Charlie and Kiwi’s Evolutionary Adventure

Join Charlie as he travels back in time to the age of the dinosaurs to discover the kiwis’ ancestors and evidence for how evolution works. Charlie and Kiwi’s Evolutionary Adventure is an original, focused experience that invites visitors to:

• see evidence of evolutionary connections between dinosaurs and birds
• enjoy the story of Charlie, whose curiosity leads to his understanding of how evolution works
• engage in activities about variation, inheritance, selection, time and adaptation, key evolutionary concepts

The exhibition is organized into three parts:

Story Theater
Charlie and Kiwi’s adventure unfolds in an intimate theater on a giant digital storybook screen. Audiences travel back in time during the 12-minute video, Charlie and the Very Odd Bird, joining Charlie and his great, great, great, great grandfather as they discover how and why the flightless kiwi is still a bird. Through the charming drawings of Peter Reynolds, award winning illustrator of “Judy Moody” and other children’s books, visitors see how Charlie comes to understand the origins of birds and why they are all so different from each other.

Exhibits
The exhibition invites visitors to see evidence thatdinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds by viewingthe homologous bones of a bambiraptor (a dinosaur),an archaeopteryx (one of the first birds) and a moderncrow. A computer-based interactive allows visitors tospeed up time so they can see the evolution of birdshappen with their own eyes. Fun puzzles show how birdshave adapted to a variety of environments.One exhibit includes an assortment of living birds of the samespecies. Visitors observe the slight differences between thebirds by examining the colors, shapes and sizes of their beaks,legs, and feet. Variations like these in natural populations arethe source of evolution by natural selection.

Discovery Area
Through a variety of discovery boxes, visitors play games,work puzzles and participate in hands-on activities that enhanceunderstanding of evolutionary concepts while providingmeaningful, multigenerational, minds-on play.

Resources

• Educators Guide (PDF)
• Related Sunshine State Standards (PDF)
• Essentials for museum professionals (PDF)

Links

• The nature of science and evolution
  Review what science is and how it works.
• Lines of evidence relevant to evolution
  The theory of evolution is broadly accepted by scientists — and for good reason! Learn about the diverse and numerous lines of evidence that support the theory of evolution.
• Evolutionary trees
  Learn about phylogenetic systematics, the study of the evolutionary relationships among organisms, and how the field is shaping biological research today.
• Mechanisms of evolution
  Learn about the basic processes that have shaped life and produced its amazing diversity.
• Microevolution
  Microevolution is going on around us all the time. Find out how small-scale evolutionary change occurs.
• Speciation
  Figuring out what species are is not as easy as one might think. Find out how biologists define species and how new species evolve.
• Macroevolution
  Explore the processes behind major radiations and extinctions and other grand patterns in the history of life.
• The evolution of complex innovations
  Learn how complex innovations, like wings and eyes, evolve from much simpler beginnings.
• Darwin's Secret Notebooks | National Geographic Channel
• The Man Who Wasn't Darwin
• Was Darwin Wrong?
• A Fin is a Limb is a Wing
• Evolution - PBS.org
• Evolution and the Fossil Record by John Pojeta, Jr. and Dale A. Springer
• Instant Expert: Evolution - New Scientist
• Evolution - Shlomiya Bar-Yam