KEY POINTS:
When dinosaurs roamed the earth so did tuatara.
Given they were probably just party snacks for the big fellas, the demise of the giant reptiles undoubtedly helped them enormously.
And what also helped them to survive was New Zealand's isolation.
At the Southland Museum and Art Gallery in
Invercargill I'm meeting a tuatara for the first time.
Henry, who is more than 100 years old, has been sulking for a couple of days because it's been too cold but is lured from his log when his sharp hearing detects tuatara curator Lindsay Hazley's voice and the possibility of a tasty weta or huhu grub.
Henry, who hails from the Stevens Islands and is a sphendon punctatus or common tuatara, stops and eyeballs us. He has an amazing ability not to blink for what seems like minutes and his colouring serves as perfect camouflage.
Hazley, who came here 35 years ago as a museum trainee, has looked after Henry all that time.
"When I started tuatara had a poor record of survival in captivity," says Hazley whose use of environmental lighting has made for a successful breeding programme.
He reasoned that because the pineal eye was visible for the first six months of a tuatara's life this had to be a crucial time. What Hazley did was try to mimic the light, using UV lighting the reptiles would get in the wild.
Through a lot of trial and error Hazley succeeded in doing what no one else had done and the breeding programme was such a success the museum now has 35 resident tuatara, including rare guntheri, and has sent up to 40 to other zoos.
Among them is one youngster who Hazley holds (because they have razor sharp teeth) for me to touch.
It has fat storage blobs on its back and feels quite strange - cold, but its spines are feathery.
Hazley hopes that one day soon some tuatara will be able to be relocated to a rat-free southern island to live out their lives.
And as for the museum residents (and visitors) he would love to see "a Jurassic-style tunnel and enclosure so the tuatara don't appear to be in cages".
* The Southland Museum and Art Gallery is at 108 Gala St, Invercargill, in Southland.
Hours are 9am-5pm Monday to Friday, 10am-5pm weekends.
It is free to locals but a $2 donation is requested from others.
Group bookings for a tuatara hands-on are an extra $3 each with a minimum of six people.
