What has six life-sized animatronic monsters, some about 3.5 metres long; as well as 30 casts of fossils, including of a fossil skull, and 15 striking visual displays?
The answer is the ''Life before Dinosaurs: Permian Monsters exhibition''.
It will run at the Otago Museum from this Saturday until February 25 next year.
The international touring exhibition, created in Australia by Gondwana Studios, brings the past back to life with fossilised skeletons and life-size animatronic models of the animals that ruled the world millions of years before the age of dinosaurs, during the Permian period, between 290million and about 252million years ago.
The mammal-like reptiles in the show were wiped out in the Permian Extinction, which killed about 90% of the planet's species, about 252million years ago.
The exhibition has been assembled and installed this week with assistance from Australian touring curator Craig McCormack.
He said that Gondwana touring shows, featuring dinosaurs or Permian creatures, had proved highly popular and animatronic monsters that moved were ''the thing that really generates the interest''.
