Not many people know the troubles we have had to go through to finally bring this exhibition to Europe. The odyssey was in danger to become a disaster: a container had been shipped from Australia and had to go through the Red Sea to arrive on time…. well, everybody knows what is going on in the Red Sea and we were in real danger of being attacked by rebels… so, the ship had to go all the way around Africa to finally arrive… just a week before the opening. Yes what you see here is the result of a whole week working against the clock by Peter Norton and the people of the Horniman Museum… until the final couple of days I couldn’t help to supervise the tremendous efforts, because nobody knew when would it be arriving! …. and guess what, despite everything and the fact that the space was too small to add some of the bigger skeletons (That had been already featured in the first versions of the exhibition in Australia and NZ)..,,. the results were amazing! We have always to adapt what we have to the hall… no matter how small or big…The Horniman exhibition resulted to my eyes in something almost intimate, welcoming, colourful and spectacular. The array of rare casts is staggering. From David Sole’s complete Scelidosaurus skeleton to a precious, perfect cast of the quilled Psittacosaurus… especially dear to me since I was responsible for the first illustration ever done of it in the year 2000! Even the animatronics were reasonable for the site… Adding the therizinosaurs with Peter Norton’s exclusive new reconstruction of Falcarius was a plus… and we were lucky those two could fit!

The sight of nursing moms precisely underneath the Oviraptor nest was simply awesome!

The exquisite Psittacosaurus needs seen to be believed! And Scelidosaurus… the same!

My favourite animatronic… we manage to convince the cChinese makers to make it as close as possible to what we needed, instead of doing a Jurassic Park clone!

People were surprised by the sizes… Velociraptor vs Avimimus were too small for the minds of many,… but we had to convince that everything in this exhibition is life-size!

Needless to say. the dinosaur-bird connection was also a surprise to so many. The reaction of the public was going to be the most outstanding feat of this whole event. The first day I was wary that we would have an audience split into rowdy kids and bored parents… but, by the second day the reaction was quite the opposite. The kids were having a field day obviously, but this time the not-so-kids and parents were paying very much attention and followed the numerous explanatory texts. Dinosaur rEvolution indeed! Every time I saw someone interested in anything specific I would try to cautiously intervene and expand the explanations… some even recognised me!… and the reactions were amazing. The whole purpose of this exhibition is to shake-up the expectations of all the dinosaur exhibitions done before… and I think we have been succeeding. People come out with a completely different view of dinosaurs and rather shocked by the fact that they were either , small, feathered or quilled… or gigantic oddities… whatever! They came out with the notion that they were after all a veritable variety of animals… not monsters… and curiously the one that scared the kids the most was thjs re-creation (or more like an animatronic caricature) of one of my better known paintings of Deinonychus!

But this is not just an artwork showcase exhibition… this is party time for all dinosaur lovers! And yes, the first day we had Dave Hone and partner with James Pascoe and his gang of Dino nerds, just arriving from visiting Crystal Palace’s restored dinosaurs. appeared on the scene!… and also Janet Smith was there . I’m immensely grateful for their support… Carmen and Patricia were also there… and many more.

Needless to say the next days the dinosaur mania increased to the levels of being sold-out every day. The images speak for themselves. They had to queue and come in in separate groups so the place would not be overcrowded.

And the paleoart workshop was giving us the first budding paleoartists of the week! Rainbow Deinonychus anyone?

Parallel to the exhibition there was a dino-sculpting workshop and it perfectly complemented what was happening in the other building(s)… I wish we have had more space and time to actually bring all of them at once to the exhibition and they could model their clay sculptures based on what they saw!

The interaction with the audiences continued and someone added a very special high praise phrase : “this is better tnan the NHM!”... their words, not mine… but it makes worthy all of our efforts.

We are especially grateful to Cressida Diez-Finch, Sian Brett and all the team of excellent workers at the Horniman Museum for such hard work and dedication. The exhibition will last at the Horniman until November. Extreme Dinosaurs Pt 2 (with the first chapter dedicated to the exhibition) is selling at the shop of the Horniman… for the second time but this time with more reason than ever. Hopefully many more will come, and even more: next time we would be able to find a bigger space…. we need it! The battle of Theropoda and Ornithischia continue, with only one of them as the winner...And it can be either in England or the rest of Europe… keeping fingers crossed!