Dan’s Corner of the Internet

For those of you not familiar with the song “Walk the Dinosaur” by Was (not Was), please familiarize yourself with it now to help put you in the mood for today’s post.

So today I decided I was sick of being sick and ventured forth to the Museum of  Nature and Science with my niece. It was a school field trip for her and there was a special dinosaur exhibit in town that I was interested in seeing so it was a win win situation.

The trip also included an IMAX movie which is pictured above, “DInosuars Alive!” Sounds exciting doesn’t it? We’ll get to that in a bit, titles can be misleading.

That little beauty up there is a Utahraptor, or at least that’s what the sign says it is. Personally I’ve never heard of a Utahraptor but I don’t know why the museum would lie to me so I’ll say it’s true. I don’t know if the museum is going dino-crazy because of the new exhibit or if this was done during a recent remodel but before I entered the museum I felt like I was being watched and I was right.

That’s the head of a big honking dinosaur, the rest of him is down three more levels but I didn’t get pictures of him because…because I…..well because I didn’t!

I did get a  picture of Bruce though! Who’s Bruce? Well I don’t know if that’s his official name but that’s what I like to call him. This is Bruce.

He’s the official museum greeter, or at least he is every time I go there anyway. He always seems happy to see me and keeps asking me about having me over for dinner (or maybe it was having me for dinner) but I haven’t been able to make it yet.

They have this nifty little doodad there too, they say it’s the same type of thing that they used to explore Mars but honestly who can focus on Mars when you’ve got things like this hanging over your head?

That thing is called a plesiosaur, they have two of them hanging from the ceiling and I gotta tell you they’re pretty freaking big! They’re kind of elitist though, they think they’re better than Bruce because they’re hanging from the ceiling and the museum feed them free lunch. Shows what they know though, the fish he’s about to eat? They’re fake!

I know you can’t really tell it from this picture but this fossil was huge! According to the guy who was standing by the cart and ignoring me this is part of the leg bone of a brachiosaurus. What’s a brachiosaurus you ask?

That’s a brachiosaur. Impressive no?

They also had this on display.  You don’t know what that is? Bruce would be so disappointed in you, it’s a T-Rex tooth! You can kinda get an idea about how big it is from the picture above, that’s what the kid is holding in his hand.

They also had this raptor claw, not sure if it’s from our friend the Utahraptor or not because Sparky the wonder slug was still pretending I wasn’t there and flirting with the “MILF”.

I think these are claws too but I wouldn’t swear to it.

I wish I could have taken pictures of the special exhibit because they had some really cool stuff there but the numerous “no flash photography” signs as well as the armed security guards pretty well deterred me from saying to hell with it and snapping away. If it comes to your town and your into dinos though I’d recommend checking it out.

Since they wouldn’t let me take pictures of the visiting dinosaurs I figured I’d just go and take pictures of our own local dinosaurs, they didn’t mind posing for me and didn’t threaten to shoot me/kick me out.

You know I like dinosaurs but I’m not gonna lie and pretend I know what these things are. There were tons of signs around that gave out all kinds of interesting facts but when I tried to take pictures of them they came out too dark to read.  These two just cracked me up because I love how they staged them fighting over the scrap of bone.

The name of this guy is on the plaque, if you can make it out you have better eyesight than I do.

I had to take a picture of this guy, the stegosaurus is my favorite dinosaur ever and you just know he’s gonna kick this meat-a-saurus’s ass. Besides he’s got his kids standing by he’s gotta look tough!I thought I took pictures of the little stegos too but evidently I didn’t, if you look behind the stego and the other guy you can kind of make them out.

This guy? He’s just appalled at all the violence and is trying to break up the fight. Kinda hard to do that when you don’t have hands though so he just looks down on them and tells them to make sure they stay off his damn lawn.

Yeah I have no idea what these guys are either I just like the fact that there’s a lot of them and I like to pretend they’re racing. The one guys running so fast he ran out of frame.

The only reason I took this picture is because it’s supposed to show what Colorado looked like as a rainforest but the only thing you can see is the monkey thing.

This thing here? It’s a..it’s a uh…did you see the monkey??

I actually know what this one is, it’s a mastodon skull. See? I paid a little bit of attention. You can tell from this picture though that he totally doesn’t floss.

So after what seemed like untold hours of dino fun it was time for “DINOSAURS ALIVE!!!” (insert ominous music and thunder sound effects here).

Now the thing about our museum is the person who painted the background murals had a sense of humor. In the animal exhibits there are seven gnomes hidden into the artwork. Well the person who painted the murals for the exhibits also painted the mural or the IMAX waiting room as well. Somewhere in the mural is a Pegasus, Yoda…..oh and this!

Yes folks the Millennium Falcon herself!

The movie itself…kinda boring. T

he preview showed CGI dinosaurs fighting each other and all kinds of other cool things. In a 45 minute movie that was about maybe 10 minutes worth. I do have to say though, the IMAX format is simply amazing! I’ve never been the type to splurge on the extra money on seeing new releases in IMAX but after seeing the detail and clarity of this one I might have to give it a shot one of these days. All in all it was a blast and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. If you haven’t gone to the museum in a while do yourself a favor and go, you’ll have a better tie than you think you will.

Till next time!