GREAT LAKES SCIENCE CENTER’S OMNIMAX® THEATER TO OPEN FLYING MONSTERS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

May 2nd, 2012

CLEVELAND (May 2, 2012) – For thousands of years, humans have believed that there were once flying monsters. But did they really exist beyond our nightmares?

On Saturday, May 26, Great Lakes Science Center will explore this question with the opening of Flying Monsters in its six-story OMNIMAX Theater, a new adventure film from award-winning Atlantic Productions, in association with Sky 3D, and distributed by National Geographic Entertainment. The film uses CGI technology to immerse audiences in a prehistoric world inhabited by pterosaurs, flying vertebrates with a wingspan of up to 45 feet that lived alongside dinosaurs. Flying Monsters was produced by filmmaker Anthony Geffen and narrated by veteran filmmaker and renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

Two-hundred-and-twenty-million years ago dinosaurs were beginning their domination of Earth. But another group of reptiles was about to make an extraordinary leap: Pterosaurs were taking control of the skies. The story of how and why these mysterious creatures took to the air is more fantastical than any fiction — and one of the greatest mysteries in paleontology. How did lizards the size of giraffes defy gravity and soar through prehistoric skies? Driven by the information he finds as he attempts to answer these questions, Attenborough starts to unravel one of science's more enduring mysteries, discovering that the marvel of pterosaur flight has evolutionary echoes that resonate even today.

Applying the same state-of-the-art CGI technology that was used in Avatar, Flying Monsters also will employ pioneering scientific techniques that reveal new details about pterosaurs. From discovering pterosaur embryos that show they might have flown from birth to figuring out how a creature the size of a giraffe could possibly fly, Flying Monsters will resolve mysteries that have intrigued scientists for more than two centuries.

“It’s almost as if this animated technology was created to tell our story. With a pterosaur’s eye-view of a hyper-real prehistoric Earth in CGI, our audience will see the challenges of survival, including courtship, flying and hunting,” said Geffen.

“This is a wonderful way of seeing the world as the pterosaurs did,” said Attenborough. “Pterosaurs are the most unlikely of creatures, but they dominated the skies for millions of years, and now this film will enable us to fly with them, the largest flying creatures the world has ever known.”

Watch the trailer: http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/flying-monsters/

For information on tickets and show times, please visit www.GreatScience.com.

Media Contact:
Kristen Shorkey
Marketing & PR Manager
216-696-3823
shorkeyk@glsc.org

About Great Lakes Science Center
Great Lakes Science Center is one of the nation’s leading science and technology centers and home to Northeast Ohio’s NASA Glenn Visitor Center. Its mission is to engage visitors through fun, interactive experiences to stimulate curiosity about and encourage understanding of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It features hundreds of hands-on exhibits, themed traveling exhibits, daily demonstrations, the awe-inspiring OMNIMAX® Theater and the Steamship William G. Mather. The Science Center is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Discounted parking is available for guests in the attached 500-car garage. Great Lakes Science Center is generously funded by the citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. For more information, contact the Science Center at (216) 694-2000 or visit www.GreatScience.com.

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