An Out-of-this World Experience

Ancient Seas transports you back in time to an era when Churchill was covered by an Ordovician Sea, teeming with ancient marine creatures.

Projected in dramatic three-screen animation, Ancient Seas is the harbinger of a new age for the Museum. We are the first museum in Canada to feature this cutting-edge technology!

Click here to see a sample of the Ancient Seas animation.

“A diorama is like a photograph, a frozen instant in time, whereas this has everything moving as if it’s still alive,” explains Geology and Paleontology Curator Dr. Graham Young, likening the video to an undersea observatory.

Tank-like trilobites appear to crawl towards you. Giant cephalopods stalk their prey. Ancient eurypterids (sea scorpions) swim across the screens, which depict a tropical climate near Churchill 450 million years ago. The scene itself is based on an ancient rocky shoreline that is still visible just east of Churchill.

Produced by an Australian production company, the animation is projected on three enormous screens spanning 7.5 meters. It will be the central display in the Ordovician section of the Earth History Gallery, and will be accompanied by display cases of actual fossils of the creatures shown in the animation.

“Everything in this video can be found in the rocks of this age in northern Manitoba. We have fossil seaweeds that are based on ones we find in rocks on the west side of Lake Winnipeg. We have trilobites from the ancient rocky shoreline at Churchill. We have cephalopods in the rocks in the Churchill area. We have jellyfish in the Grand Rapids Uplands,” says Young.

The curator spent more than a year consulting with the animators from Australia, experts from the Royal Ontario Museum, and universities and museums in Manitoba, Saskatoon, Ohio, Leicester (UK), Uppsala (Sweden), Berlin, and Russia. “We’ve been able to use our primary research to develop a very exciting piece for our visitors.”

Ancient Seas is now open to the public in our Earth History Gallery.