NEW YORK, N Y.- The American Museum of Natural History launched DINOSAURS iPAD: The American Museum of Natural History Collections, the Museum’s first app designed specifically for the iPad. DINOSAURS: iPAD expands on the Museum’s inaugural app, DINOSAURS: The American Museum of Natural History Collections for iPhone® and iPod®, by offering even more in-depth information and larger images of eight favorite dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Anatotitan, Apatosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Protoceratops Stegosaurus, and Styracosaurus, as well as accounts of their discovery by such famed dinosaur hunters as Barnum Brown, Walter Granger, and Peter Kaisen. Over time, the app will be updated with new chapters to cover all 36 dinosaurs in the Museum’s collection.

DINOSAURS: iPAD also features an opening screen mosaic of nearly 1,000 separate high-resolution images and unique social networking functionality, encouraging aspiring paleontologists of all ages to explore the Museum’s world-famous fossil collection and to engage in real-time conversations with other users from home, in the field, or in the classroom.

The latest in a series of apps that highlight the Museum’s storied collections and bring its world-class holdings to a global audience, DINOSAURS: iPAD can be purchased for $2.99 at the iTunes Store. All proceeds will directly benefit the Museum’s scientific and educational programs.

DINOSAURS iPAD is also a fun, interactive way to expand and refresh dinosaur knowledge in advance of the Museum’s major new exhibition, The World’s Largest Dinosaurs (April 16, 2011–January 2, 2012), which will take visitors beyond the bones and into the amazing anatomy of a uniquely super-sized group of dinosaurs who thrived for 140 million years: the long-necked and long-tailed sauropods, which ranged in size from 15 to 150 feet long. With innovative, interactive exhibits–including a life-sized, detailed model of a 60-foot Mamenchisaurus–The World’s Largest Dinosaurs will draw on the latest science to take visitors inside these giants’ bodies and answer the intriguing questions of how such extremely large animals breathed, ate, moved, and survived.

Other apps from the Museum include DINOSAURS: The American Museum of Natural History Collections for iPhone® and iPod® touch; Cosmic Discoveries, which lets users explore the mysteries of our universe via an interactive photo-mosaic comprising 1,000 stunning images; and American Museum of Natural History Explorer, which pinpoints a user’s location and offers turn-by-turn directions through more than 500,000 square feet of public space.