How far would YOU go to see robotic dinosaurs?
We had to go from Bath to Geneseo for an appointment last week, so we just kept on goin’ afterward, up to Rochester Museum and Science Center.
I love dinosaurs, and I was just about to write that I think MOST kids do, when I remembered that I’m 70 years old, and arguably not a kid any longer.
Except when it comes to dinosaurs. I think we’re all kids with dinosaurs.
I got a glimpse of this right in the lobby, where you meet your first dino, AND you can control it by using a panel of buttons. Raise and lower neck; swing neck side to side; turn head; open mouth; swing tail; roar. It was loads of fun, and by working several buttons simultaneously I could make it raise its neck, open its mouth, and roar all at once. A little girl, probably not quite two, was enthralled, showing no signs of fear at all. Dinosaurs are scary, but not frightening. (Even if we’ve seen Jurassic Park.)
The main exhibit is on the third floor, and we had scarcely gotten off the elevator when my wife laughed, and called my attention to the first informational panel. There was my childhood hero, Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews – the man who discovered the first dinosaur eggs, and many previously-unknown species, on the Central Asiatic Expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History. With his high boots, broad-brimmed hat, high-powered rifle, gun belt with pistol and cartridges, and expeditions to exotic and dangerous places, he was obviously an inspiration for Indiana Jones.
This third-floor space had multiple dinos, interspersed with artifacts, photos, diagrams, films, and explanatory panels – not only on dinosaurs and their lives, but also on the finding and interpretation of the beasts. You can operate the spike-tailed stegosaurus and the horned triceratops. But the albertosaurus – a smaller (only three or four tons) cousin of tyrannosaurus rex – operates on its own, either set to a timer or activated by motion sensors when someone approaches. The velociraptors, on the other hand, operate and squawk constantly. They could get on your nerves.
(There’s some artistic liberty – nobody knows how dinosaurs actually sounded, or what colors they were.)
The dinosaurs are great, but RMSC also dedicates much of its space to the story of Rochester and its people. There’s a huge diorama of the city as it was two centuries ago, and a mocked-up country store with historic post office boxes – from Ingleside, in the Town of Prattsburgh!
We walked our way through extensive exhibits on Native American life in the Rochester area, and in the United States at large. I made a stop, as I always do when we visit, at a large panel dedicated to Austin Stewart, who walked away from slavery in Bath when he was 22 years old, got legal help to assert his freedom, learned to read, and became an entrepreneur in Rochester. He was honored in the first class of inductees to the Rochester Business Hall of Fame.)
Austin Steward was also an activist fighting for abolition, a comrade of John Brown and Frederick Douglass. Local people asked him to give an address celebrating the end of New York slavery in 1827, and he lived long enough to see it ended throughout America. The exhibit incudes a late-life picture, from the frontispiece of his memoir… perhaps the only picture we have of a person who had been enslaved in Steuben County.
There are also hands-on science and technology exhibits, but our schedule precluded them on this particular day. The dino show goes through May 1. RMSC goes back to 1912, and it has over a million artifacts. You might like it. We sure do.