THE Natural History Museum has been appointed by the rulers of Dubai to help to create a “Jurassic park” of life-size robotic dinosaurs pounding across a primeval savanna.

The park will feature more than 100 giant animatronic creatures from 40 species ranging from tyrannosaurus rex to prehistoric fish. They will cover a 165m-year period from the Triassic to the Cretaceous era, which ended 65m years ago. The Jurassic period was between these two.

Visitors will be able to walk close to the dinosaurs, whose intelligent technology will allow them to roam freely. They will be able to respond to the environment around them, for example snapping their necks round at sudden movements made by visitors or lurching at people wearing red shirts.

“We wanted to create a hybrid of a theme park and a museum which would allow people to experience a Jurassic-era habitat in a scientifically realistic environment,” said Audrey O’Connell, the museum’s project director for the Dubai development, to be named Restless Planet.

The museum was invited to draw up the plan for the attraction by the Al-Maktoums, Dubai’s ruling family.

The park, which will open in 2010, is being built jointly with Ilyas & Mustafa Galadari Group, a local development company.

It will be the size of 10 football pitches and consist of two climate-controlled buildings, one of them dome-shaped. It will contain grassland and woodland divided into several different micro-environments.

In addition to species such as T rex and diplodocus, herds of less familiar creatures will also roam the landscape while pterodactyl swoop overhead and amphibians swim in a large lake.

The park’s developers hope to set new standards in the realism of animatronics in the same way that Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park was a landmark in computer graphics with its dramatic portrayal of dinosaurs on screen.

The Natural History Museum was chosen because of its own work in developing animatronic dinosaurs, including a T rex. But despite recent advances in technology, the robots have been criticised for being wooden and unconvincing.

The developers say the new creatures will be startling in their realism, even at close quarters.

An international team of scientists led by the museum are advising on the accuracy of details such as the stretching of the dinosaurs’ skin, their colour, the flaring of their nostrils and the smell of their breath.

In addition to the dinosaurs, the park will include displays showing the development of Earth from the big bang to the creation of oceans and mountains, before arriving in the age of the dinosaurs. An adjoining exhibition hall will house temporary exhibitions, some of which are likely to be loaned from the Natural History Museum’s collection in London.

The park will be the first overseas venture by the museum, famous for its 85ft-long replica diplodocus skeleton and library of specimens collected by Charles Darwin.

The museum is being advised by Jack Horner, an American palaeontologist who worked on Spielberg’s film. Horner said: “Jurassic Park was a drama first and foremost; this time everyone wants it to be accurate.

“We don’t know exactly what plants were like back then but we can make educated guesses based on fossil remains and related plant species. The Jurassic habitat was somewhere between the English moors and the Serengeti.

“The idea is that scientists will be able to visit the park without picking holes in it.”

The Dubai project is the first of a series of four scientific theme park-style attractions which the museum plans to develop overseas.

For Dubai, the dinosaur attraction is the latest in a string of mega-projects as it repackages itself from oil-rich micro-state to international tourist resort.

It will be part of a new development six miles from the coast in an area called City of Arabia.

The emirate’s construction boom, overseen by Sheikh Mohammed, has seen the building of artificial islands, one of the world’s tallest towers and its hallmark, the Burj Al Arab, a giant sail-shaped hotel.

Its western cultural imports will include a branch of the New York-based Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry and due to open in 2012. A branch of the Louvre is also set to open in nearby Abu Dhabi.

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