Jurassic playground

CAN SCIENCE ultimately answer the conundrum of human

existence? Who are we? Where did we come from? How did we

come to be? Why are we here? After all, it was science that

inspired the poet Ian D. Bush to pen: "Twinkle, twinkle little

star/I don't wonder what you are,/For by spectroscopic ken,/I

know that you are hydrogen."

The ongoing exhibit at 3/L SM Southmall called "Missing

Links-Alive!" may not provide answers to endless philosophical

questions, but it paints a vivid picture of what life on earth was

like four million years ago. No, it's not artwork culled from an

artist's imagination. It is artwork aided by the latest

animatronics, based on actual fossils and scientific facts to

educate and entertain visitors. Twenty-five leading scientists

around the globe have participated in developing this exhibit to

give viewers an accurate detail of human origins.

"We call this edutainment," says Jim Levesque, manager of

International Business Development, of the latest method to

keep people informed, and interested, on practically anything.

Levesque is here in Manila with electrical technician Andrew

Stephens and animator-mechanical designer Michael Magnant,

two of Advanced Animations' staff, the organizers of the

exhibit.

"Missing Links-Alive!" is in the country to launch its Asian

premiere, with Primetrade Asia Inc. as tour manager. The group

has toured Europe, opening at Cologne, Germany in May 1996,

and has already traveled in the Americas. The exhibit will be on

view in Manila until Oct. 15 and will move to Cebu in November.

Negotiations are currently underway to mount the exhibit at

Glorietta, Makati City next year before it proceeds to Singapore

and Hong Kong.

Expensive show

Levesque is mum when asked how much it cost to mount the

exhibit in the country, but says it would cost $2 million to buy

the show. Other works of Advanced Animations, one of the

world's providers of high-tech entertainment, can be seen at

Universal Studios' Terminator 2 cyborg robots. Its animated

figures can be seen at E.T. Adventure in Florida and Hollywood

and the Men in Black Dark Ride. They have also created a

three-story animated Clocktower for FAO Schwarz.

"It's easier to create [an animatronic] for the movies because

they'll only need it for a short period of time. With exhibits,

however, you have to keep it working every day for a

considerably longer period," Stephens says. It took the team 10

days to have the exhibit ready, utilizing the local labor force-and

not without its share of technical problems. "If there were no

problems, I wouldn't have a job," Stephens smiles.

Call it a natural history museum, if you wish, but this exhibit

offers more than just your typical look-and-read exhibit. For

starters, it features over 30 life-size and lifelike animatronic

figures in realistic dioramas that trace the origins of man. Backed

up by the interplay of lights and sound as special effects, with

the actual scientist who discovered the fossils narrating the

story on a wide TV screen, the dioramas are like virtual time

machines that bring to life Darwin's frightening paradigm of

survival of the fittest.

There's the australopithecine that dates back to 4.1 to one

million years ago. Lest you think this hominid once inhabited

the rocky mountains and deserts of Australia, it was really

found in Southeast Africa, thus the genus name

australopithecus, meaning "southern ape." It had brain size

similar to a chimpanzee. As it was likely to live in the trees than

open countries, the diorama mirrors an exotic jungle, with a

man-ape pounding a nut with his rock-like tool, his forehead

shimmering from "perspiration." Up on a rock, behind a tree and

hanging leaves, is a woman-ape swaying her leg as she nurses

her child. Believed to be preys than predators, two hominids are

shown driving away two snarling hyenas (with just frail sticks,

good lord!) after one of their own has fallen from its claws.

'Upright man'

Another diorama features the homo erectus, the "upright man,"

one of the variety of the genus homo dating 1.8 million to

300,000 years ago. It was found to have two-thirds the brain size

of a modern man with pubic hair that was amazingly long. Long

enough to spoil our curiosity and denying our preying eyes a

view on how a man's, er, "thing," might have evolved. (We later

learned it has been intentionally made longer-the hair-for the

Philippine tour to obscure the sensitive part and avoid

offending the "conservative" among us.) The homo erectus was

the first to leave Africa, spreading toward Asia and Europe.

Though it belongs to the homo ("man") genus, Dr. Alan Walker,

the narrator, cautions on calling this hominids "man," as it was

more like an animal in mental capabilities: "… An 11-year-old

boy with a body of a 15-year-old and a brain of a 1-year-old…"