By Tim Binnall
An enormous animatronic dinosaur at a Kansas theme park is on the brink of extinction after a lightning strike sparked an inferno that reduced the piece of a giant, eerie skeleton. According to a local media report, the unfortunate incident occurred on Saturday evening at the Field Station: Dinosaurs family attraction in the community of Derby. As a storm swept over the area, a lightning bolt burst from the sky and struck the park's sauroposeidon dinosaur, a massive piece that stood three stories tall, measured approximately 100 feet long, and weighed a whopping sixty tons.
Alas, the piece's prodigious size only served to add literal fuel to the fire that consumed the 'creature' after it had been struck by the lightning bolt. Fortunately, the Derby Fire Department was able to contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading to any of the other dinosaurs at the park in what they noted would have been an "extinction-level event." When the proverbial dust settled and the fire was finally cleared a few hours later, all that was left of the once-mighty sauroposeidon was a somewhat spooky-looking skeleton.
While park operations manager Steven Howe expressed understandable dismay at the loss of the iconic piece, he noted that there could be a silver lining to the situation as "a lot of people want to pay their respects, if you will, to the sauroposeidon." Similarly, the considerable media coverage of the strange fire has undoubtedly raised awareness about the attraction heading into the summer tourism season. To that end, a visitor to the park on Sunday revealed, "I didn’t know much about this place until I saw the memes of it burning down. I learned it got struck by lightning, and I had to come check it out."