Dinosaurs ahoy

[stephbg]

Last Thursday Husband and I went to see the Dinosaur Discovery exhibit at the Museum of WA. We'd be attempting this for a couple of weeks and finally motive, means, and opportunity combined in a precious outing.

The exhibition came with its own 3D Virtual Reality app which I'd previously loaded and poked sufficiently to make work, although it was a bit slow to run on my iPhone 3GS. The app documentation said it was optimised for the 4S I think (whatever, something much newer than my phone) and unfortunately this proved to be a deal breaker as the app was very nearly unusable in the field. No biggie though – there was plenty more to see with our actual eyes.

At $20 I thought the admission price was fair value for money, which is always reassuring. This is not always the case with such things, so the absence of a feeling of ripped-offedness was welcome. We got in not long after opening time on a normal school day, and were lucky to not have to compete with school groups. Most of our fellow travellers were grandparents and pre-school aged kiddies, but not so many that it felt crowded at all. We could certainly cross the room back and forth against the thin line of traffic without getting in anyone's way.

The chief attraction of the exhibition was the opportunity to see full scale models of a variety of different dinosaurs, some of which sported feathers as per current understanding. Most of them moved to some extent – necks went up and down or back and forth, and some of the tail swishing was quite good. Some of them breathed, most of them blinked, a few forelimbs extended, and jaws chomped. The hydraulics were quiet and a lot less jerky than I'd seen in similar exhibitions in the past. I completely failed to take notes of which dinosaurs were which, sorry.

The dinosaurs were not breathtakingly realistic, it must be said, but it helped to view them at various distances to obtain different perspectives. Up close and the scale was what struck you. You could mentally compare the heft and height of the things to known animals up to a point, and I for one couldn't help but imagine what would happen to a puny human snack in some of those jaws. The snack comparison was best for a partial model of a crocodilian thing, in whose mouth lay a tongue that would make a nice single bed mattress. It was like a damned big but potentially real crocodile. The illustration of the whole beastie had the same long body as the modern croc, but ran about on terrifyingly long legs – the whole effect was something I could imagine all too vividly.

Staring at some large carnivorous thing and trying to work up some lizard-brain fear I realised what key item was wrong. I kept staring at the musculature of the hind legs. This particular model swished its tail, waved its forearms, roared and possibly breathed, but not for a second did it look like it was about to shift its ground – those legs weren't going anywhere. I cursed my attachment to body language. The same model looked far more menacing from the other end of the hall, where distance and shadow combined to blur the legs while letting the other movements look rather more lifelike, if slow. Relatively.

I thought the standard of model construction was generally pretty good, with no outrageously rough zips or seams. The one exception to this was in a few specimens with spindly appendages on moving parts – long claws for one, and a head crest on another. These more flimsy bits were revealed to be distinctly rubbery when moved, which at least appealed to the B-Grade monster movie fan in me.

In terms of people-watching we noted two toddlers that covered the desired range of reactions – one little boy of maybe 3 or 4 clung to his mother tightly in tears and was clearly terrified of the whole experience.  But one tiny child who looked barely big enough to be walking was having the time of his life sprinting about at incredible speed and shouting "ROWR!" in the faces of the models. His parents were torn between laughter, attempts to film the action, and attempts to rescue the poor dinosaurs from the child's attentions. Four adults in total (I'm assuming some grandparents were also along) were attempting to keep up with this happy little explosion on legs.

We finished up in a children's activity tent where a T. Rex had pride of place. Those things really did have ridiculously tiny arms – I'd begun to wonder if my memories had been distorted by too many internet cartoons of the poor creatures trying to brush their teeth.

Because we'd timed it well there were more helpers than kiddies around, and I felt I was being watched. Hunted, even. Not by the T. Rex, but by the energetic but frustrated children's entertainers. We fled (well I fled, Husband trundled) before they could assault us with strap-on dinosaur tails and make us dig for dinosaur bones in the nearest handy sandpit.

We resisted the delights of the gift shop, had a coffee, then trekked into town to visit the rock shop on Murray street. Nothing there really appealed for the price, but then I tripped over the nearby Margaret River Chocolate Company to see if they could match a certain Haigh's product. They couldn't, of course, but I did find something to experiment with, For Science.

Spoons ran out at about that point (I love how it happens just out the blue sometimes) but it had been a big morning and a lovely and fun time with my beloved. (That would be Husband beloved, not just my new Super Boots with which I felt sufficiently comfortable to debut on a major outing.) Made it back to the car slowly but surely, then home, recovery and nap. A good day.