CINCINNATI — Visitors to the Cincinnati Museum Center can now experience a new, permanent exhibit offering a peek into a world that existed 450 million years ago.
The exhibit addition, Ancient Worlds Hiding in Plain Sight, opened Thursday morning and will feature fossils spanning the Paleozoic Era, from the underwater Ordovician Period into the Carboniferous Period.
The exhibit showcases its Late Ordovician fossil collection, which the Museum Center says is "regarded as one of the finest and largest in the world."
The exhibit aims to recreate the Late Ordovician Period marine environment and the communities and creatures that thrived in it. It will also focus on the geologic past of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.
"Exploring ancient animals and fossil communities are accessible to everyone here in the Cincinnati region," said Brenda Hunda, Ph.D. and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center. "They are hiding in plain sight. That's what makes our rocks and fossils so amazing — you can grab a bag and a rock hammer, travel to a local creek or outcrop and transport yourself back in time. It's the closest thing we have to time travel and we want everyone to have this experience."
CMC said one familiar, yet strange, face will also appear in the exhibit: Ohio's state fossil, Isotelus maximus, a Late Ordovician trilobite. It was once a large-plated invertebrate that resembles a horseshoe crab, or a water-dwelling armadillo, CMC said.
The earliest periods the exhibit's fossils once called home reaches back to well before the dinosaurs found in CMC's Dinosaur Hall.
"As the gallery marches through time from the Late Ordovician to the subsequent Silurian and Devonian periods, you’re introduced to new creatures as marine life evolves, culminating with the fearsome, massive-jawed armored fish Dunkleosteus," reads a press release from CMC.
The gallery also features soundscapes to further tell the story of the prehistoric sea. Large monitors on the walls will turn parts of the gallery into an aquarium, where visitors can watch ancient creatures traverse their habitats.
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