New Raptor Fossils Make Jurassic Park’s Dinosaur Even Less Accurate

[Nergal]

 

 

New research on raptor fossils has indicated that Jurassic Park is even more inaccurate than previously believed. The franchise marches on nonetheless, with Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World: Dominion set to release June 11, 2021. Dubious science hasn't hurt the movies at the box office, either, as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide.

But even though Steven Spielberg's original holds up as a visual effects landmark that spawned one of the most successful modern franchises, hard science continues to poke holes in the way dinosaurs are portrayed in the 1993 classic. A group of researchers has released new research that exposes the latest flaw in Jurassic Park's attempts at scientific accuracy.

Popular Mechanics reports that a paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology reveals new findings about velociraptors based on fossil research. Their findings conclude that it was unlikely raptors hunted in packs - rendering the raptors' best scenes in Jurassic Park as highly inaccurate. It also damages the veracity of the velociraptor pack in Jurassic World. Paper author Joseph Frederickson posited that raptors likely hunted on their own because "living dinosaurs (birds) and their relatives (crocodilians) do not usually hunt in groups and rarely ever hunt prey larger than themselves."


Scientists used "stable isotope analysis" to research fossils for the Deinonychus antirrhopus, a raptor from the early Cretaceous period. Stable isotopes don't decay over time, making them very useful in archaeology and paleontology. The Deinonychus antirrhopus is different from the velociraptor, but also bears a closer resemblance to the raptors portrayed in Jurassic Park. And yet the teeth of older and younger raptors in the study had different carbon isotope levels, meaning they had different diets. Thus, the researchers concluded that parents weren't feeding their young, meaning the raptors weren't hunting together.

The raptors are arguably the scariest monsters in Jurassic Park. Everyone remembers when they stalked and murdered Robert Muldoon ("Clever girl...") and hunted young Tim and Lex in the kitchen. Dr. Grant even describes a coordinated team attack in an early scene. So there's now plenty of memorable raptor moments in Jurassic Park that, if you go by the new research, are pure fantasy.

But then, the same can be said about about the entire movie seeing as it's about creatures that lived 65 million years ago existing in modern times. Sound crews mixed dolphins, geese, and other animals in order to make the noises for their velociraptors. Meanwhile, real velociraptors likely looked more like turkeys with feathers and had smaller bodies. And that's just one thing Jurassic Park got wrong about dinosaurs. But it should be easy for a timeless piece of cinema to coexist with real-life scientific progress. There are a lot of interesting facts about velociraptors that don't need to be in every movie. Jurassic Park is both iconic and scientifically flawed, and both can be true.

Jurassic World 3 (2021)
Release Date: Jun 11, 2021

 

[CGTitan]

Um, I think there was a scene in Jurassic World, where they comment that the dinosaurs cloned aren't meant to be taken as scientifically accurate. Only appearing as they are to showcase what people believed they envisioned. It's genetic manipulation people!