Ancient Enemy of Man- You Must Pay!

A fine long weekend began for me and my wife Trisha with a 20 minute drive out of our city and 250 MILLION YEARS BACK IN TIME!!!

Lacking a genuine TARDIS, we relied upon the robot dinosaur craftsmen of the Jurassic Forest exhibit in Gibbons.  (No, the craftsmen were humans, not actual gibbons.  As far as I know.)

We paid our 13 bucks and set forth on our adventure.  

The exhibit is still being assembled, and we caught glimpses of the creatures taking shape behind the scenes.  The man-sized bird Gastornis was a particular monstrosity, not to mention the pony-sized Triceratops.  It's fully mobile and quite rideable (if you are a child and not simply a giant man-child).  I wanted to ride this Ankylosaurus, but again, giant man-child.

  

As anyone who has read 'A Sound of Thunder' by Ray Bradbury could tell you, you must stay on the path while on dino excursions, and that's also required here.  But all our shooting was done with cameras and there weren't fascists running the world when we got back. Any more than usual.

I got a good picture of the Edmontosaurus.  A local fellow.  He seemed the sort who would enjoy a nice Tim Horton's coffee.

It's all just REALLY cool: take a peaceful, beauteous nature walk and be confronted with the re-created beasts of unfathomable ancient times.  Their plastic hides may well contain molecules of the original creatures.  Processed, yes, but no less fearsome!  O.K., less fearsome, I can't say I'd stick around to get a picture of a pterosaur or something if it wasn't bolted to the (also plastic) tree.

Trip the motion sensors and the robo-dinos move, and roar.  Read up on the scraps that are known about them and the reams of speculation.  Be boggled by how little you know.  (Or is that just me?)  What caused their various extinctions?  Were they endotherms or ectotherms?  Feathered or not so much?  

Why did they wear flannel shirts?

We live in a pretty cool time and place.  I was just in a dinosaur gift-shop when only a couple of hundred years back you could have been in a lot of trouble for daring to believe a dinosaur EXISTED.  Then again, the creationist parks of 2010 still take an embarrassingly biased approach (Man and saurian co-existing in the Garden of Eden and what have you).  

But who ISN'T biased?  Not me.

I LOVE dinosaurs- (from an epochs-long-dead sort of distance), and I love sharing my love of dinosaurs with my wife.  And, now,  her love of dinosaurs with all of you.  SO CUTE!