Ron Howard arrived at the Maritime Aquarium on Monday morning with a truckload of oddities he brought all the way from Texas. "This is the second strangest thing I've ever moved," he said after lifting the trailer's door.
Howard and aquarium workers unloaded a stegosaurus, a tyrannosaurus rex and other dinosaurs from the trailer lifesized and seemingly menacing but harmless, although they will impress the kids once they begin to move, blink their eyes and roar. The robots are spending the summer in Norwalk and will be placed about the aquarium in dioramas that Dave Sigworth, Aquarium publicist, promises will be educational, not scary.
Chris Loynd, marketing director, said the exhibit will highlight how fast baby dinosaurs grew into adults and what good parents dinosaurs might have been, based on current research that compares them to birds rather than reptiles. "Dinosaur Summer" begins June 18 with a kickoff that includes Dora the Explorer roaming the aquarium, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is also an IMAX movie, "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous," showing through Sept. 5 and a simulator ride-film, "Dino Island II: Escape from Dinosaur Island."
Howard said his trip began in Lubbock, Texas, on June 2. Workers removed the lifesize creatures and rocks with a forklift and put them by the building busloads of schoolkids arriving for the morning meant the dinosaurs would go indoors Monday afternoon. They also took out bags of sand to be used in a fossil dig.
"It's always nice to have a truckload full of dinosaurs," said Jeannie Egel, a freelance exhibit designer who plans to touch up the foam rocks that were also in the truck.
Howard of Great Mine, Texas, said the weirdest thing he had ever moved was a cremated human, which he wasn't expecting among the belongings of a woman he was working for. The third was cremated cats, "and a whole bunch of cat skeletons," he said. "Maybe that's second."
What's the weirdest thing you ever moved?
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