SYDNEY, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- A brand new exhibit Sea Monsters launched at the Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney on Thursday is bringing enormous prehistoric ocean predators back to life through large scale fossils, models and interactive displays.
Millions of years ago when dinosaurs ruled the land, the oceans were also home to giant predators -- many of which were as big as a whale, with mouths full of deadly teeth to snatch prey from the water.
From now until April next year, visitors to Sydney's Maritime Museum will come face to face with what remains of these prehistoric creatures in a uniquely designed exhibition which includes scale models of skeletons from actual fossil records.
"We find that nothing really prepares you for the size and the scale and the surprising shapes of these skeletons," Australian Maritime Museum Assistant Director Michael Harvey told Xinhua.
"It really is about being able to see firsthand and articulated like this, so you can see them as they would have been in life, you get this real connection with a completely alien world, the seas of the Mesozoic era."
Perhaps surprisingly the specimens on display were not actually dinosaurs, but reptiles, which evolved on land before adapting to the sea and still needed to return to the surface regularly to breathe air through their nostrils.
"We refer to them as marine reptiles, and there's a number of groups of them," Harvey explained.
"You've got the (long-necked) plesiosaurs, you also have the ichthyosaurs which resemble dolphins, the mosasaurs, which kind of resemble a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile."
"We invite kids then to get their own creativity going and and become part of the process of making elements of the exhibition... that's been a real buzz for them and for us as well," Harvey said.
