It helped growing up in smaller towns with the countryside just at the end of the garden or within a short and safe distance in a pedal car, on a scooter, bike (with or without stabilisers) and on foot.
We always did interesting things whenever on holiday or when time and money came together, which in a large family of 5 children was down to Father's hard work and Mother's budgeting.
There was plenty of play potential to hand and I could spend hours making things out of a cardboard box, or perhaps I should have really gone into Town Planning given that I designed some great road layouts and land use on large sheets of brown paper on which to drive my toy cars. Of course, this was the era just before Lego, Sticklebricks, Konnect and similar systems although I got a lot of enjoyment out of a plastic Meccano set (although the plastics used have been linked to carcinogenic effects).
One mainstay source of fascination and occupation was dinosaurs and everything prehistoric.
I collected figures of the most popular dinosaurs which were a freebie in a breakfast cereal brand or made pocket money purchasers of others on the regular visits to the local toy and model emporium. This childhood obsession with the terrible lizards inevitably led to buying archaeological sets where you had to chip and whittle away at a lump of rock-like substance in order to expose a relic of the prehistoric era or later artefact.
The greatest thrill for me was to unearth a real fossil at the beach or in the case of my best ever find, gouged out of the heavy clay whilst trespassing in the cutting of a busy rail freight route close to my house. There were also periodic outings to the Natural History Museum in London although this was quite a trek and logistical operation from up country in Lincolnshire where we lived.
I am now in my mid 50's I still take any opportunity to go to exhibitions on dinosaurs and only just this passed weekend took our friends two young sons to a shop based Dinosaur Centre in Hull, East Yorkshire. The sight, reproduced sounds and even scratch and sniff odours of the prehistoric era that are a central part of that place still have the same effect on me of quickening the heartbeat and instilling a combination of fear and amazement at the lumbering creatures , their feeding habits and habitats.
This brings in the big issue of the sheer size and scale of the largest of the dinosaurs. The Hull centre did have comparative charts and films to help in the visualisation of a Brontosaurus, T-Rex, Diplodocus and Stegosauraus against a typical human and, strangely, a double decker bus.
In my mind there is still a bit of confusion over relative sizes and this was illustrated by the discovery a couple of days after the weekend excursion to DinoStar of this skeleton in the course of my work.
It was a bit frightening on first coming across these remains as it was only in the shining around of my torch that I became aware of them. The animal evidently died peacefully although probably not without a bit of a pain if succumbing to poisoned bait, starvation or illness. It is very dinosaur-esque in its skull and bony spine and in its prime evidently built for speed and agility, as you can gauge from a powerful abdomen and strong, coil-like back legs.
The bones are well preserved but it is very difficult to say how long the skeleton has been there.
The skull is reminiscent of that of the Ridley Scott Alien, large cranium and hinged jaw being features
The hind quarters continue in a very long line of vertebrae and then an even longer tail bone. The feet are long and ideal for grip and stability on a variety of surfaces.
The animal? , well, it is probably a young squirrel.
In terms of scale and context, the whole skeleton was about the size of my mobile phone so don't have nightmares about monsters the size of two tier modes of public transport, promise?
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