Cool Stuff: Dubai Building $1 Billion Robotic Jurassic Park

The idea of Jurassic Park has always intrigued me. After taking the splash on the theme park ride at Universal Studios in Hollywood, I often wondered why a whole theme park couldn't be created around this idea. And now it is finally happening.

A new $1.1 billion Jurassic theme park called Restless Planet, is being built in Dubai. The park will feature 109 animatronic dinosaurs of over 40 different species in a 500,000 square foot (46,000 square metre) space. The new park will be the star attraction of a large Las Vegas-esque entertainment and business development called City of Arabia.

Restless Planet will mix entertainment with educational content. Managing director Mustafa Galadari promises an "Extremely realistic and scary" but also "scientifically accurate environment." Palaeontologist Jack Horner, best known as the technical advisor on Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, and the inspiration for the character of Alan Grant in Michael Crichton's original book, is also on board advising the designers of the park.

Not many details have been revealed, but we do know that the park will use "computer graphics and high-tech special effects to take visitors from the Big Bang through the birth of the Earth, the creation of its mountains and oceans, and on to the age of the dinosaurs."

The sets are being produced by Impossible Pictures, the same people that created the BBC television series Walking with Dinosaurs. The robotic dinosaurs are being created by animatronics experts, the Tokyo-based Kokoro Company of Japan. The Kokoro Company has prior experience in the Dinosaur realm, having created animatronic creatures for the National History Museum in London. One of the creatures at the Museum, is a T-Rex which targets and tracks visitors who are wearing red as if they were prey.

Watch the promotional animated conceptual video below:

Restless Planet is scheduled to open in late 2008.

via: Cosmo