The third grade class at Roanoke Catholic School were probably the luckiest pupils in the Roanoke Valley on Thursday morning.

Although it’s possible that for a few moments — as a 7-foot-tall baby tyrannosaurus rex disconnected a cordon with its teeth and began snapping its jaws at them — some of the kids might not have agreed with that statement.

But there was laughter amid the shrieks. And some students told their teachers they wanted the T. rex to come back — as soon as it was safely backstage again.

No one was in any real danger, but the utterly convincing, life-size puppet made that hard to remember.

The dinosaur’s appearance at the Roanoke Civic Center and Roanoke’s main library was part of a promotional campaign for “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular,” a massive stage show involving full-scale free moving animatronic dinosaurs that’s coming in January.

Read the full story: Roanoke children shriek with dinosaur