Smithsonian.com

The Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Hall. Courtesy of Flickr user JSmith Photo

Summer might be coming to an end, but the Dinosaur Hall in the National Museum of Natural History still echoes with the voices of tourists. As a spinoff of DCist’s fantastic weekly series “Overheard in DC, here’s our version of “Overheard at the Museum”:

An older gentleman: “I always thought they were five stories high or something, the way they talk about them.”

A young child near the Stegosaurus: “Look at the shark, Dad. See, the shark jaw?”

A little kid, looking at the Stegosaurus: “Mom, that’s not real bone!”
Mom: “How do you know that?”
Child: “Look at it!”

Man with a camera: “Well, I couldn’t get the dinosaur to smile.”

A girl, looking up at a pterodactyl: “Whoa, he looks like he’s about to eat me!”

A little girl: “That’s a very dead Stegosaurus.”

A young girl talking on a cell phone: “Me and my daddy are downstairs, and we saw some beautiful, real dinosaurs. It’s okay that we saw real dinosaurs because they’re dead. The T. rexes are dead, too.”

“That one looks exactly like Rexy,” says a girl, referencing the T. rex from Night at the Museum.

A little boy looking at a pterodactyl: “That’s a big old bird.” (Ed. Note: They are all big birds!) Oops! Thanks to our commenter for catching our error!

A dad to his daughter, while looking at the pterodactyl: “Look at some of the birds that used to fly way back then.”

A little girl looking at the Camarasaurus:  “It’s laying down; it’s dead.”

A little boy near a “Life in the Ancient Seas” display:  “Poor little fish, he’s alone out of the water.”

– Abby Callard