SALON

Tuesday, Jun 12, 2012 8:45 PM UTC

Ky. biblical museum ad campaign features dinosaurs

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Ky. biblical museum ad campaign features dinosaursA billboard in Louisville, Ky., shows a new ad campaign for the Creation Museum, on June 11, 2012. A new nationwide billboard ad campaign is using dinosaurs to attract visitors to the Bible-based center near Cincinnati. The museum has exhibits that challenge evolution science and promote a literal interpretation of the Old Testament's creation story. (AP Photo/Dylan Lovan) (Credit: AP)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky museum where dinosaurs roam the biblical Garden of Eden is unveiling a national billboard campaign featuring the popular prehistoric reptiles.

The cartoon billboards for the Creation Museum are appearing in several cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Houston and feature colorful dinosaurs drawn in a vintage comic book style.

The popular attraction in northern Kentucky that opened in 2007 has drawn controversy and thousands of visitors with exhibits that challenge evolution and present the Old Testament’s creation story.

Dinosaurs are at the center of campaign because they get the public’s attention, said Ken Ham, founder of the Christian ministry Answers in Genesis.

“People love dinosaurs,” Ham said. “Whenever a dinosaur exhibit comes to town, people are fascinated by that.”

Ham said there are 20 different billboard styles, though some feature other prehistoric animals like mastodons. A billboard near Interstate 64 in Louisville features a flying pterodactyl and says the museum is “101 miles ahead.” So far the signs have appeared in 25 states.

The high-tech museum near Cincinnati has animatronic dinosaurs, models and fossils, and teaches that the giant reptiles were created by God in a matter of days along with all other living things a few thousand years ago. Paleontologists say fossil evidence shows dinosaurs were present on the earth tens of millions of years ago, well before humans arrived.

Science educators that have long criticized the museum and said the Creation Museum’s campaign is meant to attract young people interested in dinosaurs to a place that delivers a religious message and a version of history that conflicts with scientific findings.

“It’s a hook, it’s a bait to get people to say, ‘Hey let’s go to that museum’ — and then the other message is brought out,” said Steven Newton, a program director at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif.

Dinosaurs have been a draw to other museums and destinations for years. Perhaps the most notable is the Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil known as “Sue” at Chicago’s Field Museum. In Kentucky, the Louisville Zoo is running a temporary exhibit this year with 12 dinosaur models and a fossil dig for children.

Newton said science centers should be employing powerful marketing strategies like the Creation Museum’s campaign.

“I think it’s a real shame that there aren’t science museums that are competing in the same way, with the same sort of advertising with the same sort of budgets,” he said.

Ham said Answers in Genesis spent about a half-million dollars on the campaign, but is asking museum members to chip in and sponsor more billboards to get them up in other sites.

Mary Allen, who lives near the Louisville billboard, said her 3-year-old grandson first noticed the pterodactyl sign, calling it “the big bird.”

Allen said the sign is eye-catching, but said she hasn’t visited the Creation Museum because “I just don’t think that’s how the world was created.”

___

Follow Dylan Lovan on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/dylanlovan

More Dylan Lovan.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
218 points219 points | 13 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
197 points198 points | 29 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
190 points191 points | 123 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
77 points78 points | 16 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
44 points45 points | 5 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations