Titans of the Past descend on the Science Centre

This was a journey back in time for me. I hadn’t been to the Science Centre in more than 20 years, I think.  We received an invite to the Titans of the Past exhibition, and even though it was a bit of a trek for us to get to the Science Centre, we felt that this was too good to be missed.

It was K and B’s first time to the Science Centre. And here they are all chirpy and loving at the entrance, cos they were so excited!

The Titans of the Past exhibition was housed in a very spacious Annexe portion (3000 square metres) of the sprawling Science Centre.  We visited on a Friday evening, and only got to the Annexe proper around 7:30pm.

A very friendly member of staff kindly guided us through the exhibits, patiently explaining how they dated the dinosaur fossils, how a baby triceratops’ head changed as it grew, which were casts and which were real…

I was really impressed by how lifelike the dinosaurs looked and moved, and the guide explained that the robots were developed by a Japanese company. Ah, so.

There were interesting displays like the one above, and you can see B’s little stamped hand, reaching to press the button to hear how a baby Hypacrosaurus possibly sounded.

Even though most of the fossils were replicas, they were modelled after the actual fossils, and thus true to form, or rather, true to the state the actual fossils were found in.

Here we saw a rather graphic depiction of a T-Rex crunching a large bone, and a baby gnawing on the  leg of a carcass. Nom nom nom.

We rather dramatically experienced a blackout, right before we got to the gigantic T-Rex.  The kids made us carry them, but recovered enough by the time we got to the craft station.

We made some real cute headbands!

The staff were really sweet and measured their heads so that the headbands would fit nicely.  So I went home with two (extra) baby triceratops!

I thought the “paleontologist’s site” was a great touch.  Huge with such fine sand.  My kids preferred playing with the sand instead of ‘discovering’ some ‘fossils’.  Who knows? Perhaps there were less obvious treasures to be found within.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex in its full glory.  What amazed me most were how puny its hands were.  Seriously, now! So unbefitting of an otherwise magnificent monster. All the better to pet you with? Hmm.

I did appreciate the details of having a triceratops skull being quashed underfoot. Take that, horn-head!

The real deal

The gem of the exhibition was this actual fossil of the largest T-Rex skull ever found, worth more than USD$1 million. It was on loan to us from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana, as with the rest of the exhibits.

What took my breath away was the Argentinosaurus exhibit, which was 36 metres long and 7 metres high, too huge for me to capture well on camera. It was almost like little Singapore now had a dinosaur exhibit to rival those in the natural history museums of London and Washington DC.  Simply awesome. Even the two smaller dinosaurs in the background were impressively staged.  I can only imagine how much work it must have taken to ship over, and piece together all these parts.

The Ice Age diorama was right at the end, and the exhibits did remind us of the cartoon. Against a starry backdrop, these furry mammoths were very life-like.  Though after so many dinosaur exhibits, it seemed a tad like they were pegged on like an after-thought.

Those tusks!  That shell!

It was great that there were useful nameplates describing the exhibits – very informative, and I’m sure students who have no little children to run after, would have enjoyed imbibing the details on each plate.

Don’t leave the Science Centre without noticing the corny dino jokes they have! I quite liked this one. 

Har Har Har.

In the next write-up, what else we got up to in the Science Centre, and what exhibit (ironically) engaged the kids the most!

The Titans of the Past exhibition requires separate tickets ($25 for adults, $19 for those aged 3-12) from Science Centre admission, and will be on till 23 February 2014. What better place to visit than this during these school holidays?