Advances in computer graphics and scientific studies have made dinosaurs attractive not just to small boys but also women and girls.
"It seems nowadays that one of every five children interested in dinosaurs is a girl," said a representative for the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, where a special exhibition of dinosaur fossils is under way.
The number of visitors to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, a leading research center, has increased year on year for 12th months in a row since November 2012. In the first 11 months of 2013, 570,000 people visited the leading dinosaur museum in the nation, up 31 percent from a year earlier.