A new exhibition at Manarat Al Saadiyat will give the public a chance to take a sneak peek into the artefacts to be showcased at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which is to be completed and opened in 2025.

The key attractions will be Stan, the 67 million-year-old T-rex skeleton which costs about $31.8m (approximately Dh116m), and the 7 billion-year-old Murchison Meteorite. These will be on display at the arts centre in Abu Dhabi until May 12, 2022.

Stan is a remarkable, mostly complete 39-foot-long (11.7 metres) Tyrannosaurus rex, which is one of the best-preserved and most studied fossils of this iconic predator from the Late Cretaceous period.

The Murchison Meteorite, which is 7 billion-year-old and crash-landed in Australia more than 40 years ago, has since revealed to scientists new information about the early solar system. It contains a huge range of organic ‘stardust’ compounds and pre-solar grains which formed over 7 billion years ago – long before our current solar system existed. The meteorite provides insight into the very building blocks of life.

While learning about life before our planet existed, and the species that roamed the Earth long before humans, visitors will discover what Abu Dhabi was like 7 million years ago – when the emirate’s western Al Dhafra region was a rich landscape of rivers, savanna grasslands and forests.

The exhibition will introduce visitors to the story of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. Once it opens in 2025, the museum will take visitors on a 13.8 billion-year journey through time and space, and include a thought-provoking perspective into a sustainable future for planet Earth.