KEY POINTS:
A Trust which teaches schoolchildren about evolutionary and creationist views of the universe wants to build a $30 million dinosaur park and museum, probably on the Coromandel Peninsula.
The Dinosaurs Aotearoa Museum Trust is working with Wellington's Weta Workshop, which created characters for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, to create life-sized dinosaurs in a 40ha theme park.
Founders Darren and Jackie Bush run a Wellington business called Dinosaurs Rock which runs programmes about dinosaurs and geology for schools, giving children both the scientific theory of evolution and the biblical view that the world was created by God in seven days about 6000 years ago.
A similar US$27 million ($36.4 million) museum featuring dinosaurs, but devoted solely to the creationist view of our origins, opened in Kentucky this week.
A New Zealand branch of the organisation that conceived the Kentucky venture, now called Creation Ministries International, insists that geological evidence fits the biblical theory that the Earth was created about 6000 years ago at least as well as it fits the predominant scientific view that the planet dates back about 4.5 billion years.
Mr and Mrs Bush are New Zealanders who spent 20 years in Australia. They would not say yesterday whether they believed in evolution or creationism.
Their trust's objectives are to develop "a world-class educational museum-park" and "a forum/facility where different world interpretations of science are presented without bias in the light of development of scientific knowledge".
