New dinosaur exhibit in Cork sees Taoiseach be taught all about survival – The Irish Occasions

Given he single-handedly saved Fianna Fáil from political extinction what looks like aeons in the past, Taoiseach Michéal Martin was maybe an apposite option to open University College Cork’s spectacular new exhibition, Domain of the Dinosaurs at its Glucksman gallery.

So, did the Taoiseach be taught something about what is required for political survival as he surveyed the skeletal stays of a few of the most fearsome creatures to ever stroll the Earth?

“This is an absolute showstopper of an exhibition,” he mentioned earnestly. “Great credit goes to UCC professor of palaeontology Maria McNamara for putting it all together with the Glucksman and I thought she put it very well in her speech when she said that it is all about survival.

“Climate really is the issue here. We’ve had mass extinctions before in terms of what happens on planet Earth, but Prof McNamara’s view is that life survives through it all … There is plenty of food for thought and room for perspective and philosophy and keeping a steady course.”

And a gradual course Mr Martin certainly saved as Prof McNamara, Glucksman director Prof Fiona Kearney and UCC president Prof John O’Halloran steered him round the primary sections of the exhibition: Feoil, the carnivore zone, Coillte, the herbivore zone and Farraige, the marine zone.

Chief among the many displays are skeletal casts of the eight-metre-long Megalosaurus and the five-metre-long Scelidosaurus – the one recognized dinosaurs from the island of Ireland. Their bones had been found within the Nineteen Eighties by a fossil collector, the late Roger Byrne, on a Co Antrim seaside.

Prof McNamara mentioned: “These are the only two dinosaurs we know for definite existed in Ireland and they go back exactly 200 million years, right back to first million years of the Jurassic period and they went extinct then later in the Jurassic period.

“We know Scelidosaurus, which weighed five to 10 tonnes, was an armoured plant eater so all those plates that are on the outside are defensive armour because you have predators like Megalosaurus, which weighed 10 to 15 tonnes, walking around in the same ecosystem.”

Sharing prime billing within the Coillte herbivore part with Scelidosaurus is its fellow Mesozoic herbivore, the five-metre-long Iguanodon. It might stroll on two or 4 legs and had opposable fifth fingers for greedy leaves which it ate utilizing an environment friendly chewing mechanism.

Among the opposite close to 300 displays are marine reptiles, the three-metre-long Ichthyosaurus, which first appeared within the early Triassic interval 250 million years in the past, and the similar-sized Plesiosaurus, which first appeared within the late Triassic interval some 203 million of years in the past.

And individuals say every week is a very long time in politics!

The Domain of the Dinosaurs Exhibition runs on the Glucksman gallery at UCC from Sunday till April 12^th 2026.