Officials also want visitors to feel like they are actually walking through the mountains of western North Carolina or watching a dinosaur chase after another creature millions of years ago, surrounded by the sounds of nature. In Terror of the South, Boston Production, one of the museum's four design firms, uses low-frequency speakers to make the sound of one dinosaur running after another. Officials say visitors will almost feel like the exhibit hall is shaking. Boston Productions modified the sounds of existing animals such as hippopotamuses or lions to create what museum scientists and other researchers say dinosaurs might have sounded like. Their voices are heard in the Prehistoric North Carolina and Terror of the South exhibits.
Special lighting is used to make underwater scenes or mountain scenes come alive.
Museum officials said they hope the exhibits are made so realistic, visitors are encouraged to make their own journeys through nature. We're not trying to recreate nature. We're trying to represent nature. And the goal is to motivate people. We're taking the best of everything North Carolina has to offer and giving it to everyone in a condensed form.