Mark Cuban’s Jurassic Park is extinct

The Dallas Mavericks owner is holding his horses – or dinosaurs, to be precise.

Less than a year after Mark Cuban bought the town of Mustang in Navarro County, he said he’s no longer planning to use it for animatronic versions of the prehistoric beasts, WFAA reported. Cuban had mulled the plan in a March interview on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” when he said the town’s future would be “Shark Tank”-related and referenced his investment in a venture by a man named Dino Dan who makes lifelike dinosaurs for zoos.

“No,” Cuban told WFAA in an email. “I told Drew it was something we were looking at… but it’s not going to happen. That show was taped a long time ago.”

The entrepreneur bought the 77-acre town in northeastern Texas for about $2 million in December 2021. At the time, the most recent U.S. census had Mustang’s population at zero. Cuban didn’t lean into a horse-related gimmick, telling Barrymore he wanted to change the name to Dinosaur.

“One of my buddies I’ve played pickup basketball with got cancer and was close to dying and his only real asset was this town, Mustang, Texas,” Cuban told Barrymore on the show. “I was like, ‘Well, I can help Marty. I could buy this town.’ And so I bought this town. It was a cool concept right? It’s the only town in all of the state of Texas that is available for sale.”

WFAA visited Mustang after the interview was posted online last month. All it found was “two vacant buildings, including a former adult entertainment venue.”

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