Homes aren’t the only things in Central Oregon that have been underwater. During the Cretaceous Period, which spanned from about 65 million years to 145 million years ago, much of the region we know as desert today once lay beneath the seas, which were higher during the Cretaceous than at any other point in world history.

“A lot of Central Oregon would have been a marine inland sea,” explains John Goodell, curator of natural history at the High Desert Museum, where “Be the Dinosaur: Life in the Cretaceous” opens Saturday (see “If you go”).

As the title implies, the exhibit affords museum patrons a first-person viewpoint, from how the terrain appeared to the day-to-day life of the dinosaur community, using interactive video simulation along with fossils and more traditional displays.

Replete with fossil pits young paleontologists will surely dig, the exhibit also provides answers for the many, many dinosaur questions kids ask, such as, “What was life like for dinosaurs? What did they do all day? What did they eat? What color were they?”

According to www.nationalgeographic.com, the supercontinent Pangaea continued its breakup during the Cretaceous, which came after the Jurassic.

The Cretaceous “is considered the turning point between extinct prehistoric life and the modern plant and animal communities,” according to the High Desert Museum.

Though dinosaurs thrived early in the Cretaceous, it proved to be their swan song. During the 80-or-so million years that spanned the period, global temperatures cooled and changes in plant and animal life occurred. Along came birds and rodents, and insects such as bees helped nurture the spread of flowering plants.

With assistance from University of Oregon and Oregon Paleo Lands Institute, “Be the Dinosaur,” which runs through Sept. 15, will offer information about, and fossils of, crustaceans and other species that lived, and perished, closer to our formerly underwater home.

Giant, sharp-toothed marine reptiles known as icthyosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs “were sort of the lions, tigers and wolves roaming the seas in this area,” Goodell said.

If you go

What: “Be The Dinosaur: Life in the Cretaceous”

When: Opens Saturday and runs through Sept. 15

Where: High Desert Museum, 59800 S. Highway 97, Bend

Cost: Free with museum admission, $15 adults, $12 ages 65 and older, $9 ages 5-12, free ages 4 and under

Contact: www.highdesertmuseum.org or 541-382-4754