How awesome is that?!
Anywho, this post is to tell you a bit about what I was doing when I was Dino Rangering.
Bristol Zoo had a hugely popular city-wide exhibition of gorillas last year to celebrate their 175th anniversary. This year, they wanted to have something to keep the spirit of celebration alive. Given that Bristol has strong palaeontological links of its own (see below), dinosaurs seemed like a good and exciting choice, particularly with the success of Chester Zoo's dinosaur exhibit this and last summer.
One of the tasks for the zoo was deciding how best to make dinosaurs into something informative, engaging and still tied into the messages of conservation and education that underpin the zoo's aims. Making them engaging wasn't difficult - they got the dinosaurs from the incomparable Billings Productions who specialise in animatronic prehistoric creatures. The next thing was to inform. So they began a search for a specialised team of 3 people who would go on to become the Dino Rangers at Bristol Zoo. I heard about the search by chance when a couple of friends sent me this.
I was delighted to be interviewed (more about the process another time), but wasn't hopeful of actually landing a position - the field was incredibly strong. You can imagine the noise I made when they offered me a job, though. Within 2 weeks, I began working as a Dino Ranger, planning and setting up for the grand opening soon after.
I mentioned about Bristol's dinosaur heritage. Bristol is the home of a dinosaur called Thecodontosaurus. It was the fourth dinosaur ever described, and was in fact discovered by two of the men who went on to help found the zoo. I'll be writing a post all about Theco fairly soon, but the best place to go for some really in-depth information is The Bristol Dinosaur Project - a Lottery funded scheme that sends the BDP volunteers out to different schools and events to talk more about the place that Bristol was 210 million years ago.
Right. That will do for now, but there's lots more to come - see you soon!
x
I was delighted to be interviewed (more about the process another time), but wasn't hopeful of actually landing a position - the field was incredibly strong. You can imagine the noise I made when they offered me a job, though. Within 2 weeks, I began working as a Dino Ranger, planning and setting up for the grand opening soon after.
I mentioned about Bristol's dinosaur heritage. Bristol is the home of a dinosaur called Thecodontosaurus. It was the fourth dinosaur ever described, and was in fact discovered by two of the men who went on to help found the zoo. I'll be writing a post all about Theco fairly soon, but the best place to go for some really in-depth information is The Bristol Dinosaur Project - a Lottery funded scheme that sends the BDP volunteers out to different schools and events to talk more about the place that Bristol was 210 million years ago.
Right. That will do for now, but there's lots more to come - see you soon!
x
