Zoos of the deep past: where are the great dinosaur exhibits in the world?

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
This may be more of a natural history museumish than zooish question, but they are related at some point.

Are there many zoos out there with dinosaur/prehistoric life exhibits? The Smithsonian National Zoo has a life-sized model of a Triceratops that supposedly used to sit on the National Mall outside of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Are there any great zoo dinosaur exhibits anywhere?

Where are the best exhibits of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life that people have experienced? The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum has a shiny new dinosaur exhibit that is great. Highlights include a series of T. rexes of different ages from juvenile to young adult to full adult and the only known pregnant plesiosaur fossil.

The best dinosaur/prehistoric life exhibit that I have ever experienced is at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. There are multiple highlights including a life-sized reconstruction of a triceratops relative that shows half of it as it looked externally and half of it from the inside. There are galleries showing how the Earth and its climate have changed over geological time by showing projections on globes. There are many displays on the ecology and behavior of the many dinosaur and other species that lived in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains when the area was a great inland sea (Museum of the Rockies > Exhibits > Exhibit Details).
 
Plzen Zoo has an adjoining dinosaur exhibit, although the models weren't operating when I visited. Many years ago, London Zoo had a collection of animatronic models, but I think the most interesting and educational exhibit at the time was based in the old Parrot House. This included various extinct animals, including a Falklands fox, with information about how they became extinct. It pointed out the value of conservation, indicating what will happen if no safeguards are in place to prevent animals becoming extinct.
 
Those I saw were all very kitschy and rather distraction from wild animals.

I had an idea once, that some zoo could convert old animal house, unsuitable for living animals, and put in cages models of extinct animals: quagga, moa, giant sloth, Bali tiger, thylacine, passenger pigeon, etc., with explanation of their history.
 
Calgary has a large area dedicated to prehistoric life, but it is quite old and is showing its age. Last summer there were some animatronic ones that drew in huge crowds but they have since left.

Just an hours drive from Calgary is the Royal Tyrell Museum, which has amazing displays and is far superior to the display at the zoo.
 
When established in 1794 the Jardin des Plantes in Paris had a zoo, a botanical garden and a natural history museum together. They are all still in operation. The natural history museum , now called Grand Galerie d Evolution is outstanding, with an amazing hall of extinct animals, various of which lived once at the Paris zoos. In Rio de Janiero, Brazil the zoo was built next to the national museum in 1888. The Rome zoo and the Barcelona zoo were also built next to natural history museums, but i am not certain if the museums have closed. This was sort of a tradition of the european illustration to teach the order of nature to the public. So at that point these zoos were an addition of natural history museums.
 
i'm not entirely sure, but i think that there is an island of Costa Rica called isla nublar which has a very large and diverse dinosaur collection ;)
 
You know this brings me to an idea I have been thinking about for a few weeks now. If you were to design a real Jurassic Park, how would you actually design the exhibits? I think we can all assume that those in the movie/book were not designed by a competent exhibit designer.
 
jbnbsn99 said:
You know this brings me to an idea I have been thinking about for a few weeks now. If you were to design a real Jurassic Park, how would you actually design the exhibits? I think we can all assume that those in the movie/book were not designed by a competent exhibit designer.
Click to expand...

Hard to gets the bugs out of the automatic feeder that dispenses goats to the predator species. The goats won't go willingly and flinging them in (like carrots to a bear) defeats the purpose. Still working on it
 
I'm sure Zooplantman would design it better. Exhibits in the film are definitely zoos of 1970s-80s. Dense vegetation obscuring animals, no attempt to hide perimeter fences, and the only look into velociraptor pit is from above. But there is a hint of some safari parks in Asia too - feeding live animals to predators in public.

jbnbsn99 said:
If you were to design a real Jurassic Park, how would you actually design the exhibits?
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Would include a working shotgun. :D Game reserves in South Africa usually have some. :D Similar film Prehistoric Park also has no guns.
 
crocdoc said:
The Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada. Hard to beat this.

Link to Tyrell Museum website
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My wife and I spent a few hours at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2006 and it is an excellent establishment that attracts around 400,000 visitors each year. Drumheller is the city where it is located, and amazingly the population is less than 10,000 but tourists flood in just to check out the outstanding museum. The town has capitalized on the success of its #1 attraction by having large-scale dinosaurs on many street corners, and the world's largest dinosaur can be found there. It may be cheesy in comparison to the splendid museum, but tourists such as myself line up for the view of the Badlands out of the T-Rex's mouth.

Here is the Wikipedia link:

World's Largest Dinosaur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
I've been to the museum a few times and I think it is outstanding. Drumheller is in Alberta's badlands, one of the best dinosaur fossil sites in the world (there's even a Dinosaur Provincial Park to the south east) - therefore the location of the museum.

The town certainly does capitalise on it in a very amusing way and many petrol stations and shops have some sort of gimmick with a nod to the dinosaurs. There are also fossil shops all over the place for people wanting souvenirs.

Nothing beats the museum itself, though, which is spectacular.
 
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