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Dinosaur Garden
Recommended for kids & families
The enclosed garden is a fun, relaxed space to play and chill out under our life-sized T-rex and Triceratops.
Step back in time in Brisbane's iconic Dinosaur Garden. With plenty of covered space, the Dinosaur Garden is a great area to enjoy a packed lunch, rest and reflect on your visit. Don't forget to snap a photograph with the T-rex or Triceratops.
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Dinosaurs in the Dinosaur Garden
The life-size replicas of Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops in the Dinosaur Garden were shipped to Queensland Museum from New York in the late 1970s. Since then they have been much-loved 'guardians' of the museum.
Dinosaurs belonged to a group of reptiles that included birds, crocodiles and other prehistoric animals such as pterosaurs (flying reptiles). All these animals are called 'archosaurs' or 'ruling reptiles'. Archosaurs first appeared on earth about 250 million years ago.
Dinosaurs were animals that lived in the Mesozoic era between 230 and 65 million years ago. All dinosaurs lived on land, had four limbs, walked on two or four legs and breathed air. Some ate plants, others were fearsome carnivores.
Like other reptiles, dinosaurs had tough scaly skin, with many dinosaurs having great armour plates and shields to fend off predatory dinosaurs. Some smaller species however, sometimes had a soft feathery down, similar to ducks.
Tyrannosaurus rex
Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the biggest land animals ever known. It was up to 13m in length, 5m in height and weighed in at 6 tonnes. T.rex was quite slender and agile, and had a mouth filled with dagger-shaped teeth. It ate smaller dinosaurs and other reptiles and used its teeth to tear off chunks of flesh which it swallowed without chewing. T.rex lived in North America in the late Cretaceous Period, 68 - 65 million years ago.
Triceratops
Triceratops means 'three-horned face', which represents the dinosaur's enormous bony skull with three large horns.Triceratops was up to 9m long, 2.5m high and up to 5 tonnes in weight. Triceratops was a herbivore with a huge appetite and spent most of its day grazing on low-growing vegetation in order to get enough energy for its large body. Triceratops lived in North America in the late Cretaceous Period, 67 - 68 million years ago.
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