DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Technician Mike Short polishes the eyes of a baby Apatosaurus in a new Bishop Museum exhibit. Hovering above is a Pterosaurus.

Big Babies

A traveling dinosaur exhibit is equal parts tech and teaching

Mike Short spends much of his time repairing oversize dinosaurs. This has involved dealing with broken limbs, damaged skin and motorized parts gone haywire.

Baby Dinosaurs "A Prehistoric Playground" On exhibit: Today through Dec. 11 Place: Bishop Museum Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily Admission: $14.95, $11.95 for ages 4 to 12. Kamaaina and military rates available. Call: 847-3511 or visit www.bishopmuseum.org Today is Family Sunday, featuring the opening of the dinosaur exhibit, entertainment and family activities. Admission is $3; museum members and Bank of Hawaii bank-card holders free.

As a technician for Wonderworks, Short travels around the country setting up exhibits of the mechanized beasts. The Bishop Museum will host one exhibit, "Baby Dinosaurs: A Prehistoric Playground," beginning today.

Michael Blasco, the museum's technical coordinator, was relieved that the baby dinosaurs arrived safe and sound. A few pieces needed some touching up, and Short talked about his work as he carefully rubbed a Parasaurolophus' eye with alcohol to remove residue left from a paint job on the creature's skin.

"It is the only thing that won't cause the eyes to blur," he said. Paint thinner and other agents cause a reaction. "In the shop, we would remove the eyes and use a buffing machine.

"I've worked on anything from a broken framework to welding jobs where we had to take the dinosaur's skin completely off to do a repair. Sometimes we have to do some electronic wiring and fiberglass reconstruction," he said. "Skin repairs are the hardest. There are always blemishes and tears."

Matching paint colors is especially difficult for him.

"I'm not an artist. I'm a mechanic," he said. "They make up paint kits for us, but problems arise when someone decides a dinosaur should be a different color. The skin is designed to show all of the bumps and folds of a full-size sculpture and is made of thick foam with a flexible rubbery coating."

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Kathleen Izon, director of the exhibits department at Bishop Museum, holds dinosaur stamps that children can use to stamp their "dino passports" as they go through the exhibit.

BEYOND THE NOVELTY of seeing the giant creatures seemingly come to life, teaching a little about prehistoric times and biology, the dinosaurs are also a means for parents to teach their children about family life, said Kathleen Izon, director of Bishop Museum's exhibits department. Each display includes a simple story, and all of the dinosaurs have names.

"There are morals for each scenario," she said. "We hope parents link that to their child's daily life."

One scenario uses play to teach children the value of social skills. Another, entitled "Food for Thought," explains how, like humans, dinosaurs require proper nutrition for good health and development.

A nesting display demonstrates the necessity of family guidance and nurturing for developing survival skills. An "exploration and discovery" scenario demonstrates how group interaction can help build self-esteem and confidence.

The exhibit intends to be less intimidating for younger children than past dinosaur and reptile exhibits because of its focus on baby dinosaurs that are much smaller in scale, Izon said.

Interactive stations allow keiki to create dinosaur rubbings, make sculptures and drawings, dig for fossils or make dinosaur tracks and shadow puppets.

"When building a dinosaur, nothing is right or wrong," Izon said. "It is all about imagination and letting the kids be creative."

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Mike Short examines the tiniest dinosaurs in the exhibit, baby Parasaurolophuses emerging from their eggs.

BRINGING THESE ancient beasts back to life again would not be possible without modern-day technology that is used to recreate dinosaur sounds and motions.

Computers mounted in the dinosaurs' base regulate the flow of compressed air through a series of lines and valves to various cylinders, causing their limbs and eyes to move. An interactive robotic baby T. Rex allows museum-goers to see how the dinosaurs work.

The sensitive hardware and software made shipping to Hawaii difficult. The creatures normally would be transported in large vans or trucks, but they had to be shipped to Hawaii and packed to limit movement due to strong ocean currents.

"On the ocean, the containers move much like a spaceship in outer space," Blasco said. "They need to tie things down in three different directions for stability."

Once the creatures arrived, they were then moved into the museum's Exhibition Hall, which wasn't built to house dinosaurs. These babies weigh about 700 to 800 pounds each, said Blasco, who noted that this was not nearly as challenging as trying to house other robotic creatures in the past, including one piece that weighed more than 5,000 pounds.

"We had to put in special flooring and remove some of the front doors," Blasco said.

That's the trouble with dinosaurs.