{"id":182309,"date":"2025-11-15T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T16:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/182309\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T16:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T16:32:08","slug":"new-dinosaur-exhibit-in-cork-sees-taoiseach-learn-all-about-survival-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/182309\/","title":{"rendered":"New dinosaur exhibit in Cork sees Taoiseach learn all about survival \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given he single-handedly saved Fianna F\u00e1il from political extinction what seems like aeons ago, Taoiseach Mich\u00e9al Martin<\/a> was perhaps an apposite choice to open University College Cork<\/a>\u2019s spectacular new exhibition, Domain of the Dinosaurs<\/a> at its Glucksman<\/a> gallery.<\/p>\n

So, did the Taoiseach learn anything about what is needed for political survival as he surveyed the skeletal remains of some of the most fearsome creatures to ever walk the Earth?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an absolute showstopper of an exhibition,\u201d he said earnestly. \u201cGreat 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cClimate really is the issue here. We\u2019ve had mass extinctions before in terms of what happens on planet Earth, but Prof McNamara\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

And a steady course Mr Martin indeed kept as Prof McNamara, Glucksman director Prof Fiona Kearney and UCC president Prof John O\u2019Halloran steered him around the main sections of the exhibition: Feoil, the carnivore zone, Coillte, the herbivore zone and Farraige, the marine zone.<\/p>\n

\"ProfProf Fiona Kearney, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin, UCC president John O’Halloran and Prof Maria McNamara. Photograph: Clare Keogh <\/p>\n

Chief among the exhibits are skeletal casts of the eight-metre-long Megalosaurus and the five-metre-long Scelidosaurus \u2013 the only known dinosaurs from the island of Ireland. Their bones were discovered in the 1980s by a fossil collector, the late Roger Byrne, on a Co Antrim beach. <\/p>\n

Prof McNamara said: \u201cThese 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ireland’sIreland\u2019s largest fossil exhibition runs in the Glucksman gallery in University College Cork until April. Photograph: Clare Keogh <\/p>\n

Sharing top billing in the Coillte herbivore section with Scelidosaurus is its fellow Mesozoic herbivore, the five-metre-long Iguanodon. It could walk on two or four legs and had opposable fifth fingers for grasping leaves which it ate using an efficient chewing mechanism.<\/p>\n

Among the other near 300 exhibits are marine reptiles, the three-metre-long Ichthyosaurus, which first appeared in the early Triassic period 250 million years ago, and the similar-sized Plesiosaurus, which first appeared in the late Triassic period some 203 million of years ago.<\/p>\n

And people say a week is a long time in politics!<\/p>\n

The Domain of the Dinosaurs Exhibition runs at the Glucksman gallery at UCC from Sunday until April 12th 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given he single-handedly saved Fianna F\u00e1il from political extinction what seems like aeons ago, Taoiseach Mich\u00e9al Martin was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[1877,18,102887,19,17,5765,133,3274],"class_list":{"0":"post-182309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-cork","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-glucksman-gallery","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-micheal-martin","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-university-college-cork-ucc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115554677470516830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}