MORGANTOWN – Take a walk among 150 million years of dinosaurs without getting chomped this weekend. Jurassic Quest, the traveling dinosaur experience, is at Mylan Park’s Hazel & J.W. Ruby Community Center Friday through Sunday.
You can see and touch tyrannosaurs and triceratops and velociraptors. Creators worked with paleontologists to make sure they are true to life and to scale, said Caleb Hughes – Captain Caleb the Dinosaur Trainer.
It’s both educational and entertaining, he said. For kids, there are dinosaurs to ride, fossils to dig for,
bounce houses and Jeep rides. Adults can take in the history and learn about all the creatures with digital signs fronting each display.
“It’s a really magical experience not just for young people but for adults, as you can rediscover your childlike sense of wonder and imagination,” Caleb said. “If you can reach, you may touch. We just ask that you be gentle.”
The exhibit weaves you through the three periods of the Mesozoic Era – the age of dinosaurs: Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. It’s 150 million years and Caleb points out that in terms of planetary time, humans are closer to the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to the stegosaurus, which had been gone for 80 million years when the T-Rex appeared.
Some of the dinos have the pebbly skin we’re accustomed to seeing. Many have what looks like fur and Caleb explains it’s intended to represent feathery down – reflecting their links to modern birds.
While Jurassic Quest has no ties to the first and now second Jurassic Park movie trilogies, Caleb said, the movies have helped fuel interest in dinosaurs.
Jurassic Quest, he said, was a family owned business. In May 2019, it was bought by L2 Capital Partners. But the essence of the show hasn’t changed. “The focus on family and the joy that we provide is something that we keep important as our mission statement.”
There are three Jurassic Quest crews, Caleb said. This one has 25 people and they take about a day and a half to set up the whole exhibit. It wasn’t complete during our tour – more displays were coming, along with atmospheric lighting, music and lots of roars.
The dinos come in all sizes, from the titanic apatosaurus – which is only a juvenile, Caleb said, because an adult model would be too big to transport – to the almost cuddly velociraptors.
Unlike their movie versions that stand about 6 feet tall, these velociraptors are about half that size. “It tends to disappoint people when they find out they’re about the size of large turkeys,” Caleb said.
Toward the end of the exhibit, visitors can interact with one of their bigger cousins, Jojo the Utahraptor, who is closer to the size we think of and has red, gold and white feathers running from his head down his long neck and onto his back.
One of the dino trainers will talk about raptors and the misconceptions about them. “We just ask that you do your best not to get eaten,” Caleb said with a smile.
One display gives a look at the flying dinosaurs – the peteranodons with their leathery wings and pointed heads. Another, depicting the comet age, the end of the dinosaur eras, offers the dinos that look like contemporary ostriches. One of them is a bit bigger and fiercer looking than an ostrich and is a loose ancestor of our ostriches, Caleb said. They were the fastest dinosaurs to live during Mesozoic era, able to run as fast as 55 mph.
The exhibit concludes with the Ancient Oceans display, from the more recent Paleogene Period, which began about 65 million years ago.
One creature looks like a giant snail – well over 6 feet tall. It’s a cephalopod, Caleb said, an ancient relative of the squid and octopus and nautilus. The giant mouth surrounded by sensory tentacles looks big enough to swallow a person, and they were carnivorous, like their cousins.
Ancient Oceans also features what Caleb calls the crown jewel of the exhibit – the 55-foot megalodon, the world’s largest shark. The Natural History Museum says the earliest megalodon fossils date back 20 million years and the species swam the oceans until going extinct about 3.6 million years ago.
This one is preparing to lunch on a fish that would look terrifying on its own, if it weren’t dwarfed by the megalodon. It’s a xiphactinus, an early and distant cousin of the tiny piranha, but 15 feet long.
Caleb said exhibit hours vary by the day. The exhibit takes one to two hours to walk through. Entry is timed to avoid overcrowding and give all a chance to see the entire exhibit, and for the kids to ride the dinos and enjoy the other activities.
Visitors are encouraged to buy their tickets online and reserve a time slot. Go directly to https://tickets.jurassicquest.com/morgantownwv2022/events/8d419c9a-0aaa-ec5f-09fa-37b95e44ecb0 or to the home page at jurassicquest.com and follow the links to the ticket page.
Costs are $22 for kids and adults, $19 for seniors; $36 for all-you-can-ride access to dinosaur rides, inflatables and fossil dig. General admission includes live shows, arts and crafts activities, dinosaur and marine exhibits. Kids under 2 are free.
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
