Life has found a way to bring this celebration of the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise and lifelike dinos back to Melbourne.

Welcome to… your latest reason to be surrounded by lifelike prehistoric creatures in 2024. After roaring into Sydney in 2023, and teasing a trip further south since early this year, Jurassic World: The Exhibition has a date with Melbourne from August.

When you head to The Fever Exhibition Hall from Friday, August 2, expect to feel like you’ve been transported to Isla Nublar, complete with a walk through the big-screen saga’s famed gates. From there, you’ll mosey around themed environments featuring life-sized versions of the movie franchise’s dinos, including a brachiosaurus, velociraptors — yes, get ready to say “clever girl” — and a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Also linking in with the animated Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous series, there’ll be baby dinos, such as the show’s Bumpy.

Attendees will be able to get roaming while staring at animatronics, including the new ankylosaurus and carnotarus. Fingers crossed that a velociraptor pops up in advance of the exhibition’s arrival, as it did up north as well.

Now, all that’s left is to decide which Jurassic franchise character that you want to emulate (the best choices: Laura Dern’s palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler, Sam Neill’s palaeontologist Alan Grant and Jeff Goldblum’s mathematician Ian Malcolm, of course).

And no, when Michael Crichton penned Jurassic Park in 1990, then Steven Spielberg turned it into a 1993 film, they wouldn’t have expected that this’d be the result 31 years — and five more movies — later.

It’s been a great time to fascinated with dinosaurs over the past few years — we’ve seen two seasons of Prehistoric Planet on streaming in 2022 and 2023, too — and this latest exhibition arrives as part of a global tour. A showcase with the same name displayed in Melbourne back in 2016, but the new visit comes after stops everywhere from London, San Diego, Paris and Madrid to Seoul, Shanghai and Toronto.

Jurassic World: The Exhibition will return to Melbourne from Friday, August 2, 2024 — head to the exhibition’s website for tickets from 6pm on Thursday, May 23. 

Images: Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment.