Dinosaurs : From Dawn To Extinction

I grew up with a dinosaur encyclopedia, loved Dino Riders and the Dinobots, looked forward to Jurassic Park because I could finally see a “realistic” dinosaur on the screen. I could only look at fossils from photographs from other museums, so I had to go for this exhibition.

Dino 1

As you approach the Art Science Museum, you will be greeted by the dinosaur you see above. Pretty well done if you asked me, made me more excited to go in and see more. There is another green dinosaur on the left but looks more like an alligator, so its less cool to me.

You don’t need to do any online booking, just head down to the counter and purchase the tickets. I went to get the package for 2 exhibitions, so I got to see dinosaurs and Annie Leibovitz‘s photo exhibition for SGD24 per person. Do note that this is for local rates, tourists have to pay a slightly higher fee. I can’t remember how much but I think its SGD26 or 28.

Do not throw away your ticket, you have to scan to get in and out of the exhibition areas.

You might want to download the phone apps for a more interactive tour. Here is the link for Android and Apple.

Dino 2

Head to the basement and you will have to walk through the complimentary photography section which I skipped. When you step into the dim exhibition, you’ll be greeted by 4 Herrerasaurs.

Before you get to see any dinosaurs, you have to get through a section where they show life forms, plants and sea creatures before the time of dinosaurs.

Dino 3

Dino 5

I enjoyed seeing the dinosaurs in the “flesh”, even the eyes look good. Imagine if they made the eyes blink, that would scare the shit out of a lot of people! For the fellas in the image above, they are not classified as dinosaurs. They are classified as Archosaurs instead. Basically they are more crocodile-ish than bird-ish. The bones belong to the carnivore on the left.

Dino 4

Now this is a dinosaur, the flesh version of the Herrerasaur. Imagine these things are still alive and running around in the forest or jungles.

Dino 6

(This fella is actually pretty small, like a pet dog)

Dino 7

The first section deals with the early dinosaurs, around the Triassic period. When you step into the next area, you’ll be greeted by these 2 huge sets of bones. On the left, you see the flesh version of bones on the right side. Pity that they didn’t make the flesh version of the giant herbivore, that guy was huge.

Dino 8

Dino 9

There was a mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period and the dinosaurs dominated from the Jurassic period onwards. A steel version of an Apatosaurus was created and it shares a section with the great Tyrannosaurus Rex. The T-rex was supposedly not very fast because it either needed a whole lot of muscle which wouldn’t make it proportional OR if he could move that fast, he would look like the Road Runner cartoon with spinning legs.

Dino 10

(Stegosaurus, obviously)

Dino 11

You know you are near the end of the exhibition when you reach the China section. This is where the most recent fossils have been found and they started to put feathers on the dinosaurs. Who knows, maybe the dinosaurs were really huge birds all these while.

Dino 12

This is the Dilong. They didn’t put the Chinese word in so I assumed it was “ground dragon”, a quick search on wiki shows that it actually means “emperor dragon”. The Dilong is the last relative of the T-rex.

Dino 13

Dino 14

I actually like the China section because of the way everything was set up. Realistic environment, well done props and pretty good lighting. I wish I had a good prop team like this for my shoots.

The exhibition will take you quite a while, there are loads of things to read, some write ups are repeated because its the same dinosaur. After this, we headed to the top gallery for the photo exhibition which was pretty good too.

All photos taken with Note 2.