Montreal Science Center | The dinosaurs are back

They’re big, they move, they go rrroaaAAARRrr. It’s very hard to resist the charms of the 20 life-size dinosaurs that have taken up residence at the Montreal Science Center as part of a five-month temporary exhibition.

Mary Tison
The Press

This is the third time the Science Center has hosted dinosaurs.

“It’s a renewed pleasure,” enthuses Science Center director Cybèle Robichaud.

Over the years, animatronic technology has improved. As before, the huge beasts move their heads, open their mouths, wave their front legs and slowly wag their tails. But now you can see the skin on their sides lifting, as if they were breathing. It’s very realistic, to the point of being a bit disturbing.

This new exhibition, titled Dinosaurs around the world, groups the huge critters according to the current continents, while explaining that at the time of the dinosaurs, the continents were tight against each other as part of a supercontinent, Pangea. It was first divided into two, Laurasia and Gondwana, before breaking up into various continents. The dinosaurs then followed a different evolution according to their territory.

The exhibition takes on the aspect of a visit to a national park in each of the continents, with a small kiosk at the beginning of each section to explain the history and geography of the place as well as the fauna that can be found there.

Of course, it’s the dinosaurs that steal the show. In front of everyone’s enclosure, a panel gives information on their size, their time, their diet. Paleontology has made a lot of progress in recent years, we now know that at least some dinosaurs had feathers. It’s also a little destabilizing to see the huge therizinosaurus or the small velociraptor covered in feathers.

Mysteries

But there are still mysteries: what was the real color of the skin, the shell or the feathers of the dinosaurs? What noise did they make? The showroom resounds with roars, bellows, moans, belches, but what was it really?

“There were no recording women 250 million years ago,” jokes Cybèle Robichaud. So it’s speculation. »

Among other unanswered questions: what were the tiny front legs of the fierce tyrannosaur used for? They are not even long enough to allow him to bring food to his mouth.

The therizinosaurus, for its part, had disproportionately long claws, much like those of the sloth. However, we do not see this huge beast hanging from a branch, upside down.

While some dinosaurs look seriously terrifying, others seem friendlier, like the oviraptor, which Cybèle Robichaud describes as a “nice turkey”: the beast leans over a nest where oviraptor chicks emerge from their egg, still capped with a piece of shell.

There are obviously a few fun activities here and there throughout the exhibit, as well as a real fossil, a 67 million year old duck-billed dinosaur femur that you can touch.

But everything has an end and a final panel explains how the fall of an asteroid in Mexico probably led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. In fact, they have not completely disappeared: these ferocious creatures have descendants, these graceful birds which, in the morning, wake us up with their songs.

To continue the experience, the Imax cinema at the Montreal Science Center presents the film 3D Antarctic Dinosaurs. It is not necessary to dress too warmly: in the age of the dinosaurs, the climate of Antarctica was tropical.

The exhibition ends on March 12, 2023.