From tomorrow, prehistoric ocean predators will take over Otago Museum for five months.
RNZ Otago-Southland reporter Timothy Brown went along for a sneak peak and filed this report.
Sea Monsters, an exhibition by the Australian National Maritime Museum, will be on display at the Otago Museum until 1 May.
It features 70 exhibits, including real fossils that are millions of years old and life-sized fossil casts up to 13 metres long.
The exhibition was meant to have a three-month run at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, but it was cut short by the Delta outbreak.
Otago Museum natural science curator Emma Burns said visitors would get to see some of the prehistoric beasts featured on the movie Jurassic Park.
"It's got all sorts of different prehistoric creatures some of which are now extinct dating right back from 250 million years ago," Burns said.
Some of the creatures on display at Otago Museum's Sea Monster exhibition would have once been spotted in the waters off the coast of New Zealand. Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
There would be plenty for children, even the older ones, she said.
Some of the creatures on display would have once been spotted in the waters off the coast of New Zealand.
"My favourite would be the plesiosaur, because we've got one here at the museum as well which we're really proud of - which is one of the largest fossils at a New Zealand museum. That was found right here in Otago," Burns said.
Otago Museum exhibition designer Shanaya Cunningham said assembling the exhibition was a mammoth task itself.
"It actually took four container loads down on a ship to get everything here and unloading that into the gallery is always a bit of Tetris, so you've got lots of crates that store all the objects and bones, and you have to fit it all in and make it look good."
Otago Museum's Sea Monster exhibition features real fossils that are millions of years old and life-sized fossil casts up to 13 metres long. Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
At $10 a ticket, getting up close and personal to a mosasaur or megalodon would not break the bank.
But for those wanting to get 20,000 leagues under the sea for free, there is also the museum's first augmented reality exhibition - Plunge.
The product of a talented Otago Museum team member, it features a QR-code activated interactive display which swims through the museum's Beautiful Science Gallery.
Both exhibitions open tomorrow.
