Big dinos mean big opportunities for museums
Palentologists have to do a lot of digging to tell a story.
But it didn’t take much to unearth the news that lots of natural history museums are hoping to capitalize on “Jurassic World,” when it makes it ways into theaters next week.
“We felt like Jurassic World was a great opportunity for us to sneak in a little promotion,” says Randall Gann from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. The museum will have a booth in the lobby of one of the biggest theaters in Albuquerque on opening day, with staff, brochures and a Tyrannosaurus rex skull.
The Museum of the Rockies, in Bozeman, Montana, is holding a fundraiser where the movie will be screened before it opens in theaters. Tickets, which cost between $35 and $75 sold out in hours.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia recently screened the first three Jurassic Park films and held a dino-themed dance party.
The Morrison Natural History Museum in Morrison, Colorado, will also try to raise money with a special screening.
But, the bigger goal, says Morrison Director Matthew Mossbrucker, is education. “We’re going to be able to take movie monsters and use them to generate conversation about real animals and real science,” he says.
For one, Hollywood dinos are inappropriately large. “I’ve seen many times people stand in front of the skull of a T. rex and wonder if it’s a baby,” Mossbrucker says, “even though it’s as big as a washing machine.”
The goal is to turn fans of Hollywood’s supersized prehistoric creatures into fans of the real thing.
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