodon is safely affixed to the wall now in a sea-like atmosphere that houses creatures from the Mesozoic Era. Paleontologists found its bones on the museum's plot in an area that used to be filled in by the Sundance Sea about 165 million years ago.

The reptile now swims alongside several other sea creatures that are from other places and have most recently been housed in the museum's collections. Visitors will also see an Atlantic horseshoe crab with sharp, fang-like edges and a Shame-faced box crab are among other marine fossils.

"We were able to take out a whole bunch of our fossils that just haven't been seen before — some beautiful ammonites and really cool octopus fossils," said Jennifer Anné, lead paleontologist and manager of natural science collections at the museum.

Animate your own dino drawing

Special paper with QR codes and coloring utensils await kids who want to draw their own dinosaur. Once they scan it at a special station, their creation pops out of an egg and grows on a giant screen. Then it frolics alongside other kids' creations. On Thursday evening, at least one with  "Big Daddy" written on it was born.

The activity is in the Art Lab, which is brimming with other projects that will while away the time. The museum commissioned artists to create works that teach kids something about the dinosaurs, and many invite their touch. For example, bumps along a crest, neck and eggs await small fingers in "Survival of the Prettiest" by Nekoda Witsken.

Elsewhere, kids can mold putty to an egg and then add patterns, arrange magnets to create a scene of animals eating and create a trackway by rubbing a crayon over patterns of footprints.

Children's Museum dinos:  Here's what I learned watching scientists dig bones out of the dirt 

See actual dino footprints

Real fossilized footprints that could have belonged to meat-eating and plant-eating dinosaurs are encased in glass. Nearby, a baby sauropod bone bears the scars of a predator's tooth marks.

Together, the evidence helps kids and scientists question how sauropods protected themselves by walking in herds and what might have happened to smaller ones who became vulnerable and were attacked.

The research behind these trackways and other fossils is ongoing in the field of paleontology and at the museum. The institution has several years left on its lease for the Wyoming plot of land. Anné said that the paleontologists plan to dig up more, which will continue to improve Dinosphere. 

"I'm actually really excited because ... we've been concentrating on the science and information that we need to make a great exhibit and getting the animals up for a great exhibit," Anné said. "Let's now start tackling the other questions, and then each year, we can bring back new information."

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.