DINO-MITE!

Bishop Museum has unleashed its latest dinosaur exhibit with more than a dozen animatronic creatures taking up residence in the Castle Memorial Building through Sept. 7.

Tyrannosaurus rex is the star of the "Dinosaurs Unleashed" exhibit, which opened Feb. 28, as he moves his head, stares right at you, opens his jaws and even gives a hair-raising "squaaahhh!" for good measure.

Fans of PBS Kids’ "Dinosaur Train" will appreciate the Pteranodon, a flying reptile, soaring above T. rex.

Then there’s Pachycephalosaurus, which means "thick-headed lizard," who looks around as if he’s trying to find plants to eat. Triceratops, the three-horned dinosaur, appears to be rummaging for food.

Aidan Beaton, 4, of Honolulu, dressed in a head-to-toe dinosaur costume, took in all the excitement with his mom, Sierra, at a members’ preview event Feb. 27.

"Yeah," he said, when asked if he liked the exhibit. "The one I like most is the Tyrannosaurus rex. Is this T. rex as big as when they were alive?"

Sierra Beaton said Aidan has been talking about dinosaurs since she took him to the museum’s last dinosaur-themed exhibit, "Life Through Time: Dinosaurs and Ice-Age Mammals" in 2013.

"Dinosaurs Unleashed," presented by Kokoro Exhibits, is similar to the ice-age exhibit two years ago, with plenty of interactive, family-friendly features, but this exhibit focuses on dinosaurs and reptiles of the sea and air.

"Dinosaurs occupy the imaginations of both young and old," said Bishop Museum spokeswoman Claudette Springer, referring to pop-culture references that span from "Dinosaur Train" for the preschool set to the upcoming blockbuster "Jurassic World."

"This exhibit really taps into our fascination with these grand creatures. It’s perhaps the closest experience to what it would have been like to be in the presence of a living, breathing dinosaur," she said.

Peek through a porthole to get a glimpse of marine reptiles Mosasaurus and Elasmosaurus. The Mosasaurus belonged to a small group considered an aquatic offshoot of monitor lizards. The Elasmosaurus, or "ribbon lizard," has a neck that measures up to 26 feet long.

Visitors will also meet Maiasaura, or "caring mother lizard," with her baby and a nest of eggs.

Kids can create colorful bone imprints with crayons, uncover fossils at a dig box, put on dinosaur costumes and control a robotic dinosaur skeleton. Serious students of paleontology can track down which creature belonged to which era via a chart of the various eras of geology.

Orion Pongklub, 10, of Honolulu, also named T. rex as his favorite.

"Well, he’s the star of ‘Jurassic Park,’" he said, "and they’re pretty cool predators."

His mother, Min Pongklub, said dinosaurs will be coming up in his home-school curriculum soon, and so the exhibit serves as a good introduction to that chapter in science.

Getting back to young Aidan’s question, the exhibit explains that the T. rex at the entrance is actually about two-thirds the size of an adult dinosaur. But visitors can get an idea of its true size by posing in the jaws of a life-size T. rex head.