MoAW presents
Spotlight
TYRANNOSAURUS REX
King of the Tyrant Lizards
get your tickets for
Escape the Lost Pyramid - A Night at the Museum
On Friday and Saturday, October 1 and 2, 2021,
from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
MoAW will host PRO VR USA’s
Escape the Lost Pyramid Virtual Reality Escape Game.
Click below for more information from Palm Springs Life and to register.
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MESOZOICA
The Age of Dinosaurs
From the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs to the last of their kind, these laboratory fossil casts of legendary discoveries guide us through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods known as the Mesozoic Era. Gathered from more than 30 museums worldwide, the collection includes fully-mounted dinosaurs, skulls, teeth, claws, and eggs displayed in geological, chronological order to illustrate the awesome story of the evolution of dinosaurs to their ultimate extinction.
Displaying casts of rare fossils from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, this prestigious collection includes skeletons, skulls, claws, and eggs gathered from such revered museums as the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, The Royal Ontario Museum, and the Carnegie Museum, as well as many others.
These compelling fossil casts, rarely seen outside of their respective museums, are on view together exclusively in MESOZOICA: The Age of Dinosaurs.
30 NASA photographs of the Universe titled STARSCAPE: A Journey To The Beginning of Time associates the fossil record with the origins of the Cosmos.
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Barnum Brown, the man who discovered T-rex.
In the 1890s, Brown's discovery of Tyrannosaurus rex was just the beginning. For the next six decades, he would travel the world in search of important fossils, from the baking heat of India to the humid jungles of Guatemala, and when not looking for fossils, Brown often supplemented his income by working for mining or oil companies. Even though Brown had flunked out of Columbia University and seldom wrote scientific papers, his expertise at finding and excavating fossils was unmatched—it is no wonder that dozens of the skeletons he collected still grace the American Museum of Natural History fossil halls. - Riley Black, Science Correspondent, Smithsonian Magazine.
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THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD
from 140 million to
65 million years ago
Marking the appearance of flowers, the fertile Cretaceous period was named for vast deposits of chalk (creta in Latin), rich in fossils and widely distributed throughout the world. The distribution of the continents was beginning to resemble that of the present, although a great shallow sea flowing from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico separated the supercontinent of Laurasia into Asiamerica (East Asia and Western North America) and Euramerica (Europe and Eastern North America). Marked by a rich emergence of advanced dinosaurs, the Late Cretaceous, 75 million years ago, was a time of tremendous volcanic upheaval as mountain ranges and new islands were being formed. The drifting of the continents toward the polar regions brought on significant changes in seasonal weather. No longer able to roam between the continents, many of the later dinosaurs evolved exclusively in Asiamerica. The dominant creatures of the period, most species lasted no more than 5 million years before disappearing from the fossil record, often followed by more advanced descendants. This period lasted until 65 million years ago, ending with a catastrophic mass extinction second only to that of the Permian. Nearly half of all the Cretaceous plants and animals, both marine and terrestrial, suddenly vanished. Among them were the dinosaurs.
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Suborder Theropoda,
Family Tyrannosauridae Tyrannosaurus rex
Late Cretaceous, Montana
One of the largest known predators to have walked the Earth (the females distinctly larger than the males), this invincibly massive, ferocious carnosaur of Late Cretaceous western North America and Asia was discovered in 1902 by the adventurous collector Barnum Brown. Surpassed in size only by the South American carnosaur Giganotosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex (“Tyrant Lizard King”) grew to lengths of as much as 50 feet, towering 20 feet high and weighing 5 to 7 tons. Their heads alone measured 4 to 5 feet, sporting jaws lined with long, saw-edged teeth, each one supported by ranks of replacements. Reaching maturity within 5 years, the life spans of these enormous creatures may have surpassed 100 years.
Fossil evidence of their actual metabolism is magnificently preserved in the sequential rings of growth-spurts which scar the teeth. While strictly regarded by some as nothing more than scavengers, owing to their greatly reduced forelimbs which could not even reach their mouths, others consider these creatures the most fearsome hunters ever to have existed, balanced for swift running by their long tails.
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Presumed to have dealt mostly with the animal’s senses, the brain of Tyrannosaurus rex was not small for a dinosaur although compared to the size of the creature’s body it was remarkably diminutive. This cranial endocast preserves the size and shape of the brain of a Tyrannosaurus rex. |
This isolated maxilla, once the largest known, is from the University of California, Berkeley. This spectacular skull, from one of the largest ever found, is from the Museum of the Rockies. |
MoAW's mission is to educate a diverse audience about the history of ancient civilizations and prehistoric life using fossils and artifacts from a variety of cultures and time periods; to enhance universal curriculum development for local and surrounding school districts, colleges, and universities while establishing museum diversity for the Coachella Valley.
Hours of Operation:
Monday - Saturday
10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Sunday 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m.
The last admission is taken one hour before closing.
Admission:
$15.00 Adults
$12.00 Students, Seniors, & Military
$ 3.00 Discount available for Coachella Valley Residents
$10.00 Group Rate for 10 or more individuals.
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, MoAW is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM) Association, the American Alliance of Museums, and the California Association of Museums.
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VESSELS OF THE GODS
Treasures of the Ancient Greeks
1650 to 410 B.C.E
Reflecting the brilliance of a millennium of ancient Aegean culture, four distinct periods produced the designs of these vases: Minoan, Mycenaean, Corinthian, and Attic. Essentially consisting of silhouetted figures drawn against a background of red, black, or white, this art form gradually dies out after the Persian wars, c. 475-450 B.C.E. Shaped and painted by hand, these exquisite reproductions were created in Greece by master artists from the originals housed in The National Museum, Athens, The Heraklion Museum, The Thera Museum, The Corinth Museum, The Delphi Museum, The Louvre Museum, The Vatican Museum, and The Museo Civico, Brescia.
Please, feel free to preview this collection on MoAW's website: www.moaw.org
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Next Week:
Do you have a favorite piece at MoAW you would like to see highlighted in our weekly email? You can visit www.moaw.org, see the collections tab, visit the catalogs, and view Spotlights From The Past.
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Members Perks
The newest perk of membership: Free admission to over 1,200 museums nationwide through the North American Reciprocal Museum Program (NARM) Plus, discounts at their museum shops and restaurants (if given to their members). Local museums include the Palm Springs Art Museum and Cabot's Pueblo Museum, several museums in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, throughout California, all 50 states, and the District of Columbia, plus Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda. This is available to all members at the Donor Level ($125.00) or higher. Current members who qualify will be receiving new membership cards with the NARM logo to be used at participating museums.
Current members who would like to upgrade their membership to take advantage of this new benefit please give us a call, (442) 268-5004.
Click below for more information and to join.
THANK YOU
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ON DISPLAY EXCLUSIVELY
AT THE
MUSEUM OF ANCIENT WONDERS
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FACES OF AFRICA:
A Mystical View of
Tribal Heritage
(38 Replica Masks and Sculptures)
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TUTANKHAMUN:
"Wonderful Things"
Treasures From The Pharaoh's Tomb
(124 Egyptian replicas)
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MESOZOICA:
The Age of Dinosaurs
(Approximately 100 fossil-cast dinosaur elements and fully-mounted skeletons from around the world.)
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LUCY:
The Story of Human Origins
(Courtesy of the Institute of Human Origins and the National Museum of Ethiopia,
Addis Ababa)
On view exclusively at the
Museum of Ancient Wonders
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