34 thoughts on “Dinosaur visits school!”

  2. What next? A visit from Adam and “Steve”? . That is a really neat costume. I wonder what’s going on mechanically in the get-up that makes those springy actions work so well…And it appears to be just one guy.

    1. It’s one guy. There is a PBS documentary about them, they created these for a traveling stadium show, Walking with Dinosaurs. I’d imagine you can find at least some of it on Youtube or Google’s video search.

      I would have died of excitement if these things existed and I got to see them up close and personal when I was a young lad. Hell, I’d still wet myself in excitement and give a nerdy *squee* of joy, I think.

  5. Brilliant! I haven’t laughed so much in ages – looked like the kids loved being scared (but yes, bet there was at least one precocious one muttering about the lack of feathers)

  6. I remember how much I loved being safely frightened as a child. I think that’s true for all young mammals ~ including kittens & puppies from my observation of their play behaviour

    It’s from 1st April, 2011 @ Bondi Public school (next door to Sydney), NSW. It was to promote the return of the Walking with Dinosaurs arena spectacular that toured Oz in April/May.

    It’s the work of the creaturetechnology co. [nice website] of Australia who are the animatronics arm of Global Creatures Group. They did the robots for the wonderful Attenborough Walking with Dinosaurs documentary series.

    1. I thought I had seen video of something similar! Thanks for letting me know I’m not (completely) nuts.

      You know what’s especially great about this particular stunt (for lack of a better word)? Because of the fear element, the memory of the experience will be recorded that much more clearly. So, for the rest of their lives, these kids will remember the really fun time they had learning about dinosaurs in school. I predict a much higher-than-average number of future life sciences professionals from this crop of kids. Talk about a force multiplier!

      Cheers,

      b&

      1. Spot on ! I would guess that, all else being equal, a “fun time” in a particular classroom is what points a child towards an area of interest that becomes an obsession/career

        At my school in the ’60s there was an exam-passing, rote-learning culture that drained the very curiosity out of young souls. The English lit. department was the exception ~ I recall fondly the delectable Ms x enthralled us teenage boys with deep discussions on sexual mania & repression in the work of D.H.Lawrence

        *sigh*

    1. Nah. It’s not even like they’d had surgery to make their legs bend the right way/elongated their feet to walk on their toes.

      Amateurs!

  8. Here’s a ten NEWS video with extra scenes. The reporter claims the show has earned “350 billion Dollars for its Australian creators” ~ I imagine that should be “million” since the AUD is around the same as the USD. Even then it is 50 dollars a head (well worth it)

  9. Oh, that’s nothing. When I was in primary school, we uh…we incubated some chicken eggs. ‘Til they hatched.

        1. Yes, they did.

          Of course, this being the late ’80s, we were still being taught that the brain of a stegosaur was the size of a walnut and sauropods were too big to spend much time out of the water, lest they be crushed by their own weight. The dinosaur-bird link wasn’t even discussed. It took some trips to the natural history museum and reading different in later years to correct these misconceptions.

    2. I remember staring at the little bean sprouts we had growing in the styrofoam cups. Riveting. …at least compared to what was going on in class day after mind-numbing day.

      1. Yes, we did the “grow a plant in a styrofoam cup” project, too. Upon watching this video, I feel gypped now.

  12. Why wouldn’t it work with a Stegosaur? They could just do it like a two person horse costume.

    2. They did build a Stegosaur. It’s in one of the (many) clips at the site given by #6 Michael Fisher above.

      A full sized Stegosaur, so no visits to school gyms or soft playing fields.

      Also a full sized Brachiosaur. It lifts its head 30 feet above the ground.

      The bigger ones do no support themselves on their own legs. A camouflaged manned low profile vehicle provides support and mobility. Puppeteers, as they call them, control the lifelike body movements with ingenious radio controls.

      When I build my evil fortress, I’m going to have a bunch of autonomous robotic dinosaurs patrolling the perimeter. What, did I say that out loud?

  13. Whoever is inside that thing must have muscles of iron. They sure work for their money!

    Very impressive.

  14. Love that kid trying to pet it! LOl! The way they all run away when it swoops at them and then run right back. They all know what’s up but their imaginations simply overwhelm.

  16. Speaking for formative biological influences at school: in my elementary school, one of the teachers (Mrs. Bolton in a fifth/sixth grade classroom, iirc) would, every year, bring in a bald faced hornet nest wrapped up in several brown paper grocery bags. The critters would diligently gnaw the paper, incorporating it into their nest, until they had created an exit to the outer world.

    Regrettably, Mrs. Bolton of blessed memory was not my teacher – alas! – so all I got were second-hand accounts of the thrills and chills involved over the week or so it took the hornets to free themselves.

    Just how Mrs. Bolton managed to capture the nest in the first place and later removed it from the classroom without getting stung by one of Mother Nature’s more ill-tempered creations, I do not know.

  17. This would be a dream job! What’s better than giving children nightmares and getting paid for it! I would have been over the moon had I the opportunity as a small child to see such a performance. Sure beats the Nancy Reagan-inspired “don’t do drugs because…blah blah blah” that I suffered through. And a helluva lot more interesting than feeding one rat good food and the other crap to see what happened. Regardless of their diet, I’m pretty sure they ended up dead in a lab somewhere.

  18. Does anybody else feel like they were robbed as a kid not getting to experience this in school. Damn those lucky kids!

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