Online resource guide

Dinosaurs from China ran at Te Papa from 6 December 2003 to 12 April 2004.

It featured some of the largest and most complete fossil dinosaur skeletons in the world. The largest specimen, the Jurassic sauropod Mamenchisaurus jingyanensis, is twenty-six metres long. The exhibits were so large that we have had to accommodate the exhibition in two galleries on two different levels of the Museum.

This exhibition originally showed at the Australian Museum in Sydney, where it attracted enormous crowds. Te Papa has reworked the presentation and brought in information about New Zealand’s own dinosaurs and dinosaur hunters. The exhibition now also includes one of the great treasures of Te Papa’s collections: the very first fossil to be recognised as a dinosaur – an Iguanodon tooth found by Gideon Mantell in Sussex in 1820.

About this resource
This online resource was designed to support teachers in guiding their students through the exhibition. It is in eight parts, one for each segment of the exhibition. Each has curriculum links listed, background information, possible topics for discussion within the exhibition, and some ideas for classroom activities. Each one ends with suggested further reading and useful websites.

Please note: All files for printing are in PDF format. You may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer to view the PDF documents.