Giant Dinosaurs Take Over Peoria Riverfront Museum
PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) — The Peoria Riverfront Museum has officially gone prehistoric.
Thursday, it roared to life with the opening of a brand-new exhibition: 'The World's Largest Dinosaur.' This immersive display brings visitors face-to-face with some of the largest creatures to ever walk the Earth, sauropods.
Some of them grew up to 150 feet or the length of four city buses. The museum's exhibit will feature a life-sized 60-foot-long Mamenchisaurus, with one of the longest necks of any dinosaur.
Those long-necked giants are childhood favorites. They were featured in cartoons and the groups features one of the most famous dinos of all time: the Brontosaurus, the 'Thunder Lizard.'
The gentle giants — they were plant-eaters unlike their cousins, Tyrannosaurus Rex — are the focus of the new exhibit, which started Thursday and lasts through Sept. 1.
'The World's Largest Dinosaurs,' presented by the Gilmore Foundation, made its Midwest debut from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Along with life-size models, the experience digs deep into the science behind sauropods, exploring everything from how they grew to such enormous sizes to the biology required to keep their massive bodies functioning.
Renae Kerrigan, the museum's curator of science, hopes the exhibit does more than just impress with its scale.
'Maybe it makes somebody think about, 'I want to learn more about the other types of dinosaurs that lived on the planet,'' she said. 'Or maybe, 'Well, why aren't there dinosaurs here today? What happened to dinosaurs?' You might start to learn about how birds are actually the descendants of dinosaurs.
'I just hope it inspires people to continue learning more about something that piques their curiosity here at the museum,' Kerrigan said.
In addition to the jaw-dropping scale of the displays, the exhibition also delves into the fascinating world of dinosaur eggs, growth patterns, and the biomechanics of how these giants might have pumped blood through their enormous bodies.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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