Smithsonian.com

An animatronic theropod dinosaur on display at the Brookfield Zoo. The list of robotic dinosaurs which will be present in Alberta's Jurassic Forest has not yet been announced. From Flickr user jimdeane.

As much as I love spotting dinosaurs along the road and in “prehistoric parks,” I have to admit that most of them look terrible. Not only are they often misshapen and woefully out of date, but many have been in a state of disrepair for years. It seems that many roadside dinosaurs are the products of an earlier wave of dinomania that have been left to rot, but now some people are creating the next generation of dinosaur parks.

Next month will see the opening of the Jurassic Forest dinosaur park in Gibbons, Alberta, Canada. It will open with about 40 dinosaurs—some of which were recently flown in by helicopter—but they are not going to be immobile statues. Instead, following the continuing dino-motion trend, the dinosaurs will be animatronic robots that will have the usual behavioral repertoire of blinking, growling, and waggling their appendages for visitors. Photos from early news reports show that the park will be home to at least two robotic Parasaurolophus, but a list of the full dinosaur menagerie has yet to be released.

More information about the park will be made available at its website, JurassicForest.com

[Hat-tip to Darren Tanke for letting us know about this story]