Roaring good time awaits at Indianapolis children’s museum newly expanded dinosaur exhibit

It’s a long walk back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Down past the sauropod skeletons, their necks snaking along a mural of an ancient plain, feathery foliage bursting from the wall, just as it did eons ago.

Down past the frothy ferns sprouting from the wall, a misty herd of giant creatures wandering in the distance.

Every step you take into the interactive Dinosphere exhibit at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis is met with thundering footsteps of dinosaurs, felt and heard but unseen. The ground shakes under their weight, just as it did way back when.

The museum’s own staff paleontologists dug up quite a collection in Wyoming and carted it back to their headquarters in Indianapolis, where they brushed, cast and assembled the remnants into genuine skeletons and fleshed-out models.

The expanded Dinosphere, which debuted in 2004, reopened in March, a celebration of the extinct giants that have achieved immortality in the imaginations of millions of children.

Under the dome of a vivid Cretaceous sky, dinosaurs big and small fight and eat, soar and snore. Bite marks on dinosaur leg bones show how they fought. Fossilized impressions of foliage indicate the types of plants that provided shade and food to lumbering triceratops.

You can’t beat a dinosaur for the killer combination of science and education, and you can’t beat the Indianapolis exhibit for elevating dinosaurs — if that’s even possible — to the next level in the preschool paleontology pantheon.

The oldest, largest and in many ways, most innovative children’s museum in the world, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (childrensmuseum.org) blends the best of traditional museum research with enlightened design that welcomes kids of all abilities. Founded in 1925, it has led the philosophy and application of hands-on learning ever since. With 13 major exhibit spaces that range from a tiny village, to a 7-acre outdoor sports park, the museum is a childhood must-see for families in the Midwest and beyond.

Even before reaching the dinos, visitors can cling to a rose-painted Victorian carousel horse as it glides up and down, around and around; slide into an Indy 500 race car; or buckle into a slice of airplane and wing their way to Greece.

So many scenes for the dinosaurs to steal.

Down in the Dinosphere, an occasional screech overhead warns of danger in the skies. Light shifts, dappling the canopy of palms that circles a dino panorama. Kindergartners poke their heads into gargantuan masks and see the world as a triceratops might. Adults might walk right by the knee-high tunnel that beckons kids to crawl into the center of the exhibit and pop up, prairie dog-style, into a plastic bubble. From there, they can see the action from all angles — and enjoy a perspective denied to adults.

In a nearby alcove, kids can excavate for bones at a simulated dig site. A slice of simulated fossil-studded hillside serves two purposes: it shows the depth at which dinosaur bones are buried and enables children to scrape artifacts from the pretend hillside, just like real scientists do.

The dino lab occupies an entire wall. Sliding glass windows open to invite visitors to quiz the paleontologists as they work, gently unwrapping plaster casts from long-broken bones.

The most-often asked question? Visitors wonder if the fossils are actually real, said Jenn Anné, lead paleontologist. “People must think we get them from the dinosaur Ikea,” she jokes while narrating the lab’s operations for a recent group.

Visitors who crave a slightly more sedate experience can head upstairs to the dinosaur art lab, a favorite of staff science educator Becky Wolfe.

“You can rub the texture of a dinosaur’s skin,” she said, demonstrating by running a crayon over a piece of vinyl cast in a reptilian texture. Take that colored-in dinosaur outline and scan it into the art lab’s animation machine and your very own dinosaur will pop onto the wall-sized screen and chase other visitors’ hand-decorated dinosaurs through a fantastical Jurassic landscape.

Children ages 3 to 8 often are obsessed with dinosaurs because, well, they’re the opposite of kids’ daily experience, said Clio Stearns, assistant professor of education at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts.

“Dinosaurs are all about the battle and the fight,” said Stearns, herself the mother of two school-aged children, one engrossed by dinosaurs and the other, not. “Kids are trying to come to terms with what it’s like to be big and powerful. They’re little and they usually lose their power struggles. But if they’re a T. rex, he’ll win every battle.”

The kind of detail that scrolls through the Dinosphere is oxygen to kids who yearn to be masters of a universe — any universe, she explained.

“You can memorize encyclopedic amounts of knowledge about dinosaurs and being an expert is really, really fun,” Stearns said, reeling off a list of candidates for second place in the arena of trivia mastery. “Outer space, animals — there’s a handful of topics where you see kids practicing accumulating massive amounts of knowledge, organizing it, and showing off.

“Dinosaurs are really handy for that,” she said. “Little kids love to be experts; there’s very little under their control. It’s something kids can amaze us with, and they love that, and we should honor that.”

Dinsophere delivers on it all: The tongue-twisting scientific names, the cool tools, and most importantly, the ability to enter, if just for a moment, the center of dinosaur world, where no adults could fit (even if they were welcome).

The Indianapolis Children’s Museum is best taken in half-day visits, given its size and in-depth exhibits. Tickets are $21-$28 for children over 2 years old, and $26-$34 for adults, and you can save up to 25% by buying tickets in advance. The on-site cafe serves plenty of kid favorites along with the full complement of caffeinated drinks to help parents keep up.

Review the museum’s website (childrensmuseum.org) in advance, to identify your must-see exhibits and to prioritize the rest. Be sure to bring a generous spending allowance for the capacious gift shop, which features hard-to-find gear — especially for dinosaur devotees — like play-size trail vehicles equipped with dinosaurs in cages.

Indianapolis is rich with destinations for families. Build a long weekend around the Children’s Museum with a day walking through history at Conner Prairie, and an arts walk at the parks and museum campus west of the central business district.

Conner Prairie (connerprairie.org), a half-hour drive north of downtown in suburban Fishers, takes you back in time for a whole day. Pet goats and sheep at the barn that’s part of the William Conner House, the historical dwelling of a white settler in the area. Costumed interpreters demonstrate how the Indigenous American Lenape tribe made the most of central Indiana’s rich natural resources.

Then explore Prairie Town, where costumed interpreters go about their daily weaving, shopkeeping, woodworking and blacksmithing, and continue on to a re-creation of a 1863 Civil War skirmish. If weather permits, you can even board the basket of a replica 1859 sightseeing balloon and rise above it all.

The White River State Park defines the western border of downtown Indianapolis. On or adjacent to its campus are the Indianapolis Zoo (indianapoliszoo.com), the Indiana State Museum (indianamuseum.org), and the gem that is the Eiteljorg Museum (eiteljorg.org), which showcases art, sculptures and artifacts of the American West, both confirming and puncturing popular perceptions of the region and era.

If you stay downtown, be sure to walk to the Sailors and Soldiers Monument, a circular plaza at the intersection of Market and Meridian streets. Its soaring pillar capped with a statue is a classic Midwest landmark. Plus, it’s fun to walk up the many steps to the base of the monument.

Plenty of casual restaurants dot downtown Indy. A good option for families who like variety is the Indianapolis City Market (indycm.com), four blocks east of the Sailors and Soldiers Monument.

Major hotel chains are represented throughout downtown Indianapolis, including midpriced and higher-end brands such as Omni, Marriott and Hilton. The Children’s Museum is about a 10-minute drive north of the central business district and the sites at the White River State Park a quarter-mile hike.

Joanne Cleaver is a freelance writer.