Grade Level: Middle and High School
Language Arts Content Standards: 1.2; 1.4
Visual Arts Content Standard: 6) Students will make connections between the visual arts, other disciplines and daily life.

Description: We often accept restorations of prehistoric animals as "real." This class discusses the art and science of recreating "real" dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals by examining two of the Yale Peabody Museum’s greatest icons, the Pulitzer award-winning The Age of Reptiles mural, completed in 1947 by Rudolph Zallinger, and the 22-foot-long bronze Torosaurus sculpture by Museum Preparator Michael Anderson dedicated in 2004. Though the study of dinosaurs has revealed many new insights about these amazing creatures participants will discover that the process involved in recreating dinosaurs has changed very little. This program will include specimens and materials that were used in the creation of the mural and Torosaurus sculpture.

 

Photo/Image (top): Rudolph Zallinger (left) in front of the unfinished mural in the Great Hall and Michael Anderson (bottom right) working on the full-size clay model of Torosaurus. At the top right is the final bronze sculpture.