LITTLE ones can walk alongside nature’s giants as a new exhibition launches to reveal hidden wonders from the animal kingdom.

Bones: Skeleton Secrets of the Animal World opens in Newcastle on Saturday.

The new exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock, has drawn from the Natural History Society of Northumbria’s vast collection.

Visitors will embark on a journey across land, air and through the ocean to explore the role of bones in animal movement, survival and evolution.

Manager at the Great North Museum: Hancock Caroline McDonald, said: “This exhibition will be like a giant x-ray of the animal kingdom and I can’t wait for our younger audience to come and explore these bony beasts with us.”

Complete skeletons, individual bones, teeth and horns from over 100 different animals will be shown in the exhibition, alongside important fossils and preserved specimens.

From vast rhino skulls and moose antlers to fragile frog and bat skeletons, the diverse wonder of the natural world will be represented.

The exhibition will also feature a narwhal skull complete with tusk and a three metre long baleen, the filter-feeder system inside the mouths of whales.

Keeper of biology at the museum, Dan Gordon, said: “I’m excited to be able to put these important specimens on display.

“Many of the bones have never been seen by the public before, so the exhibition offers a unique glimpse into our amazing collection.”

Visitors can also take a look at bones from the now-extinct dodo, collected from a swamp in Mauritius; antelope horns collected in the Congo and the skeleton of an Andean condor which came to the museum on a steamer from Chile over 100 years ago.

As in previous years, the museum will use its major temporary exhibition to display multidisciplinary research by Newcastle University experts to the public’s attention.

Musculoskeletal researchers from the university will bolster a supporting programme of talks and events and the exhibition will also boast its own artist-in-residence.

Bones: Skeleton Secrets of the Animal World opens to the public at 10am on Saturday and runs until Sunday, May 14.

Gateshead-based puppeteers 4M will give three walkabout performances using giant skeleton puppets on the opening day, at 11am, 1.30pm and 2.30pm.