‘HORNS, SPIKES, QUILLS AND FEATHERS. THE SECRET IS IN THE SKIN!

Not long ago, our knowledge of dinosaurs was based almost completely on the assumptions we made from their internal body structure. Bones and possible muscle and tendon attachments were what scientists used mostly for reconstructing their anatomy. The rest, including the colours, were left to the imagination… and needless to say the skins were lizard-like and the colours grey, green and brown prevailed.

We are breaking the mould with this Dinosaur Revolution!

Thanks to a vast web of new research, that this time emphasises also skin and ornaments, we are now able to get a glimpse of the true, bizarre and complex nature of the evolution of the Dinosauria.

We have always known that the Dinosauria was subdivided in two main groups, according mostly to their pelvic structure: Saurischia and Ornithischia. But they had many things in common, including structures made of a special family of fibrous proteins called keratin that covered their skin in the form of spikes, quills, protofeathers and feathers, that served as insulation, defensive-offensive items or simply ornamentation.

One group (ornithischians) would go extinct and the other (saurischians) would fly into another age! But not before some of their forms collided spectacularly. Porcupine-like runners, massive horned faces and tank-like monsters had to live with and defend themselves against the teeth and claws of the Feathery Menace… a menace that sometimes reached gigantic proportions in the shape of Tyrannosaurus… or in the shape of outlandish, massive ornithomimids with gigantic claws like the newly re-discovered Deinocheirus, reconstructed here for the first time in full.

All of them are well represented and spectacularly mounted in this exhibition. The exhibits are backed with close-to-life-sized murals of all the protagonist species, fully fleshed and feathered and restored in living and breathing colours.

This two-tier exhibition is like no other: it will follow the two separate paths of dinosaur evolution that will meet at the end in a massive and dramatic battle, that, in evolutionary terms, could only be really won by flying away.