Dinosaurs!

I had some spare time during my business trip to London, so I used it to visit the dinosaur exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

As many boys, I was a big dinosaur fan when I was little. I have always been fascinated by these "terrible lizards" - that's what dinosaur means in Greek - and knew everything about them. For instance that they are not related to lizards, so their name is just wrong.

The Natural History Museum is located in a beautiful old building in South Kensington, and it has much more to offer than dinosaurs. But their dinosaur exhibition is definitely their main attraction. The museum's central hall is dominated by a 32 meter long skeleton of a diplodocus carnegii - also known as Dippy - which has become its most iconic exhibit.

There was a long queue to enter the museum. No surprise, as it's free and I came in the half-term vacation. The dinosaur exhibition starts with this scary model of a tyrannosaurus rex, which moves and roars. 

I would have loved this when I was a boy and I still think it's cool. Do I need to mention that I was also a big fan of the band T. Rex?

The exhibition explains everything you need to know about dinosaurs in a very entertaining way. Here is the model of a nest with some freshly hatched dinosaur babies.

Besides many skeletons, models and diagrams, you also find this original sized head of a tyrannosaurus rex that you may touch. If you dare.

There is also a compilation of dinosaurs in the movies, from The Flintstones to Jurassic Park. My favourite is this scene by stop motion genius Ray Harryhausen from the film 1 Million Years B.C., in which a group of stone age men fight a velociraptor.

We all know that humans never fought against dinosaurs as they became extinct some million years earlier (unless you believe in creatonism). But still nobody knows why dinosaurs died out. Was a big meteor the reason? Climate change? Tectonic shifts? The museum shows some explanations in the form of cartoons.

The only downside: the exhibition was very crowded, which was quite exhausting after a while. Well, it's free, so one cannot complain. 

The museum probably makes so much money from all the dinosaur toys, book and t-shirts it sells at the museum shop that it can afford its free entry policy. I nearly bought myself a dinosaur jumpsuit, but it was not available in my size.

So if you love dinosaurs, the Natural History Museum in London is a must-see.