TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Jurassic Spark Jolts MOSI

Tribune photo by Kevin Howe

MOSI employee Maxwell Green explains fossils to visitors at "Dinosaurs! The Exhibition," which opened Saturday.

ADVERTISEMENT

By PHILIP MORGAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 15, 2008

TAMPA - The towering Tyrannosaurus rex bent his head toward the boy, flashed teeth the size of daggers, and roared.

Four-year-old Christopher Paige of St. Petersburg wanted nothing to do with the robotic dinosaur. The boy leaned away and clung to the neck of his grandfather, Jerry Krampera.

"He can't get you," Grandpa said.

"He was so bigger than me," the boy explained. "That's why I'm so scared."

The fearsome meat-eater was the centerpiece of "Dinosaurs! The Exhibition," which had its grand opening Saturday at the Museum of Science & Industry. The beast is among 10 moving dinosaurs on display in a 5,000-foot exhibit that runs through Sept. 7.

A triceratops with her baby, the spiky stegosaurus and the odd ankylosaur, with a hammerlike tail and two babies in tow, are among the other stars in the show.

The animated creatures on display - big, but smaller than their real counterparts - were made by Kokoro of Japan and Los Angeles, which has created more than 1,500 moving critters for museums around the world.

Each model has its own computer program and is powered by a system of compressors.

MOSI brought in the exhibit because of popular demand, said museum spokeswoman Shani Jefferson. It was among the top requests listed when the museum surveyed members about what they would like to see.

"Dinosaurs have always fascinated children," she said. "They're huge lizards, so anything creepy-crawly, scary, with a larger size, they're going to like."

Though MOSI once had a mechanical dinosaur on display, this is the first time the museum has shown models that are animated by compressors.

The Tyrannosaurus rex, with its moving eyes and strange roar, intimidated kids much older than Christopher.

"It's scary!" said Kai Meredith, 9, of Carrollwood.

He, his younger brother Dakota and his mom, Suzette, got a look at a real Tyrannosaurus rex tooth nearby. MOSI staff member Maxwell Green held up the fossil and explained that the dinosaur couldn't bite down all the way or it would tear its own flesh. So it could not chew.

"It would bite, tear away about 100 pounds in one bite, and then swallow," he said.

"Oh, my gosh!" Suzette Meredith said.

By the time the doors opened at 11 a.m. Saturday, hundreds of children and their parents, many of them dads getting in free this weekend for Father's Day, formed a line that stretched nearly the length of a football field. Dads also got a chance to enter a drawing for a charcoal grill or a gas card worth $50.

By midafternoon, some 1,500 people had gone through the doors, a huge crowd compared with the usual 600 to 1,000 most weekend days, Jefferson said.

The Meredith family was first in line at 9:15 a.m. The boys wanted to snag a free WebKinz, a stuffed toy that kids care for by "feeding" and "bathing" it on the Internet. The toys, quite the rage among children, were being passed out by Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine to the first 50 youngsters in line.

"They're WebKinz crazy," said Meredith. Kai, 9, and Dakota, who is about to turn 7, care for several WebKinz between them.

Children took part in face painting, origami, a fossil dig and dinosaur egg hunt during the grand opening, which lasted till 3 p.m.

The exhibit actually opened Friday, and 12-year-old Lakeland twins Elisha and Amy Dunfee were there. They returned Saturday.

"It looks so real!" Elisha said. "All the dinosaurs, they're so big! It's so amazing!"

Amy agreed, but then they tend to have the same interests, she said. "We've always had a knack for liking dinosaurs."

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609 or pmorgan@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT