August 2, 2012 9:12 am
Australian Billionaire in Talks with Cloning Pioneers to Build Real Jurassic Park
Like this dinosaur, but not made of stone. Image: Pete Reed
When you have enough money to basically do anything you want, you come up with some pretty crazy ideas. Take Clive Palmer, an eccentric Australian billionaire. What does he want to do with his billions? Build Jurassic Park, cloned dinosaurs and all. Seriously.
The Sunshine Coast Daily reports:
The controversial billionaire is rumoured to be planning to clone a dinosaur from DNA so he can set it free in a Jurassic Park-style area at his new Palmer Resort in Coolum.
Mr Palmer has, apparently, been in deep discussion with the people who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep to bring his dinosaur vision to life.
Of course, Palmer isn’t the first billionaire to have some wacky ideas. Mark Cuban, the 546th richest person in the world, is a third of the internet company “I Want To Draw a Cat For You,” a cartoon cat business. When he was only 28, Richard Branson bought his own private island and opened it up to visitors who want to drop over $26,000 a week to stay there. Another millionaire dropped $100 million on the entire Faberge egg collection owned by the Forbes family. And Palmer himself isn’t new to weird pet projects. He’s rebuilding the Titanic from scratch, and it’s scheduled to sail in 2016.
With any luck visitors will some day be able to ride the Titanic II to the real life Jurassic Park. What could possibly go wrong?
More from Smithsonian.com:
Which Dinosaur Would You Clone?
Book Review: How to Build a Dinosaur
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1 Comment »
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Did eh SEE Jurassic Park?
oh.. wait.. he’s rebuilding Titanic too… I guess he has an obsession with gigantic things that cause mayhem and death.
next week’s headline:
Eccentric Australian Billionaire starts building the Hindenburg!
Comment by DustonB — August 3, 2012 @ 1:04 am