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The Bruce Museum unveils its new "Chinasaurs: Dinosaur Discoveries from China" exhibit to the public Saturday. The exhibit features casts of fossils of dinosaurs whose lives span millions of years, including the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
"We love having family-friendly exhibits. We haven't had dinosaurs in a very long time and they're really nice specimens," Bruce Museum Curator of Science Gina Gould said. "China is one of the fastest-growing paleontology areas a,nd many museums have opened there just in the past five years."
The Bruce Museum is going all out with the nearly four-month exhibition, featuring a lecture series on dinosaurs and several events for children.
"Any time you can get dinosaurs to come to the little Bruce Museum, we're happy about it," Bruce Museum Deputy Director Susan Ball said. "We knew when this was coming in we wanted to do a lecture series that you can bring your budding paleontologist to and meet the people who actually dig these things up."
Some of the fossils may look very similar to dinosaurs people might be familiar with from the film "Jurassic Park," but almost all are biologically different. One dinosaur that looks a lot like a stegosaurus is actually a tuojiangosaurus.
Dinosaur fossils have been found in neighboring Mongolia since the 1920's. But Gould said that it is only within the last 20 years or so that China has become a hotbed of paleontology finds.
"China is really kicking butt right now," Gould said. "Whether it's fossils or living stuff, they have a renewed focus on what their land is that they haven't had in a long time."
Gould said one of the most striking things about the exhibit is how intact all the fossil casts are.
"When you look at these animals and their bones, they're really pieces of art," Gould said. "They're beautiful sculptures and they fit in as art, even though it's not. It's science."
Check out The Greenwich Daily Voice events page for all of the lectures and kids programs related to the "Chinasaurs" exhibit."
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