Jurassic Park in Dubai

Dinosaurs are finally roaming the earth!

Well, realistic animatronics that is!

Located in the City of Dubai ( in United Arab Emirates) - The real live Jurassic Parkesque theme park, a $1.3 billion dollar project, called 'Restless Planet', will be home to the world's largest collection of animatronic dinosaurs.

The T.rex is the first to be completed of 109 robots, which are being built in various shapes and sizes to resemble more than 40 different extinct species. Hoping to attract many wealthy tourists the park will attempt to provide an educational experience amid all of the Vegas-style spectacle. This will be done using history themed rides and robots/habitats that represent an accurate portrayal (based on current knowledge) of what life was like millions of years ago.

The robots will be capable of interacting with guests by following them with their eyes or lunging at them as the walk by."The Restless Planet provides a visual, audio and tactile experience allowing visitors to experience some of the exciting things that have gone on in the Earth's history," says managing director Mustafa Galadari. "Extremely realistic and scary – but at the same time, educational, the 500,000 square foot (46,000 square metre) Restless Planet, will most of all be enormous fun. A thrilling ride in a scientifically accurate environment."

"Right now it's pretty much under wraps, but I can tell you that it will indeed be accurate to our modern knowledge, and it will be unlike anything you've ever seen before," adds palaeontologist Jack Horner, of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman, U.S., who is advising the designers of the park. Horner dug up the first known dinosaur nest fossils, was a technical advisor on Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, and is purported to have inspired the character of Alan Grant in Michael Crichton's original book. "On any commercial project I do my best to suggest things that would make the dinosaurs look as best they can based on the latest discoveries, and most up-to-date ideas," says Horner.

That leaves one sticky problem as far as the science goes: "Colour is far more difficult as nobody really knows what colour dinosaurs were," says our NHM expert. Fossils don't betray any clues as to whether the long-extinct creatures were brown, purple or had stripes. So the scientists make best guesses for the models based on today's animals, especially birds and reptiles.

To fill in the details on how the dinosaurs might have moved, the Museum's palaeontologists look to the anatomy of the skeletons and hunt for marks on the fossils that betray where muscles might once have been attached. Computer modelling then takes into account biomechanics to reconstruct the shape of the animal, estimate its weight and work out how fast it might have been able to move. This information is also based on the estimated physical strain on the bones, ligaments, muscles and joints. "One study on T.rex has estimated that the giant flesh-eater would have been incapable of moving at more than a fast walk, making it only about half as fast as the top human sprinters today," said the NHM expert. "Though not many people can keep up a fast sprint for longer than a few seconds, so we still might have had trouble outrunning T.rex."

Scientists have recently made some amazing steps towards the goal of deriving dino DNA. Horner was part of a team who reported in the U.S. journal Science in April 2007, that they had succeeded in extracting and sequencing collagen protein from a 68-million-year-old fossilised T.rex bone (see, Protein extracted from T.rex fossil, Cosmos Online). Prior to this, the oldest sequenced protein came from a mammoth fossil which was just 300,000 years old.

That would be amazing if they received enough dna to clone dinosaurs. Possibility?? I think so, but for now I'm excited about park opening up - it will get you close enough to experiencing live dinosaurs in case they aren't ever able to clone the dna.

They are keeping details under wraps, but the creators of the development, the Ilyas and Mastafa Galadari Group, have released promotional videos showing a T.rex charging at visitors and pterodactyls flying overhead and the park is scheduled to open in late 2008 in Dubai.

I don't know about you, but I personally can't wait to check out this park. I hope they don't overprice their tickets!

Sources and more info:

Dubai Restless Planet
Detailed info on the new park

MSNBC.com
Scientists recover T Rex soft tissue!

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Science Daily
Great source for all the latest research news

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