Q. What Came Before Dinosaurs? A. These Permian Monsters, At Horniman Museum

Ever wonder what came BEFORE the dinosaurs? Your kids are sure to ask you sooner or later. Better get them along to the Permian Monsters exhibition at south London’s Horniman Museum, which answers the question… with teeth.

The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill is among the best family museums in the country. It has everything from an aquarium to a sundial trail to a famous, overstuffed walrus. Now it has an exhibition about the fang-toothed creatures who preceded the dinosaurs. Like the titanophonus.

This cow-sized creature was the top predator of the time with a nightmarish dental arrangement. More placid-looking was the dimetrodon, whose sail-like back will perhaps be familiar from dinosaur books: 

Don’t call it a dinosaur, though… it’s officially a ‘non-mammalian synapsid’ and is more closely related to us mammals than to the reptiles. It died out some 40 million years before the first dinosaurs.
 

As did most of the Permian Monsters. Their sad fate was to be killed in a poorly understood cataclysm that shook the Earth 252 million years ago. The mass extinction, which killed 90% of all large animals, paved the way for the dinosaurs and, ultimately, us.
 

The Horniman Museum tells the story of the Permian era with a mix of full-size animatronic models and fossil remains. “It was a time of fearsome sabre-toothed predators, giant insects and bizarre-looking sharks,” we’re told. Immerse your family in this alien world any time from now until 3 January 2021.

Permian Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs is a travelling exhibition produced by Gondwana Studios.

Entrance to the Horniman Museum is free, but paid, prebooked tickets are needed for this exhibition.

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Ticket deal: kids got a thing for animatronic animals? Then they’ll love Dinosaur World Live at the Drive In, north London. If you’re quick, we’ve got a 39% off deal.