Exhibit to spotlight underwater creatures from prehistoric times

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The Las Vegas Natural History Museum will open its doors to a variety of prehistoric creatures this weekend as it kicks off an exhibit titled Savage Ancient Seas.

Marilyn Gillespie, director of the 900 Las Vegas Blvd. North facility, said the exhibit will last from Saturday through Sept. 24. Gillespie said it will include both reproductions and original skeletons of extinct marine reptiles, as well as fish and other sea life.

Among the highlights is a reproduction of the skeleton of the longest sea turtle ever found, which measures 17 feet; a 45-foot-long tylosaur; the jaw of a Carcharadon megalodon, an ancient relative of the great white shark; xiphactinus; pachyrhizadus; and about 12 display cabinets and kiosks featuring interactive exhibits, including about four touch stations.

"They have found a lot of specimens, and they own the real specimens and in many cases created reproductions of bones that are too rare and expensive to travel around the country," Gillespie said. "So they do a casting of the bones and send them to display so the community can see the different creatures."

Gillespie said some of the specimens are reproduced with fake flesh to demonstrate how they would have looked while alive.

In addition to marine life, the exhibit will include the skeletons of pterodactyls and pterandons, which will hang in the museum's entrance hall.

"It's the savage ancient seas, but we also wanted to include some of the things that were fishing from those seas," Gillespie said. "That hallway has a 22-foot ceiling, so guests will be greeted by the creatures that lived near the oceans before they go in and see the things that lived underneath."

Gillespie also said the museum tries to showcase a family exhibition every year, and that's a reason behind the new exhibit.

"We try to do it in the summer because a lot of families are looking for things to do with their kids during the summer months," she said. "This show has that universal appeal that prehistoric stuff tends to have for kids of all ages."

Dave Ehlert, director of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colo., which created the Savage Ancient Seas exhibit, said the animals displayed lived between 80 million and 90 million years ago in a salt water seaway that ran through North America, from Texas through Montana.

"It was a shallow seaway that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, and it split North America in two," Ehlert said. "It was a lot bigger than the Mississippi, and it opened and closed several times, depending on geologic processes."

Ehlert said most of the specimens shown in the exhibit were found in Kansas. After the specimens were found, they were brought back to Colorado and replicas of those specimens were made and sold.

"In the water, there were these bizarre, weird creatures that don't live today," Ehlert said. "Dinosaurs lived on land at the same time, but they were only on the land. What was flying and in the water was all reptiles, not dinosaurs."

Ehlert said the exhibit will give the public a rare chance to learn about those reptiles, and see their fossils.

"The best thing about this show is that it shows people what was happening in the oceans at the same time dinosaurs were on land," Ehlert said. "There are a lot of dinosaur shows, but this is the only ancient marine show."

Gillespie said in addition to the exhibit, the Las Vegas Natural History Museum was set to re-open the Wild Nevada Gallery exhibit in the museum's Nevada Room this month. She said a donation from the E.L. Wiegand Foundation has allowed the museum to undergo major upgrades, including improved lighting, new interactive displays and state-of-the-art technology inside the Nevada Room.

The Wild Nevada Gallery was the museum's first ever display, and has been up for the past 13 years.

Gillespie said the museum closed the exhibit in January to add the $156,000 worth of upgrades.

"Sometimes it's too hot to go out in the desert and see the environment, so families can come here," Gillespie said of the Wild Nevada Gallery.

"A lot of kids have never been out of their own neighborhood," she added. "This is a good exhibit of the wildlife around us."

The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, military personnel and students, $3 for children ages 3 to 11, and free for museum members and children ages 2 and under.

For more information, those who are interested can visit www.savageancientseas.com or www.lvnhm.org, or call 384-3466.