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New Exhibit At Franklin Institute Shows Dinosaurs On A Grand Scale

By Hadas Kuznits

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Franklin Institute opens a new exhibit this weekend, and it's all about dinosaurs.

The Franklin Institute's newest exhibit, called "Giant, Mysterious Dinosaurs," opens Saturday.

Today, walking among the skeletal fossil casts of these creatures at a preview, I couldn't help but ask exhibit creator 'Dino' Don Lessem, "What would it have been like to live on the Earth with the dinosaurs?"

"Actually, we would be sort of a very dominant animal of the time, because we're faster than almost all of them," he said.  "We're certainly a lot smarter than all of them.  It's mostly as if you were in a land of giant cows."

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dino jaws hadas DL
(Credit: Hadas Kuznits)

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Lessem says the largest dinosaur was ten times bigger than the biggest animal we know today.

"It would be as if you lived in a world of rhinoceroses if you were a mouse.  If you look up at a five-story building, that's the tallest dinosaur.  You look across four school buses, that's the longest dinosaur.  A pile of 50 elephants and you've got the heaviest dinosaur.  That's why to have these exhibitions is the only way to get a sense of how big they were."

"Giant, Mysterious Dinosaurs" runs through April 15th, 2012.

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