Dinosaur exhibits in zoos

Brookfield Zoo's recent Dinosaurs exhibits were both fairly accurate for this kind of thing -- feathered maniraptorans is old news but I was genuinely taken aback by feathered ornithomimids which are not only not well represented in pop culture but that I don't even usually hear about from paleo nerds as often.

Given Brookfield holds reptiles and birds together in Feathers and Scales (and technically Birds and Reptiles, although the birds in there have declined) I've always thought it would be a cool concept to do a large reptile-bird exhibit building with a theme of exploring the evolution of archosaurs into dinosaurs and birds and emphasizing that connection a lot.

Sorry it's another 'Brookfield this, Brookfield that' post.
 
My earlier message wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

Anyway, as I said on this topic now more than 5 years ago, my opinion still considerably stands. The tackiness and inaccuracies simply don't appeal to me, but families with young children enjoy them and zoos get extra revenue overall.

In terms of extinct animals in general (not just dinosaurs per se), Toledo's Promedica Museum of Natural History hosts some magnificent dioramas of various Pleistocene ice age animals that once lived in Ohio (as well as the rest of the U.S. Midwest region), from mammoths to American lions, and the building even has a replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull itself. Toledo had various pterosaur displays in their reptile house for a considerable amount of years, but only the Quetzalcoatlus statue now remains right outside of the building.
 
I think that it can be done really well, and doubtless to say models like the ones at the Bronx and Brookfield zoos will stand the test of time. However, what really grinds my gears is the fact that a huge majority of zoos that do this just go for the marketable Jurassic Park aesthetics. Yes, this film franchise can be very entertaining, but it completely detracts from the educational content that zoos MUST provide (in my humble opinion). One of the most baffling ones for me is the Paradise Wildlife Park, which flat out includes INDOMINUS REX as part of the exhibit! I don't care if the sign says it's a man-made mutant; putting it in there makes even more people blissfully ignorant of this animal's absence from the fossil record! Showcasing shrinkwrapped featherless "Velociraptors" with broken wrists and a neck-frilled Dilophosaurus are bad enough, and labelling a toothed, crestless pterosaur as Pteranodon is worse, but this takes the cake. See for yourself...
Dinosaurs Archive | Paradise Wildlife Park
There's another zoo in the UK whose dinosaurs are jaw-droppingly attrocious, but I can't quite recall which one it was... All I remember is that their allosaurus looks like one of Cronenberg's dakura nightmares.
 
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