In the shadow of the Empire State Building there is a dark foreboding rock that time forgot. It’s called Snake Hill and it’s home to the nation’s most talked about science theme park – Field Station: Dinosaurs.
Built on the cliffs of a $200-million-year-old lava flow, Field Station: Dinosaurs takes your students on a scientific expedition to the Mesozoic age. The Field Station was designed in collaboration with scientists from the New Jersey State Museum and the park is modeled on working paleontological expeditions. Students are encouraged to ask questions and explore as they come face-to-face with thirty two life-sized, realistic dinosaurs in a stunning natural environment. Students learn lessons in a wide range of disciplines, including geology, plate tectonics, the history of science and the scientific method, as they participate in entertaining workshops, musical shows and fast-paced games that combine the talents of great New York theater artists with minds of today’s top scientific theorists.
Field Station: Dinosaurs is unlike any other field trip your students will take this year. Just minutes from Manhattan, it’s a journey back in time. The fully-accessible trails wind their way through deep woods, past a canyon-esque rock quarry and up a reed covered hill to a vista overlooking the entire New York City skyline. In addition to being a great dinosaur attraction, the Field Station is a world famous bird sanctuary, an important geological site and one of the countries true historic wonders. The key words are exploration and discovery as students are challenged to explore, think and ask questions.
Petting the Mighty T-Rex. Puppets designed, created and provided by Erth. All rights reserved.
More than just an exhibition or static museum show, Field Station: Dinosaurs is a series of live performances designed to entertain as well as teach. “Alien Rocks” takes students from deep beneath the Earth’s surface to beyond the orbit of Mars with a surprising look at the extraordinary origin of some ordinary rocks. “Dinosaur’s Feast” helps students make the connection between the dinosaurs of yesteryear and the animals of today as we look at what the dinosaurs ate and learn how scientists know what dinosaurs ate sixty-five million years after they went extinct. The shows are illustrated with real specimens, including dinosaur fossils, Mars rocks and a forty seven billion year old asteroid from four hundred million miles away.
Students get to meet our famous T-Rex up close and personal at two live shows that feature music, puppetry and lots of audience participation. “Dragons to Dinosaurs” is a look at the connection between the myths of ancient cultures and the early discovery of dinosaur bones, while at “The Dinos Whodunit” students become detectives trying to crack the coldest of cold cases – who killed the dinosaurs? Everybody dances and there’s even a guest appearance by the Dinosaur Troubadour, a guitar playing, dinosaur loving singer whose songs highlight and emphasize the scientific lessons in each show.
In other shows, students get to judge the first ever dinosaur skull beauty pageant, visit some of history’s “Great Moments of Discovery” and help create an original work of Paleo-art as they learn some of the newest and most surprising theories about the dinosaurs. There are even two fast-paced, funny gameshows where teams compete and students get to show-off everything they’ve learned during their trip to the Field Station.
All the shows are carefully scripted with laughs interspersed with learning and plenty of opportunity for students to participate and shine. Our lessons, designed in collaboration with the New Jersey State Museum, supplement the science core curriculum standards of New York and New Jersey and the STEM requirements of school districts nationwide.
Boy Scout Troop & Stegasaurus
New for 2013 is the addition of a 3D Movie Dinosaurs Alive! – a global adventure of science and discovery – featuring the earliest dinosaurs of the Triassic Period to the monsters of the Cretaceous “reincarnated” life-sized for the giant 3D screen. Audiences journey with some of the world’s preeminent paleontologists as they uncover evidence that the descendants of dinosaurs still walk (or fly) among us. From the exotic, trackless expanses and sand dunes of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert to the dramatic sandstone buttes of New Mexico, the film follows American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) paleontologists as they explore some of the greatest dinosaur finds in history. Through the magic of scientifically accurate computer-generated animation, these newly discovered creatures, and some familiar favorites, will come alive…in a big way!
Field Station: Dinosaurs is just a nine minute train ride from New York’s Penn Station and easily accessible from the Lincoln Tunnel at Exit 15X from the New Jersey Turnpike.
