By Mac Bellingham
Jurassic Park is a beloved classic. Released in 1993, it quickly became a box office hit. Its plot follows the attraction ‘Jurassic Park’, an island where cloned dinosaurs roam about in their enclosures. But when a power cut means the dinosaurs, including a terrifying T-Rex roam free, a paleontologist needs to try and survive. It’s a fun film, and it sparked three movies, and a whole other franchise, Jurassic World.
But how does the actual science hold up? Are the dinosaurs an accurate depiction of how life was when they were still alive? That is the question we will explore today.
Obviously, some facts have been proven to be different nowadays compared to the 90s. New information has come out, more fossils discovered, so it is likely that lots of things do not hold up.
One such example of something that doesn’t hold up is the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor designs. In the film, the T-Rex is dark green bordering on brown, and is scaly like a lizard. This is also the case with the Veliciraptors. In reality, this isn’t true. The T-Rex and Velicoraptors were actually quite colourful, and were covered with feathers. This change was purposeful though. Steven Spielberg, the movie’s director, said that he purposefully presented these creatures like this, as he thought that ‘technicolour, feathered dinosaurs wouldn’t be scary enough.’
This seems to be a valid change. In this film, the sight of the T-Rex needs to spark fear in the audience. I doubt that something that looks like a large parrot would elicit that reaction.
Yet it isn’t just the T-Rex that doesn’t hold up. The most controversial difference from Jurassic Park to the real world is the Dilophosaurus, the dinosaur that is pictured to be around 5-6 feet tall and is able to spread its frill and shoot venom at things that threaten it.
In actuality, Dilophosaurus was up to 20 feet tall, without the ability to shoot venomous saliva, instead choosing to opt for powerful jaws to tear into its predators. It was the largest terrestrial dinosaur during the early Jurassic period. Like many other dinosaurs, it also had feathers instead of scales.
Another way the Jurassic Park franchise doesn’t hold up is when you think about how they create the dinosaurs in the first place. John Hammond, the owner of the park, manages to clone dinosaurs by finding their DNA in prehistoric mosquitoes. However, this wouldn’t have happened in real life. Dinosaur DNA wouldn’t have lasted for millions of years. Scientists have attempted to extract dinosaur DNA from feathers they found, but no such luck.
But what’s the big deal? Some dinosaurs weren’t as threatening as they were depicted. It’s not such a major problem.
But it does have an impact on the way society sees dinosaurs.
Most people reading this article don’t know that dinosaurs are multicoloured and feathery. This is due to the media portraying them in a more fearsome way, and Jurassic Park is an example of that. Not many films portray dinosaurs accurately, which can lead to misconceptions about them.
But it still holds up in numerous ways.
Many other dinosaur movies from that time period didn’t portray dinosaur behaviour accurately. They were seen as huge monsters, instead of the animals they actually were. They also were depicted as dumb beasts, when in reality they were quite intelligent.
Jurassic Park was ahead of its time when it comes to general portrayals of dinosaurs. They are fast, large, and intelligent creatures. This is more accurate when it comes to their actual behaviour.
This movie has inspired many people to pursue the careers of paleontology, and spark lifelong interests in prehistoric creatures. If more people pursue careers in this, then it could result in more information being known about dinosaurs.
To sum up, this movie manages to balance itself out. What it lacks for in scientific accuracy, it makes up for in determination to show dinosaurs in a positive light, and passion for these creatures. Most importantly, the movie remains one of Hollywood’s best productions and it fulfills its primary goal, and is worth a watch.