Wild: amazing animals in a changing world opens September 2009.
 

Credit: late Gary Lewis, Source: Museum Victoria

Wow look at me I'm being installed into the new exhibition. My friend Dean has been working really hard to make me look good, you can see him on the ground sorting out my tail.

Credit: Melinda Iser; Source: Museum Victoria

Rencently we installed a Quetzalcoatlus at Melbourne Museum for the upcoming Dinosaur Walk exhibition. It ‘s a huge pterosaur with a wingspan of up to 15 metres - the largest flying creature of all time and existed the very end of the Cretaceous period. Being such a large animal it was suprisingly light and probably weighed no more than 100 kilograms.

Credit: Rodney Start, Source: Melbourne Museum

Hello

I'm currently getting a new 'look', all my bones have been individually cleaned and freshed up to make me look good for the new exhibition. I'll be standing on my hind legs like the picture below.

I've also added a picture of ramp (second image) that is being built, I'm going to be exhibited down the end near Diprotodon, he's the fellow you can see right at the end of the ramp.

Not long now only one month to go before I'm back on show and you can come and visit me again.

Artist: Kym Haines, Source: Museum Victoria / Credit: Kate Phillips, Source: Museum Victoria

Above: Trilobites, fossil ferns and Diprotodon - all a bit older than me.  (Source: Museum Victoria)

Time is an odd sort of thing – I’m always losing it, but you can never get it back. For example, one year ago, my son wasn’t even born. Ten years ago, I was still at University. A thousand years ago, Vikings were doing their thing in Europe . A million years ago, ancestral humans hadn’t even formed recognisable civilisations. But 600 million years? It almost goes without saying, but that’s a very long time ago. As you can probably guess, quite a bit has changed on our planet in that time.

One of the challenges we’re facing with our new exhibitions in the Science and Life Gallery redevelopment is to make this sort of timescale comprehensible – the amount of time is so big that it is hard to wrap your head around. The first of the four exhibitions to open will be Dinosaur Walk, displaying dinosaur skeletons and others, aims to summarise the last 253 million years of land vertebrate evolution, starting just before the age of the dinosaurs, passing through the Mesozoic where dinosaurs, flying and marine reptiles ruled their domains, through to their extinction and the eventual rise (and demise) of the megafauna.

So how do you fit something as mind-bogglingly vast as hundreds of millions of years into an exhibition space less than 50 metres long at Melbourne Museum ? The answers to that are, with careful selection of display objects, some very clever (and patient) exhibition designers and an equally talented exhibition team!

Hello!

My time had arrived to start the process of getting ready for my new look in the Dinosaur Walk exhibition, I had ALL these men fussing over me (which was just fabulous) making sure I was taken apart in the correct way. I’ve got a video of the whole thing, take a look.

Museum staff installs temporary signage advertising the upcoming Dinosaur Walk exhibition

Credit: Melinda Iser, Source: Museum Victoria

Credit:Benjamin Healley, Source: Museum Victoria

The science and life design team have backgrounds in exhibition design, industrial design, interior design and graphic design. They are creating dynamic environments for the display and interpretation of heritage collection material for this development project.

Concept drawing & elevation of Dinosaur Walk exhibition showing viewing platform.

Credit: Richard Glover, Source: Museum Victoria

Platform template placed in space to establish hanging points in the ceiling| 3D rendered drawing of platform in space.

Credit: Melinda Iser, source: Museum Victoria | Credit: Peter Wilson, Source: Museum Victoria