For 160 Million Years, Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
With over 70 mounted skeletons and hundreds of displays and dioramas, the Wyoming Dinosaur Center will educate, inspire and capture the imagination of children and adults alike.
Dinosaurs mysteriously disappeared long before the rise of mankind. Only in the last century have we discovered just how important and complex these creatures were and what their lives may have been like.
Dinosaurs were first discovered on Warm Springs Ranch in 1993. Fossil hunters were walking the ancient rolling hills around Thermopolis and discovered dinosaur bones weathering out of the mountainsides. This first discovery led to the construction of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, located at the southern margin of the Big Horn Basin. The complex includes a world-class museum, dig sites, a complete preparation laboratory and an outstanding gift store. The museum provides visitors a window into the ancient past where creatures from prehistory are revealed.
Starting with single-celled protozoa, the Walk Thru Time allows visitors to trace the origins of complex life on Earth. Visitors will witness the rise of the arthropods, including a mass death of trilobites, early fish including the Coelacanth, who is the predecessor of land vertebrates, and meet some of the earliest vertebrates such as Dimetrodon. This journey through the first three-quarters of life’s history on Earth culminates in the rise of the dinosaurs. In the Hall of Dinosaurs lies “The Thermopolis Specimen”, the only Archaeopteryx outside of Europe, a Supersaurus named “Jimbo”, one of the largest dinosaurs ever mounted, and “Stan”, a 35-foot Tyrannosaurus rex charging a Triceratops.