JOHN QUINN reports from Auckland: Giant dinosaur star attraction at Auckland exhibition

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 24

JOHN QUINN reports from Auckland: Giant dinosaur star attraction at Auckland exhibition

Dinosaurs have crossed the Tasman and settled in Auckland for the time being. They are in a $500,000 dinosaur exhibition at the Auckland Museum until January 5, a display that could be the bestattended paid admission exhibition in New Zealand’s history, The exhibition’s star attraction, according to museum staff, will probably be a 22-metre-long replica of a Mamenchisaurus, a Chinese plant eater. It was known as Fred to curators at the Museum of Victoria. It would have weighed between 40 and 50 tonnes in its prime, 140 to 150 million years ago. Gallimimus, an almost complete skeleton 6 metres long, was found in the Gobi Desert, in the People’s Republic of Mongolia, in 1968. Belonging to a genus called ostrich dinosaurs, it was probably one of the fastest, able to reach speeds of 50 km an hour as it snapped at prey with virtually toothless jaws. Another Gobi find is part qf a larger mystery. Called Deinocherirus (meaning “terrible hand”), it consists of two giant clawed arms, each much larger than a man. What the dinosaur really looked like, no one yet knows.

No dinosaur exhibit would be complete without Tyrannosaurus material, the shivering delight of all small children. Tyrannosaurus was upto 14 metres long; its dagger-like teeth had serrated edges, like a steak knife. Their skulls are heavily reinforced, most likely to withstand the forces of hitting large prey at high speeds, up to 30km an hour at the end of a short chase. There is also material from a smaller version from Mongolia whose name Tarbosaurus means "alarming reptile.” A species from western Colorado called Ultrasaurus (“very large reptile”) represents what people mainly think of when dinosaurs are mentioned. Probably more than 30 metres long, it weighed 130 tonnes and was the classic long-necked, huge-legged plant eater from the pages of e

children’s comics and cartoons. . Dinosaurs came in all sizes, from the scale of a bantam chicken to about the, size of a i large kangaroo. An example of ; the latter, a species called Hypsi- j lophodon, is represented by a full skeleton.

Australia is surprisingly rich In . dinosaur remains. Its biggest example, a Queensland plant-eater standing about twice the height of a man and 7 metres long. ; Much of the recent Interest has been in Victoria at Dinosaur Cove, on the rugged south coast of Australia. Volunteers and scientists have •* been excavating fossil fragments from hard rock with the help of . air-compressed drills. The site is unusual and of international importance because it lay within the Antarctic Circle. Small dinosaurs lived - there 106 million years ago.

Material found has included flying pterosaurs, turtles, lizards and a seal-like, fresh water version of the plesiosaurus common in New Zealand seas. ,

The site has volcanic debris which may have come from active volcanoes somewhere off toward New Zealand at a time when the Tasman Sea did not exist

Some material from Dinosaur Cove is included in the Firth Dinosaurs Exhibition. One example is the Leaellynosaur, named after a Victorian schoolgirl named Leaellyn Rich. Together with her paleontologist parents, she helped discover the dinosaur fragments. There has been much speculation, scientific. and otherwise, about . why dinosaurs disappeared. Last year, the “Weekly World News,” a newspaper that sees little creatures from outer space behind almost anything, ran a story that said dinosaurs were gunned down by big ,gw< hunters from Mars and points beyond. They said a Czechoslovakian archaeologist had found fragments of giant skulls punctured with neat roun< holes.