Dinosaurs are big in Bonn!

“Dinosaurs – Argentinian Giants” on show at Bonn’s Museum König is exactly what is says on the tin – including as it does skeletal models of the biggest plant and flesh eating creatures found to date.  In fact just a few moments standing under the massive Argentinosaurus skeleton puts  mankind very much into perspective.   If you’ve put off going to Bonn’s Museum König thinking it was just a storage space for stuffed animals then this might be a good time to put those preconceived notions aside.  The Museum is very much a place to be right now, with night time visits by torchlight apparently an ‘in’ event (by arrangement only I hasten to add).

Museum König’s current exhibition of Argentinian Dinosaur remains is grabbing all the headlines with the help of it’s colossal ‘Argentinosaurus’.  The creatures skeleton measures an incredible 38 metres long from head to tail and needs a specially built tent to house it.  Each toe of its hind legs is like a tree root and standing (literally) at the tail end it seems as if the head is in another building.  Actually it’s easy to mistake the head for the tail because of its small size.  The poor animal must have had a 24/7 job eating to support its estimated 80,000 kg weight.

Possibly the only animal that would have disturbed Argentinosaurus at the dinner table would have been the flesh eating ‘Gigantosaurus Carolinii’.  At a ‘mere’ 14 metres long it would still have been the largest flesh-eater around at the time and it would surely have had a plentiful diet in the Museum given the amount of people stopping to put their heads between its huge jaws.

In his foreword to the Exhibition’s catalogue Museum Director Johann-Wolfgang Wägele  describes the show as a magnet for young children and teenagers, (which sort of suggests that us oldies are not so impressed since we experienced the dinosaurs on a living daily basis!) but it’s also  fascinating for adults too, as a stark reminder that being Kings of the planet doesn’t make mankind invincible.  As I came out of the Museum into a blizzard of snow I was reminded that what ‘did for’ the dinosaurs was probably climate change – and I thought maybe that Gigantosaurus with frozen grin and laughing human heads between it’s locked jaws might have been thinking “Make the most of it.  You’re time will come soon enough!”

I thoroughly recommend the exhibition and a look around the museums other floors too.  The sad fact is that many other exhibits could be as extinct as their temporary ‘room-mates’ and many others here would either run away, fly away or eat you for dinner in the wild whereas ‘Argentinosaurus’ would only steal your salad course.

Giganten Argentiniens Weblink

‘Dinosaurier Giganten Argentiniens’:  3 Dec 2009 to 6 June 2010

Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig

Adenauerallee 160, 53113 Bonn

(www.dinos-in-bonn.de)

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