Jurassic Alcove immerses visitors in a world of dinosaurs
SOUTH PARK-In 1993, Dominic Bianco was 7 and was among the horde of children who stampeded to theaters to watch “Jurassic Park” and its cloned dinosaurs chase Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill and Laura Dern and generally wreak havoc on the island of Isla Nublar.
Steven Spielberg’s classic movie nudged many of Bianco’s peers to take a deeper interest in dinosaurs, but Bianco was already totally smitten with the reptiles who once held dominion over the planet.
What did the trick for Bianco were trips to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where he, along with his sister and parents, would marvel over the hulking skeletons in what was then called Dinosaur Hall and now goes by the name Dinosaurs In Their Time. His fascination was further stoked when his grandmother gave him dinosaur models in what was called the Carnegie Collection.
“I loved dinosaurs long before ‘Jurassic Park’ came out,” Bianco explained. “You go through a dinosaur phase. I just never outgrew mine.”
In the decades since, Bianco is one of those lucky souls who has turned his obsession into a profession. The Bethel Park resident is the proprietor of Jurassic Mag, a print publication that has a legion of followers on social media. More recently, he has opened Jurassic Alcove in Building No. 8 at the South Park Fairgrounds.
The nonprofit venture is free and open to visitors from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s a kind of resource center and exhibit focusing on all things related to dinosaurs. There are six lifesize replicas of dinosaurs made of resin and fiberglass, including a stegosaurus, velociraptor and triceratops, a sandbox replica of terrain with exposed fossils like those that would be unearthed by a paleontologist, a re-creation of a paleontologist’s tent while on a dig and models created by the late Mark Ewan Sanko, a South Fayette resident and dinosaur enthusiast.
There are also toys to handle and books to look at.
While the origins of Bianco’s dinosaur fascination date back to the early 1990s, the genesis of Jurassic Alcove can be traced to Bianco’s days at Bethel Park High School. Bianco was sitting in one of his classes, and started thinking about how he would design his own dinosaur park and “Jurassic Alcove grew out of that,” Bianco said.
Bianco set up shop at South Park Fairgrounds because the township makes space available for nonprofit ventures. Right now, the space does not have central heat, so visitors are advised to bundle up on weekends when it’s chilly.
It opened in October, and Bianco said about 1,000 visitors stopped by on its opening weekend, and 2,000 or 3,000 more have followed in the months since. He’s hoping to expand its hours as the temperature rises. He’s also anticipating more visitors after “Jurassic World Rebirth” arrives in theaters July 2. As has become customary when a movie in the “Jurassic Park” series arrives, Bianco plans on renting a movie theater auditorium and watching it with family and friends.
And despite movies like those in the “Jurassic” cycle or “One Million Years B.C.” or television series like “Land of the Lost,” which depict men and dinosaurs walking the earth at the same time, that never happened – dinosaurs exited the scene 65 million years before humans appeared. That reality was undoubtedly crucial to human survival, since the largest dinosaurs would have chewed us up like celery on a snack tray.
But what accounts for the undying interest people – and particularly children – have with dinosaurs, when encountering one in real life would have been a hair-raising experience, to say the very least?
“As a child, you see the sheer size of an animal, and it’s not like an animal you would see on this planet,” Bianco explained. “They talk about dinosaurs as if they were dragons or magical creatures.”
Information on the Jurassic Alcove is available at https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Jurassic-Alcove-61559322074958/. Information on Bianco’s Jurassic Mag can be found at jurassicmag.wordpress.com.