Deep Time Detour

Red Rocks Amphitheatre is world-famous for its stunning geology, but what’s the story behind these iconic rocks? Walk among ancient plants: lepidodendrons (aka “scale trees”) known for their unique bark of repeating diamond shapes. This lush grove forms a portal into Colorado’s deep past, inviting visitors to touch, explore, and imagine life 300 million years ago, long before dinosaurs.

Back then, Colorado was warm and swampy. Giant millipedes populated the undergrowth, dragonflies with two-foot wingspans buzzed overhead, and early amphibians inhabited the wetlands. Red Rocks’ first rock stars made their own kind of music!

The world’s first Stegosaurus fossils were unearthed on Dinosaur Ridge in 1876. This part of Jurassic Colorado featured meandering stream channels and floodplains that built the Morrison Formation. Layers of sand, silt, and mud preserved fossils for 150 million years. In this zone visitors come face-to-face with Stegosaurus, Colorado’s state fossil. A full-sized sub-adult, posed adjacent to a half-buried Stegosaurus skeleton, lets visitors compare life and fossil side-by-side while realizing that the first of these epic creatures was found less than a mile from this very spot.

Meanwhile, a hungry Ceratosaurus looms nearby, representing one of the rare predators that hunted within this ancient ecosystem.

Beach Day ~100 MYA

Did you know Colorado once had a coastline? Around 100 million years ago, this region sat at the edge of a vast inland sea. The famous Dinosaur Ridge tracksite preserves this prehistoric shoreline, capturing the Cretaceous moment when dinosaurs walked across tidal flats leaving footprints in soft, wet sand.

This exhibit highlights rare tracks made by deinonychosaurs, raptor-like predators, and horseshoe crabs, offering a glimpse into an ancient interaction between hunter and prey. It also celebrates the science of paleoichnology, the study of fossilized tracks and traces, helping scientists understand how extinct animals moved and behaved. Dinosaur Ridge is internationally known for this field of research, thanks to co-founder and legendary track expert Dr. Martin Lockley, for whom the building is named. This immersive corner of the exhibit serves as a call to action: head up to the Main Tracksite to see the real fossil footprints that made Dinosaur Ridge world-famous.

Welcome to the bottom of the sea! During this time, a warm, shallow ocean split North America in half, and Colorado was underwater. At the top of the food chain swam the mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles that could grow more than 50 feet long! This zone features something never seen in a museum: a juvenile Tylosaurus (one of the largest types of mosasaurs) mounted on a motorized ceiling track that allows it to “swim” overhead as if cruising through ancient waters.

Beneath the mosasaur, a hands-on display will dive deeper into the story of the seaway, featuring touchable replicas, interactive elements, and opportunities to explore the ammonites, ancient fishes, and other creatures that once swam where we now walk.

By the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, the sea had retreated, and Colorado had transformed into a humid, swampy landscape filled with tall palm trees and dense vegetation. Iconic dinosaurs like Triceratops, T. rex, and Edmontosaurus roamed what is now Golden, leaving behind footprints still visible along Triceratops Trail today.

This exhibit zone brings those ancient giants to life with dramatic, immersive displays. A touchable life-sized Triceratops bursts through the wall, while a motion-activated duck-billed dinosaur guards a nest of hatchlings. A sweeping mural sets the scene with prehistoric flora just as the incoming asteroid that marked the end of the dinosaurs approaches.

From Giant Sequoias to the Pleistocene, 34 MYA-40,000 years ago

In this final exhibit, the dinosaurs are long gone. Dramatically different life dominates Colorado’s landscape, from giant redwood forests to beasts of the Ice Age. Murals transport visitors to the rich paleoecosystems of what is now Colorado’s Florissant National Monument, where ancient sequoias once stood and giant rhino-relatives roamed. A reconstructed Brontothere head overlooking the stump of a giant redwood tree now shows how dramatically life in Colorado has changed.

Finally, a life-sized replica of a Mesohippus introduces visitors to a small early horse ancestor. This dog-sized mammal had three-toed hooves and proportionally smaller ears than today’s equines, and was adapted for life in forests where it browsed on twigs, leaves, and fruit.