Massive moving monsters at museum
As a small girl approaches the large creature with pointy teeth, it begins to move.
She stops. Staring at a monster she’d never come across before - a giant saber-toothed gorgonopsid Inostrancevia. The creature is one of five life-sized animated models that feature at the Waikato Museum.
Permian Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs details life on Earth 290 million years ago, with models and fossils of the extraordinary creatures who ruled the land and sea.
The exhibition, which launched in New Zealand this month, was created by Gondwana Studios in Australia, and has been touring Australian and United States cities since 2013.
The massive moving monsters captivated the class from St Columba’s Catholic School on Tuesday. The pupils, aged between 7 and 9, were buzzing with excitement as they discovered the creatures who explored the world before dinosaurs.
Daytona Barker, 7, Eloise Careswell-King, 7, and Kamryn Sewell, 8, were among the students who were introduced to the top predator of the time, the giant saber-toothed gorgonopsid Inostrancevia, as well as giant insects, bizarre-looking sharks and strange reptile-like creatures with mammal characteristics.
The Permian period ended with the largest extinction Earth is believed to have experienced, which wiped out 90 per cent of all species on the planet. The exhi- bition sheds light on the cause of this catastrophe which turned Earth into a biological desert.
St Columba’s school teacher Megan Careswell-King said the exhibition fit in well with their class inquiry concept this term, which was looking at sustainability.
It dove-tailed with what they were learning around the changes in the atmosphere and environment which created these extinctions, she said.
The exhibition runs August 13.
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