Of all places you might expect to see a dinosaur, Hyde Park perhaps isn’t one of them. However, stroll through the London park from Wednesday, and dinosaurs are what you’ll see. The giant reptiles are being projected at night around the Serpentine river flowing through the park, and are specifically ones that live near water.
The Dino display will only be in the park on Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th, so you’ll need to hurry yourself up if you want to see it for yourself. The dinosaurs themselves are rather obscure, and ones you’ve likely not heard of (unless you’re a big dinosaur fan, or happen to be a palaeontologist). If you’ve heard of the Wuerhosaurus, Dsungaripterus or the Kronosaurus, then you’ll know what to expect.
— Jurassic World Evolution 2 (@JW_Evolution) December 8, 2021
For the rest of us who aren’t as deep in the history of the giant reptiles, these are all dinosaurs hailing from the Cretaceous era. It’s a bit more of a mouthful than “Jurassic”, and actually occurred considerably later, as the last period of dinos before they were all wiped out seemingly due to an asteroid rather rudely raining on their paleo parade.
These are all dinosaurs hailing from the Cretaceous era...
So after that brief lesson of prehistory, you’re probably wondering why these dinosaur light displays are going to be lighting up Hyde Park in the first place. It turns out they’re there not on their own volition, but to promote a video game tie in to Jurassic World: Dominion, the latest film in the Jurassic franchise which stomps into cinemas next year.
The game is called “Jurassic World: Evolution 2”, and aside from sounding like a fake game that Bart might play in The Simpsons, the main draw is to create your own Jurassic theme park. It apparently features Jeff Goldblum himself though, which is a good enough reason to buy. Whether holograms of Mario, Sonic or Steve from Minecraft (ask your kid/nephew/younger brother) will appear in London’s parks is unknown.
In any case, even if you’re not interesting in gaming, the dinosaurs are there for all to see next to the Serpentine, at least for the two evenings mentioned above. Elsewhere in London, of course, there’s the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the first sculptures of dinosaurs in the world, though they’re a fair stretch from Hyde Park if you want to try and see both displays in one day.
