Tyrannosaurus rex is UK’s Most Popular Dinosaur

We tend to get asked to do some odd things from time to time.  Yesterday some of the team were helping out at a maize maze, today we are working on a press release at the request of our PR agency.  This release is a little different as it is aimed at a radio station which periodically broadcasts unusual and bizarre lists.  We have been advised to contact the station and submit the results of our prehistoric animal popularity survey.  We gather lots of information from children about their favourite dinosaurs and such like so we gave it a go.

Underneath is the text of the release, with the top five animals from our survey.  We put in the pronunciation as we were mindful that this was an item aimed at broadcast media.

Our Media Release

Tyrannosaurus rex is UK’s Most Popular Dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex (pronounced tie-ran-oh-sore-us rex) is the nations favourite dinosaur, although Velociraptor (pronounced vel-oss-see-rap-tor) is rapidly catching T. rex up according to a survey published by Cheshire based Everything Dinosaur, the specialist educational toy company.

Using information gathered from dinosaur drawing workshops with schoolchildren, as well as product sales and viewings from the company’s website: Everything Dinosaur, a top ten list of popular prehistoric animals has been compiled.  Not surprisingly, the ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex tops the chart but the much smaller; Velociraptor is gaining in popularity, with strong showings from other family favourites such as Stegosaurus (ste-go-sore-us) and Triceratops (try-sera-tops).

“Velociraptor was quite small by dinosaur standards, it was no bigger than your average Christmas turkey. The only difference being that with its sharp teeth and vicious sickle-like claws, if it was around today we would be the ones on the Christmas dinner menu”; commented Mike, one of the team members at Everything Dinosaur.

Mike’s passion for palaeontology, the study of ancient life, first took hold, when as a nine-year old, he learnt about these animals and saw fossils put on show in the school science display cabinet. Encouraged by his teachers, Mike began his own fossil collection and retained an interest in the subject throughout his school years. Now Mike and his team are able to help spur on the next generation of young scientists.

Popular Prehistoric Animal Models

Prehistoric Animal Models

There are a lot of prehistoric animal models that have been introduced.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Popular Prehistoric Animals

To set up the company, research was undertaken to identify educational games, models, toys, posters and gifts related to palaeontology and geology, getting back to what the procurement team referred to as “kitchen table activities”, with Mums and Dads involved helping to build models, construct kits and galvanise youngsters enthusiasm.

UK’s Most Popular Prehistoric Animals

1).  Tyrannosaurus rex (always likely to be number one).

2).  Velociraptor

3).  Triceratops (proved to be very popular with the girls)!

4).  Stegosaurus

5)  Allosaurus

To conclude our release to the radio station we wrote a short letter to accompany the release and included a Tyrannosaurus rex soft toy.