It's got extinct possibilities… (From Bournemouth Echo)

It's got extinct possibilities…

7:00pm Friday 23rd July 2010 in

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FEROCIOUS dinosaurs have been unleashed on Bournemouth and they look set to stay for the next few weeks.

The BIC’s Purbeck Hall has been transformed into a murky, primeval swamp with gloomy caves where children and grown-ups can take a cautious step back to wilder times.

Dinosaurs Unleashed is a unique and enthusiastically interactive exhibition, designed to allow visitors to get up close and personal with 22 enormous, animatronic prehistorics, including the insatiable tyrannosaurus rex and the mighty diplodocus, which measures in at three times the length of a double-decker bus.

Trust me, it looks even bigger in the nobbly flesh.

This is the country’s largest collection of the kind of fearsome creatures which roamed the earth back when Raquel Welch wore a fur bikini and, for giant toys, these big boys are impressively lifelike, all convincing head thrashes and blood-curdling roars.

My four- and six-year-olds loved it, and did that obligatory wide-eyed, wide-mouthed “wow!” thing at the initial sight of the scaly giants that the organisers no doubt fervently prayed for.

But they particularly enjoyed the interactive stuff, some of which was computer-based and required them to use their problem-solving skills, the rest of which was properly hands-on and, even better, messy – specifically the archaeological “digs”, which were basically sand pits with buried fossils and brushes for dusting off the unearthed “finds”.

The prehistoric aquarium, where giant sea monsters glide past (a bit like the penguin viewing windows at the zoo) was fun, but the most popular thing by far, with children of all ages, was a clever gadget that takes your on-screen colouring of a small triceratops and instantly transfers it onto a big, plain white triceratops so it is decorated in colours and patterns of your choosing.

My girls opted for pink with purple spots and yellow with bright red lipstick, and as one of the many info plates reminded us, we can only guess at what colours dinosaurs actually were. Perhaps they were, ahem, spot on!

• BIC Purbeck Hall until Sunday, September 5.