The Australian Museum in Sydney has unveiled a new 650sq m permanent exhibition exploring the pre-historic world of predator and prey.

The Dinosaurs exhibition is split into four areas: Dinosaur World, Dinosaur Life, Discovering Dinosaurs and Surviving Dinosaurs. The creatures are brought to life through a range of hands-on fossil specimens, models, skeletons, touch screen computers, interactives, dramatic lighting effects and projected scenes.

Visitors can make sounds like a crested dinosaur, watch a life-sized CGI-animation of an Australian dinosaur stampede, design their own dinosaur, identify bones in a fossil dig, discover which creatures survived the mass extinction and even breath in the smells of the dinosaur world.

The new exhibition is part of the first stage of the New South Wales Government’s AUS$41m (US$38m, £19m, 24m euro), five-year Australian Museum Revitalisation project. The first phase also includes the construction of a new Collections and Research Building – which should open for staff later this year.

Architects Johnson Pilton Walker, led by design team Richard Johnson and Graeme Dix, are using environmentally sustainable principles to construct the new building, including a double-skin façade to help insulate against the extremes of temperature and humidity.

Photograph: Maiasaura peeblesorum nest with eggs and hatchlings. © Australian Museum