When Fossils Attack

And we’re not talking about Ron Paul

Comments (0) By Peter Breslin Thursday, May 1 2008

Gigantic, pissed-off chickens with teeth. That’s the impression created by the imposing models on display in the “Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origins of Flight” exhibit. After you check out these dentally impressive fowl, run for your life to Arizona Science Center and marvel at the computer-controlled dino-matrons galore featured in the “Dinosaurs! Giants in the Desert” show.

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The on-loan traveling exhibition “Feathered Dinosaurs” offers an ultra-rare glimpse of fossils from China. Specifically, the show centers on the reptiles-with-feathers revolution in paleontology, which theorizes how those cute little birdies eating worms in your yard descended from Shaq-size, flesh-mangling monsters. The recently opened “Dinosaurs!” showcases other types of realistically modeled, actual-size giants that butt heads, roar, tend to their young, and try to eat each other. Along with a very dead, 32-foot-long Apatosaurus, there are “fossil rub stations” and a “dig pit” for visitors with a dirt-and-bone fetish.

Roar.

March 1-7, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; March 8-30, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; April 1-May 4, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., 2008