Dino might: Come and play where dinosaurs still rule the world

Is that an apocalyptic asteroid blazing overhead? What else could explain why some of the nation’s most rip-roaring dinosaur exhibits recently went extinct?Last fall, tristate favorite Field Station: Dinosaurs in Leonia, NJ, sold off its terrific menagerie of 25 animatronic dinosaurs.Then in February, Walt Disney World in Orlando abruptly announced the permanent closure of DinoLand, an original piece of its Animal Kingdom park, opened in 1998.

(It’s being replaced by a new “Tropical Americas” themed land with Indiana Jones and “Encanto” attractions.)But parents of elementary school-aged paleontologists and precocious toddlers who already know how to say pachycephalosaurus shouldn’t fear another ice age.Life finds a way.From coast to coast, new and long-beloved dinosaur experiences, along with museums and touring shows, are keeping the saurian spirit of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods alive.Closest to home, the American Museum of Natural History (already the go-to spot for rex-traordinary fun) opened “Fossils of the Flaming Cliffs” in April.

The exhibit highlights discoveries from the Gobi Desert, a rich source of paleo-pay dirt.It also honors the late curator, Mark A.

Norell, who studied the museum’s fossils and helped make the groundbreaking link between dinosaurs and birds.The highlights of the show include a nest of eggs (one with a newly hatched dinosaur) of two birdlike oviraptorids, and the skeleton of an early rodent-like mammal.(Speaking of mammals, be sure to go and peep the museum’s Paraceratherium — another Gobi Desert discovery — which was a hornless rhinocerotoid that was one of the largest terrestrial mammals to ever exist.It’s on show in the museum’s neighboring exhibit, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs.” That show also features life-size models of a 27-foot mosasaur, a 30-foot, long-necked plesiosaur, and touchable triceratops.)For more adventure, that’s certified triceratops, head upstat...