Photo by Erin FredrichsTribune

Tribune

New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science preparator Larry Rinehart examines the bone structure of the erythrosuchian, the large model of the animal that will greet visitors in the museum's new Triassic Hall exhibit. "They are not dinosaurs, specifically," Rinehart says. "They're extinct reptiles."

Photo by Erin FredrichsTribune

Tribune

The coelophysis, one of the earliest dinosaurs known to have existed, is one of the exhibits marked for display in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science's new Triassic Hall. The exhibit, set to open in March, will allow people to examine the ancient coelophysis fossil excavated from Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in 1984.

Photo by Erin FredrichsTribune

Tribune

A respirator dangles from the vertebra of the redondasauras bermani "Dave" inside the annex of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Sketches on the wall behind the model show how it will be displayed inside the museum's new Triassic Hall, scheduled to open in March.

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Dinosaurs weren't always the gigantic earth-shaking monsters you see in museums and the movies.

In their early days — during a time period called the Triassic — dinosaurs the size of chickens hid in the bushes in small packs, hoping to avoid the deadly jaws of 20-foot-long crocodile-like reptiles that were the dominant animal of their time.

It's an important phase of their history, and one that has been all but ignored by natural history museums across the world, said Spencer Lucas, interim director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

A new permanent exhibit opening at the museum in March is aimed at improving those perceptions and educating people about the importance of that time period, which spanned from 248 to 208 million years ago, he said.

"The Triassic is a crossroads in the history of life," said Lucas, who is also the museum paleontology curator. "It's an important time of change when a lot of things went extinct and a lot of new things appeared."

The Triassic began after the end of the biggest extinction event in Earth's history, when about 90 percent of all oceanic life forms died out. The creatures that survived into the Triassic spread out and changed dramatically, Lucas said.

It's also a time that seems to have parallels to today, with mass extinctions and talk of both massive global warming and global cooling events, Lucas said.

"You have to wonder if people 10,000 years from now will look at today as another one of these shifting points," he said, then paused.

"If people are still around," he added.

The exhibit is perfect for New Mexico because the state has some of the best Triassic-aged rocks in the world, including some spectacular finds of clusters of a dinosaur called coelophysis — a 9-foot-long, lanky meat-eating predator, said Bob Sullivan, senior curator of paleontology and geology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

"Rocks and fossils from New Mexico represent a very important sequence for that period of time in earth's history," Sullivan said, adding that such finds are somewhat rare.

"Most museums focus heavily on the Jurassic and Cretaceous, which are represented by large dinosaurs," Sullivan said. "The New Mexico exhibit will show that this time period is important as well."

The Jurassic, which spanned from 208 to 146 million years ago, and the Cretaceous, which spanned from 146 to 65 million years ago, represent the end of the story of the dinosaurs, Lucas said.

But there's a lot to be learned from the beginning of their story, he said.

"All the stories of evolution start with small body sizes," Lucas said. "Large body sizes are the end of things."

The predominant creatures of that time were phytosaurs — 20-foot-long crocodile-like animals that hunted both in the water and on land.

Dinosaurs, on the other hand, were small hunters that grew to 10 feet long at their largest.

"Most were small enough that they lived off eating insects," Lucas said. "There are chicken-sized and even pigeon-sized dinosaurs from that time."

Dinosaurs are also reptiles, but their upright posture and light-weight bones are different from phytosaurs and other reptiles that dominated during the Triassic, Lucas said.

"What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur is that the animals were very active and agile," Lucas said. "You could argue that the landscape in the Triassic, with a single landmass and vast land areas, was an opportunity for them."

The Triassic also marks when the first mammal appeared. A pinky-tip-sized rodent that likely scurried around in trees.

"We have the fossil of the oldest known mammal ever found," Lucas said. "That's our distant ancestor, many grandpas ago — the first of the begats."

Visitors to the exhibit will get to view that fossil under a microscope.

They'll also get to see what the giant phytosaur looked like when hunting other creatures of the day.

And they'll get to see one of the most spectacular specimens of coelophysis — locked in a 4,000-pound hunk of rock with parts from about 24 individual animals, including nine skulls.

Museum preparator Larry Rinehart has worked to bring out the detail in that specimen for more than three years, and it shows some fascinating details about how the creatures lived.

"You can see evidence that they ate their young," Rinehart said, pointing to the grasping and distinctive hand bones of one young coelophysis in the stomach of a larger animal.

"We've also found the teeth of juveniles in the vomit of adult animals, and wrist and finger bones in coprolites," which are fossilized dinosaur feces, Rinehart said.

Visitors will be able to pet another large predatory reptile called a erythrosuchian, which Dwayne Ulibarri, a preparator, is carefully constructing out of clay.

Walking through the museum's annex where Ulibarri is building it, Lucas stopped to discuss how to make the skin more scientifically accurate.

"We don't know exactly what the skin was like, but we have to make it reasonably realistic," Lucas said.

Lucas and Ulibarri have looked at skin textures preserved in ancient rock, and compared them with the skin of modern alligators and other species to try to get as close as possible to the real thing, Ulibarri said.

"We always work with the paleontologist to determine what these animals looked like," Ulibarri said.

Adding a sense of touch to the exhibit is something Lucas is proud of, he said.

"We wanted to provide an alternative experience — to let people touch this animal," Lucas said.

The erythrosuchian isn't quite as big as the phytosaur, but it was still a dominant animal of its day, Lucas added.

"It might not look as big, but you wouldn't want to wrestle with it," Lucas said.

When the exhibit is finished, visitors will get to walk through the entire time of the dinosaurs in order, Lucas said.

They'll start by seeing many samples of fossils from the Triassic, then be led into the Jurassic exhibit — where visitors can see the 110-foot-long seismosaurus being attacked by a 40-foot-long meat-eating dinosaur called a saurophaganax — and then finally into the Cretaceous exhibit, where they can learn about how the dinosaurs went extinct.

"You will be able to get a complete story of New Mexico's dinosaurs here," Lucas said. "That's something you won't be able to do anywhere else in the world."