From a giant 'squid' to a T-rex

Science Centre's biggest dinosaur expo opens today

- Koh Ming Lun

Exhibition will showcase six geological eras and five major mass extinction events

From Oct 11, visitors stepping into a hall at the Science Centre Singapore will be transported more than 400 million years into the past, when prehistoric creatures still roamed the planet.

Greeting guests at the entrance to the centre’s latest exhibition, Dinosaurs | Extinctions | Us, is a full-scale model of one of the top predators of the Ordovician period — the Endoceras, a shelled cephalopod similar to a modern squid, that could grow up to 5.7m.

That exhibit is bathed in a shimmering ocean-blue light in a reference to how the area north of the tropics was almost entirely ocean during that period, which began more than 480 million years ago.

The Ordovician period is the first of six geological eras that visitors of the exhibition will be able to explore.

The exhibition will also take them on a journey through the late Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous eras, and finally the Holocene epoch.

The Holocene epoch provides visitors with a glimpse of how animals have been driven to extinction by the arrival of humans, but also serves as a reminder that people have the power to protect and safeguard the earth’s remaining biodiversity.