Duck That Dino!

By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on May 18, 2009 7:30PM

Yesterday we got a sneak peak at the Field Museum's latest addition: a 3D movie theater. Wearing the requisite glasses, we saw Dinosaurs Alive!, an educational film about bones more than dinosaurs. The film shows how bones are found, who looks for bones and, best of all, what the dinosaurs and their environs looked like.

The theater is located near the "Evolving Planet" exhibition, suitably supplementing the rest of the museum's dinosaur collection. From an entertainment point of view, they could have done more with the 3D graphics of the living dinosaurs to excite the viewers, perhaps by placing more emphasis on the creatures' magnitude. From an educational viewpoint, though, they did a fantastic job of explaining how paleontologists find and excavate bones, as well as how they can use clues from those bones to figure out how they lived. When leaving the theater, you pass the scientists working in a glass-enclosed room, and you have a better understanding of what they actually do in there.

The children in the audience seemed amazed by the graphics, and they giggled at a dino doo-doo joke, but it might be a bit frightening for the younger and more skittish children. There are fights, but no blood or serious violence.

The Ernst & Young 3D Theater opens to the public on Friday, May 22. Tickets are $5 with basic admission to the Museum