Honduras and Mexico banned the use of animals in circuses in 2015, and in 2017, Guatemala followed suit. A century and a half of circus performances that included horses, elephants and lions was gone.

Enter Mexico-based Rolce Productions. Circumventing the ban, they resurrected dinosaurs (albeit mechanical) and placed them in the shows visiting Honduras and Roatan. “Era of The Dinosaurs” was set up next to the Roatan airport from April 3 to 27.

The show is half circus, half variety show.

The show is half circus, half variety show, with performers having long dialogues while walking around the stage. There were several circus acts interspersed throughout the show: jugglers, balancers, acrobats and a clown act.

Children love the concept of dinosaurs. It is a rite of passage to be obsessed at the age of four or five with the animals who roamed the Earth millions of years ago. The show was interrupted four times for children to walk around figures of mechanical dinosaurs that were wheeled onto the stage while the lights were dimmed.

One curveball given by the organizers was adding a mammoth to the dinosaur lineup in the final credits section of the show. The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), an extinct elephant species, was not from the same era as the dinosaurs.