Paleontologist Reviews Jurassic Park Scenes

Vanity Fair

Take a look back at paleontologist Mark Loewen reviewing dinosaur scenes from 'Jurassic Park' films. How accurate were 'Jurassic Park,' 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park,' 'Jurassic World,' and 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' when it comes to depicting dinosaurs on the big screen?

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name's Mark Lowen.

00:01I'm a paleontologist at the University of Utah

00:04and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

00:06I love watching movies.

00:08I love dinosaurs.

00:09I especially love dinosaur movies.

00:11Jurassic Park, 1993.

00:23So the question is, did dinosaurs make sounds?

00:26Of course they did.

00:27Are the sounds at Jurassic Park realistic?

00:29Mmm, sure.

00:31Animals like T-Rex had huge resonating chambers.

00:34They had air sacs throughout their neck,

00:36into their lungs, throughout their belly.

00:39This would have been part of the sound board

00:42that brings the sound out on T-Rex.

00:44The kind of sound that would stop your heart for a second.

00:52Don't move.

00:53You can't see us if we don't move.

00:59The actual paleontologist who was the character study for Dr. Alan Grant, and also an advisor on the film, was Dr. Jack Horner.

01:10Jack Horner came up with the idea that the olfactory portion of the brain is relatively bigger than it is in other dinosaurs.

01:17So people started saying T-Rex had a really good sense of smell, therefore T-Rex was a scavenger.

01:24And then this went further to now T-Rex can't see very well.

01:28It just follows its nose around.

01:29T-Rex had three-dimensional binocular vision.

01:32T-Rex had an overlapping field of view of about 60 degrees, which is more than something like a hawk today.

01:39We know that animals with binocular vision today are hunters.

01:43We know that T-Rex could see quite well.

01:45Dr. Alan Grant bet his life and probably would have lost it in that situation.

01:51Look, stick. See stick? See stick?

01:53Yeah!

01:54No wonder you're extinct.

02:03One of the interesting things about Dilophosaurus is they made it smaller than it really is.

02:09It's really about 25 to 30 feet long, but that's only one of the real complaints.

02:15This is the worst dinosaur probably in the entire Jurassic Park franchise.

02:20We have absolutely no evidence of that neck frill that came out of Dilophosaurus.

02:28At the same time, there are modern animals like the lizard that has that, but we should actually

02:34be able to identify that in a dinosaur.

02:36So that would be pure speculation.

02:38The real artistic license is in the idea that they're depicting Dilophosaurus as venomous.

02:44But how is it getting that venom from inside of its body outside onto Nedry?

02:52Now, animals that spit venom, they have hollow teeth that actually have poison glands connected

02:58to the top of that hollow tooth and it can inject the poison into that tooth under pressure to shoot

03:05it out. Dilophosaurus did not have hollow teeth.

03:08We have absolutely no evidence that any dinosaur was venomous, much less that any dinosaur could spit

03:15that venom. Dilophosaurus is literally the worst dinosaur in the Jurassic Park franchise.

03:23Jurassic World 2015.

03:26Oh, you're fired. Do not fire.

03:30Stand down.

03:33Delta. I see you. Back up.

03:35Good. Good.

03:40Charlie.

03:40The main problem, its size.

03:43We actually have exquisite fossils of Velociraptor and this is what its skull looks like.

03:48In fact, if you had maybe a pair of work boots and a stick, you could probably fend off this dinosaur.

03:54This is the sickle claw of Velociraptor. It's sharp and it would have had fingernail covering that

03:59would have made it even longer and sharper. But at the same time, it's not the size of the dinosaurs

04:05in Jurassic Park. This sickle claw was found right here in Utah. This is actually the sickle claw for

04:11Utahraptor. And Utahraptor is the size of the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park. One of the things

04:19about Velociraptor is we never find them together. So we don't know that Velociraptors ran in packs.

04:26We actually know that Velociraptor was covered with feathers. The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park

04:31don't have feathers because they weren't known at the time the movie came out. The Lost World, 1997.

04:47One of our problems as paleontologists with this is the size of the Stegosaurs.

04:53These are absolutely huge. Stegosaurs got big, but they did not have nine foot long spikes at the end

05:00of their tail. So the plates on the back of Stegosaurus, the debate has been, what are those for?

05:05Are they for display? Are they for protection? Are they for thermal regulation? Are the animals pumping

05:13blood into the plates to use them as a giant radiator? When we look at the entire family of

05:18Stegosaurus, not all of them have plates. This would actually argue against them being used for

05:24thermal regulation. But almost certainly to me, the plates on a Stegosaurus are for the same reason

05:30that your cat, when it gets frightened, will stand sideways, puff up its fur, and look bigger.

05:36It's a way for Stegosaurus to say, I'm too scary. I'm bigger than you even think I am.

05:42You probably don't want to mess with me and try to eat me.

05:53So the baby Stegosaurus has really got some weird proportions. They got the fact right

05:58that it does have a big eye, but it also has some weird upturned snout to look like a puppy.

06:03We don't have any ideas Stegosaurus ontogeny would be any different than how most of the armored

06:10dinosaurs grew up. The fact that you're changing the angle of the roof of your skull is almost

06:14certainly not plausible. We do have some baby Stegosaurus out there. One that actually would

06:19be about the size of a German Shepherd. Super cute. You'd want to meet it in a petting zoo.

06:24But at the same time, some of the things that they're doing in this reconstruction are not

06:29legitimate.

06:38Stegosaurus would have to actually break its tail to actually turn its tail spikes downward like that.

06:45Lateral movements with their spikes are possible, but a downward motion like that is not. The absolute

06:50largest Stegosaurus spike is right about two and a half to three feet long. Having the spikes that

06:58we're showing in some views of these animals where the spikes are this long, that's a bit much.

07:03Really, this is a trend that we see in the Jurassic Park franchise. If there's a chance to make it just

07:08a little bit bigger and therefore scarier, we're going to do that. Jurassic Park 3, 2001.

07:20Spinosaurus has for a long time been competing with Tyrannosaurus rex for the longest meat-eating

07:36dinosaur of all time. The skull of Spinosaurus was probably a couple of inches longer than the skull

07:43of T-Rex. The body almost certainly was about five feet longer than the body of T-Rex. T-Rex outweighed

07:51Spinosaurus by a large amount. Recently, new specimens have come out and they've redrawn this

07:58picture of what Spinosaurus looks like. Spinosaurus was much closer to a shape that looked like this.

08:04With a big long swimming adapted tail and relatively short limbs, this animal is adapted for living in the

08:11shallow oceans and eating fish. So this animal is an aquatic hunter. It's not going to live in the

08:17same environment as T-Rex.

08:31There's not enough muscle on Spinosaurus to break the neck of T-Rex. We have skulls that are more complete

08:38and the skulls are very narrow with sharp conical teeth, very well adapted for eating things like

08:43fish. The skull of Spinosaurus is only on the order of four to five inches wide. Whereas T-Rex,

08:50which would have been almost two and a half feet wide, the bite of T-Rex would have crushed

08:55Spinosaurus's skull in a single bite. This would have not been a good match for T-Rex on the land.

09:02Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom 2018 What I really like in this clip is the

09:19volcanic eruption. You can see the beginnings of the pyroclastic flow that's going to destroy

09:24the island. You see volcanic bombs flying through the air. We get some interesting dinosaurs that we

09:29hadn't seen much of before. Cynoceratops, that's a different story. Cynoceratops has way too big of

09:36a nose horn and it's got some weird things going on on the back of its skull to the point where I

09:41almost didn't recognize it. This dinosaur is famous because it's the only true horned

09:47dinosaurs related to Triceratops that actually has been found in Asia. We think it's a North American

09:53animal that walked over to Asia to live there towards the end of the Cretaceous.

10:04Carnotaurus. This is an animal that's closely related to Ceratosaurus and it's actually quite

10:10well rendered. We actually have skin from across the body, on the tail, and on the face of Carnotaurus.

10:17This is one of the best rendered dinosaurs as far as what it actually looked like in real life.

10:22Carnotaurus, which is from Argentina, never met a Ceratopsian dinosaur in its entire life. It should

10:29have been frightened and amazed by the size of its head and probably just run away. But it's

10:34interesting the way that Cynoceratops is using its frill to protect its neck. The whole head toss,

10:41Cynoceratops does not have a neck that is strong enough to full toss Carnotaurus over its shoulder,

10:47but I do love the look. Interesting stuff, but again, T-Rex wins as it would win against any dinosaur.

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