Louise Wilford Seeing a T-Rex Skeleton in the Natural History Museum

Seeing a T-Rex Skeleton in the Natural History Museum

His bones are made of plastic, pinned together, and they rattle like loose teeth. They are yellow at the edges, at the joints. He is bigger than a bus and wider than a whale –his tail is longer than a lorry and his head is higher than a house.

He’s an exact copy of bones that once lived inside a dinosaur’s skin –moved by his muscles, by tendons, blood and brain. Those bones once held up his giant jaw, his massive mouth chockful of terrifying teeth. Eyes once sat in those empty sockets.

The claws on his toes could kill you with a single slash. He was once a dragon who didn’t need flames or wings. I have to bend my head right back to see his jutting chin, his spiky overbite, thick neck and massive chest. And as I stare, I swear

his head moves –tilts downwards with a rattling creak. He is staring at me through eyeless holes in his gigantic skull. And - just for a moment –I feel his breath, hot and foul, on my face; hear the deep growl of a roar beginning in his throat; and I know that he has seen me.

Then the teacher leads us into the next room, and we shuffle away, glancing back at the bones of the beast –plastic replicas, pinned together, rattling slightly like loose teeth.