British Experts Called in As Dubai Plans Animatronic Jurassic Park

Move over John Hammond, the dinosaur-obsessed billionaire portrayed by Richard Attenborough in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film adaptation of Jurassic Park.

Two Arab businessmen are planning to create a real life Jurassic Park in Dubai, with more than 100 animatronic dinosaurs, including T-rex, vicious velociraptors and plant-eating triceratops.

The park is the brainchild of Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari, the developers behind the City of Arabia section of Dubailand, a enormous entertainment and leisure "city".

The Galadari brothers are pumping £100m into the 500,000 sq foot theme park - to be known as "Restless Planet" - and aim to make the attraction the centrepiece of the Mall of Arabia, the world's biggest shopping complex.

With the help of scientific experts from the British Natural History Museum and Jack Horner, the chief paleontological advisor to Spielberg, the park will feature not only dinosaurs, but artificial volcanoes and rides exploring the prehistoric seabed.

"The idea is to throw people back in time to how the Earth was millions of years ago," said a spokeswoman for the Natural History Museum, which will consult with the architects Furneaux Stewart on the project. "It will be part theme park, part educational/museum experience."

In a statement the Galdari brothers said the attraction, which is due to open in 2008, would also feature cosmic events such as comet strikes, the tearing away of the moon from Earth and the formation of the mountains and seas.

As well as input from Horner, the Natural History Museum will draw on the expertise of Kokoro, the Japanese animatronic company which leads the world in dinosaur design.