On Easter Sunday at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine, it was the dinosaurs who had risen. 

Hundreds of small children ran throughout the museum’s three floors on the hunt for the thousand of “dinosaur eggs” hidden throughout the play structures, discovery tables and science displays. 

The museum’s annual Dino Egg Hunt is always popular, as evidenced this year by the hordes of children in their Easter best – and Easter pajamas –  and the adults trailing after them in bunny ears. Running Friday through Sunday, each two-hour hunt brought in more than 300 visitors, said Matt McDermit, the museum’s director of marketing and communications.

Each child could collect up to 15 colorful plastic dinosaur eggs filled with candies, miniature dinosaur figurines, stamps and more tiny treasures. 

Sierra Zitsch, of Auburn, brought her two sons. Her eldest, Mathieu, 7, helped 4-year-old Beau reach an egg that was perched three feet from the ground on top of a framed children’s book cover. Beau had made several close-but-unsuccessful attempts to grab it in his rubber rain boots.

“I knew this was going to be a hit,” said Zitsch.

Quickly, both boys were on to looking for their next egg. 

“I want to find the golden egg,” said Mathieu, searching for one of the dozen of prized rare eggs hidden in the museum. 

To keep up with the egg hunting, museum staff slyly wandered the crowds and restocked the supply, pulling fresh dinosaur eggs out of inconspicuous cardboard boxes and reusable tote bags when children weren’t looking.

“Nothing to see here,” said Nolan Ellsworth, a programming senior associate and arts and culture educator, as he quietly placed eggs in the museum stairwell. “I try to be invisible.” 

The museum tied the event to educational programming about dinosaurs, including talks about fossils, dinosaur crafting and making volcanoes. Dinosaur lovers, a well-represented interest of children ages 2 through 8, also had the chance to flaunt their prehistoric knowledge.

Four-year-old Elio Twine, of Portland, quickly found his 15 eggs while wearing a  dinosaur-patterned shirt. His said favorite dinosaur, “at least for today,” is the herbivore Ankylosaurus. 

His favorite treasure he found inside an egg was a small box of pink Nerds candies, which he just as quickly devoured.