There is something visceral about dinosaurs. Even people who are unwilling under normal circumstances to visit a museum will often make an exception to see these massive killing machines with their giant teeth and claws. This certainly seems to be what the Royal Ontario Museum is hoping for with its exhibit Great Asian Dinosaurs! The poster for the exhibit features a small boy playing hopscotch, with the shadow of a Tyrannosaurus skull looming over him and the caption “How Fast Can You Run?”

The actual exhibit is slightly subtler in its approach. There are still some extraordinary specimens, but for obvious reasons of rarity and transportation difficulties, only a few really massive ones. The most notable of these is the Tyrannosaurus bataar, a 7-metre-tall giant that stands in the entrance to the exhibit. This colossus had an estimated jaw power of 30,000 pounds per square inch, easily enough to crush a car.

Another really cool specimen is the Therizinosaurus, a gentle, herbivorous dinosaur with 2-foot-long Wolverine-style claws, possibly used for pruning trees. Also featured is the skull of the Liopleurodon, a whale-sized sea-dwelling reptile with 6-inch teeth—long enough to kill anything that got in its way.

This exhibit features 63 full and partial skeletons of rare dinosaurs and other ancient animals found in various parts of Asia. Besides the rarity of the individual skeletons—some of which are the only remnants of a particular species—the exhibit itself presents a unique opportunity. Most of the fossils are from Russia and China, and it is only through extensive negotiation and collaboration with both governments that they are being presented in North America.

There is a large range in age of the different skeletons in this exhibit; the oldest are from 230 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs, while the youngest are from around 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs dominated the earth. This wide span in time allows visitors to discover how dinosaurs evolved from earlier animals.

The theme woven through the exhibit is the development of motion—from ancient creatures that moved like modern crocodiles to the upright animals and the eventual development of flight.

Despite the impressiveness of the skeletons, the exhibit is flawed. Although each dino is labelled with its name, where it was found, when it lived and a requisite witty comment (“The huge, bulbous nose of Altirhinus may have been used for mating sounds”) the size of each dinosaur isn’t mentioned, which makes it difficult to get a good understanding of how large the animal was, especially for the incomplete skeletons.

This lack of depth is really a shame; the skeletons are mostly rare ones, and it is unlikely that visitors will ever see some of these specimens again.

It seems the ROM is grossly underestimating the intelligence and attention span of its visitors. Even if many people aren’t interested in the interpretation of an exhibit, under-presenting these skeletons makes for a frustrating time for those who go to a museum to (gasp!) learn something.

Great Asian Dinosaurs! runs until March 31st. Admission to the exhibit is included in general admission, $15 for adults, $10 for students/seniors, $8 for children. ROM open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday, until 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.