A recent discovery, as of writing, has once again changed how we view the large, carnivorous dinosaur Spinosaurus. Every new discovery revolutionises how we see this dinosaur, and truly shows how diverse dinosaurs were as a group. While fairly accurate for its time of release, Jurassic Park III boasted that they were showing a carnivore larger than Tyrannosaurus, but since then new discoveries have completely changed how we see Spinosaurus. A new discovery could mean this blog could become quickly outdated. I also want to stress, the recent paper is still somewhat contested so bare that in mind while reading today.
Discovery and Fossils
Saying that Spinosaurus changed with each discovery is an understatement. The first fossils of Spinosaurus were discovered in the Bahariya Formation in Egypt in 1912, and was later formally described by German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer. He could tell from the fragmentary remains that it was a theropod, the bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs, but it had curious neural spines which formed a sail on its back. Due to this, Stromer named it Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, 'Spined Lizard from Egypt', and with the fragmentary remains he based the reconstruction on another, recently discovered, big theropod - Tyrannosaurus. Spinosaurus was reconstructed as being like a T rex with a sail on its back, but scientific knowledge of the 1910s meant that it was portrayed as dragging its tail along the ground. Stromer would discover many other dinosaurs from Egypt, but they are all sadly lost. An Allied bombing raid in 1944 destroyed the museum which kept Stromer's fossils, and the specimens were destroyed. As a result, a new reconstruction wasn't made until the 1990s! With the destruction of Stromer's specimens palaeontologists found it hard to identify which fossils belonged to Spinosaurus, however, new discoveries and other spinosaurids being found, such as the Baryonyx from England, allowed a new reconstruction. This one changed the skull from resembling a tyrannosaur, to the one we have today with an elongated jaw - this is the reconstruction used in Jurassic Park III. In 1996 a new find from Morocco indicated a possible second species, but that it still heavily debated with palaeontologists debating whether it is the same species as the first one discovered. Then, in the mid-2000s, it was discovered to have a small crest on its head, and in the late-2000s a well-preserved snout revealed a series of nerves. Isotope analysis, mixed with this, indicated that Spinosaurus was largely a fish eater - something long theorised which was now confirmed.
From 1915 to 2014 to 2020, from National Geographic
A 2014 paper, led by Nizar Ibrahim revolutionised how Spinosaurus has been reconstructed. This paper made the dinosaur a quadruped, semi-aquatic, and had a newly shaped sail, which was likely covered in some skin. This caused waves in the palaeontological community, albeit for some controversial reasons. Many agreed that Ibrahim's reconstruction, which utilised 3D modelling, offered a new insight into the life of Spinosaurus - palaeontologists had realised that it was top-heavy, but a quadrupedal lifestyle would solve that issue. However, as Ibrahim had combined several specimens together it was criticised, and the reconstruction shortened the hind legs of the Spinosaurus. It was seen as being a combination, and not an actual specimen, and the now shorter hind legs created issues with other spinosaurids. Baryonyx and Suchomimus, for example, had much longer hind legs, although the only specimens of these animals were juveniles. Others have theorised that younger spinosaurids had longer legs which ceased to grow at the same rate as the rest of the body as the animal aged. This brings us to 2020. Ibrahim and his team had discovered more tail bones of a Spinosaurus, something which had not been found before. Neural spines and chevrons were found on the tail, these spines were long, and did not overlap allowing flexibility. This means that the tail was adapted to an aquatic lifestyle - it has a resemblance to a crocodile's tail. Spinosaurus had gone from a sailed bipedal lizard which dragged its tail on the ground, to a fish-eating, aquatic or semi-aquatic dinosaur.
Biology
The spines at the National Geographic Museum
We've largely looked at the biology of the Spinosaurus in the discussion about the fossils discovered, so we'll go over it quickly here. The most iconic aspect of Spinosaurus is its 'sail'. Since the early-2000s it has been debated whether it was a sail or a hump - something which would heavily determine what type of lifestyle the Spinosaurus had. One theory, which is widely accepted regardless of whether it was a hump or sail, is that it could be used for display - bright and intimidating colours, including the sheer size of it, could be used to deter rivals or attract mates. When it was more accepted that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, a theory argued that the sail could be used for thermoregulation with the Spinosaurus basking in the sun to warm itself up. However, it has largely been found that dinosaurs, especially larger dinosaurs, were more warm-blooded than cold, with them likely being somewhere in-between. Consequently, this theory has largely gone out of favour. The hump theory argues that it is a fatty buildup to sustain the dinosaur while it was searching for new food reserves. Since 2014, it has generally been seen as some form of 'sail' with skin covering it. With recent discoveries revealing an increasingly aquatic lifestyle, a likely function was to aid in locomotion. Ibrahim's findings have revealed a much more streamlined animal making it more aerodynamic to cut through the water. The 'sail' would serve as a way to cut through the water more efficiently.
The new tail, from National Geographic
The new paper is still being debated - Mark Witton, for example, has argued that the tail bones may not be entirely suited to an aquatic lifestyle. However, we do see a lifestyle mostly suited for the water, maybe a semi-aquatic one like a crocodile. Ibrahim has reconstructed the dinosaur with webbed feet, for example. Before 2014 it was assumed to be a terrestrial animal which fed on fish - the long snout with crocodile-like teeth was suited to grabbing hold of fish, it had strong forearms to swipe at its prey, and its skull seemed adapted to standing for long-hours at the waterside. The BBC documentary Planet Dinosaur, for example, used this idea. This theory had Spinosaurus hunting like a heron or stork, largely based on the skull. The eyes and nostrils are high up the head while the snout was covered in nerves and receptors. The snout could be in the water to detect movement, while the nostrils and eyes could be out of the water, so it could see what it was hunting and it could still breathe. However, the recent discoveries has changed how this would work. Instead, Spinosaurus would hunt like a crocodilian - using its sensitive snout to find fish and turtles through the murky waters. With the nostrils and eyes high up the head, this would allow the Spinosaurus to poke its head out of the water while remaining submerged. The new shorter hind legs is part of the aquatic lifestyle - short but muscular to give propulsion to power the dinosaur through the water.
Finally, we have the size of the Spinosaurus itself. Until relatively recently many of the established sizes were estimates. Even today, the size of the Spinosaurus is still based on estimates. Back when Spinosaurus was thought to be bipedal estimates placed the dinosaur at over 4 metres in height (discounting its sail), but the recent findings have placed this as being around 3 metres (again discounting the sail). The original height placed it as being one of the most, if not the most, tallest carnivorous dinosaurs - taller than the Tyrannosaurus. Spinosaurus is still very big coming to a minimum length of 15 metres (about 49 foot), and its largest length is estimated to be around 18 metres (59 foot). Its skull was big coming to around 1.75 metres (5.7 foot) from snout to the back of the skull. It was full of teeth evolved to grasp hold of fish, these teeth could be over an inch in length.
When and Where
Unfortunately for Jurassic Park III fans, Spinosaurus would never have met Tyrannosaurus. Not only is it found in an entirely different continent, but it lived several million years before the Tyrannosaurus came about. Tyrannosaurus evolved at the very end of the Cretaceous period being one of the last dinosaurs, whereas Spinosaurus lived in the early Cretaceous until the late Cretaceous. The oldest fossils date around 112 million years ago, and the most recent fossils have been dated to around 93 million years ago. This was a time when large, carnivorous dinosaurs became very diverse. There were the spinosaurids, abelisaurids, tyrannosaurids, carcharodontasaurids to name a few. Spinosaurus, meanwhile, lived in two areas - the Bahariya Formation in Egypt and the Kem Kem Beds in Morocco. As a result, both species are named in reference to where they have been found: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus and Spinosaurus maroccanus. However, as mentioned earlier, there have been debates about whether the Moroccan species is actually the Egyptian species.
Knowing that Spinosaurus was aquatic, or semi-aquatic, you may be wondering why the Spinosaurus lived in the arid regions of North Africa. However, back in the Cretaceous North Africa was a shoreline and a mangrove forest creating the perfect environment for a giant, crocodile-like dinosaur. Both sites where the dinosaur has been found are full of a diverse range of fish and aquatic life - sharks, sawfish, coelacanths, lung fish, ammonites, crabs, oysters, rays, and crocodiles. A mangrove swamp full of life with access to the sea proved to be the perfect habitat for the Spinosaurus. Other dinosaurs lived in the region including the giant sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs) Paralititan and Aegyptosaurus. However, the Bahariya Formation and Kem Kem Beds were full of giant carnivorous dinosaurs - these places have been described as possibly the most dangerous places to go on safari in history. Possibly the largest carnivorous dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus were found here, as well as many other big carnivores like Deltadromeus and Rugops being just the most well known. With so many carnivores around it is evident that they had to specialise to avoid competition, Spinosaurus could happily hunt the waves to avoid contact with a hungry Carcharodontosaurus. This does not mean there were overlaps in prey. The spinosaurid Baryonyx has been found to have preyed upon the herbivorous Iguanodon, so it is not too far-fetched that the Spinosaurus could prey on dinosaurs which went too close to the shoreline. Neural spines have been found with chunks taken out of them by a large carnivore, likely Carcharodontosaurus, indicating that at times clashes could have happened.
The sources I have used are as follows:
-Michael Greshko, 'Bizarre Spinosaurus makes history as first known swimming dinosaur', National Geographic, (29/04/2020), [Accesed 08/05/2020]
-Jason Treat and Mesa Schumacher, 'Reconstructing a Gigantic Aquatic Predator', National Geographic, (29/04/2020), [Accessed 08/05/2020]
-Ben G Thomas, 'The New Look of Spinosaurus', YouTube, (03/05/2020), [Accessed 08/05/2020]
-Trey the Explainer, '"New" Spinosaurus', YouTube, (30/05/2015), [Accessed 08/05/2020]
-Nizar Ibrahim, Simone Maganuco, Cristiano Dal Sasso, Matteo Fabbri, Marco Auditore, Gabriele Bindellini, David M. Martill, Samir Zouhri, Diego A. Mattarelli, David M. Unwin, Jasmina Wiemann, Davide Bonadonna, Ayoub Amane, Juliana Jakubczak, Ulrich Joger, George V. Lauder & Stephanie E. Pierce, 'Tail-propelled aquatic locomotion in a theropod dinosaur', Nature, 581, (2020), 67-70
-Nizar Ibrahim1, Paul C. Sereno, Cristiano Dal Sasso, Simone Maganuco, Matteo Fabbri, David M. Martill, Samir Zouhri, Nathan Myhrvold, and Dawid A. Iurino, 'Semiaquatic adaptations in a giant predatory dinosaur', Science, 345:6204, (2014), 1613-1616
-Thomas Holtz, 'Spinosaurs as crocodile mimics', Science, 282:5392, (1998), 1276-1277
-Simone Maganuco and Cristiano Dal Sasso, 'The smallest biggest theropod dinosaur: a tiny pedal ungual of a juvenile Spinosaurus from the Cretaceous of Morocco', PeerJ, (2018), 6
-Jan Gimsa, Robert Sleigh, and Ulrike Gimsa, 'The riddle of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus’ dorsal sail', Geological Magazine, 153:3, (2016), 544-547
-Planet Dinosaur, (2011), BBC, 14 September
Thank you for reading. For other Paleo Profiles we have a list here, and for other blog posts we have a Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
The reconstructed holotype at the Royal Ontario Museum
One of the most iconic dinosaurs from Jurassic Park is the crested Dilophosaurus which blinded and ate the hapless Dennis Nedry in one of the most iconic scenes of the movie. The Jurassic Park version of the Dilophosaurus has gone on to inspire recreations of the dinosaur in popular media, ranging from toys to video games. However, the real Dilophosaurus was fairly different from its Hollywood counterpart.
Discovery and Fossils
The Dilophosaurus was first discovered in 1942 by American palaeontologist Charles Camp, who was on an expedition to find vertebrate fossils in northern Arizona. In the Kayenta Formation, guided by local Navajo, the expedition found three dinosaur skeletons. While two were very eroded, the first one they found was almost complete. As always with fossils, there was a large gap in time between initial discovery and description, and the dinosaur was not named until 1954 by palaeontologist Samuel P. Welles. However, he believed that the new dinosaur was a species of an already discovered dinosaur called Megalosaurus, which was actually the first discovered/named dinosaur. Welles named the fossil Megalosaurus wetherelli after a Navajo councillor whose nephew had help discover the fossil, and who had helped the expedition himself. Megalosaurus has been seen as a 'wastebasket taxon' - a taxon where organisms don't seem to fit anywhere else are put in there. In 1964 Welles returned to the Kayenta Formation to find more fossils, and he found another near complete skeleton where the three earlier ones had found. What he found made him realise that Megalosaurus wetherelli was not as they initially thought. The skull of the new discovery had crests, and the dinosaur was overall larger than the earlier finds. Upon re-examining the holotype Welles realised that the crests had become dislodged from the skull, so he had the dinosaur renamed to Dilophosaurus wetherelli - 'Two-crested Lizard'. New fossils were found and in 1987 a near complete skeleton was discovered in Lufeng Province, China, and a few years later named Dilophosaurus sinensis. It was later discovered to not be actually a Dilophosaurus, but instead another species of a different dinosaur called Sinosaurus in 2017.
Biology
The real life Dilophosaurus differed greatly from its appearance in Jurassic Park
Dilophosaurus was a theropod dinosaur - this was a suborder of dinosaurs characterised by bipedal stances. This order includes many different species ranging from modern birds to the Tyrannosaurus. Existing at the very start of the Jurassic Period Dilophosaurus this means that it was one of the earliest theropods, and definitely one of the earliest large carnivores. When it was alive it would have been one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs on the planet; from snout to tail it could reach 6 metres long, and could reach heights of up to 2 metres. Very different from the diminutive version in the movies. The initial three skeletons found were determined to be juveniles as the fossil found by Welles was much larger than the first three. An adult would therefore be the size of a brown bear. Just like a bear Dilophosaurus had very powerful arms - this will become important later. They were likely quite hardy animals. Phil Senter and Sara Juengst in 2016 found that one specimen had eight fairly bad injuries. However, most of the injuries showed signs of healing indicating that it could have lived years after getting initially wounded. A reason why it might have survived so long is possible evidence of pack behaviour. As specimens of similar ages have been found together it has led to the suggestion that they worked and lived together to survive - it would explain how the injured one lived. However, we cannot be entirely certain - a flash flood could explain why they were found together, especially considering how well preserved some specimens are. We now know that most dinosaurs would be feathered by the end of the Jurassic, but palaeontologists have been debating about when feathers developed. We have yet to find evidence of feathers on Dilophosaurus itself, but in 2004 Martin Kundrat reported finding traces of filaments from downy feathers on a theropod dinosaur from early Jurassic Massachusetts. If this dinosaur had some form of feathers it is not out of the question that Dilophosaurus also did so. Senter and Juengst even found that their specimen had a deformed humerus and finger thanks to developmental osteodysplasia - a condition previously only found in modern birds. If a Dilophosaurus has been found with this condition, this indicates that it more than likely had feathering.
A skull in the Royal Tyrell Museum
The most iconic part of Dilophosaurus is easily its crest. Unlike in Jurassic Park, the Dilophosaurus never had a frill - that was made up for the film, likely so audiences would not get it confused with the Velociraptors. The v-shaped crest shaped have often been disarticulated from the skull so for a while palaeontologists were not sure how it would go on the animal's head. Quite possibly the initial three specimens had their crests preserved, but as the expedition team did not know they existed consequently did not look for them. Initial reconstructions had the crest resting on the back of the skull and going onto the neck; this has since been rejected as it would restrict the neck's movement. Instead the crest started at the front of the skull and ended at the back. A real life equivalent could be the crest of a male cassowary, as shown below:
What were the crests used for? Initial theories of combat or thermoregulation have been rejected, so visual display is a likely function. Theropod dinosaurs likely could see bright colours as modern birds do, so the crests would be brightly coloured. Male Dilophosaurus would have the brightest crests in order to attract a mate, or scare off rival males. Finally, we have the jaw, which features a large notch in the upper jaw. This made it very weak - Dilophosaurus would be unable to break through bone. This led to questions about how or what it could eat - when writing Jurassic Park Michael Crichton theorised that they were venomous. We have no evidence for this, but palaeontologists have theorised how and what it ate.
Diet
One of the biggest questions concerning the Dilophosaurus is its diet. With a weak jaw hunting down prey like a modern lion or wolf could be potentially dangerous. One wrong bite and its jaw would be broken. Different theories about how Dilophosaurus could have eaten. For one, it had very strong arms. Long, powerful arms, like a bear, could be used instead of its jaws to attack prey, and potential pack behaviour could improve the chances of a successful kill. One swipe could do serious damage, and an injured animal would be unable to escape when surrounded by other dinosaurs. Hence, its jaw would only need to be strong enough to tear flesh from a carcass, and even then the strong arms could also be used to break a carcass into smaller, manageable pieces. Some palaeontologists did suggest that Dilophosaurus was a scavenger, but as no living large animal exists entirely by scavenging this hypothesis has been rejected. A later theory suggested that the jaws weren't used for killing prey, but rather holding prey. Dilophosaurus lived alongside many smaller animals ranging from herbivorous dinosaurs to frogs, so they would be its primary food source. A Dilophosaurus would catch a small animal where its front teeth would slash the prey, by the time it reached the back of the jaws the prey would be too weak to resist. Andrew Milner and James Kirkland in 2000 suggested a new theory which has become increasingly accepted. The Kayenta Formation has been discovered to be rather wet, and many fish fossils have been found there. Most importantly, wading marks have been found from carnivorous dinosaurs indicating the diet of Dilophosaurus: fish. The strong arms show signs of being even able to grip prey so a diet of fish would be ideal. Like a bear, Dilophosaurus would wade into water where it would swipe up fish to eat in its weak jaws. Milner and Kirkland have found that Dilophosaurus had similar adaptations to the known fish-eating Spinosaurus: long teeth near the front of the skull to hold fish in place; long and strong arms; and nostrils further back in the skull to avoid water entering them. It is therefore likely that Dilophosaurus waded into water to catch fish and other aquatic life.
When and Where
The reconstructed model 'Dyzio' in the Geological Museum of the State Geological Institute in Warsaw
Dilophosaurus lived 193 million years ago in the Early Jurassic. Dinosaurs had begun to fully evolve as a distinct group during the Mid to Late Triassic, and the Late Triassic extinction left them as the dominant terrestrial group. At this time most of the best known dinosaur orders - like stegosaurids, sauropods, and tyrannosaurids - had yet to evolve. Dilophosaurus would have been one of the largest carnivores, especially as large terrestrial life had yet to bounce back from the Triassic-Jurassic extinction. This is also a reason why Dilophosaurus likely had a diet consisting of fish: there were few large herbivorous dinosaurs to hunt. We have currently only found Dilophosaurus in Arizona, but the formation group which the Kayenta Formation is part of comprise most of the South-west United States. We probably could have seen Dilophosaurus in this region as well. Unlike contemporary Arizona, the Kayenta Formation was humid and wet with plenty of lakes and rivers. Rivers preserve fossils well as the sediment protects specimens from the elements. The high number of well preserved specimens, including the first Dilophosaurus to be found, and high number of aquatic animals in the area show this. Dilophosaurus lived in an environment closer to modern Florida than modern Arizona.
Thank you for reading. The sources I have used are as follows:
-Gregory S. Paul, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Second Edition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016)
-S.P. Welles, 'New Jurassic Dinosaur from the Kayenta Formation of Arizona', GSA Bulletin, 65:6, (1954), 591-598
-S.P. Welles, 'Dilophosaurus (Reptilia: Saurischia), A New Name for a Dinosaur', Journal of Paleontology, 44:5, (1970), 989
-S.P. Welles, 'Dilophosaurus wetherilli dinosauria theropoda osteology and comparisons', Palaeontographica Abteilung A Palaeozoologie-Stratigraphie,185:4-6, (1984), 85-180
-Robert Gay, 'New specimens of Dilophosaurus wetherilli (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of northern Arizona', Western Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists Annual Meeting Volume Mesa, Arizona, 1:1, (2001)
-Phil Senter and Sara Juengst, 'Record-Breaking Pain: The Largest Number and Variety of Forelimb Bone Maladies in a Theropod Dinosaur', PLoS ONE, 11:2, (2016), 1-13
-Martin Kundrat, 'When did Theropods Become Feathered? - Evidence for Pre-Archaeopteryx Feathery Appendages', Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 320B:4, (2004), 355-364
-Andrew Milner and James Kirkland, 'The Case for Fishing Dinosaurs at St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnstone Farm', Survey Notes of the Utah Geological Survey, (2007), 39, 1-3
Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. For other Paleo Profiles we have a list here, and for future blog updates please see our Facebook page or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
For years palaeontology has been one of my great loves; so much so that I came very close in doing it as my degree at university. The creatures of the past have wowed peoples worldwide ranging from the monsters of the silver screen in Jurassic Park, Gojira, and The Valley of Gwangi to real life folklore and myths. With Paleo Profiles we look at different extinct animals ranging from dinosaurs to mammoths to giant bugs in order to understand what they were like when they roamed the Earth. This series will hopefully inform readers of the wonders of prehistory (and some more recently extinct forms of life). I also want to prefix this by saying that I am a historian, not a palaeontologist. This is something which is a hobby to me and not my field of study so I am not an authority on palaeontology. The purpose of Paleo Profiles is for me to engage in one of my great loves; for newcomers to palaeontology to find out some interesting information; and for those with an active interest/actual authority to also find out interesting points. For any Paleo Profiles if you feel that I've got something wrong or left something out please tell me and I will add it in. Palaeontology is a constantly evolving and changing field; just as much as archaeology and history.
We will be forming a list of Paleo Profiles as they are written which you can find here. Those with an interest in history, comic books, and everything related to them please be sure to check out our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
Our first Paleo Profile will focus on a behemoth from the deep...
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is now out in cinemas (highly recommend it by the way) purposefully to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the original release of Jurassic Park in 1993. Regular readers of this blog, and people who know me in real life, can attest how much I love the Jurassic Park franchise. With special effects remaining superb today, interesting characters, and, of course, dinosaurs Jurassic Park has stood the test of time. Today we'll look at 25 things which I find interesting about the franchise looking at the books, games, comics and even the marketing of the series. All of the things which we will look at shows how important Jurassic Park has been. Warning: this post will contain some spoilers for the new movie as well as other entries to the series. I'll be abbreviating certain titles during this post so I shall lay them out now: JP is Jurassic Park, TLW is The Lost World, JPIII is Jurassic Park III, JW is Jurassic World, JW:FK is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, JPT is Jurassic Park: Trespasser, JPOG is Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, JPTG is Jurassic Park: The Game, and JWE is Jurassic World: Evolution.
25. From a dark novel to a family feature
Those who have read Michael Crichton's novel will know that it is far darker than Steven Spielberg's adaptation. Many characters swear, John Hammond is a far more sinister and self-centered character, Robert Muldoon is a drunk, and characters are brutally torn apart by dinosaurs. When Dennis Nedry is killed by a Dilophosaurus he comments that he can feel his intestines which have been torn apart and Henry Wu is also torn disemboweled while still alive. Unnamed characters also die quite horrifically. A young man at the very start of the novel is taken to mainland Costa Rica after being mauled by a Velociraptor, and we see in detail his wounds, and a baby is killed by Procomsognathus who had escaped to the mainland. If we had gotten a book accurate adaptation JP likely would have remained a smash hit but not in the same way. It would have been a hit in the same sense as Terminator 2; T2 made US $523.7 million while JP made US $1.029 billion. Spielberg was always into making family features despite wanting to make more adult hits like Schindler's List. As a result JP was made into a more darker family feature than a straight up adaptation featuring gore and violence. Even the two darkest entries in the series, TLW and JW:FK, are nowhere nearly as dark as Crichton's novel. Quite possibly JP would never be such a big franchise as it is now without this shift.
24. Landmark in film history
Jurassic Park's first CGI dinosaur
JP is one of the movies lauded for its special effects with it being one of the first movies to use CGI to such a great extent and realistically as well. Originally Phil Tippett, who had worked on Return of the Jedi, was hired to use go-motion, a more updated version of stop-motion, to create the dinosaurs. However, Spielberg felt it could be improved upon. A team from Industrial Lights and Magic (ILM) under Dennis Muren was approached to use a relatively new form of special effects to make the dinosaurs: CGI. ILM had used CGI to create the fantastic effects of the aliens in The Abyss and the shape-shifting living metal T-1000 in Terminator 2, both directed by James Cameron. After showing Spielberg an animation of skeletal Gallimimus running go-motion was scrapped in favor of CGI. Tippett was kept on board to create the models which Muren and his team would adapt for their CGI, and then their CGI dinosaurs would be combined with animatronics and puppets made by Stan Winston. As a result we managed to see the breath-taking effects where most still stand the test of time which actually were better than the effects which we saw in JW. Hence, JP, T2, and The Abyss are seen as some of the films which brought CGI into the mainstream which has since shaped the film industry.
23. Surprising lack of dinosaurs
Especially compared to later entries in the series the original JP had surprisingly few dinosaurs in the movie; this includes species and how many dinosaurs literally appear. JP is 127 minutes long and in that only 15 minutes have dinosaurs in it of which nine are animatronic and six are CGI. That means barely over 10% of the movie has dinosaurs in it! Eight dinosaurs physically appear in the movie, a few more are mentioned though, and even then one is a skeleton (the Alamosaurus in the Visitor's Center), and another, Parasaurolophus, appears briefly alongside Brachiosaurus in the movie's most iconic scene. Quite ironically only two dinosaurs which appear are from the Jurassic: Dilophosaurus and Brachiosaurus. The rest are from the Cretaceous.
22. Progressing Views on Paleontology
Although those who know about dinosaurs will know that JP is inaccurate, after all we now know that most or possibly all dinosaurs had feathers, but when it was released it was fairly accurate for the time. Paleontologist Jack Horner was hired as an adviser to the series and as a result audiences were introduced to more accurate dinosaurs. Previously dinosaurs had been portrayed as slow, sluggish brutes destined to go extinct little more than being large iguanas. Horner made sure the dinosaurs were active. We saw this in the book as well. Henry Wu acts Hammond whether he should release a new batch of dinosaurs slower than the ones they have in case guests didn't believe that they were real. Originally the Velociraptors were meant to have forked tongues which flicked out of their mouths like lizards but Horner convinced the makers to drop this, and when they breathe on the kitchen door window it fogs over showing it was warm blooded. I have seen this called a mistake with people saying dinosaurs were cold blooded when in reality it is accurate - dinosaurs like Velociraptor were more than likely warm blooded. The later entries occasionally continued this trend. TLW and JW:FK both portray Tyrannosaurus as an ambush predator while the raptors in JP3 have some head feathers, although in real life they were entirely covered in feathers.
21. Greater Interest in dinosaurs
JP coincided with a new wave of dinosaur discoveries from China which found that dinosaurs were indeed feathered. These combined with an upsurge in people becoming paleontologists at university. The 1990s also saw a boom in dinosaur related media ranging from the video game Turok to the Whoopi Goldberg movie Theodore Rex. Possibly the best documentary on dinosaurs, Walking with Dinosaurs, was made thanks to JP. Producers and writers Jasper James and Tim Haines wanted to make a documentary on the scale of JP and with effects from Mike Milne produced Walking with Dinosaurs in 1999. They had even initially approached ILM to make the dinosaurs but as they were charging over $10,000 per second of footage they were deemed to be too expensive for the BBC! Walking with Dinosaurs still remains one of the most successful documentaries by the BBC and has spawned sequels, a live experience, and a movie since then.
20. Alternate Scripts
JP went through many script revisions before we got the one used. Quite curiously all bar the final had Robert Muldoon survive. Some scripts were also darker than the one we eventually got even though most were not nearly as dark as the novel was. In one script Hammond was closer to his book counterpart with him being a greedy capitalist but he was still caring and selfless with him eventually sacrificing himself to let others escape from Velociraptors. One storyboard also had a different ending. In this ending Grant and the kids escape from the Visitor's Center but are chased by the Tyrannosaurus who then tries to attack their helicopter instead of the one we saw where the Tyrannosaurus saves them from the pack of raptors.
19. Metaphors hidden in plain sight
The gift shop
Steven Spielberg's movies were constantly criticized for being heavily marketed. For every family movie we saw toys, comics, video games (E.T. The Game is often cited as almost crashing the video game industry), clothing and countless other products made. Directly quoting Ian Malcolm: before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Albeit JP was heavily marketed as well having a comic series by Topps, ten video games being released between 1993 and 1995, lunch boxes, Burger King tie-ins, clothes, many toy series, and novelizations just to name a few examples. Spielberg, though, decided to address this criticism in JP outside of just Malcolm's rant. We catch a brief glimpse of the gift shop showing the wide range of JP merchandise including books, lunch boxes, and toys in a purposeful attempt to show how much Spielberg's movies have been over-marketed. JW also featured huge amounts of marketing having tie-ins with Sony, Margahritaville, Pandora, and LEGO to name a few examples where most were very blatantly shown in the movie. Director Colin Trevorrow did this on purpose as a critique of marketization and commodifying nature and some of the examples of product placement are physically destroyed by the fighting dinosaurs. This brings us to our next point...
18. An environmentalist and anti-capitalist series?
The environmentalist aspect of the series is very clear; throughout the series humans try to exploit nature for their own gain but, as always, life finds a way. JP scientists create dinosaurs as attraction but as they don't understand them all hell breaks loose; TLW features wild dinosaurs being captured for a zoo in San Diego which backfires; JW sees the Indominus rex literally created for entertainment and war; and JW:FK features dinosaurs being made or captured for human desires. With the exception of JPIII all the movies and books feature humans trying to exploit nature but 'life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously'. Many people have highlighted the environmentalist aspect of the franchise but one often overlooked is a possible anti-capitalist theme to it; in TLW Ian Malcolm even says to Hammond 'you've gone from capitalist to environmentalist'. Especially book Hammond sees dinosaurs as something to be used for profit regardless of ethics and whether they really understand the life they've just created. This is especially prominent in JW and JW:FK. As mentioned Trevorrow used product placement to show capitalist exploitation of the dinosaurs and this revolves around the Indominus. They give it a name specifically for ease of marketing and one character makes jokes about calling it along the lines of 'Pepsi-saurus'. Irrfan Khan's Simon Masrani is just like an eccentric and ostensibly good-hearted billionaire like Elon Musk. Quite recently, as of writing, his self-driving car tests have resulted in crashes as Musk overlooks poor working conditions. Like Musk Masrani chases a dream, (a 'cool' hybrid dinosaur) but ignores the awful reality until it is too late. Then this theme is further reinforced in JW:FK as dinosaurs are captured to sell to billionaires in order to fund a new biological weapon. Anti-capitalism may not have been behind the thinking of Crichton, Spielberg, and Trevorrow but it is there.
17. Crichtonsaurus
Crichtonsaurus in Jurassic World: Evolution
A dinosaur has been named after Michael Crichton due to him being the author of JP. In 2002 an ankylosaur from China was given the name Crichtonsaurus in honor of Crichton. Incidentally another species of dinosaur has been named after Crichton. A second species of Crichtonsaurus was discovered but paleontologists realized in 2015 that it was indeed a different genus of dinosaur so it was named Crichtonpelta. Ironically, things have come full circle. The new park building game JWE, to be released in two days time as of writing, features a Crichtonsaurus as a dinosaur which you feature in your own version of Jurassic World. A few people on Reddit have been wondering how this can be, some have argued that Crichton wrote a novel based on the real-world events, forgetting that Crichton was a big author even before JP. The popular HBO show Westworld is a remake of a movie written and directed by Crichton after all. In the JP universe Crichtonsaurus is likely named after the famous sci-fi author instead of the author of a novel where cloned dinosaurs break out and eat the guests.
16. Carnosaur and Jurassic Park
JP was not the first novel to feature dinosaurs brought back from extinction in a zoo which goes wrong. In 1984 the novel Carnosaur was released by John Brosnan, under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight, which features an eccentric lord in Cambridge, England who breeds dinosaurs for his own menagerie. I have not read the novel but it does bear resemblances to JP with Brosnan commenting that he liked the ending of the movie JP as it resembled his own book. In fact he was so worried about the similarities between the two when his book was reissued in case people thought he had plagiarized Crichton. However, it is unlikely that Crichton intentionally plagiarized Brosnan as the novels diverge quite a lot after the cursory 'eccentric person breeds dinosaurs for a zoo who escape an eat people' plot line. This did not stop people from wanting to use Carnosaur to capitalize on JP. Roger Corman, a director famous for his glorious over-the-top, low budget and campy movies, was hired to direct Carnosaur in 1993 to capitalize off of JP's marketing. Brosnan even wrote a script for it which was never used (the movie bears no resemblance to the novel) and they even hired Laura Dern's mother, Diane Ladd, to appear in it! Naturally the movie was awful and Brosnan has described it as 'interesting crap'. Ironically, JW:FK's plot of dinosaurs running loose in a mansion resembles Carnosaur's plot more than the actual adaptation does!
15. No real dinosaurs?
A line in the novel has sparked a fan theory about the first novel and movie. Henry Wu debates with Hammond the validity of the dinosaurs saying that they recreated them but they aren't sure how truly accurate they are. When Hammond dismisses his request to clone slower dinosaurs he says that the dinosaurs are 'real' with Wu remaining unconvinced. We now know that the dinosaurs of JP being very different from their real counterparts - Wu in JW even directly says this and viral marketing have confirmed several fan theories on this. This is where a fan theory comes in. The theory states that the reason why paleontologists are invited to Isla Nublar is to not only assess the security but also to see if they get convinced by Hammond's dinosaurs. If the experts think that the dinosaurs are 'real' and not approximates then Hammond's dream can happen unhindered.
14. Important games
There have been many games relating to the franchise, JPOG remains one of my favorite games, but two are important. The first was released in 1998 called Trespasser, JPT. A sequel to TLW which was partially directed by Speilberg and featuring Richard Attenborough it told the story of a woman who landed on Isla Sorna and her attempts to survive. They wanted a game as ambitious as the first movie with it having no HUD display to make it realistic, have dinosaurs act naturally with each having moods, and real physics. However, a rushed development meant that dinosaur AI was extremely poor (some would break when changing moods), the physics went out of control, and objects at times refused to render. In some instances mods had to actually make the game playable! Despite this the game remains to have a huge following and has highly influential in the gaming industry. Games such as Half-Life 2 have based their gameplay off of JPT but done right. In 2011 Jurassic Park: The Game, JP:TG, was released by Telltale Games. This was meant to be a sequel to JP featuring some characters left behind as the main cast left via helicopter. It was a point-and-click game featuring puzzle solving with a great emphasis on story. Unfortunately most characters were forgettable, the puzzle solving was basic, and the story was a tad bit dull with Telltale being forced to have its own employees post anonymous reviews praising the game. Telltale learnt from their mistakes and would go on to make games improving on JP:TG such as the fantastic The Walking Dead. Trevorrow has come out and said that both these games are 'soft canon' - this means that the events are canon but if anything counteracted the movies that aspect would be written out.
13. Rexy
The Tyrannosaurus featured in JP is very important to the series. Given the name Rexy by fans, due to Muldoon calling her that in the novel, she was called Roberta in the script. However, Rexy didn't end with JP - the Tyrannosaur shown in JW and JW:FK is the same Tyrannosaur from JP. If you look carefully in both movies you can see that she has scars on the side of her body; these are the scars given to her by the Velociraptor from the end of the first movie. With this in mind she is joint with Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu for physically appearing the most in the franchise where both appear in three movies. If we include JP:TG then she would appear the most in regards to just the movie canon.
12. Confirmation of Fan Theories
A promotional website for JW takes you to a website forMasrani Global and you can access secret emails. One of these, called 'Ruffled Feathers', confirms two fan theories. I'll put the email here:
OWNER: WU, HENRY
DATE: 02/20/2003 1410 CST
SUBJECT: RUFFLED FEATHERS
NOTES: I'M CALLING THIS THE 'COMMON COLD OF GENETICS'. WE CAN'T CURE THIS ONE SOON I'M SURE. BECAUSE WE'RE ACTIVELY MANIPULATING AND MUTATING THE ANIMALS' GENES, ADDING FROG, BIRD AND REPTILE DNA, WE CREATE WHAT IS KNOWN AS 'NULL ALLELE'. THE DINOSAURS CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SOMETHING ADDED TO THEIR CODE SO FOR NOW WE'RE STUCK WITH SCALES. MAYBE MY RESEARCH INTO GENE SPLICING WILL UNEARTH THIS PROBLEM, IT CERTAINLY PROVED ITS LIMITLESS CAPABILITIES WITH THAT ACCIDENT WE LEFT ON SORNA.
---END LOG---
The first theory confirmed is why the dinosaurs are featherless with the 'null allele' reference - the addition of frog DNA meant that the dinosaurs cannot produce feathers. The second theory is where it says 'with that accident we left on Sorna'. Fans have argued that the reason why the Spinosaurus was so aggressive and different to the real dinosaur was due to it being a hybrid setting up the Indominus. As a result, fans have speculated that this confirms a fan theory that the Spinosaurus was indeed a hybrid.
11. Box Office
JP is one of the most highly successful franchises being in the top 50 most successful franchises above Godzilla, Mortal Kombat, Ghostbusters and Family Guy. JP and JW are also two of the most successful films. JP sits at twenty-eighth with it earning over a billion but JW smashed it out of the park earning over US $1.6 billion! JW sits just below The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, Titanic and Avatar.
10. The first dinosaur
For JW:FK a new canon guide to the history of the JP universe has been released called Jurassic World: Survival Guide. In it we find out that in 1986 InGen cloned its first dinosaur: Triceratops. Before then the first dinosaur had always been debated. According to the Topps comic Rexy was the first dinosaur to be cloned whereas Trespasser implies that it was Velociraptor. Unfortunately we have no indication what was bred first in the books although the books do have a miniature elephant being bred to drum up support for Hammond's business ventures. However, the Survival Guide mentions that in 1984 InGen cloned its first animal, strongly implied to be extinct, but we still do not know what it is. YouTuber Klayton Fioriti has argued that it could be a Smilodon, the saber-toothed tiger, as stuffed toys of them can be seen in the gift shop in JP.
9. The disaster of JPIII
I would argue that the only outright bad movie in the franchise is JPIII and looking at its production it is clear why. Spielberg was good friends with Joe Johnston, who had directed Jumanji and Honey! I Shrunk the Kids, so he made him a promise: if a third movie was made he could direct. It could have worked if not for the script. The script repeatedly changed and some of the older versions were far better than the one we received. One involved a group going to Isla Sorna to find Alan Grant who had ignored international law in order to study the island's dinosaurs. Another, featuring the characters of the film we got, revolved around mysterious deaths on the mainland which people suspect to be dinosaurs so Grant leads an expedition to Sorna to investigate where they get trapped. Last minute script changes meant it was incomplete when filming started and the cast joked that during their party at the end of shooting they would be presented a finished script. The antagonist was changed, the fates of characters were altered, and entire scenes crucial to the plot were scrapped. As a result we got a jumbled movie where the best thing about it was the effects.
8. The turbulent making of JPIV
Yeah, I'm glad this got scrapped
We received many different ideas for a fourth installment before we got JW in 2015, many of which I am glad they abandoned. One of the earlier ones was mentioned in an interview with Johnston which incidentally was a plan for JPIII where the Pteranodon came to the mainland. A potential script by John Sayles was actually leaked, which you can actually read here, where the only recurring character was John Hammond. The movie was meant to be released around 2005 and aspects of it would inspire aspects of JW: a ex-military operative would be hired by Hammond to go to Nublar to get the DNA canister from a company who wants to used trained and genetically modified dinosaurs for war. Another script featured grotesque human/dinosaur hybrids which I am glad they scrapped. After the death of Stan Winston in 2005 the project was scrapped until around 2011. A script similar to JW was revealed where an open Jurassic World would clone a newly discovered Chinese dinosaur called Diabolos rex is cloned. Its discoverer and her sons go to check it out where she meets a dinosaur trainer just as things go bad. When I first learned of JW, and when I wrote about it on here in 2014, articles and this blog called the Indominus the Diabolos rex.
7. The books joking about the films
The book JP portrays the eyesight of the Tyrannosaurus differently to the film. While the film states that Tyrannosaurs have eyes like frogs, being only able to see moving objects, in the book we find out that this is due to frog DNA being woven into the dinosaur DNA. In TLW novel a character makes a joke about Alan Grant's theory that Tyrannosaurs could only see moving objects, as one unfortunate character finds out, in a strange twist. It seems that TLW is a sequel to both the first book and the film.
6. Making an iconic scene
One of the most iconic scenes in all of cinematic history is when the cup of water ripples as Rexy approaches. Special effects artist Michael Lantieri found this to be the hardest scene to film but he found a way. In the end Lantieri found out how to produce it when he was playing his guitar in his spare time. He found that when he plucked the guitar the water would ripple in the desired effect. For the film he attached a guitar wire under the jeep dashboard and plucked it creating one of the most iconic scenes in not only the JP franchise but also film history.
5. Pop culture References
The franchise is littered with references to popular culture with some being very blatant, such as Malcolm saying 'What are they keeping in there? King Kong?' in JP,to more subtle ones. Crichton's second novel was purposefully entitled The Lost World in order to homage Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name due to both featuring a team of explorers going to a remote land inhabited by dinosaurs. The adaptation took it a step further when it brought a Tyrannosaurus to San Diego; at the end of The Lost World the explorers brought back a Pteranodon which flew back home while in the 1925 film an escapee Brontosaurus wrecks havoc in London, much like Spielberg's version. Some Japanese business people also flee the Tyrannosaur and when you translate what they're saying it turns out they are complaining that they 'Left Japan because of this' in a reference to Godzilla. Incidentally the US remake of Godzilla released a few years later took inspiration from JP with the baby Godzilla. In Trespasser an abandoned workers' village is called Burroughs after Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote The Land that Time Forgot and another is called Verne after Jules Verne who wrote Journey to the Centre of the Earth. During JP if you look carefully Nedry is watching Jaws, another movie by Spielberg, and Trevorrow had the mosasaur eat great white sharks to see if Spielberg could pick up on the reference.
4. Honoring Stan Winston and Richard Attenborough
There are homages to both Winston and Attenborough in JW. There is a steak house, serving Chilean sea bass, in both the movie and the promotional material called Winston's in honor of him. There was also meant to be an animatronic Tyrannosaur destroyed by the Indominus but Spielberg had it cut in case it was seen as an insult to Winston's memory. Meanwhile, there is a statue of John Hammond in JW which was expanded upon in JW:FK as a portrait of Hammond is purposefully shown in Lockwood's manor.
3. Cancelled TV series
Surprisingly we have yet to receive a TV series but there were plans for two animated series. The first was entitled Escape from Jurassic Park and was actually had storyboards drawn for 23 episodes to be released around 1993/4. It would feature the cast trying to rebuild Jurassic Park as InGen's rival Biosyn trying to form their own in Brazil. We know that in one scene the team would be attacked by a plesiosaur while in a dingy. Spielberg himself cancelled the series as he didn't want the market to be saturated with Jurassic Park. Around 1997 a series called Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect was planned featuring genetic hybrids but it was never produced for unknown reasons. However, the hybrids got turned into a toy line under the same name instead.
2. The Jurassic World viral marketing
The viral marketing for JW and JW:FK have expanded a lot on the lore. Mentioned earlier we have the Masrani Global website but we also got one for Jurassic World itself where you can visit the website as if it was a real zoo. You can see the dinosaurs, attractions, hotels and even a menu for Winston's! For JW:FK they came back to that website where it was, and still is, hacked by the Dinosaur Protection Group (DPG) revealing which dinosaurs have gone extinct again, bits and pieces of Jurassic World, and even a book reference. When you click on the original T.rex enclosure on the map it mentions it could hold an adult and juvenile; in the book there was an adult and juvenile at the park. The DPG also has their own website revealing all that has happened between JPIII and JW and later JW and JW:FK. Even this morning I found another bit of marketing; @Extinction_Now on Twitter shows an anti-dinosaur account wanting them to go extinct again due to how dangerous dinosaurs are, and it even has new footage from the Tyrannosaur rampage in San Diego!
1. An end of an era (Spoilers!)
From the trailers and websites we know that Isla Sorna and Isla Nublar have been, or will be, destroyed and Trevorrow has said that the third movie will not be set on the islands. Our first CGI dinosaur in JP is the Brachiosaurus in one of the most iconic scenes of the franchise where it stands on its legs calling. Our final shot of Isla Nublar as it is destroyed by the erupting volcano we see a Brachiosaurus being consumed by the pyroclastic flow. As it is being consumed it raises upon its hindlegs and calls. A new era for the series starts by homaging the old and as always:
Thank you for reading and I hoped you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.
Throughout the Jurassic Park franchise we've been introduced to a wide variety of dinosaurs and other extinct life cloned by InGen. Through comic books, video games, and apps the number of animals present in the franchise has steadily grown. Today I thought it would be interesting to make a non-definitive list of the animals present in Jurassic Park and World. However, I am only taking definitive canon animals - so only animals from the books and movies - and, of course, I will likely through accident omit some. If I have forgotten any animals please feel free to tell me in the comments. So this list will feature three parks: the book Jurassic Park, the movie Jurassic Park, and Jurassic World.
Book Jurassic Park
For animals in the version of Jurassic Park we're going to animals present in the two books written by Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park and The Lost World. If an animal is present on Isla Sorna we can easily assume that they were intended to sometime be transported to Isla Nublar, and then appear in Jurassic Park. From the first book it is easy to find the animals which were intended to be on display just before the Park opened as we get a population table detailing all the animals. This table reads: Tyrannosaurs, Maiasaurs, Stegosaurs, Triceratops, Procompsognathids, Othnielia, Velociraptors, Apatosaurs, Hadrosaurs, Dilophosaurs, Pterosaurs, Hypsilophodontids, Euoplocephalids, and Micrceratops. Through dialogue we find out that the Hypsilophodons are actually Dryosaurus and the Pterosaurs are Cearadactylus. In the lab scene Dr. Wu comments that they are preparing to breed a Coelurus. Finally the characters find a large dragonfly and Alan Grant comments that it is likely a cloned prehistoric dragonfly. There could be various possibilities to which species it is and two are the most likeliest: Meganeura and Meganeuropsis. Both these dragonflies lived millions of years before the dinosaurs evolved and could grow to the size of gulls. As more well-preserved Meganeura fossils have been found we can assume that this means that the dragonfly is Meganeura. Some editions of Jurassic Park change Apatosaurus to Camarasaurus and Microceratops (now called Microceratus) to Callovosaurus, however, most editions keep it to Apatosaurus and Microceratops so our count will only include these names.
The Lost World includes several more species which we can assume would eventually make their way into Jurassic Park if the events of the novel had transpired differently. In some editions of the novel there is a map of Isla Sorna with images of the dinosaurs which make an appearance. These dinosaurs are: Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurolophus, and Carnotaurus. Some extra dinosaurs make an appearance which aren't mentioned on the map. A body washes onto the coast early in the story which Richard Levine identifies as an Ornitholestes. When he first arrives on Isla Sorna he spots a small herbivorous dinosaur which he identifies as Mussaurus. The final dinosaur is only mentioned but not seen. An InGen document makes reference to Gallimimus (possibly due to the dinosaur's appearance in the first movie).
Now we can make a solid judgement about what animals were to be displayed in the book version of Jurassic Park: Tyrannosaurus, Maiasaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Procompsognathus, Othnielia (which is now called by scientists Othnieliasaurus), Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Cearadactylus, Dryosaurus, Euoplocephalus, Microceratus, Coelurus, Meganura, Pachycephalosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Carnotaurus, Ornitholestes, Gallimimus, and Mussaurus.
Film Jurassic Park
Looking at the movies is far trickier than the books as you have background references as well. First let's look at the dinosaurs directly seen in the first movie. We have: Velociraptor, Brachiosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and Gallimimus. There are many referenced dinosaurs though. You can at times spot a map of Jurassic Park and the map contains a few extra dinosaurs: Segisaurus, Proceratosaurus, Metriacanthosaurus, Herrerasaurus, and Baryonyx. When Nedry steals the embryos we spot another dinosaur: Stegosaurus. A little side note; Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are both misspelled in this scene but strangely Metriacanthosaurus is not. I am one of many fans who do not consider Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game canon so we won't be involving those extinct animals.
As is the case with the books we can assume that animals present on Isla Sorna would eventually be on display in Jurassic Park. The ones which we do know the identity are in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (but did not appear in the first movie): Mamenchisaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Pteranodon, and Edmontosaurus (albeit as a skull in the Rex nest). The small green carnivore is either a Procomsognathus or Compsognathus. Fans are divided over which it is: the character who identifies it as Procomsognathus is unreliable, but the novel uses Procomsognathus instead of Compsognathus. For the purpose of this post we'll go for what the Jurassic Park Wiki says, and they go for Compsognathus. Through Tembo's guide and the trailer screen a pterosaur called Geosternbergia is seen. Finally, in a deleted scene Ankylosaurus is mentioned but they later appear in Jurassic Park 3 anyway.
Jurassic Park 3 features a few extra dinosaurs not previously seen in the two prior movies. As mentioned earlier Ankylosaurus is one of these dinosaurs. Corythosaurus also appears and originally it was meant to appear in The Lost World as well. We also have a Ceratosaurus appearing in the movie. Now we come to the Spinosaurus. If you got to one of the two promotional websites for Jurassic World, the Masrani Global one, and type in 'Indominus' at the terminal button you get access to a whole bunch of Easter eggs. One of which leads you to this screen saying this:
OWNER: WU, HENRY DATE: 02/20/2003 1410 CST SUBJECT: RUFFLED FEATHERS NOTES: I'M CALLING THIS THE 'COMMON COLD OF GENETICS'. WE CAN'T CURE THIS ONE SOON I'M SURE. BECAUSE WE'RE ACTIVELY MANIPULATING AND MUTATING THE ANIMALS' GENES, ADDING FROG, BIRD AND REPTILE DNA, WE CREATE WHAT IS KNOWN AS 'NULL ALLELE'. THE DINOSAURS CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT SOMETHING ADDED TO THEIR CODE SO FOR NOW WE'RE STUCK WITH SCALES. MAYBE MY RESEARCH INTO GENE SPLICING WILL UNEARTH THIS PROBLEM, IT CERTAINLY PROVED ITS LIMITLESS CAPABILITIES WITH THAT ACCIDENT WE LEFT ON SORNA. ---END LOG---
This confirms two fan theories. The first is why the dinosaurs don't have feathers; splicing dinosaur DNA with that of amphibians led to the allele which produces feathers to not work. The second confirms why the Spinosaurus in JP3 was so different to the real life version. Wu specifically uses the wording 'my research into gene splicing will unearth this problem, it certainly proved its limitless capabilities with that accident we left on Sorna.' A fan theory was that the Spinosaurus was a hybrid similar to that of the later Indominus Rex. As a result the Spinosaurus seems to be a mistake and not intended for Jurassic Park. Dialogue in JP3 mentions that Spinosaurus 'wasn't on InGen's list' indicating that Spinosaurus did not seem to be intended at all for Jurassic Park prior to the events of the first movie.
For the extinct animals in the film Jurassic Park we can guess that they are: Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Brachiosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Dilophosaurus, Pteranodon, Geosternbergia, Edmontosaurus, Gallimimus, Segisaurus, Proceratosaurus, Metriacanthosaurus, Herrerasaurus, Baryonyx, Stegosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Corythosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Mamenchisaurus, and Compsognathus.
Jurassic World
Luckily for us finding most of the extinct animals in Jurassic World is a somewhat easy task. The promotional website, here, tracks quite a few of them. They are: Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, Apatosaurus, Baryonyx, Pteranodon, Dimorphodon, Metriacanthosaurus, Suchomimus, Parasaurolophus, Ankylosaurus, Microceratus, Gallimimus and Mosasaurus. A Dilophosaurus appears as a Hologram and Claire mentions Archaeornithomimus. As Archaeornithomimus is such an obscure dinosaur in the context she says it in I am certain this must be one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic World. In that same scene a call from a Brachiosaurus can be heard, and Brachiosaurus was meant to appear but it was cut very last minute. In the trailer for Fallen Kingdom Brachiosaurus does appear so we have physical confirmation that Jurassic World had Brachiosaurus. An eagle eyed fan pointed out another Easter egg to the rest of the community which brought to the attention of everyone several other dinosaurs in Jurassic World. It was this promotional image:
This is the screen which creates holograms of Jurassic World's creatures so it would make sense to only have the animals present in the park on the screen. You can see: Allosaurus, Spinosaurus, Deinonychus, Elaphrosaurus, Hoplitosaurus, Lesothosaurus, Nipponosaurus, and Plesiosaurus. Jurassic World also has a somewhat accurate Spinosaurus skeleton as decoration which can further suggest that the JP3 Spinosaurus was a mistake; although I would like to think that the SornaSpino inspired Masrani to have an actual Spino in Jurassic World. Finally we have the Indominus; although we later find out why it is bred there seemed genuine plans in the movie to put it on display.
Finally we have the Fallen Kingdom trailers. The behind the scenes trailer had a Stygimoloch skull but there is an issue with this. Recently quite a bit of the palaeontological community views Stygimoloch as a young Pachycephalosaurus. We don't know at the moment if they are treating it as a separate species or a juvenile.
I've attached the new trailer so we can run through it together to tick off dinosaurs not already mentioned. At 0.42 we have a Procompsognathus/Compsognathus but I would guess it's the same species as the one from the previous movies making it Compsognathus in our list. 1.28 we have the Carnotaurus which fans have long been eagerly awaiting to appear. 1.51 we have a theropod which many people have been debating on what it is. Based on the head shape, and the fact that it was mentioned as being a hologram, I would guess this is Allosaurus. At 2.07 we have a ceratopsid in the water and based on the skull I would guess this is Styracosaurus.
As Fallen Kingdom is not out yet I would advise to take this list with a pinch of salt. So these animals are: Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, Apatosaurus, Baryonyx, Pteranodon, Dimorphodon, Metriacanthosaurus, Suchomimus, Parasaurolophus, Ankylosaurus, Microceratus, Gallimimus, Mosasaurus, Dilophosaurus, Archaornithomimus, Brachiosaurus, Indominus, Allosaurus, Spinosaurus, Deinonychus, Elaphrosaurus, Hoplitosaurus, Lesothosaurus, Nipponosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Compsognathus, Carnotaurus, Stygimoloch, and Styracosaurus.
Thank you for reading and I hope you found this list informative. The Jurassic Park series has so many animals I have bound to have missed one or two so if you spotted any not mentioned please leave a comment. For future updates please see our Facebook or get me on Twitter @LewisTwiby. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again.
