The Creature That Once Ruled The Earth

THIS holiday season, meet the creatures that ruled the earth millions of year ago!

After visiting Bangkok and Jakarta and astounding hundreds of thousands of visitors, the “Dinos Alive! Tour” is now in Manila. At the Mall of Asia, a huge air-conditioned lot, equivalent to 30 basketball courts, houses 31 interactive dinosaurs, some of them several feet high.

The dinosaurs represented at the show date back to the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, more than 200 and 140 million years ago, respectively.

Jurassic Park

Where did the word “dinosaur” come from?

A. It is Greek for dragon.
B. It is Latin for “smelly breath.”
C. It is Latin for “gone long ago.”
D. It is Greek for “fearfully great lizard.”

The answer is D. Dinosaur comes from the Greek words deinos (terrible, powerful, wondrous) and sauros (lizard, reptile).For millions of years, they ruled the earth until, whether due to a meteor impact, severe weather changes, or other causes, they suddenly became extinct. But unlike, say, werewolves or vampires, dinosaurs really existed once upon a time.

In the tour, dinosaurs are brought to life with high-quality latex, visually similar to what scientists believe dinosaur skin looked like. Robotics technology, reportedly from Japan and used in the movie “Jurassic Park,” makes the creatures amazingly lifelike. Realistic light and sound effects transport us to the dinosaurs’ world.

T-rex and other predators

What color was Tyrannosaurus rex?

A. green
B. gray
C. brown with spots
D. no one knows

The answer is not A, B, or C. Scientists are still debating its actual color. What we do know is that this Tyrant Lizard King was a fierce predator with a huge head, large teeth, strong jaws—and tiny arms with two fingers each. That is why T-rex could not box well and had to rely on other assets to fight other creatures. T-rex had a stiff, pointed tail to provide balance and let it to do quick turns while running.

My son Scott relished the sight of a two-story-high T-rex, its enormous teeth bared, snapping away at visitors. He also loved another T-rex, busily gnawing away at its prey. Scott looked up its jaws, and proclaimed, “This T-rex is really eating flesh!” to which our guide replied, “The technology is amazing, even to the last detail.”

A fan of T-rex, Scott did not particularly care for the Allosaurus, which also had powerful legs, a strong neck and a bulky body. Scott decided to go head-to-head and, staring down one Allosaurus, he bared his own teeth to the horrified fascination of two young kids nearby.

The kids had been whimpering since the first loud roar so, to reassure them, I asked Scott to pat the Allosaurus. Their grateful mother said, “See? The dinosaurs like to be touched.” (Parents, do not let young children go in alone since the effects are quite realistic, and the place is dark more than half of the time.) To my shock, Scott’s favorite was the Velociraptor, immortalized in “Jurassic Park.” He certainly got his fill in this exhibit, which had six of them lurking in various corners.

Velociraptor, a fast-running, two-legged dinosaur, had 30 very sharp teeth. But its major weapon was a long sickle-shaped claw in the middle toe of each foot that it could retract or flash at will. The fearsome claw enabled the Velociraptor to kill prey many times its size and weight.

“The Velociraptor is very smart,” Scott informs me, and he is right. In fact, scientists agree that, as calculated from brain-body weight ratio, the Velociraptor was the most intelligent of all dinosaurs.
These creatures also hunted in packs, which made them even deadlier. The exhibit had a replica of a Jurassic Park electric cage, complete with a hungry Velociraptor.

The gentle ones

Which of the following dinosaurs had a giraffe-like neck?

A. Brachiosaurus
B. Allosaurus
C. Torvosaurus
D. Ankylosaurus

The answer is A. Remember Littlefoot in the movie “Land before Time”? The 50-foot-tall Brachiosaurus walked on four legs (slowly). With front legs longer than the back, and with its long neck, it looked like a very tall giraffe. About 85 feet long, it weighed 80 tons. It ate the tops of tall trees, swallowing food without chewing, and digesting its meal in its stomach.

One problem the Brachiosaurus had was high blood pressure. Because of their long necks, these animals needed large powerful hearts and very high blood pressure to pump blood up the neck to the head, which was many feet above the heart. Scientists estimate that their normal blood pressure was probably over five times as high as ours.

Similar to the Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus was my favorite dinosaur in Jurassic Park. This long-necked gentle plant-eater also had four massive legs and a long whip-like tail. Its height protected it from enemies like the Allosaurus, which could not reach high enough to attack the head or neck, and probably would not attack the feet or tail.

Apatosaurus’ nostrils were not in the middle of its face, as we would expect, but were at the top of its head, “like the blowholes of a whale,” Scott said. But the Apatosaurus did not live in or near water. So why these weird holes? No one knows.