Dinosaurs make appearance in Niles
Jeff Lange | The Vindicator Visitors of Discover the Dinosaurs exhibit admire a deinonychus, Sunday afternoon at the Eastwood Expo Center.
NILES
Inside Eastwood Expo Center on Sunday, 7-year-old Tyler Newbole was making some very large new acquaintances.
He didn’t know very much about them, he said, before he came with his mother, Jill Bond, from Canton to visit them.
“I’m just in first grade,” he said. He agreed, though, that when the time came in school to answer questions about dinosaurs, his hand would now be one of the first ones going up.
His favorite dinosaur?
Tyrannosaurus rex.
“He’s the most popular,” agreed Bond.
Tyler likes him because he was a meat-eater, and he was pretty fierce.
How did people learn about dinosaurs? Bond asked Tyler.
“They found their fossils,” he answered.
Mom’s favorite? “Triceratops.”
“He eats plants,” Tyler asserted.
It wasn’t fossils, but life-size, moving dinosaurs that attracted parents and kids to the three-day exhibit Discover the Dinosaurs this weekend at the Expo Center.
All the old favorites were represented: T-rex, stegosaurus, triceratops and the bony little tanklike ankylosaurus.
For the person with only the average amount of dinosaur knowledge, however, there are going to be many new encounters.
The stygimoloch, for instance, is a type of pachycephalosaur, or bone-headed dinosaur, the size of a fully-grown human being.
Joey Paglia, 5, of New Castle, Pa., was about to get a lesson on what it was from his mom, Richelle.
“That’s a stygimoloch,” Joey told her. She was astounded.
Turns out her son is a dinosaur shark, harboring a vast knowledge of facts about the ancient creatures thanks to a Nick Jr. show he watches called “Dino Dan.”
The dinosaur had bones on its head, his mom pointed out.
“I already KNOW that,” Joey pointed out.
They used their horns to fight each other, she continued.
“I already KNOW that,” Joey said.
Joey’s sister, Gianna, 7, said she doesn’t watch “Dino Dan” with her brother. She agreed though that after Discover the Dinosaurs, she will be able to hold her own with him when he “already knows that.”
There is plenty to learn about dinosaurs if people take the time to read the Dinosaur Facts posted along the walls in the display.
The dinosaur with the longest name was micropachycephalosaurus. Its name means “tiny thick-headed lizard.” It was one of the smallest dinosaurs at 1.5 to 3 feet long and 22 to 32 pounds.
The argentinosaurus weighed 110 tons and was “quite possibly the largest animal ever to walk the earth.” It was herbivorous — a fact to consider while you’re trying to shed all that winter weight by munching down salads.
Which was the dumbest dinosaur? Poor small-brained stegosaurus.
If you missed the Eastwood Expo showing, Blue Star, the Minnesota company that owns the display, will put on two more shows nearby this month — one Friday through Sunday at the Cleveland Convention Center and one at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh on March 27-29. Ticket information is available on the website discoverthedinosaurs.com.