Every boy's favourite dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex, stars in a stunning new exhibition that asks whether the king of the dinosaurs really deserves its fearsome reputation.
As the visitor will see, some recent research has suggested that, instead of being predatory hunter, it may just have been a scavenger that used its size and strength to steal meals from others.
The theory that T. rex may have been a scavenger has been championed by American palaeontologist Jack Horner, who was also a consultant for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park movies.
On display at this exhibition of moving, roaring, life-size dinosaur models is footage of Horner and his team excavating an almost complete T. rex fossil in Hell Creek, Montana, USA.
The show compares replicas and skeletons of the dinosaur with those of other predators to demonstrate how T. rex lacked much of the speed, agility and dexterity of a natural hunter - it had tiny forearms and could run only short distances no faster than a horse.
T. rex, we learn, had an olfactory bulb the size of a grapefruit, which may have helped it smell fresh carcasses from far away.
Two animatronic models show both sides of the debate leaving the visitor to decide: in one a bloody-mouthed T. rex feasts on a Triceratops slain by another predator, while in another T. rex roars and whips its tail through the air as it prepares to attack an Ankylosaur.
Sixteen 'animatronic' dinosaurs have taken up residence in the Fiera di Cremona for the show, which also features the feeding habits of dinos such as Brachiosaurus, Iguanadon and Velociraptor.
The giant beasts were driven to Italy in ten articulated trucks from the Natural History Museum in London, where they have already starred in two smash-hit exhibitions that form the basis of this Italian show - Dino Jaws' and T. rex: The Killer Question'.
Designed by a Japanese robotics company, the dinosaurs are powered by compressed air and contain computers running the latest animatronic technology to create fluid, realistic movements. The models can twist round, snarl, blink and even eye visitors warily.
''These are the most impressive dinosaurs I've ever had the chance to work with,'' said the Natural History Museum's senior mechanical engineer John Phillips at the unveiling of the models in London. '
'Since we received our first animatronics from Japan in 1991, both science and engineering have progressed to create such lifelike dinosaurs, they can now do almost everything but walk''.
On display here are life-size animatronic heads belonging Brachiosaurus and Edmontosaurus, fleshed out on one side and bare bones and teeth on the other in order to demonstrate their different tearing, munching and grinding mechanisms.
The highlight of the show is the dinosaur feeding frenzy with seven different animatronic models. In one moment of the performance a menacing Coelophysis eats one of its own young head first, glaring at passers-by.
Also on show is genuine 60-million-year-old fossilised dinosaur dung, from which scientists have been able to extract much information about the dino diet.
'Dinosaurs' is at the Fiera di Cremona until 25 March 2008.
