It’s a wild idea.

For most of our lives, we have gone about our business entirely unaware that Ireland ever had dinosaurs at all. Cows, yes. Saints, certainly. But dinosaurs? That always felt like someone else’s story. America’s. Mongolia’s. Anywhere but here.

And yet, on Thursday afternoon, February 5th as part of the Deep Dive Tour: Domain of the Dinosaurs, Dr Valentina Rossi, post-doctoral researcher in palaeobiology in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UCC, will guide visitors through an exhibition that gives Ireland back a prehistoric past most of us didn’t quite know we had.

For 60 minutes, from 1pm to 2pm at The Glucksman, UCC, the noise of the modern world fades and we are returned to a time nearly 200 million years ago, when this island was home to creatures far larger and far stranger than ourselves.

Domain of the Dinosaurs is not a small exhibition. It features more than 250 fossils, including bones from the only dinosaurs ever discovered in Ireland, alongside life-sized skeleton casts.

Dr Rossi’s tour promises to go beyond the labels on the wall, offering detailed insights into the specimens on display and the stories they tell — about survival, extinction, and the slow, patient work of discovery.

Nab a ticket for the tour, €11.70, over here.