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MOAB — With the summer blockbuster "Jurassic World" opening in theaters, there's plenty of opportunity to be entertained — or frightened — by dinosaurs.
In Moab, tourists will also have a chance to get up close and personal with dinosaurs at a new museum later this year.
But the experience will be a bit different, not only from the science fiction world of the movies, but also from other dinosaur exhibits in the region.
The museum still under construction is called Moab Giants, as in giant reptiles. There are six buildings and thousands of square feet that will be dedicated to dinosaur feet.
"This is made by a small, emu-sized carnivorous dinosaur," Martin Lockley said as he pulled a mold of a dinosaur footprint from a specimen cabinet. "We call them theropod dinosaurs."
Lockley, a paleontologist with the University of Colorado Denver, is science director for Moab Giants. He said the emphasis of the new museum will be on the tracks dinosaurs left behind in the Moab region tens of millions of years ago.
"We're definitely science-oriented," Lockley said of Moab Giants. "We're a museum. We're not a theme park."
Moab Giants is the creation of JuraPark, a company that operates three dinosaur-related parks in Poland. JuraPark's specialty is lifelike and life-size dinosaurs with museum exhibits and interactive family entertainment. Polish investors are spending $10 million to build a similar park near Moab.
"The main investor, he came (to Utah) first time seven years ago, and he simply fell in love," said Darek Gazdzinski, executive director of Moab Giants. "And he said this is the best, best place to create such a park — in the world."
The main investor, he came (to Utah) first time seven years ago, and he simply fell in love. And he said this is the best, best place to create such a park — in the world.
–Darek Gazdzinski
The new museum is at the key highway junction between Arches National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park. Since it's a profit-making venture, JuraPark officials are hoping the location will help draw a crowd.
Once construction is finished, they promise a "leisure park," not a theme park, suitable for people of all ages.
"This is the kind of leisure where you're still learning interesting things," Gazdzinski said, "and those are real things based on science."
"But," Lockley said, "we certainly want to make the science as hands-on an experience as we can in this community."
One building will be what the company is billing as a "paleo-aquarium." It will give visitors a virtual reality experience so they can feel what it might be like to be back in time with marine dinosaurs and prehistoric sharks.
Photographer/Outlet
"The feeling when you go inside is like a real aquarium," Gazdzinski said.
The displays involve eight movie screens — "almost holographic displays," said Eddy Hogan, the construction project manager. "It will look like an underwater ocean in dinosaur time. So you go and it'll look like the dinosaurs are swimming, and it's 3-D so they're swimming in the displays."
A highlight of the display is that, from time to time, a simulated prehistoric shark will seem to attack. In the animated sequence, as the shark races toward visitors, it will appear to crack the glass of the simulated aquarium.
The museum's main attraction, though, will be exhibits related to dinosaur footprints. Tens of thousands have been found in the Moab region in recent years.
"Whatever scientists have found on the ground," Gazdzinski said, "we are re-creating that story."
Lockley said the museum will be near the center of a region that's been called the "Dinosaur Diamond," a fertile hunting ground for dinosaur footprints in Utah and Colorado.
"Actually, some of the Europeans who came over here to study dinosaur tracks, because it's such an important area, said, 'Wouldn't it be great to have this here?' So it really was a sort of hands across the ocean," Lockley said.
Moab Giants officials plan a so-called "soft opening" for the public in September and a grand opening in March 2016.
