dinosaurs Archives - Kidding Herself

Mama has this vague idea in her head that fossil collecting is a very British and specifically Victorian thing to do, reinforced by her visits to the Natural History Museum in London. Its feverishly over-imagined Gothic vibe is, she says, about as Victorian as it is possible to get without actually getting unnecessarily worked up when somebody shows a bit of ankle.

So the Orlov Paleontology Museum in Moscow came as a bit of a shock. It’s very big. It’s full of bones. Could it be that Russia has, perhaps, MORE dinosaur bits than Mama’s motherland?

Revolutionary thought.

UPDATE: We revisited this museum recently after our first visit in 2015 and, shockingly, there are STILL an unreasonably large number of dinosaur skeletons there! Couple of new pictures for you though and a surprise revelation at the end.

Of course, Russia is relatively large areawise. Mama’s personal moment of horrified realisation of that, since we are sharing this sort of embarrassing revelation already, came when she was watching the weather forecast one day.

Did you know it takes three maps to sketch out the vaguest overview of this sprawling landmass, with each point identified representing distances which would take you from at least London to Edinburgh in a properly proportioned country? Mama had to lie down in a dark room for some considerable time after cogitating too carefully on that. Russia is the sort of size that triggers Mama’s latent agoraphobia.

It’s probably best not to tell her about the nine time zones and how long it takes to chug along over to Lake Baikal on the Trans Siberian Express (six days. SIX DAYS! And that’s not even end to end of the country by any means.

Oh dear. Mama is off having another little lie down).

Anyway. Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that Russia, a country which we can probably agree, withoutgoingintotoomuchdetail, is big, has managed to scavenge quite a few bits and pieces of fossilised ancient lizard and prehistoric mammal. But quite clearly it did. To Mama.

Not an unpleasant surprise, of course! Who doesn’t like wandering around looking at giant sloth skeletons, giant tapir skeletons, a giant diplodocus skeleton, small but vicious-looking velociraptors, a huge mammoth, a small mammoth, many mammoth trophy heads on the wall and a few more tusks scattered artfully around, big birds, no bigger than that, and various squat shapes which all looked as though they were getting ready to charge at us through the glass. Also in skeleton form.

Now Mama would not be prepared to swear that absolutely every single one of those bones is original. Much reconstruction with plastercasts has almost certainly happened, but it has happened well and is most impressive all the same to small people who can spend hours leafing through the monster books and spew long strings of what Mama thinks are unpronounceable syllables in two languages in delighted recognition.

Which may be why the Paleontology Museum in Moscow leans towards the old skool when it comes to interactive features. In that there aren’t any. Mama thinks this is a bit of a shame and that the Paleontology Museum should go and look at the Darwin Museum to see just how much more fabulousness is waiting to be unlocked without needing a radical upgrade. More stuff to touch and move around and something that fills the air with roars is my recommendation.

That way you won’t have the unfortunate incident that we nearly had when we came across the many thousand year old rock covered with cave paintings. While Mama was transfixed by the UTTER COOLNESS of the exhibit, I was attracted by the shiny smoothness and reached out a hand and…

Let’s hope that one is one of the reproductions, eh? The Paleontology Museum is quite clearly a firm favourite with the children of Moscow and their parents and I can’t imagine I am the only small person who has had their tactile limits tested by the time they get to this, one of the last items on display.

That said, if you are Mama’s advanced age and bored by bones, the Paleontology Museum in Moscow is still worth a visit for the art. Every room has enhancements in the form of monstrous mosaics, murals, enamelled installations and suchlike.

With the tone being set by the terribly lizardy wrought iron gates at the entrance.

Look out also for the pterodactyl shaped doorhandles and the similarly Jurassic window coverings!

But our favourite was the courtyard overlooked by many of the rooms of the museum. Giant dinosaur sculptures and similar! I’ll just say that again. Giant! Dinosaur! Sculptures! And Similar! Looking a bit the worse for wear, admittedly, but if the people out there with the tape measures and enthusiastically waved hands are anything to go by, they may well be in tip top condition and ready for lounging amongst when we go in the summer. UPDATE: Nope. Still just a courtyard full of giant dinosaur sculptures and similar. I say just…

Preferably with coffee. Says Mama. I’d go for ice cream myself. Unfortunately, the Paleontology Museum does not provide such things on its territory, or at least it didn’t when we went in the autumn. This is a bit of a shame as it’s quite a slog down a multi lane highway from the Metro, where all the food options are – at least TEN MINUTES brisk march. And that’s if you aren’t burdened by a small complaining bundle, which Mama was on the way back as I was coming down with something and had only been sustained round Moscow’s Paleontology Museum by my feverish interest in all things large and scaly, and barely that by the end of the five hundredth room.

There is a toy kisok though. In fact there are TWO, and this is, of course, far FAR more important than mere bodily refreshment. The entrance price is extremely reasonable, and thus Mama was inclined to reward the Paleontology Museum by spending money in its shops. UPDATE: Scored two make your own dinosaur kits this time round. The kiosks are still there, and still fabulous, the cafe is still non-existent.

Yes, it’s that good. Go. Bring your own snacks, a sense of wonderment and either a smartphone someone to translate the Russian explanatory placards if awed gawping alone isn’t good enough for you. Because UPDATE Mama discovered on a recent visit that you can download a free app and listen for either an audio tour or read about the Orlov Paleontology Museum’s collections IN ENGLISH! Not that she got a chance to do stand around idly listening to people talk in her ear with us there. But nice to know the option exists.

More Information

The Orlov Paleontology Museum’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Mary Anning and the fossils of Lyme Regis.

Address: 117647, Moscow, Ulitsa Profsoyoznaya 123.

Opening: Wednesday through Sunday 10am to 6pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Admission: Adults: 300 roubles (£3). Over 7s: 150 roubles (£1.50). No need to buy a photography ticket here – that’s included.

By Metro: You can either get off at Tyopliy Stan or Konkovo on the orange line. The website has a particularly helpful pictorial guide of how to get to the Paleontology Museum from both stations, but basically it’s a trek along the multi lane highway that is Profsoyuznaya Ulitsa and there you are you are.

By other means: Don’t know, don’t care.

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There are a LOT of dinosaur bones an other prehistoric animal remains at the Orlov Paleontology Museum in Moscow

The Natural History Museum is my Brilliant Big Brother’s choice. He is very very keen on animals. And dinosaurs. So regular visits here are a bit of an inevitability.

The Natural History Museum from the outside — Dino world, here we come!

The problem with this, from Mama’s point of view, is that my Brilliant Big Brother is actually interested in the exhibits. He wants to stop, and look at them, and discuss them. I, however, am not. I want to run around and find something random to fixate on, like a rope barrier (oooooh) or a leaflet holder (aaaaaah). FIRE EXTINGUISHERS! IT DOESN’T GET BETTER THAN FIRE EXTINGUISHERS!!!

This means that Mama is constantly either having to coral me in the pushchair or drag my Brilliant Big Brother away from a stuffed swan, plaster of Paris crocodile or fossilised triceratops. Both of us end up feeling that Mama is an unreasonable old whatsit and are not afraid of making our opinions on this subject known.

Still, we usually manage to spend a certain amount of time in the usually exceptionally crowded bird hall, where Mama, the career teacher, simply cannot restrain herself and insists on setting my Brilliant Big Brother questions designed to better his understanding of how animals work. ‘Which birds,’ she is wont to ask, ‘eat meat? How do you know? Lookatthebeaklookatthebeak’ This is sometimes successful, sometimes not, and sometimes my Brilliant Big Brother silences her by keeping up a running commentary of random factoids about the lives and loves of the feathered exhibits himself.

Stuffed dodos in a display case — Dodos!

My Brilliant Big Brother, you see, pays close attention to nature programmes. Mama, on the other hand, thinks that nature in its entirety goes ‘they have sex and then something eats the really cute baby’ and that this is especially true if you watch David Attenborough’s Planet series. Except that in the programmes it is done to ominous music. Nature missing a trick there. Mama, basically, finds the animal world both boringly predictable and excruciatingly traumatic. My Brilliant Big Brother does not. Therefore, in a fauna fact-off, my Brilliant Big Brother always wins.

A blue whale and other animals at the Natural History Museum — That’s not a *real* whale, you know.

It should come as no surprise then that the mammal room is also popular. My Brilliant Big Brother finds the elephants in various stages of evolution fascinating. Similarly the fish corridor. With added crocodiles! And the bit with the giant sloth (it’s GIANT!). And the bug exhibition. With your actual leaf cutter ants carrying your actual leaves. Although he also thinks the case explaining the difference between centipedes and millipedes (not as obvious as you might think, Mama says) pretty essential. And… well, let’s just say that all the bits with any kind of animal are equally as thrilling to my Brilliant Big Brother, and, unfortunately, equally as packed with other nature obsessed big children and so equally as unfriendly to wide-roaming toddlers as each other.

Giant prehistoric sloth at the Natural History Museum — GIANT SLOTH IS GIANT!

Except the dinosaur exhibition, which is even more so. In fact, Mama recommends that the Natural History Museum should be avoided at weekends*, during school holidays and especially in half term, when everybody with children within reach of London decides to visit in the space of one week. Not only are there lengthy queues to get into the place, but the entire entrance hall is given over to the hour-long line of people waiting to go and see the animatronic T-Rex, with only the admittedly impressive Gothic detailing and the huge, iconic diplodocus skeleton to entertain them.

Entrance hall and Diplodocus skeleton at the Natural History Museum — An unusually empty day at the Natural History Museum.

Actually it can be quite entertaining. They’ve rigged the massive plant eater so that you can light it up different colours and even make it roar. But only if you pay an extortionate sum of money, which Mama, well, Mama doesn’t. Of course, if you should make a half term visit there will be many many desperate parents, and so the roar gets played quite often anyway. Still, this does not compensate you, in Mama’s opinion, for the wait, especially when it is followed by the news that the lift to the walkway you have to use in order to reach model dino heaven is out of order and no, you cannot just abandon the pushchair here and come back for it later.

Gothic details at the Natural History Museum — Cool, eh?

Of course, the T-Rex is almost worth it in Mama’s opinion and TOTALLY worth it in my Brilliant Big Brother’s, which is why we all keep coming back and back. I am less convinced, being much of the opinion of my Brilliant Big Brother on his first visit (< wobbly voice > “Teef, Mama, TEEF!”< /wobbly voice>), but I am generally overruled.

The animatronic T-Rex at the Natural History Museum — Teeeef!

There’s also a whole other bunch of galleries about the earth, the environment and, I dunno, plants and such, but we only go there when my Brilliant Big Brother thinks they might have hidden a few more animals in them or when Mama is trying to make me fall asleep. Not even being in a real earthquake or making your own clouds really compensates for the lack of furry/scaly action. Although the rocks room is a hit. To Mama one bit of quartz looks very much like another, but she says Granny, the geologist, should be proud that her grandson can spend hours and hours and hours in there getting Mama to read the captions (“Quartz. Quartz with iron. Quartz with copper. Quartz quartz. Quartz with gold. Oooh. Quartz.”) and I am happy because it is really quiet up there and Mama let’s me play hide and seek round the quartz cases. Granny must really like quartz. I wonder what she does with it?

The quartz room at the Natural History Museum — Quartzquartzquartzquartzquartzquartzquartz!

And so to the coffee, or not because Mama rarely stops for refreshments inside. The cafes are too open plan and busy for someone with over-stimulated children who will probably run off in different directions just as she has taken her first sip of the warm brown drink she seems to like to much. If you must go, the one in the Darwin Centre is probably the quietest. There’s also a restaurant, but that is particularly expensive and even a balloon per child cannot make up for that. Says Mama. The best option on rainy days is the basement, where there is a vast lunch room for school parties and other picnickers. It even has a small coffee shop at one end! On better days, there is a nice bit of grass outside and it even has its own snack kiosk and, in summer, a carousel. In good weather there is also a stall selling ice-creams at the entrance to the nature garden, a small wildlife preserve of overgrown foliage, twisty pathways and water features, with which my Brilliant Big Brother and I like to end our visit to the museum. You aren’t supposed to picnic there though.

Stone monkey climbing the walls of the Natural History Museum — Awww. Cute, innit?

Anyway. The Natural History Museum is an essential on any list of places to visit in London for children of all ages. Mama will just have to continue sucking up the drawbacks and start bribing me with the promise of dinosaur toys, because we will be regulars here for some time to come.

*Except for the last half term before the summer holidays. Mama reckons people are saving it up. Go then, if you are trapped by school. Unlike me. Nyahnyahnyahnyahnya.

More Information

The Natural History Museum’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about dodos – an extinct bird.

Address: Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Opening: 10.00 – 18.00 every day.

Admission: Free

By Tube: South Kensington (District, Circle and Piccadilly lines).

By Bus: The 360 stops on Exhibition Road. The 14, 49, 70, 74, 345, 414, 430 and C1 stop at South Kensington.

By Car: *sigh*

Tag: dinosaurs

No dry bones at the Orlov Paleontology Museum, Moscow

The Natural History Museum, London