Dynamic Earth's new temporary exhibit, unEarthed: 4 Billion Years of Life, tells the story of life on Earth.
Opening this Saturday and running until the Labour Day weekend, the exhibit features a treasury of fossil casts from a century of worldwide excavations.
It explores a geological timeline from the earlier forms of life through to the age of dinosaurs, mammals and prehistoric humans.
“We've got an awful lot of content in there — about 150 individual cast specimens from some of the most significant collections in the world, including Lucy, the famous hominid skeleton,” said Julie Moskalyk, senior manager of Dynamic Earth.
Over the past three decades, Science North and Dynamic Earth have hosted five exhibits focusing on dinosaurs — it's a popular topic. But this is the first time there's been an exhibit on humans' ancestors, Moskalyk said.
While Science North and Dynamic Earth regularly develop their own exhibits, unEarthed comes from a science centre in the United States.
As well as the fossil replicas attached to the exhibit, Dynamic Earth brought in a few real ones, including some Canadian dinosaur specimens on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum.
The Cayuga Nature Center in Ithaca, New York has also sent along 40 buckets of material from a mastadon fossil dig site.
“What visitors get to do with our bluecoats is they get to dig through the material, and when the find material that's related to the mastadon or to its habitat, they identify it, they bag it, they tag it and put their name on it,” Moskalyk said.
“Then it gets shipped back to the nature centre in New York. It's a citizen science project. It's where people get to be hands-on and do real science on a real dig.”
Visitors can visit unEarthed: 4 Billion Years of Life as part of the price of admission to Dynamic Earth. Visit Dynamic Earth's website for more information.
