The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences seeks to travel 67 million years in the past with its upcoming Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit<\/a>. Tyrannosaur and Triceratops fossils will help make paleontologists out of visitors thanks in part to a fruitful partnership between NC State and the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six joint-appointed faculty engage in scholarship and help educate the nearly 1 million members of the public who visit the museum each year. They’ve helped set the stage for engaging, interactive experiences, including an exciting new dinosaur exhibit that opens on April 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dueling Dinosaurs Fast Facts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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• The Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit focuses on a fossil with the skeletons of a tyrannosaur and a Triceratops<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
• The fossils in the exhibit were discovered in 2006 in Montana.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
• Visitors will design their own dinosaur by comparing it to living animals. They will also have a sensory experience of the paleontology process as it happens in the lab. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
• Visitors can use CT scan data to figure out what sounds a dinosaur could hear, and will touch and feel different kinds of fossils.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
• Visitors will be able to see what\u2019s happening live in the lab, which was designed so that fossils can be craned in and out through the window in the lab.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

  Putting Science on Display<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

  NC State\u2019s University-Museum Partnership, part of the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs<\/a>, artfully showcases science to the public and helps make exhibits like Dueling Dinosaurs possible. The university and museum partner to bring researchers, students and the public together to explore and understand our world through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  \u201cThe partnership began with the University-Museum joint appointment of renowned paleontologist Dale Russell in 1995 and continued with his 2003 successor,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  Mary Schweitzer, who would turn the field of paleontology on end with her disruptive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  discovery of soft tissue in a 68-million year old T. rex fossil,\u201d said Dan Solomon, emeritus dean of the College of Sciences. \u201cToday, faculty and students from across the university are now deeply engaged with the museum, using the venue and the staff to gain experience and skill in communicating science to public audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  The first of the current joint-appointee faculty were hired in 2012. Around that time, Betsy Bennett, then director of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, envisioned an innovative program that would create opportunities for faculty to build a strong presence at the museum\u2019s Nature Research Center. This would include positions involving a significant amount of public engagement and outreach. Bennett then reached out to Dan Solomon, then dean of NC State\u2019s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (now the College of Sciences), and they worked together to create these opportunities for several NC State faculty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  The University-Museum Partnership is the first-of-its-kind program to position university researchers in truly transparent, open-to-the-public research spaces within the museum. The public can see research occurring in real time and engage directly with the researchers to hear from them about what they\u2019re doing and why it matters. Much of the research that has historically occurred in museums is not visible to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  And, traditionally, museum researchers (who don\u2019t have a joint appointment with a university) do not have the opportunity to teach university courses and advise\/mentor university students the way the joint appointees do. The partnership also dramatically increases opportunities for joint-appointee faculty to conduct public engagement and outreach work in settings that many university researchers don\u2019t typically experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n