Submitted Photo Jurassic Quest, shown in this photo from Jurassic Quest, brings to life the era of dinosaurs when they roamed the earth millions of years ago. The event will be in Minot beginning Friday.

Park Ranger Marty is a dinosaur expert for Jurassic Quest.

Acclaimed as the nation’s largest dinosaur experience, Jurassic Quest opens at the North Dakota State Fairgrounds in Minot on Friday and continues through Sunday.

“I’m always teaching people about dinosaurs,” said Park Ranger Marty (aka Marty Hoffman) in an interview with The Minot Daily News this past week. He said the key way he does that is through Jurassic Quest’s text line available for those attending.

“If they’re at the show and they’re not exactly sure what a dinosaur is or they have a question about something, they can text me directly and (I’ll) answer all their questions because we want our show to be as educational as possible,” he said.

He said they want people to have the right answers.

“Dinosaur information is changing constantly. We’re always getting new information on dinosaurs. You have to try to stay as up to date as possible as we make new finds,” he said.

He said they work with paleontologists to make sure they have the most current information about dinosaurs. The show also works with paleontologists to make sure the dinosaurs are replicated accurately.

Jurassic Quest, an event billed for the entire family, is based in Conroe, Texas. Park Ranger Marty resides with his wife in Huntsville, Alabama.

Besides Park Ranger Marty, other dino trainers are Safari Sarah, Dino Dustin, Prehistoric Nick and Captain Caleb.

“We’re the five primary human characters and then we have our baby dino characters like Cammie the Camarasaurus, Trixie the Triceratops and Tyson the T. rex,” Park Ranger Marty said.

Park Ranger Marty has been interested in dinosaurs since he was a kid.

“I’ve been a dinosaur enthusiast my entire life but it was 2016 when I really started digging in and becoming a dinosaur expert,” he said. “My favorite dinosaur has been the same since I was a little kid and that’s Triceratops.”

He noted Triceratops have been found in North Dakota.

The Jurassic Quest herd of animatronic dinos – from large predators to baby dinos – are displayed in realistic scenes, with some of them moving and roaring. Guests get to experience them as they were when they roamed the earth millions of years ago.

“It’s really just kind of seeing the whole Mesozoic Era just brought to life in front of you,” Park Ranger Marty said. The Mesozoic Era is divided into three periods: Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.

When people arrive at the Jurassic Quest event, he said, “You enter through an archway. Typically, the first thing you are going to see is a giant Apatosaurus, a giant dinosaur, which most people will think is a Brontosaurus. You’re just slightly out of arm’s reach of all these amazing dinosaurs. Then there’s a lot of other things to do as well. The key thing is to go there and see amazing dinosaurs.”

He said other things to do at the event include dinosaur-themed bounce houses, the largest rideable dinosaurs in North America and dino digs where visitors can actually pretend to be a paleontologist and dig in the sand.

“If you’re older and you want to learn the real science of fossils, we actually do have a fossil table with some real fossils and some casts of larger fossils so that you can kind of see what paleontologists actually find out in the field,” he said.

“For the really little kids, we have the ‘Triceratots,’ a little soft play area for those under 2,” he said.

“We’ve got something brand new this year. We’ve got a class if you want to take your experience to the next level. It’s an interactive scavenger hunt-style adventure for the whole family,” Park Ranger Marty said. “We try to be as engaging to keep everybody entertained throughout the different age groups. Obviously, kids love dinosaurs but sometimes parents have forgotten how much they loved dinosaurs and there’s always new information on dinosaurs.”

He said Jurassic Quest was started by Dan and Leticia Arnold of Texas in 2013. Dan Arnold was in electronics sales and had many convention center contacts. They developed the idea to bring dinosaurs to the centers.

“It started small and it grew and grew and grew,” Park Ranger Marty said.

Jurassic Quest started with one show with three trucks.

“By the time I got there in 2016, it was one show and six trucks. Now we have three separate shows touring the country and each of them has probably at least 16 trucks,” he said. He said typically around 30 people travel with each show, and they hire extras or temporary help as well at the show.

Typically, he said, it takes about two days to set up the show and when the show is completed, it takes about a day and a half to break it down.

“The show is pretty much on the road all year,” he said. Although, he said, they sometimes take a break for major holidays.

Besides across the United States, the show has also been presented in Canada.

At the shows, Park Ranger Marty said there is one question people always ask: How big does a T. rex get? He said the T. rex grew to about 42 feet long, was about 13 feet tall with the head and weighed somewhere between 7-9 tons.

Due to the “Jurassic Park” movie, he said, people also often ask who would win in a fight between a T. rex and a Spinosaurus?

“In the movie they had the Spinosaurus win,” Park Ranger Marty said. But a T. rex weighs more than a Spinosaurus and has a stronger bite force.

“One bite from a T. rex pretty much will kill the Spinosaurus so I would give that fight nine times out of 10 to T. rex,” he said.

Park Ranger Marty said one of the great things about the Jurassic Quest event is seeing the kids when they arrive.

“Just wait for the kids to come through the door. The first thing in the morning watch them walk through those arches and watch their eyes just get big as saucers and their jaws drop and just giant smiles on their faces,” he said. He said that makes it worth everything.

Tickets are available at the door but to avoid time slot sellouts, it is recommended those planning to attend obtain tickets online for the Minot event at https://www.jurassicquest.com/events/minot-nd. Children younger than 2 are admitted free.