The Science of Jurassic World: The Dinosaur Facts Behind the Films

Copyright © 2021 by Mark Brake & Jon Chase

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Daniel Brount

Cover photo by Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-6258-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6259-6

Printed in the United States of America

For Bryher, Eden, and Hallie

CONTENTS

Dinosaur Timeline

Introduction: How Did Jurassic Park Transform Dinosaur Science?

How Was Deep Time Discovered?

Why Didn’t All Dinosaurs Become Fossils?

How Does Amber Help Us Peer into The Past?

Does Life, Uh, Find a Way?

Was Dr. Alan Grant’s Job a Walk in the Park?

How Has Rapid Prototyping Tech Transformed Paleontology?

How Are Dinosaur Skeletons Reproduced in Museums?

How Many Dinosaur Species Are There?

How Did the Dinosaurs (Mostly) Die Out?

What Is the Smoking Gun for Dinosaur Extinction?

What Was the Great Dinosaur Rush?

Jurassic Backdrop: Continents and Tectonics

How Did Dinosaurs Get So Big?

What Predators Pose the Biggest Threat in the Jurassic Series?

How Do You Feed a Herd of Hungry Herbivores?

What’s with the Giant Dinosaur Poop?

Meet the Jurassic Family: At Home with the Tyrannosaurs

Was T. Rex King of the Jurassic World?

How Can We Know the Behavior of Extinct Animals?

How Did Dinosaurs Acquire Feathers?

Did Dinosaurs of a Feather Flock Together?

How Do You Train Your Velociraptor like Owen Grady?

How Did Dinosaurs Do the Deed?

Fallen Kingdom: How Would Trump’s America Deal with the Escaped Dinosaurs?

Was Mosasaurus the Greatest Sea Beast?

Should We Make a Real-Life Jurassic World?

Extinction: Will Humans Go the Way of the Dinosaurs?

Index

DINOSAUR TIMELINE

Dinosaur timeline showing all the dinosaurs of the movie franchise so far and when they existed

INTRODUCTION:HOW DID JURASSIC PARK TRANSFORM DINOSAUR SCIENCE?

"I think the first Jurassic Park was the best thing that’s ever happened to dinosaur paleontology. That led to an explosion of public interest in dinosaurs . . . and that led directly to a lot of museums putting out dinosaur exhibits. A lot of universities put out courses, and [there was] a lot more interest and money in the field. A lot of my colleagues got jobs specifically because of Jurassic Park, because a museum or university wanted to hire a paleontologist after that. So, I do think there is a really, really good chance I wouldn’t have my job today if the book was never written, if the movie was never made. I think dinosaur paleontology right now would still be a really niche discipline, with only a handful of people around the world studying it."

—Interview with paleontologist Steve Brusatte, The Verge (June 23, 2018)

Until twenty years ago dinosaurs were widely assumed to be large lumpen lizards that became extinct millions of years ago. Discoveries in China have since shown dramatically that many were fast and feathered and some survived the great extinctions and are the ancestors of our modern birds. The recently discovered Chinese fossils of feathered dinosaurs are so well-preserved, scientists can even work out the feathers’ color and where they were found on the dinosaurs’ bodies and theorize about their use for displays, insulation and, in some cases perhaps, flight. Even a large T. rex may have had downy feathers, and it appears the small velociraptors had long quill-like feathers arranged on arms that look like wings.

—BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: Feather Dinosaurs (2017)

An Iconic Dinosaur Movie

Jurassic Park was not the first science fiction to influence science, of course. To name but a few early influences: The submarine was invented in the imagination of Jules Verne’s 1870 book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The atomic bomb was conjured up by H. G. Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free. And NASA stole the 10-9-8-7-6 idea of the rocket countdown from Fritz Lang’s 1929 sci-fi film Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon). Over the years there have been many, many more.

But here’s the unique thing about the science fiction of Jurassic Park: It influenced the way in which science looks at the past, rather than the future. The evolution of the field of dinosaur science, how it has blossomed by bounds and branched out in recent years, has been thanks in no small part to Steven Spielberg’s iconic movie.

It all began in 1993. The year before had seen mostly mundane movies. But when Jurassic Park premiered on June 9 at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC, and on general release from June 11 in the United States, it went on to gross over $914 million worldwide in its original theatrical run. Jurassic Park became the highest-grossing movie of that year, and the highest-grossing film ever at the time, a record held until the 1997 release of Titanic. Following Jurassic Park’s three-dimensional (3D) re-release in 2013, in celebration of its twentieth anniversary, the dinosaur movie became only the seventeenth film in history to surpass the $1 billion ticket-taking sale total. Finally, in 2018, it was announced that Jurassic Park was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

And just look at the franchise Jurassic Park went on to spawn. Adjusted for inflation, Jurassic World is the seventh-highest-grossing movie franchise of all time (for more data see IMDB):

1. James Bond

2. Star Wars

3. Marvel Cinematic Universe

4. Harry Potter

5. The Lord of the Rings

6. Batman

7. Jurassic Park

8. Spider-Man

9. Pirates of the Caribbean

10. X-Men

Such statistics came with a cultural clout. Moviegoers the world over were seduced by the sight of the dinosaurs. Gone were the days of clunky stop-motion T. Rex versus Trike droll dinosaur battles to the death. In its place were stunning technical achievements in visual effects and sound design. Jurassic Park is still considered a landmark in the development of computer-generated imagery and animatronic visual effects. I vividly recall seeing the film for the first time. Sitting in movie theaters, many of us were struck by the realization of what the ongoing CGI revolution might mean for presenting science on the silver screen. The dinosaurs were created with groundbreaking CGI by Industrial Light & Magic, the American motion picture visual effects company founded in May 1975 by George Lucas. The dinosaurs looked jaw-dropping.

As a result, we shared in Dr. Alan Grant’s emotions as he first sees the brachiosaurus (I am happy to tell you it’s pronounced brake-ee-o-saw-rus) move across the screen with such towering elegance (even if its haunting call is actually the sound of a whale and a donkey). Fictional paleontologist Grant seems so gobsmacked by the CGI, which finally does justice to the science, that he merely utters, It’s a dinosaur! When John Hammond tells Grant that the Park also has a T. rex, Grant almost faints and barely recovers before we spy a herd of brachiosaurs and crested, duck-billed parasaurolophus at the lake. Later, Hammond declares of the Park’s dinosaurs, They’ll capture the imagination of the entire planet. And so, they did.

A New Generation of Dinosaur Hunters

Without Jurassic Park, many dinosaur hunters wouldn’t have a job. The movie led to an explosion in the public’s interest in dinosaurs. And soon, by extension, it led to a boom in people wanting to research dinosaur science. How did this renaissance happen? The movie created a brand-new image of dinosaurs for the emergent generation. Dinosaurs were now dynamic, lively, and intelligent creatures. The explosion of public interest meant a lot more museums created dinosaur exhibits. And there was a huge increase in the number of colleges and universities running dinosaur-related courses. And that meant more money for the field of dinosaur science.

Many professional scientists believe that, were it not for Jurassic Park, dinosaur paleontology would still be a niche discipline. There would probably be just a handful of people studying it, and not a very diverse group of people at that. The Jurassic Park franchise revolutionized the field, and scientists reaped the rewards because there were so many people around the world who were galvanized by the movie.

As a result of this revolution in dinosaur science, one of the great ironies is that the Jurassic Park films soon became out of date. The task of this book is to compare the fiction of the Jurassic films with the facts we have learned about dinosaur science since 1993.

Jurassic Thought Experiment

Jurassic Park was an amazing thought experiment. Scientists also use thought experiments. German genius Albert Einstein was famous for them. In his youth, he mentally chased beams of light. The technique led to his famous Relativity Theories. Jurassic Park was a testing ground for discussing the scientific and ethical challenges of bringing back the dinosaurs. To create a theme park, and to discover how dinosaurs from different times would interact. Because T. rex didn’t coexist with brachiosaurus. And neither of those two dinosaurs lived at the same time as Dilophosaurus or Velociraptor. Such creatures lived at different times, in different places, as we will discover later. But this is one of the things that makes Jurassic Park such a great thought experiment for science too. How would T. rex deal with the Velociraptor? How would these very different types of predators cope with a new and weird wilderness?

What’s the biggest flaw in the way the Jurassic Park thought experiment was pictured? Lack of feathers. Forget, for now, the genetics of bringing dinosaurs back to life. The one big omission in the film’s portrayal of its thought experiment is the absence of feathers on some of the dinosaurs, as we now know many dinosaurs were feathered. Jurassic Park did such a good job of picturing its CGI’d dinosaurs that most of the public would now probably find it weird to see these huge creatures feathered. Imagine being chased by a murder of feathered velociraptors. Because we know they had feathers. And we know they actually had wings. In my opinion, the fact that they actually looked like giant killer-birds makes them even more terrifying!

Dinosaurs Aren’t Just for Kids

Who is this book for? You’ve probably noticed that there are so many dinosaur books for children that a library’s worth of them would weigh the same as an Argentinosaurus. Sadly, there are comparatively few dinosaur books for adults. Especially popular science books aimed at the Jurassic franchise which, after all, is often the reason for a love of dinosaurs.

This book aims to right this wrong. We are, after all, living in a golden age of dinosaur science, a golden age of new dinosaur discoveries. It’s time this tale was told against a backdrop of one of the most successful film franchises of all time. And, whether or not you want to relate to a childhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs, you will hopefully learn why dinosaurs are so fascinating, what makes them topical still, and why it’s scientifically important to understand them.

So, read on, and experience the amazing story of the birth of the dinosaurs, how they evolved to world dominance, how some became gargantuan in size, how others grew wings and flew, and how the rest of them met an untimely end, at the peak of their dominance. It is a tale which paves the way for our modern world.

It’s also a tale of some of the most amazing creatures ever to grace this tiny planet. Their global dominion over nature is a story that stretches over 150 million years of deep time, and the evolution of fantastic creatures that does justice to some of cinema’s most incredible creations.

HOW WAS DEEP TIME DISCOVERED?

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them . . . What is 40 million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things . . . Such analogies hint at what deep time means—but they don’t get us there. ‘The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time,’ John McPhee once observed, ‘it may only be able to measure it.’

—Keith Meldahl, Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains (2011)

In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, much of the action takes place at Lockwood Manor. The Lockwood Estate, situated in Northern California, belongs to Sir Benjamin Lockwood, wealthy philanthropist and longtime friend and business partner of John Hammond. The grandest part of the Manor is its museum parlor, which is adorned with large dinosaur diorama displays, similar to Disneyland and real-world museums such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Many moons ago, the dinosaur discoveries in the Smithsonian were housed in a Lockwood-like room known superbly as the Hall of Extinct Monsters. Today, that same space is known as the Deep Time Hall. And the scientific discovery of deep time, as we shall now see, is a tale of such drama it’s well worth some kind of Steven Spielberg treatment.

The Great Chain of Being

The story starts in the medieval Age of Faith. This was a time when it was thought all things were created by some god, or gods, above. Just as a typical medieval town was walled-in, so was the medieval universe. A walled-in cosmos, bounded between Heaven and Earth, closed to the ravages of change and time. It was a fully connected cosmos, from the realm of God beyond the stars, through the nested planets carried along on spheres of crystalline perfection, and down to the dark and lowly corruptible Earth at the center.

This old universe was an ornate pageant of divine creation, known as the Great Chain of Being. Within the broad boundaries of this cosmos sat a cornucopia of creation: an infinite procession of links, stretching from God above down to the lowliest form of life. This scale of being, or scala naturae, was a strict hierarchical system, ranging from the highest perfection of the unchanging Spirit, who sat at the top of the chain, down to the fallibility of flesh at the core, mutable and corruptible Man.

Every creature and object had a place in this great scheme of things. And each place was determined in a rather anthropocentric way, often according to its utility to humans. For example, wild beasts were superior to domestic ones, since they resisted training. Useful creatures, such as horses and dogs, were better than docile ones, such as sheep. Easily taught birds of prey were superior to lowlier birds, such as pigeons. Edible fish were higher up the totem pole than more dubious and inedible sea creatures.

Even aesthetics came into it. Beautiful creatures such as dragonflies and ladybirds were considered more worthy of God’s glory than unpleasant insects such as flies and, no doubt, dung beetles. The poor snake languished at the very bottom of the animal segment, relegated as punishment for the serpent’s actions in the Garden of Eden. Some aspects of the Chain persist in popular culture today: the lion is still considered king of all existing creatures, the T. rex king of the extinct dinosaurs.

This explains a memorable scene in the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom where a lion faces off against a T. rex. This famous moment is symbolically saying that the T. rex is taking its place as the true king, roaring at the lion in a declaration of dominance. Within the movie, thanks to the science of genetics, the Great Chain of Being has been rewritten.

Limits in Space and Time

Historically, the Great Chain was, in part, a theory of biology, a theory of the generation of sentient and vegetative creatures. As such, it was a hugely influential idea, until it was eclipsed by the theory of evolution many centuries later. But medieval notions of history left little room for the concept of evolution. The Christian sweep of time was a mere bite-size history, one that began in Genesis and ended in Revelation.

Nonetheless, Church scholars wanted to get a temporal grip on their history. How long ago had God created all this wonder? They began to add up the begats, the long procession of scriptural births and deaths found in the Christian Bible. The fashion for doing so started with Eusebius, Chairman of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Eusebius claimed that 3,184 years had elapsed between Adam and Abraham. Medieval German astronomer Johannes Kepler caught the dating bug and estimated the date of Creation at about 3993 BC. Even world-famous physicist Isaac Newton followed suit, putting the date at 3998 BC.

This rather dodgy method was raised to an art form by the seventeenth-century bishop of Armagh, James Ussher. He declared in 1658 that, The beginning of time, according to our chronology . . . fell upon the entrance of night preceding the 23rd day of October, in the year of the Julian calendar, 710. That’s 4004 BC to you and me. There is no doubt that some still believe such twaddle to be true. But the age-dating techniques of these Christian chronologists did have some lasting worth, it seems. They unconsciously paved the way for more scientific inquiries about the genuine extent of the past.

Learning to Read the Rocks

Science began to bury the Age of Faith. By the end of the 1700s, humans had made a start in securing their dominion over nature. Newton’s system of the world rang out in the clanging new workshops of the world. The steam engine drove locomotives along their metal tracks. The first steamships crossed the great Atlantic. Transport magnates built bridges and roads. Telegraphs ticked intel from station to station. Cotton works glowed by gas. And a clamorous arc of iron foundries and coal mines powered this Industrial Revolution.

Speculation about planet Earth and its fossils grew steadily in the eighteenth century, along with a fascination for the natural world. And the new disciplines of geology and biology began to locate humanity’s place in the depths of time, just as astronomy had charted our new position in cosmic space.

In developing industrial nations, such as Britain and Germany, engineers could open up the veins of the Earth deeper than ever before. Budding field geologists oversaw the excavation of strata, laid down over hundreds of millions of years of planetary history, as yet an untold story. The geologists soon learned how to read the rocks. As French naturalist George Louis Leclerc explained in 1778:

Just as in civil history we consult warrants, study medallions, and decipher ancient inscriptions, in order to determine the epochs of the human revolutions and fix the dates of moral events, so in natural history one must dig through the archives of the world, extract ancient relics from the bowels of the earth, [and] gather together their fragments . . . This is the only way of fixing certain points in the immensity of space, and of placing a number of milestones on the eternal path of time.

The Fossil Record

The geologists began to learn the language of the stones and started to decode nature’s cipher. And with this understanding they amassed evidence of the long history of planet Earth. Take the English geologist William Smith, for example. Smith was consulting engineer for the Somersetshire Coal Canal. In 1793 he noted that the same strata were usually found in the same order and contained the same fossils. And so it was that the geologists realized the world’s natural history could be gleaned from the fossil sequence hidden within the rocks.

But this soon spelled trouble for unsuspecting scientists. The fossil record started to churn out signatures of beasts no longer found on planet Earth. The evidence flew in the face of biblical accounts of natural history. What was worse, many of these beasts had no living counterparts. That was a problem for the faithful. They derived their Earth history from Genesis, along with the belief that all animate creation was born at the same time and that none such had become extinct.

Look Out for the Woolly Mammoth!

The Church fathers were far from convinced by the growing evidence in the fossil record. Give our lord God time, they suggested. Soon enough, His divine essence would ensure that living and breathing specimens of all assumed-dead species will materialize. Maybe in far-off lands to which the beasts had roamed in the years since the strata were formed. American President Thomas Jefferson was one such evangelist. Jefferson urged pioneers heading west to look out for the woolly mammoth. A pious but deluded naturalist even reported having heard one trumpeting through the dark forests of Virginia.

And yet the death roll of extinction grew. French zoologist George Cuvier helped found the science of paleontology. By 1801, Cuvier had identified twenty-three extinct species in the fossil record. The word extinction found a place in the lexicon of science, and also started to ring out in churches and