LEVEL 2

Our most popular long-term exhibition complements what your students have seen and studied in Dinosaurs From China.

Most notable objects and interactives:

• the giant ammonite
• the Joan Wiffen exhibit, including some more of her finds – mosasaur and elasmosaur skulls, a carnosaur toe bone, and a sauropod rib; the most important is the unimposing vertebra – her first dinosaur fossil find
• the audio-visual showing the split up of Gondwanaland – a 3 minute loop
• by the Gondwanaland a/v, displays and graphics highlighting fossil evidence of modern-day New Zealand, Australia, and Antarctica once being joined
• the tuatara case – an excellent example of a diapsid skull – and behind the case the tuatara family tree
• the Time Traveller interactive – a circular timeline that begins 110 million years ago and travels through to the present.

There is more information (including images) to be found about some of these objects on Tai Awatea | Knowledge Net, Te Papa’s multimedia database.

On your left just before your enter this area is a case called ‘Road kill’. It shows a possum fossilised after meeting its untimely end in a road collision.

• Run your fingers over the fossils in the limestone boulder and learn through exploring a series of drawers how the limestone is formed.
• A ginkgo fossil is on display.
• A timeline sets out the periods of geological evolution with models of fossils of life forms found in the periods (for example, a theropod claw above the Cretaceous Period).
• A moa bone is available from the staff desk for the children to touch.
• A model of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull is on display for the duration of Dinosaurs from China.
• Dinosaur websites can be accessed on two of the children's activity computers.
• We have dozens of children's books related to dinosaurs, as well as an activity table with board games and tactile dinosaur models to play with.

On a fine day your students can pretend they are palaeontologists on a fossil dig and excavate a mosasaur skeleton.

Bush City can be accessed through Mountains to Sea, down the end to your left.

Blastback

This Time Warp ride explores the mythological and geological forces that have shaped New Zealand’s landscape. It also features prehistoric animals. Note: admission fee.

LEVEL 6

Get down on your hands and knees and discover these amazing polished floor tiles. They are limestone from Germany and approximately 150 million years old. The layers of creatures that formed this limestone would have accumulated in warm shallow seas prior to the collision of Africa into Europe. Get your students to see if they can find cross-sections of the fossilised remains of ammonites, belemnites, and various organisms with shells.