But inside, alongside stuffed Bactrian camels and terrifying bearded vultures whose beaks and eyes were frozen by some taxidermist into fearsome masks of predation, there were excellent paleontological samples.
But in early August, Tuck, a Giants defensive end, had to petition the N.F.L. to keep his fearsome face mask, with a grille of extra horizontal and diagonal bars.
Here they encounter - in terms that shift according to their particular habits of perception - a trinity of figures comprised of two dwarves (or, for the religious-minded character who goes by "UGLI 666", two cathedral canons) and a fearsome, larger, masked figure seen, equally variously, as an overgrown mushroom, a member of the Chicago Bulls and so on.
Clad in animal skins, with huge cowbells round their waists, and wearing fearsome wooden masks, these are the Tschäggättä.
Where the face would have been was a fearsome charcoal death mask, the mouth frozen open in a wide, silent scream, the teeth huge and sneering like a skeleton's because the lips were gone; the sunken eyes were also open, showing only blank whites.
They followed a 12-year-old boy who, walking briskly ahead of them, wore the wood-carved mask of a fearsome elongated face, with a large forehead, small eyes and a thin rectangular mouth.
In another section, an actor wearing an oversized wig and robe and fearsome makeup tries on the oxygen mask, and a child in the classic pure white face makeup demonstrates the "brace for impact" position.
Looking at these, you're reminded of the fearsome visages of Greek Gorgons, Mayan masks or European gargoyles.
Although the goblins are first introduced as wholesome young thespians (Benjamin E. Oyzon, Jodi Renee Redmond and Marta Reiman), this doesn't diminish their fearsome potential once they don grotesque masks designed by Chris Mahle.
A winged, golden ram, a sea monster and a fearsome dragon materialize via puppets and masks.
