Rare dinosaurs from the Southern Hemisphere are about to take over the Royal Ontario Museum this weekend in a new exhibit called "Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana."
The exhibit, a North American premiere, features fossils from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana—a land mass that existed some 510 million years ago.
Gondwana—which included large parts of Africa and South America—was torn apart from what would later become parts of the Northern Hemisphere. This allowed for the dinosaurs of Gondwana to evolve separately from their Northern counterparts.
Because of evolution, these dinosaurs developed in a noticeably different way from the more popular Northern Hemisphere dinosaurs.
Unlike the T-rex, triceratops and stegosaurus, visitors to the museum will get to know the lesser-known giganotosaurus, carnotaurus and futalognkosaurus.
Exhibit curator David Evans told to CTV's Canada AM on Friday just what makes these new dinosaurs so special.
"In the last 30 years some of the most exciting paleontological discoveries have come from the Southern Hemisphere," said Evans. "These have revealed an amazing diversity of dinosaurs with features that are just unlike anything we see in the North."
For example, visitors to the exhibit will get to see dinosaurs with giant sails down their back or dinosaurs with spikes covering their entire neck, said Evans. These are a few examples of the distinct features that make these fossils so special.
"They just took on different features. It's that evolution in isolation. Isolation is really important to make evolution run wild," he said.
"In one hemisphere they went one way and in another hemisphere they went another way."
The exhibit features 17 full-sized skeleton casts, wall murals depicting the dinosaurs' natural environment and special augmented reality stations, where visitors can experience bonus features through their smart phones and tablets.
Through the augmented reality stations, visitors can see the fossils in a number of different ways. They can even use their mobile devices to view a virtual image of the dinosaur skeletons with their flesh on, as they existed millions of years ago.
Evans said one of the highlights of exhibit is the skeleton of the giant futalognkosaurus.
The futalognkosaurus is known as one of the largest animals to have ever walked the earth, said Evans. The long-necked dinosaur, which lived nearly 88 million years ago, measured around 110 feet in length and weighed as much as ten elephants.
"It's so big that we couldn't fit it in the exhibit hall, so it's in the main hall of the museum," said Evans.
"It really shows the extreme limits of how big these dinosaurs were. When you walk into the museum and you see this dinosaur, most people's jaws drop," he said.
"Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana" opens on Sunday and runs for eight months.
