Be The Dinosaur

“Be the Dinosaur™” is a groundbreaking fusion of state-of-the-art video game technology and traditional exhibits, featuring full-size dinosaur bones, a paleontology field station, a Safari Jeep and more. Visitors of all ages can enter into the largest and most complex restoration of an extinct ecosystem ever created.

Welcome to the most complex and far-reaching restoration of dinosaurs and their world ever created!

• Artificially intelligent and scientifically accurate dinosaurs with muscle, nervous, sensory and digestive systems.
• Spectacular cutting-edge content available exclusively at your museum!
• Easy to use controls and activities specifically for younger visitors!
• World-class Advisory Panel; including renowned paleontologists and interactivity experts.
• Eureka Inquiry-Based Simulation Technology allows visitors to experience this lost world – singularly or as a group.
• Explore some of the greatest mysteries of paleontology in a completely interactive way; What was a day in the life of a dinosaur like? How might they have lived? What can fossil evidence tell us about the way extinct animals lived their lives?
• Scalable space requirements, turnkey exhibit support, host-selectable age appropriate content, teacher and educational support, multiple local sponsorship opportunities available to, and at the discretion of, exhibit hosts.

ADVISORS

Professor John R. Hutchinson,
Chief of the Be the Dinosaur Advisory Panel.
Professor Hutchinson is the 2012 recipient of the Charles Darwin award and presented the Be the Dinosaur simulation to the audience during his acceptance lecture because the simulation embodied and served as an example for so much of his research. Dr. Hutchinson is an American biologist in the UK. He gained a B.S. degree in Zoology at the University of Wisconsin in 1993, then received a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at the University of California with Kevin Padian in 2001, He rounded out his training with a two-year National Science Foundation bioinformatics Post Doc at the Biomechanical Engineering Division of Stanford University with Scott Delp.

John started at the Royal Veterinary College as a Lecturer in Evolutionary Biomechanics in 2003 in the Department of Veterinary Basic Sciences (now Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences), in 2008 became a Reader, and in 2011 became a full Professor.

Prof. Hutchinson is an Associate Editor for Proceedings B of the Royal Society, the Journal of Theoretical Biology, the new open access journal PeerJ and ISRN Evolutionary Biology journal. He is also a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and of the Society of Biology. From 2012-2013 he is doing a sabbatical as a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, but still based at the RVC.

British Science Festival 2012, Darwin Awards Lecture, featuring Dr. John Hutchinson, Chief Advisor on “Be the Dinosaur”

New Scientist Video featuring Dr. John Hutchinson’s views on “Arena” Dinosaur Shows

We are also extremely appreciative of the advice and guidance received from:

Paleontology Advisors:

• Dr. James O. Farlow, Ph.D., Professor of Geology, Indiana Purdue University
• Dr. Thomas Holtz, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology, Department of Geology, University of Maryland
• Dr. J. Michael Parrish, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Illinois University
• Dr. Dale. A. Russell, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Paleontology, NC Museum of Natural History
• Manabu Sakamoto, Ph. D., Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, U.K..

Visitor Studies/Museum Advisors:

• Scott Alvey, Director of Visitor Interaction, Louisville Science Center 1992-2008.
• Dr. Rob Ross, Ph.D., Education Director, Paleontological Research Institute and the Museum of the Earth
• John Kelton, Exhibit Designer and Fabricator, SCS Exhibit Services, Huntsville, Alabama
• Ronald Ross, Director of Alumni Affairs, Drew University, Board of Directors, Liberty Science Center (for Gov. Thomas H. Kean)
• L. Scott Miller, Executive Director of the Consortium on Higher Academic Performance, Graduate School of Education, U.C. Berkeley