There were screams and tears when a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) appeared at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum on Tuesday.

About 80 children and adults, including students from Compassvale Secondary School, were enthralled by the life-sized baby T-Rex, which was controlled by British performer Neal Holmes, who was hidden in the dinosaur's body.

The ferocious creature is one of 18 dinosaurs in Walking With Dinosaurs - The Live Experience, a theatrical show that opens next Thursday at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

It made a promotional stop at the museum, where three sauropod dinosaur fossils are housed, to meet visitors.

The $20-million dinosaur show is set to music and brings to life the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, through high-technology projection and lighting effects.

Directed by Ian Waller, the touring show features nine species of dinosaurs - including the long-necked Brachiosaurus and the plant-eating Stegosaurus with two rows of bony plates along its back - through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods before their mass extinction.

One of the dinosaur lovers at the event was Matthew Chiang, nine, who was thrilled to see the T-Rex in action.

The Queenstown Primary School pupil, who had a dinosaur guide book in his hand, says the baby T-Rex lived up to his expectations.

"He did all the right body movements for the T-Rex. It's just like what I read in books and watched in videos," says Matthew, who was at the event with his grandmother.

Some kids got scared, though, when the dinosaur snapped its jaws.

International school teacher Angela Liang, 32, was at the museum for the first time with her two children - Kathlyn Tan, three, and Lucas Tan, four.

She says: "The T-Rex looked real and we were taken aback when it first came out, but when I pointed out to my kids that someone was moving the dinosaur, they were comforted by that."