ON a small peninsula separated from the mainland by a strong security fence a new theme park is being planned. With a little help from some hi-tech engineering, creatures that move and look just like creatures moved and looked 65 million years ago will be wandering free. The belief is that hundreds of thousands of people will come, pay, see and wonder at the unusual creations. But this is no Steven Spielberg movie in a fictitious future - it's now and it's happening in Macau. The scheme, to set up Southeast Asia's largest dinosaur exhibition, will involve more than 20 half-lifesize robot monsters being trundled into the Macau Forum. Organisers hope more than 400,000 people - about equal to the enclave's population - will crowd into the forum from October 23 until February 15 to see the exhibition, which promises to be educational as well as a lot of fun. A bony-plated stegosaurus will stamp its legs and swish its tail to protect its young; a long-necked elasmosaurus will placidly munch vegetation in the eerily primeval forests; and a terrifying tyrannosaurus will be on the prowl in the specially created park. The models were made by the Kokoro company of Tokyo and Los Angeles, which has 20 years' experience in robot engineering. When an earlier exhibition of Kokoro's lifelike lizards was shown in London, the weekend queues of excited dinosaurphiles curled right round the National History Museum. Macau's exhibition organisers - led by the Macau Maritime Museum - hope to benefit from the current Jurassic Park mania to pull in crowds from Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Shenzhen.
