Curious children flock to dinosaur session at fair

sharjah — Dinosaurs are often depicted as fierce creatures, baring their teeth, moving like colossal deranged lizards. Talking to a packed audience full of curious school students at the book forum, during the 37th Sharjah International Book Fair was Dr Ben Garrod, an English evolutionary biologist, primatologist and broadcaster.

Sharing his experiences Dr Ben said: “There is no definition of a dinosaur. That’s because the problem is that there are so many of them. There were thousand species of dinosaurs. Some had head that were taller than this building, some had four legs and some had two. Some could swim, some could jump and some could fly. With so many different types of animals, in science they didn’t have any one definition”.

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles that first appeared some 230 million years ago. The first dinosaur was recognised in the 19th century and ever since, dinosaurs have been the source of many questions.

Comparing scientists to detectives Dr Ben said: “We have to turn into investigators and look for clues on our fossils. Now fossils don’t even need to be broken open, there are millions of CT scans and X-rays and great technology is available to look inside. Now technology is so much better. That means we know about dinosaurs than ever before.”

The session concluded with giggling children sharing videos of these lumbering, foultempered creatures gasping from footstep to footstep.