A museum in the Phoenix area is hoping to add an eye-catching element to its building — and it's looking for donations to get the project going.

The Arizona Museum of Natural History, located in a nondescript building in downtown Mesa, is easy to miss from the street. That's part of why museum officials want to install a life-sized replica of a carnivorous dinosaur — one that will appear to be bursting through the wall of the museum.

The dinosaur, Acrocanthosaurus, roamed the western part of North America more than 100 million years ago, the museum says. In real life, it was 38 feet long and weighed more than 6 tons.

The museum has contracted with a Kansas company to fabricate and install the dinosaur. It's now aiming to raise $150,000 to complete the project, which it says will attract more visitors to the facility. More than 3 million people have visited the museum since 1990, the museum says.

To learn more about the museum and the "Free the Dinosaur" project, or to donate, click here. Even if you can't donate, you might consider paying the museum a visit — it's one of the better values among museums in the Phoenix area.