Museum & Science Center

Expedition Earth Glaciers & Giants

Opened in January, 2006, Glaciers & Giants is the spectacular first phase of Expedition Earth—the total re-creation of the Rochester Museum & Science Center's natural science exhibits. Watch for the opening of expanded sections of this spectacular exhibition in January 2008.

Meet ice-age giants, enter a twisting tunnel through an icy glacier, and journey through an amazing landscape upstate New York hasn't seen in thousands, or even millions, of years. Your expedition through Glaciers and Giants will be an astounding journey through time and the awesome events that have shaped our region's natural environment.

Engaging, hands-on exhibits help you
piece together this incredible story:

• Get in touch with the distant past as you gaze at a full-scale Albertosaurus skeleton in a setting that evokes the environment this fierce predator inhabited 65 to 200 million years ago. Touch real dinosaur bones!  See and touch fossil dinosaur tracks, and discover what they can tell you about the animals that made them.
  

• Enter a glacial ice cave, shimmering with bright, translucent reflections. Feel the temperature drop, and hear the ice crack. Young children will enjoy exploring their own, smaller-scale version of the cave.

• Explore the beauty and structure of ice as you manipulate the formation of ice crystals in a hands-on exhibit. Touch and examine objects left by glaciers.

• Take a virtual hike to Mendon Ponds Park to see local evidence of glacial features. Press a button and watch the Rochester skyline fade beneath the vast glacier that once covered the city's location.

• Uncover replica bones at a mastodon dig site, and identify them by comparison with the nearby, full-size mounted mastodon skeleton. A vertical wall dig site makes this activity wheelchair accessible.

• Compare and contrast bones from two mastodons excavated in our area. Using a computer screen, take images of scattered mastodon bones and reconstruct a compete skeleton.

• Stand in awe at the feet of a full-size replica mastodon in a diorama evoking its natural habitat. Touch and compare lifelike reproductions of teeth from mastodons and mammoths. Examine evidence of plants and animals found at dig sites, and see how this helps scientists reconstruct the mastodon and its environment.

• Leave the glaciers behind as the saga of humans in our region begins.  You'll hear perspectives on nature from an early hunter arriving soon after the glacier left this area, a Seneca woman, a resident of Rochesterville during the early years of the Erie Canal, and a contemporary Rochesterian.

Hands-on exhibits help you learn about the succession of animals and plants that inhabited the region in the wake of the retreating glacier.

Expedition Earth Glaciers & Giants is inspiring, educational, and fabulous fun for families, individuals of all ages, and school groups. Teachers will find great connections to earth science, life science, and local history.
 
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The Rochester Museum & Science Center is grateful to our principal underwriters

Mrs. William H. Morris
The Gleason Foundation

and generous funders

U.S. Congressman Thomas M. Reynolds
The Charles Fund, Inc.
Edward Charles Eisenhart Trust
Halcyon Hill Foundation
NY State Senator James S. Alesi
NY State Assemblyman Joseph D. Morelle
NY State Senator Joseph E. Robach
National Endowment for the Humanities
Presenting sponsor ESL

whose vision and steadfast support inspired and enabled the Rochester Museum & Science Center to present this and future phases of the spectacular new natural science exhibition, Expedition Earth.