Age of the Dinosaur exhibition opens Friday 22 April

Natural History Museum: Age of the Dinosaur exhibition opens Friday 22 April
The animatronic dinosaurs are lifelike enough, but the exhibition also brings to life their natural habitat, so visitors get immersed in Jurassic and Cretaceous environments along with weird and wonderful now extinct plants and animals.

As well as the animatronics, Age of the Dinosaur has CGI (computer generated images) film, stunning images, interactive stations, and amazing specimens, including real fossil dinosaur bones, to help visitors explore a world of more than 65 million years ago.

Well-preserved fossil of an Rhamphorhynchus, a flying reptile, or pterosaur.
And keep hold of your ticket as there is a NaturePlus barcode on it that lets you continue your dinosaur and fossil exploration back home on your computer.

Museum specimens
Age of the Dinosaur is rich with Museum specimens giving a taster of the important science work that goes on behind the scenes.

They come from the Museum’s world-class palaeontology collections and this is the first time in 5 years that so many have been used in a temporary exhibition.

Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis OBE
Animatronics
The exhibition has 6 animatronic dinosaurs, and an animatronic Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird.

The 1.5 tonne Tarbosaurus took 8 people and a forklift truck to get it safely into the Museum. They are produced by Kokoro, based in Tokyo, Japan.

Jurassic zone
In the Jurassic zone, see a huge tooth from a pliosaur, one of the many Jurassic marine monsters.

Find out more dinosaur facts and fun at the interactive stations
Along with plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, these menacing predators used their jagged, ridged teeth to gorge themselves on fish, squid and other sea creatures.

Take a look at a special fossil of a pterosaur. These flying reptiles had wings supported by a single long finger. They shared the air with birds and could fly as soon as they hatched.

The first dinosaur to come to life in the exhibition is a life-size Camarasaurus eating from the treetops of a Jurassic forest and calling to the rest of its herd.

Actor John Hannah
Cretaceous zone
In the Cretaceous zone, get a glimpse of some of the first flowering plants. Before the Cretaceous Period, plants only used seeds or spores to reproduce.

Examine the skull of a duck-billed dinosaur, Lambeosaurus lambei, that that had 700 teeth!

More life-size animatronic dinosaur scenes are waiting, including Protoceratops defending its nest and the tall, slim, ostrich-like Gallimimus.

Keep an eye out for Oviraptor and Velociraptor, two small, vicious meat-eating dinosaurs.

And the final dramatic Tarbosaurus, a cousin of T.rex, and every bit as scary.