How realistic his aspirations actually are, or whether the story’s even true, remains up for debate. But if Palmer didn’t have plans before, perhaps he should pursue them now that the idea’s been floated. Sure, it seems like a really extravagant way of courting death — but again, this is the same guy who wanted a do-over on the Titanic. More details after the jump.
The Sunshine Coast Daily (via Nerd Approved) learned of the rumored Jurassic Park plans from a source “close to Mr. Palmer’s inner circle.” Palmer is reportedly “in deep discussion” with the same scientists who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep at the Roslin Institute in 1996, and they’re talking about the possibility of extracting dinosaur DNA to clone a dinosaur. If all goes well, the (alleged! Don’t sue us!) plan is to set up the attraction at his new Palmer Resort in Australia’s Coolum Beach.
For his part, Palmer denies any plan to bring dinosaurs to life. “It’s just a beat-up of a story and untrue,” he told the Gold Coast Bulletin. “There was never any verification, the journalist never spoke to me.” The Roslin Institute points out that cloning a dinosaur would be a tricky proposition because of it’d be difficult to find an appropriate surrogate to carry a baby dinosaur. Besides, whole dinosaur cells may not even exist — and, according to the Herald Sun, a cloning attempt would require over 100,000 whole dinosaur cells.
But Sushine Coast Daily editor Mark Furler stands by his newspaper’s original tale, noting that “Mr. Palmer has changed his tune several times on this project and the people of the Sunshine Coast wait with bated breath to see what the real plans are.” Moreover, he says, “a lot of those rumours are coming from Clive’s camp.”
Whichever side you believe, what’s clear is that it’ll be some time yet before we get to meet living, breathing dinos. Then again, considering how that worked out for everyone in Jurassic Park, perhaps that’s for the best. In the meantime, we can live out some considerably less dangerous movie fantasies with the real-life Wall-E.
