image: Children participate in a hands-on workshop at the “Wake-Waku Aira Dinosaur Exhibition, creating fossil replicas by pressing softened resin clay into molds based on ammonite fossils dating back approximately 100 million years. The interactive program allowed young visitors to experience paleontological research up close.
Credit: Okayama University of Science
The “Wakuwaku Aira Dinosaur Museum Exhibition”, organized by Aira City with the cooperation of Okayama University of Science, closed on December 27, 2025 after an eight-day run. The exhibition attracted a total of 11,580 visitors. The 10,000th visitor was four-year-old Yuito Nagata from Kagoshima City, who attended with his parents.
The venue was Aira Square on the first floor of the city’s new municipal office building, which was completed in May 2024. Approximately 20 items were displayed, including a full-body skeletal reconstruction of a tyrannosaurid, a Triceratops skull, and fossil specimens of various parts of Tarbosaurus. The exhibition also featured a recreated excavation site from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, along with panel displays and video presentations introducing field research activities, allowing visitors to experience dinosaur research up close.
Daily workshops offered hands-on learning opportunities for children, who created replica fossils by pressing resin clay—softened in hot water—into molds of ammonite fossils dating back approximately 100 million years. Participants also experienced fossil cleaning, carefully extracting shell fossils from rock.
In addition, students from the Faculty of Biosphere-Geosphere Science, who are engaged in dinosaur and paleontological research, served as guides, providing explanations of the exhibits to visitors.
On the final day, December 27, an “Interesting Dinosaur Lecture” was held in a third-floor conference room. Masato Fujita, professor in the Department of Dinosaur Paleontology and director of the Okayama University of Science Museum of Dinosaur Research, delivered a lecture titled “Digging for Dinosaurs in Mongolia!” Speaking to an audience of approximately 150 people, he introduced dinosaur excavations in Mongolia, including details of daily life at excavation sites. Some attendees were seen listening intently and taking notes.
Yuito Nagata, the 10,000th visitor, learned about the exhibition through television news and visited with his father Yasuhiro, and mother, Akina. A passionate dinosaur enthusiast, he is particularly fond of Ankylosaurus, known for its hammerlike tail club. To commemorate the milestone, he received a gift set of local specialties from Aira City, along with a Tarbosaurus cardboard craft kit and an ammonite replica-making set from Okayama University of Science. Attending the ceremony with his parents, Yuito smiled and said simply, “I’m happy!” He also shared that he hopes to become a paramedic in the future.
Reflecting on the exhibition’s success, a senior official of Aira City commented, “Initially, we estimated around 5,000 visitors, so surpassing 10,000 came as a surprise. It reminded us once again of the tremendous appeal of dinosaurs. We also heard many positive comments about how clear and easy to understand the students’ explanations were. Rather than being a simple display, the exhibition allowed visitors to learn about and experience the front lines of research and field investigation, which I believe contributed to the high turnout.”