Dino Excursion

I realise that many of my posts now start with "last weekend", "last week" or "two weeks ago". What can I say, I've been procrastinating, and I've been swarmed with more important things to do than blogging. So this is another late entry for an excursion to the Science Centre that took place last month. Some details are still clear on my mind and some are fuzzy, so let's see how much I can remember.

I heard that two mummies were going to the exhibition at Science Centre, Titans of the Past - Dinosaurs and Ice Age Mammals, so I decided to tag along. Prior to that, we had read a book about going to the museum to see dinosaur bones and played with the dinosaurs that we have. I had a feeling she would be excited about seeing some "real" dinosaurs. 

So on the morning of the visit, I told the little girl where we were going. She had an immediate question for me, "The dinosaurs will not roar?" I told her they would not roar as they were not real dinosaurs; we were going to see the dinosaur bones. I remember clearly how she had clung on to me when she saw the "dinosaur" in a green poncho at Ammar's dino party and I was convinced she had gotten over her fear.

And what do you know, the first thing we heard when we entered the darkened hall of the exhibition were the roars of dinosaurs. After that, she clung on to me 80% of the time we were inside. She did not even want to sit in her stroller or be put down. So the pictures you see here were taken while I was carrying a 13+kg toddler in one hand while snapping away with the other. It's not the first time for me so I guess all it takes is some practice. 

If I'm not wrong (remember we were there last month), the first display was a row of triceratops skulls. I wished I had time to read the panels but between carrying the little girl, pushing the stroller, taking pictures and pacing myself for the (what I thought was) long walk, there was little reading I could do. 

The display intended to show the changes in the skull from infancy, to toddlerhood (called "juvenile" in dinosaur lingo), to adulthood. After all, the aim of the exhibition is to show that some dinosaur species were mistakenly classified as other species in the past when actually they were the juveniles, and not different species.

I remember there were quite a number of triceratops on display at the beginning of the exhibition. I thought the above was a rather cute one of an infant with an adult triceratops. But since it was an animatronic, and moving about and probably making sounds (I can't remember for sure), the little girl didn't want to release her clutches on me.

The only thing I remember about the above dinosaurs was the little girl saying, "Mummy, the dinosaurs wear helmet!" And that was it. I read the name and I forgot what it was. I'm sure the dinosaur enthusiasts will be able to name it in a heartbeat but I'm not going to try. Whenever I think I can identify a dinosaur, it turns out to be something else. So many species look so alike!

The other thing I remember was it had an interactive panel where you could press buttons to listen to the different sounds made by the infant, juvenile and adult of this species. This was part of the 20% of the time when the little girl was not stuck to me. I remember she pressed the buttons and went home talking about it.

Next was T-Rex! There was a whole skeleton on display but I'm not sure if it was the real thing or just a replica. Oh yes, most of the bones on display are not the real thing. The real ones are probably too delicate and valuable to be transported across thousands of kilometres from everywhere it is they come from. 

Oh yes, this was another spot where she wanted to be put down. The two boys we had gone with were posing to have their picture taken and so she posed together with them. I must add that one of the boys, Umar (an older Umar, not the one she usually hangs out with), tried to pacify the little girl by saying that the dinosaurs were not real; real dinosaurs are long gone. What a sweetheart!

Just after the whole T-Rex skeleton was a glass display of two T-Rex skulls. If I'm not mistaken, these were real fossils and not replicas. Before we passed it, I saw a little girl who was crying away as she wanted to be carried and didn't want to walk past the glass display. I thought I would have some luck since my little girl was posing away for the camera before that. Well, no such luck. 

The next animatronic (shown above) creeped me out too. Just look at the sharp teeth of the adult T-Rex with a bone in its mouth and those menacing eyes! If you press a button, the adult will start "chewing" on the bone, and press another button and the infant will start eating. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what exactly the infant was eating. Is that the leg of another dinosaur? The boys stared at it for a while without saying anything, while the little girl clung on to me. I would have clung on to myself! 

The next animatronic wasn't interactive; it was just continuously roaring and "eating". I have to say that I was rather mesmerised by it and so were the children. We ended up sitting on the floor to watch it as if it were a performance. 

Shortly after, a staff of the exhibition came by and asked if one of the boys wanted to touch the T-Rex. Neither of them wanted. I would have said yes if he had asked me! A girl who was nearby heard him ask the boys and said that she wanted to touch it. So he carried her and crossed the ropes, and she got to touch its jaw and take pictures with T-Rex. How cool!

Shortly after was a big hall with a documentary screening (we skipped it), a craft corner (skipped that one too), a Stegosaurus ride (little girl wouldn't go near it) and a sand pit to uncover "fossils". We bypassed the rest and headed straight for the sand pit. That was the remaining 20% of the time that she wasn't clutching me at the exhibition.

The last part of the exhibition was for the ice age mammals like the sabre-toothed tiger, mastodon and woolly mammoth. It was just a small hall with the animals lining up three sides of it. We tried to take a picture of the kids together but it was unsuccessful. They've had enough and wanted out.

Before we entered, we were contemplating if we should buy tickets just for the exhibition or add another $5 to go into the Science Centre as well. Well I'm glad we paid the extra $5 or we would not know what to do after exiting the exhibition. The lady at the counter said that it would take an hour or slightly more to cover the exhibition and she was so right. We left the exhibition exactly an hour later. 

After a short walk round Science Centre, we went straight to Waterworks so that the kids could splash around. It was the first time that the little girl was there and while the other kids had gone off to explore the water playground, she made sure she pulled my hand so that I would follow her around. Of course in the process, my shoes ended up soaked through. Why didn't I remove them first? Don't ask me why.

In the end, she spent most of the time at the water feature with a vortex. She watched the other kids throw balls into it and she did the same. In fact, when she got home, it was all she talked about. Don't ask me what happened to the dinosaurs. Like Umar said, they are long gone.