This is quite simply the bestest thing ever.
Man, if my school had an assembly like this for us when I was a kid, I might’ve stuck with studying dinosaurs. Also? I want one for Dragon*Con.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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April 13th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
I’ve seen these before.. They look like fun.
April 13th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I WANT THE SUIT!
April 13th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Everyone walk the dinosaur….
April 13th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
They could have all be killed…
April 13th, 2011 at 5:07 pm
OMG! Fantastic suit!
April 13th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
It needs feathers.
April 13th, 2011 at 5:15 pm
“And then when I was about eight, a dinosaur came to my school and started chasing us around. No, not Barney, a REAL dinosaur, with teeth and claws. I’m telling you, doctor, it really happened! NO…PLEASE…NOT THE STRAITJACKET AGAIN!!!”
April 13th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
I wonder how many of those kids needed a change of underwear after that assembly?
April 13th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Rats. We’ll have to change the “days since” on the sign again: http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2011/04/raptors.html
April 13th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
GEEZ!!! I want to be a kid again!!
April 13th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
I’m the Tyrannosaur, gotta love me!
J/P=?
April 13th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
I don’t think that’s a real dinosaur. It’s got an extra pair of people legs.
Hmm…. On the other hand, the people legs on a dinosaur may be definitive proof of evolution.
April 13th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Check out the boy in the blue shirt against the wall at the 0:38 second mark… I think he might be taking it a little too seriously.
April 13th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Love the (teacher?administrator?) putting up his “quiet sign” fingers at 0:30. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
April 13th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
One of my boyfriend’s friends worked as a puppeteer on one of the arena tours of this show. We got to go backstage after the show and see the puppets up-close. They are AMAZING.
April 13th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
They had this as a moment of zen on the Daily Show last week, and I too want the suit!
April 13th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
I want a suit too! On second thought, I’ll take two of them.
April 13th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
The movements look really really good. Looks realistic, not that we’ve seen real dinos. Well maybe 6000 years ago our ancestors did
You know, it would be a great gag to get into that suit and start walking over to a crowd from a distance. You can imagine people trying to figure out if that really is a dino coming in their direction.
Edit: Then again, you’d probably get shot. Especially in Texas! In which case, if you do this and you die, you disavow me of any responsibility. kthanx.
April 13th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
That’s pretty awesome.
But…some of those kids look genuinely terrified. And can you blame them?
April 13th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Huh. I tried to post a link to the website of the people who do these performances but it keeps getting marked as spam. Weird.
April 13th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Awesome!
Can you imagine how cool it would be to be the guy in the suit? Whenever people ask you what it is you do for a living, you’d be able to say “oh, I’m a dinosaur” … AND THEY WOULDN’T BE LYING! Best job ever!
April 13th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
Would be the perfect Halloween costume.
Now give me the plans for it so I can build one myself.
April 13th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
The Natural History Museum in Los Angeles has one of those tyrannosaurs (theirs has feathers). Plus a ceratopsian and a saber tooth cat. And in a year or two, the California Science Center next door will have a space shuttle! Woohoo!
April 13th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
I can see it now…Newspaper article saying…Local youth has night terrors after a dinosaur puppet scared him at local school assembly. Parents suing school district for $100 Million dollars for emotional distress…….
Walking with Dinosaurs show was absolutely fantastic when we saw it. So life like. If you EVER get a chance, SEE IT!!!
April 14th, 2011 at 12:45 am
Add in some virtual reality and long distance operation, later AI, really good armor and small nuke reactors to power the things and I can see armies of these things invading the territories of our terrified enemies. And razor teeth made of steel. I’d love to see Al Qaeda peeing in its pants.
April 14th, 2011 at 1:51 am
There’s a show, Walking with Dinosaurs, that has the baby t-rex like that one there, and then its full-sized mama. Along with a dozen other dinos. I recommend it if it’s ever at an arena in your area.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:09 am
@ Jess Tauber (24) -
It needs bigger guns.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:14 am
It appears to be pooping out an earlier victim. Legs first.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:17 am
Kids are so lucky these days. If that was my school I image I’d have choosen a different profession.
I want a costume like that for my next Halloween party.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:24 am
This post has been up nearly twelve hours and we still haven’t had the troll pointing out that a tyrannosaur would be Cretaceous, not Jurassic. So I guess that’s me. Just sayin’. TROLLOLOL.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:57 am
I think I once read a Ray Bradbury story in which a kid wanted to be a dinosaur when he grew up. Apparently it actually came true (after a fashion) for someone.
April 14th, 2011 at 4:13 am
Awesome idea for Halloween
April 14th, 2011 at 5:42 am
Lovely. Of course what they never include in these reconstructions is what Tyrannosaur breath must have smelled like.
April 14th, 2011 at 6:23 am
[...] First, via the Bad Astronomy blog, we have the best school assembly ever. [...]
April 14th, 2011 at 6:55 am
My dinosaur suit would have a jet pack, rocket launchers, and a flux capacitor. Not that I’ve thought about it, much. Actually, I think about it every day.
Sigh
April 14th, 2011 at 8:10 am
I want to take off running in a mall with that suit on…
April 14th, 2011 at 8:17 am
SHAME! Shame shame shame on those school administrators!
Now those children, when the time displacements hit, or when the the inevitable genetic engineering experiment goes awry, or when the hidden valley in the Antarctic is revealed by global warming, or when the underground warren protected over millions of years is opened through an inadvertent mining accident, etc. etc.
Those poor children will not run when they see the T-rex or other similarly structured predator, they will squeal in terrified delight as it moves towards them. Then they will squeal in horror for other reasons.
FOR SHAME portraying dinosaurs in such a friendly light.
Be wary of the tall grass my friends, be wary…
April 14th, 2011 at 8:42 am
Poor king of the tyrant lizards. Reduced to entertaining children. Sweet, innocent, delicious children. This cannot possibly go wrong.
OK now seriously, that is very cool and must have inspired a few of those kids into natural history.
April 14th, 2011 at 9:22 am
Phil, when my Son was three, he knew and could accurately enunciate the names of most known dinos.
These days, he’s a senior software engineer at Apple.
So, MAYBE you’d have gone for paleontology,,,or maybe you’d be working for Apple too,,,
Hummm, maybe this is a good posting for this link,,,
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/04/video-birds-evolve-to-fight-cuckoos/1?csp=Tech
,,,about evolution in action,,,
Gary 7
April 14th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Perhaps I’m cynical from arguing with creationists all the time, but the first thing I think of when I watch that video is “great, another prop for the Creation Museum to hijack.” I can just picture them taking costumes like this on tour around the country to demonstrate how velociraptors ate vegetables and let Adam and Eve ride them like horses before the fall.
On the other hand, one could corner the trick-or-treat market with that Halloween costume.
April 14th, 2011 at 9:38 am
I laughed so hard over this and the comments, I’m still wiping the tears from my eyes. Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago Twitters and is very funny. Last time I was in Chicago, I saw one of these at a baseball game and walking the Mag Mile, advertising her exhibit.
April 14th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Not realistic at all. Needs a saddle. And a Jesus sitting in the saddle.
April 14th, 2011 at 10:30 am
@42, fastpathguru:
“And a Jesus sitting in the saddle.”
Or a bearded zebrafish expert!
April 14th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Fantastic!
April 14th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
What happened to the blog page just now? Weird.
OK, cool video… and whoever is in that suit is VERY fit!
April 14th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I’m really annoyed that I put a website link in my name once and it keeps sneaking back in there.
April 14th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Oh man, how cool! That is a really great idea…can I have one for Halloween, mom??? Huh, Pleeeeeezzzeeee???
April 14th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Re chris y (post 33), My guess is that TRex had lovely breath right up there with Komodo Dragons and old lions or tigers, only lots worse.
This was a matter of courtesy for the prey- as they would pass out from the stench before the first bite.
There is some paleontological controversy in certain quarters as to whether theropods were venomous. Thank God birds lost their teeth! Polly wanna paralyze you….
April 14th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
From the very first seconds of the vid I could tell the video was shot in Oz. Apparently the school is in Bondi. I really truly hope this show is still going in 5 years when my daughter starts school. Knowing it is here in Sydney is awesome.
April 15th, 2011 at 12:32 am
#25, Jess Tauber
Actually the puppets from this show are mainly animatronics.
#26, Jub
This video is of one of the puppets from the show.
#49 Shane and everyone else
The puppet is from ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’, and is an Australian-made production. It’s returning to Oz for the first time in a few years.
dinosaurlive.com
April 15th, 2011 at 6:15 am
omg… I want to see 50 of these running down the street at dragoncon.
April 16th, 2011 at 1:29 am
THAT is what they should have at Halloween Horror Nights. It would be horrifying.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
How funny. I wanted to be a paleontologist when i was a child, but then i changed my mind and now i’m studying astronomy.
About the video, What could happen if someone dressed like that awaits you in a dark alley at night?
April 19th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
That is amazing! For a few seconds, I didn’t even notice the man’s legs coming out the bottom and thought it might have been some very advance animotronics (advanced as in, standing on its own instead of having an extra support system).
I would have loved going to an assembly like that when I was in grade school.
June 20th, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Will this be on the standardized test? If not, then it has no curricular value and should not be in school. These children should be sitting still and quiet in desks learning from Texas State School Board approved books which had been vetted by concerned Creationist members of the community.
I fear for the youth of our nation.
July 14th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Scaring little kids is funny.