The Liaoning Forest diorama is a major highlight of the exhibition Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries. This enormous evocative diorama—one of the most detailed re-creations of a prehistoric environment ever constructed—depicts the rich diversity of animals living in a Mesozoic forest in China.
Photographer: Roderick Mickens © American Museum of Natural History
Get ready to travel back in time. Your voyage will take you to a part of eastern Asia as it looked about 130 million years ago. At the time, this region—now in the Chinese province of Liaoning—was warm and dry. The land was covered by forests and lakes rich with plant and animal life, although from time to time, volcanic eruptions darkened the sky and stilled everything with a blanket of ash.
Photographer: Roderick Mickens © American Museum of Natural History
A close-up of Monjurosuchus splendens, a small carnivorous, aquatic reptile featured in the exhibition Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries
Photographer: Roderick Mickens © American Museum of Natural History
This feathered dinosaur, died in its sleep—either buried by volcanic ash or killed by poisonous gas from an eruption. The animal, a dinosaur called Mei long, apparently slept much as birds do, with its feet tucked under its body and its head underneath one wing. Look for Mei long nesting in the forest.
Photographer: Roderick Mickens © American Museum of Natural History
It's skull doesn't have any horns, but this dinosaur, called Psittacosaurus, is also a member of the same group as Triceratops and other horned dinosaurs. The very first ceratopsians did not have horns or frills and probably looked much like Psittacosaurus.
Photographer: Roderick Mickens © American Museum of Natural History
Jeholopterus ningchengensis: This flying reptile (pterosaur) was covered in a fuzz of thin fibers. This model is covered with hair-like structures as well!
Photographer: Craig Chesek © American Museum of Natural History
Get ready to travel back in time!
Your voyage will take you to a part of eastern Asia as it looked 130 million years ago. At the time, this region—now in the Chinese province of Liaoning—was warm and dry. The land was covered by forests and lakes rich with plant and animal life, although from time to time, volcanic eruptions darkened the sky and stilled everything with a blanket of ash.
Some of the plants and animals of the Liaoning forest will seem familiar. Pine trees line the shores of the lake. Frogs, turtles and fish look almost the same as they do today. But much is different here. Long-extinct dinosaurs share the landscape with unusual plants, large insects and unfamiliar mammals. Primitive birds fly overhead, while other feathered dinosaurs climb the trees. A walk through the Liaoning forest offers intriguing clues to how the ancient world became modern.
Scurrying beneath the feet of large dinosaurs, early mammals were often quite small. This shrewlike mammal from Liaoning, China, named Eomaia (“ee-oh-MY-ah”), is considered to be a close relative of all living placental mammals, which give birth to live young. Other mammals found at Liaoning were the size of dogs and preyed on dinosaurs!
