Dinosaurs

October is National Stamp Collection Month in many countries, and the special stamps issued for the occasion show that dinosaurs have captured the imagination of postal authorities as well as the interest of filmgoers to Jurassic Park. Australia, Canada and New Zealand all issued commemoratives last week depicting the prehistoric beasts. Special cancellations also are available in an effort to promote collecting interest in each country. Australia issued six stamps, each 45 cents, featuring dinosaurs that once roamed the continent.

The skeleton of a fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, part of the new, $2.5 million permanent exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences, captures the attention of onlookers. The exhibit, which features more than a dozen specimens of dinosaurs and other forms of prehistoric life, had its grand opening yesterday at the academy.

The scene, set in central Montana 70 million years ago, is straight out of a rock video: A bright purple Tyrannosaurus rex, king of the dinosaurs, races by at 35 miles per hour, waving a tail that is pink and yellow. A duckbilled dinosaur - bright yellow - struts by snorting, bellowing a cry somewhere between an oboe and a French horn. Welcome to the new, more colorful world of dinosaurs. This view of dinosaur mating season belongs to Robert Bakker, a Colorado scientist, whose provocative ideas about dinosaurs have helped shake up the world of paleontology, the study of fossils and prehistoric life, over the past decade.

Walking through the lush tropical setting of Longwood Gardens' fern room, visitors are surrounded by a jungle setting similar to the land where dinosaurs dwelled more than 60 million years ago. Vines grow from rain-forest plants that scrape the ceiling of the Kennett Square conservatory. A pteranodon sculpture hangs overhead as if in flight. Even the sounds of prehistoric times are recreated as replicas of parasaurolophus and triceratops move slowly among the plants and make deep, throaty sounds.

Nancy Darmstadter holds the beast in her hands. Its fat neck tapers into a pointed snout, out of which a long, forked tongue continuously flickers. The African Savannah Monitor lizard is as ugly as a wart on the Wicked Witch of the West. But to the kids in this class, who eagerly take turns stroking its scaly head, its cuter than the Pillsbury Doughboy. The class is called "Dinosaurs in Action," and it is part of the Saturday Adventures series at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

Thousands of people are about to discover that much of what they know about dinosaurs - or think they know - is wrong. For example, that all dinosaurs were enormous. For most people, the very word dinosaur calls up the image of a huge beast, as long as a football field, as tall as a hook-and-ladder. But the fact is that not all dinosaurs were giants. There were also smaller ones, some no bigger than a chicken. Or take the ever-popular view that cavemen used to club dinosaurs for dinner.

From Connecticut to Maryland, Wawa Food Markets yesterday scrambled to remove up to 120,000 plastic dinosaur cups from its 400 stores. It's not because the cups are a health hazard. It's not because they've been recalled by the manufacturer. It's just that, well - somebody was taking legal action over them. The reptiles pictured on some of the plastic cups may have been drawn by someone other than the person whose name was printed beneath the sketch. The lizards had to go, Wawa officials decided.

Primeval, an exciting British sci-fi adventure series, takes place in that, um, primeval time and place where dinosaurs roam - the local shopping center. (Where they hunt down and viciously kill and eat unwary shoppers.) The dangerously addictive and entertaining show, which has its U.S. premiere tonight at 9 on BBC America, is a melange of sci-fi, mystery and comedy genres. It is the brainchild of Tim Haines, the writer and director behind the popular BBC nature docs Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts, which show the life of those extinct giants through the magic of computer-generated imagery.

Hollywood is still talking about a recent in-house memorandum, written by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney production chief, and promptly leaked, that railed against runaway budgets and the blockbuster mentality. In addition, the buzzword around the studios these days is story-driven, an adjective to describe a movie that draws an audience with its narrative rather than with the magnetism of its stars. All of which serves as an odd climate for what may turn out to be the most expensive movie ever made.

Burly Victor Mature was one of the silver screen's first hunks. The Sylvester Stallone of the '40s and '50s, he was a press agent's delight. One of them may have started a fad by calling him "a beautiful hunk of man. " Mature starred in biblical epics (that's Vic above in costume as Samson in "Samson and Delilah" 40 years ago), and played real he-men in dozens of other filmstravaganzas. He even was a caveman in one of his first films, the 1940 version of "One Million B.C.," in which he battled dinosaurs.

WASHINGTON - An energy businessman is donating a record $35 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History to build a new dinosaur hall on the National Mall, the museum complex announced Thursday. The donation by David H. Koch, the executive vice president of Koch Industries Inc. of Wichita, Kan., is the single largest gift in the museum's 102-year history. The Smithsonian board of regents voted Monday to name the new dinosaur hall in Koch's honor. Koch, an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a billionaire who lives in New York.

Like all little boys, Don Lessem was fascinated by dinosaurs. Growing up in the New York suburb of Scarsdale, he used to make frequent visits to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. But even at that age, he had an urge to educate. "I would give tours," Lessem recalls. "Nobody asked me. I just decided that would be a good thing to do, to take people around the museum. When you're 5, you know more about dinosaurs than any adult, or at least you think you do. " Lessem calls himself "Dino Don" and now lives in Media, and though he is strictly an amateur dinosaur authority, he probably knows nearly as much as many professional paleontologists.

Kids can learn about aquatic organisms and catch a movie this weekend at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center as part of the Science Saturdays and Matinee Sundays program. On Saturdays from 2 to 4 p.m., guests can learn about diatoms, the microscopic algae that help scientists determine the quality of the water each day. Guests will develop an understanding of diatoms by looking at a presentation with photos and videos and then learning about the ones that are common to the Schuylkill.

See rare skeletons and fossils from around the world at Franklin Institute's new exhibit "Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs," displayed Saturday through April 15. The exhibit will feature artifacts from the collection of area resident Don Lessem, who is described as the world's leading dinosaur collector. View dinosaur skeletons as long as 70 feet collected from remote regions in Argentina, China, and Europe. See the remains of the Mamenchisaurus , a plant-eater that was one of the longest-necked dinosaurs in history, and marvel at the world's largest meat-eating dinosaur, the 45-foot Giganotosaurus from Argentina.

Here's your chance to see huge dinosaurs up close, even some originals from the film Jurassic Park , at Granite Run Mall's new permanent interactive museum, Dino Don's Dinosaurium. The 6,500-square-foot museum, which is also a learning lab that combines science and education, showcases 12 rare dinosaur species such as the Yangchuanosaurus, Sichuanosaurus, and Velociraptor, the dino-villain in the Jurassic Park series. The exhibit has moving dinosaurs and a pit where kids can go on a dinosaur dig, searching for fossils.

* TERRA NOVA. 8 tonight, Fox 29. WHEN FOX describes "Terra Nova" as "an epic family adventure 85 million years in the making," it's exaggerating. Slightly. Announced in May 2010 as part of the network's 2010-11 season, the show that brings man and dinosaurs together (and, yeah, includes a guy from South Jersey named Spielberg among its dozen executive producers) has experienced a few bumps on the road to our TV screens, from weather problems on its Queensland, Australia, location to technical issues in bringing the dinos to CGI life.

Bad omen for Fox's monster Mesozoic melodrama Terra Nova : It starts going downhill when the dinosaurs show up. A long time coming (it was supposed to bow in May), the show, which has a special two-hour premiere Monday at 8 p.m., is unquestionably a triumph of modern computing, populated with head-thwacking, cutting-edge electronic imagery. "It probably wasn't possible, totally, until we got a visual-effects team together that has literally created new technologies to make it possible," Brannon Braga, one of the show's 13 producers - another is Steven Spielberg - told TV critics at their summer meeting last month in Los Angeles.

2011 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4x4: Jeep's answer to the Hummer H2. But did anyone ask the question? Price as Tested: $37,175 (Base price: $32,745). Conventional wisdom: Only in a Jeep. Reality: Big, a beast to drive, thirsty. But it's true there's nothing else like it. Even Jeep lovers didn't like it: Mrs. Passenger Seat has always had a thing for Jeeps. So I thought this would be the test ride of her dreams. But even she didn't like this one. A colleague at work who has a '99 didn't like it, either.

By detecting the faintest remnants of pigments on two bird fossils that date back more than 100 million years, scientists say they may have found a technique to add color to the age of the dinosaurs. Fossils give scientists a good image of the shapes, sizes, and even, from inference, the motion of long-extinct animals. But the colors and patterns adorning those creatures was anybody's guess. As part of an international collaboration, paleontologists from the University of Pennsylvania used intense beams of X-rays to detect remnants of a dark pigment called eumelanin in two ancient bird fossils from China.

By detecting the faintest remnants of pigments on two bird fossils that date back more than 100 million years, scientists say they may have found a technique to add color to the age of the dinosuars. Fossils give scientists a good image of the shapes, the sizes, and even, from inference, the motion of long-extinct animals. But the colors and patterns adorning those creatures was anybody's guess. As part of an international collaboration, paleontologists from the University of Pennsylvania used intense beams of X-rays to detect remnants of a dark pigment called eumelanin in two ancient bird fossils from China.