Feel Small at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana

My running gag on historical places is "set you watch back (fill in a number) years."  At the Musuem of the Rockies in Bozeman, come in and set your watch back up to 300 million years.

Families can walk through the passages of time and the development of life on earth.  From the microbial life that settled into fossilized and layered mats, into the Paleozoic era of early ocean life, to the Mesozoic era followed briefly by prehistoric mammals.

Then a time jump to a connection with Native American culture which explains social structures and includes games, and then into the 19th and 20th century and Yellowstone National Park.

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Let's be honest.  The real attraction are the Dinosaurs!

The Mesozoic is the era of dinosaurs, and the Museum has lots of specimens, bits and pieces, and whole skeletons built from actual and recreated fossils.  There are a couple skeletons of dinos half again the size of a man. then there are the really big and dangerous.

If this guy was still alive, YOU WOULD BE IN GREAT DANGER.

Along with the full skeleton are a few skulls that could have bitten you in half.  Now, aren't you glad they're extinct?

T-Rex is a big star here at the Museum of the Rockies, but there are more.  A row of skulls from Triceratops and its kin gives an up-close sense of the size of just the head of these herbivores.

The latest finding about dinosaurs is that many had feathers like birds.  So a raptor may look like this.

Don't fret, the young man back there was actually several feet away.

The neat thing on this display is that one side shows the speculated outward appearance.  Walk around to the other side...

...and see their skeletons.

Mythical Creatures Coming to MoR

Opening May 24th through the rest of the year, kids and families can meet a 17-foot dragon, a mermaid and other animals that bridge between nature and legend.

A full rundown of all the attractions are on their website, museumoftherockies.org