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More than a dozen "animatronic" dinosaurs arrived Monday at Utah's Hogle Zoo, where they will spend the summer reminding visitors that extinction is forever — even for some of the largest beasts that ever walked the planet.
Zoo officials hope, said spokeswoman Erica Hansen, that patrons come away from their encounters with these dinosaurs — which can roar, spit and move — with a fuller realization of the extinction threats faced by many of Hogle's resident animal species.
"The means of extinction are different," she noted. "Dinosaurs died out after an asteroid hit the planet. But we're making choices today that affect animals in the wild, including many animals in the zoo. We hope people will say to themselves, 'What can we do to conserve their habitats?' "
With help from the Natural History Museum of Utah and sponsor Les Schwab Tire Centers, Zoorassic Park 2 will open to the public May 1 and remain on display through the end of September.
This year's display will include some dinosaurs featured in the original Zoorassic Park exhibit in 2011, helping boost zoo attendance to a then-record level, Hansen said.
"You can't do a dinosaur display without a T. rex," she said of the Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the largest land carnivores of all time.
But this year's display also will highlight the cast skulls of two dinosaur species found recently in the state — Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops.
"These horned dinosaurs are two of the many species excavated by museum paleontologists in southern Utah since 2000," said Museum of Natural History Executive Director Sarah George.
The cast skulls will be displayed outdoors, near the new lion enclosure, in weather — and hand-proof cases that Hansen said still will allow "up close, nose-to-nose" views.
Unloaded Monday from trailers using large cranes, the 14 dinosaurs represent 11 species, including a Diabloceratops that was unearthed in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It roamed that area of southern Utah several million years before Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops.
"There's something about dinosaurs that capture the imagination of kids and adults alike," Hansen said. "Seeing them life-sized makes you ponder them even more."
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