It’s mornings like this one I do wish I had a five-year-old in tow. Because then I’d have a bona fide excuse for muscling my way into the “Dinosaurs Around the World” exhibit at the South Florida Science Center that opened today. The exhibit features more than a dozen life-sized animatronic dinosaurs, from the Spinosaurus stationed outside the building (he was too big to fit!) to the Herrerasaurus and Iguanodan inside, the feathered Velociraptor, the massive T-Rex with his scary yellow eyes. They move, they roar, they size you up for dinner and they even feel a little warm and rubbery, as you’d expect.
I have loved dinosaurs since the Saturday mornings my dad used to take me to the Smithsonian and we’d just stand and look at the massive T-Rex skeleton in the main hall. My brother took me to all the Japanese Rodan and Godzilla movies, and I never missed a Jurassic anything; in fact, I’ve seen all of them countless times. Give me a good dinosaur fight, or a T-Rex with a pair of human legs kicking from his mouth and I am one happy camper.
It makes perfect sense I’d hightail it to the Science museum, and I am here to tell you your kids will love it. Today we even got to talk to Robert DePalma, a real-life local paleontologist who was wandering around the exhibit carrying one fossilized foot of a prehistoric raptor he discovered in South Dakota—at 17 feet, the largest raptor ever discovered. The scientific paper he wrote on his finding comes out today and he’s naming it Dakota raptor, like Indiana Jones, only with a claw the size of a small and deadly scythe. DePalma was happy to show how that claw could rip another dinosaur apart without trying—and we already know that raptors can reason—so this was a very satisfying conversation, in my opinion.
“Dinosaurs Around the World” starts today and will have discounted admission prices the next two days, just because. (Halloween largesse perhaps?) In addition to the dinosaurs, the exhibit features fossils, immersion design elements, a cast of a T-Rex paw print (do dinosaurs have paws?) and lots more. The exhibit runs until April 16, 2016. For more information , call 561/832-1988 or visit sfsciencecenter.org. The South Florida Science Center and Aquarium is at 4801 Dreher Trail North, West Palm beach and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mon, to Fri. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
