"Jurassic World 3" "magic modification" of dinosaurs? Paleontological research helps you distinguish true from false

Jurassic World 3 is the final chapter of the Jurassic Park series of science fiction films. In the past 30 years, what changes and constants have the dinosaur images in this series experienced?

A cold wind howled across the Bering Strait as a crab fishing boat was collecting its nets. The swaying of the boat gradually grew stronger without anyone noticing...

The fishermen were about to face a threat far more terrifying than the cold: a huge Mosasaur suddenly appeared under the cover of the waves, opened its bloody mouth and bit the net cage to pieces, and then overturned the helpless boat. Mosasaur was a marine reptile that lived in the late Cretaceous period, the end of the dinosaur era. After "reappearing on Earth", it is still the king at the top of the food chain.

This summer, we welcomed the final chapter of the "Jurassic Park" and "Jurassic World" series of science fiction films, "Jurassic World 3". After the first "Jurassic Park" was released in 1993, this series centered on the "resurrection of dinosaurs" has been fermented for a generation, and finally derived a whole new world based on the original science fiction novel.

Thirty years of witnessing new progress in paleontology

Whether it is the "Jurassic Park" trilogy of the last century or the new series "Jurassic World" rebooted in 2015, their biggest attraction is undoubtedly the numerous crises brought to the protagonists by the "resurrected" dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles.

In Jurassic World 3, there are also many dangerous scenes. The male and female protagonists Owen and Claire were on an old transport plane owned by the female pilot Kayla, and were attacked by Quetzalcoatlus near the dinosaur reserve controlled by the genetic company Biosyn. After Claire parachuted to escape, she encountered a Therizinosaur with brown feathers, like a straw raincoat. Owen and Kayla, who made an emergency landing on the ice, were chased by a Pyroraptor with dark red feathers.

▲Quetzalcoatlus attacks the plane the protagonist and others are on

The Therizinosaur and Pyroraptor in the film, as well as the Urosaurus that flashed by in the laboratory scene, are all shown with feathers. The changes in the image of dinosaurs in movies and TV shows are like "slices" in the history of science, allowing people to look back at the great progress made in paleontological research in recent decades.

From the time the word "dinosaur" appeared in 1842 to the release of "Jurassic Park" in 1993, people always thought that dinosaurs were ugly and cold reptiles. But in 1996, scientists discovered the fossil of Sinosauropteryx in Liaoning Province, China. Because it had feathers, it was once thought to be a bird, but subsequent studies showed that it was a small carnivorous dinosaur. This discovery made people realize that feathers are not "exclusive" to birds.

▲The Sinosauropteryx fossil from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Formation and its hand-drawn schematic diagram. The scale bar in the figure is 5 cm (Source: Contemporary Biology)

After Sinosauropteryx, paleontologists around the world have discovered a large number of dinosaur fossils with feathers. The study of these specimens has revealed the inextricable connection between birds and dinosaurs, and convinced us that birds evolved from a branch of dinosaurs. Today, the mainstream view is that the "dinosaur extinction" 65 million years ago only destroyed all non-avian dinosaurs; some dinosaurs evolved into birds, which are still with us today.

As research on dinosaur feathers continues to accumulate, people have begun to re-examine the restored images of some dinosaurs. The Therizinosaur in the movie is a "close relative" of the Beipiaosaur found in Liaoning Province. Beipiaosaur fossils have traces of primitive feathers, so paleontologists speculate that the Therizinosaur was likely covered with similar feathers.

▲Beipiaosaurus model exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History (Source: New York Times)

In contrast, the feathers on the Fire Raptor are likely to be more "advanced", or closer to modern birds. In 1992, a forest fire in Provence, France, exposed some fragmentary dinosaur fossils to the surface. After 8 years of research, paleontologists discovered that these fossils belonged to a type of small carnivorous dinosaur and named it "Olympus Fire Raptor" to commemorate the forest fire that year. It is basically the same age as "Jurassic Park" and "made a grand appearance" in the final chapter of the series, as if to pay tribute to the process of paleontologists' understanding of feathered dinosaurs over the years.

▲The image of a Pyroraptor covered in feathers in the film

The Ozaurus, which was only scientifically named in 2019, was a newcomer that just "entered the film" when the film was about to start shooting. Considering that paleontologists don't know much about it in the real world, its role in the film is only a few fleeting shots.

Feathered dinosaurs are not the only thing that real-life paleontological research has brought to movies. In Jurassic World 3, there are more than one scene of dinosaurs walking, running, and even hunting in the snow, and these plots are also supported by research evidence.

In recent years, a series of studies on dinosaur metabolism and growth have shown that many dinosaurs were not cold-blooded animals like lizards or turtles. Some dinosaurs had the ability to maintain a constant body temperature like humans and birds. Therefore, as long as they could get enough food, the four distinct seasons on Earth today would not be a big challenge.

The wrong definition of "inheriting tradition"

Although Jurassic World 3 draws on many of the latest research results, in order to make the plot more exciting, the filmmakers have to "magically modify" some dinosaurs. For example, the real-world Fire Raptor is only about the size of a turkey, and its body structure is not suitable for diving. But such an image obviously cannot cause too many waves in the hearts of the audience, so the Fire Raptor in the movie is set to be "slightly larger than a human", while retaining the characteristics of agility, and with a mouth full of sharp teeth, creating a strong sense of oppression.

In the movie, when Claire parachuted into the forest, the Therizinosaur had just swung its giant claws to kill a wild deer. Before it could enjoy its prey, it was attracted by the sound of Claire landing and chased after her, forcing her to dive into a pond to avoid it. In fact, the Therizinosaur's giant claws, which were somewhat disproportionate to its body, were probably given a "new function" by Hollywood.

▲Claire dives into the pond to avoid the Therizinosaurus

In reality, the sickle-clawed dinosaurs probably feed on plants, and their huge claws cannot withstand too much impact, so they are not active offensive weapons, and can only be used to pull tree branches to their mouths. But in the movie, this huge claw can not only kill wild deer with one blow, but also pierce the body of the southern beast dragon, adding a lot of color to the carnivorous dinosaur battle at the end.

In addition, some of the wrong settings in the movie are "made to stick with the wrong" in order to carry on the tradition of the previous film. Since the first "Jurassic Park", the agile, swift and extremely aggressive Velociraptor (formerly translated as "raptor") has attracted attention because of its "high intelligence" of being able to hunt in groups. Small carnivorous dinosaurs such as Velociraptor may indeed be the "smartest" members of the dinosaurs. However, the restored image of Velociraptor drawn by paleontologists today looks like a bird covered with feathers.

▲The real size of Velociraptor is about the same as that of a turkey, but in the Jurassic Park series of movies, they are taller than humans. The picture shows a paleontologist showing the skull fossil of an adult Velociraptor (Source: wired.com)

However, in order to maintain the consistency of the film setting, the Jurassic World series can only adopt the plan of "old dragons with old images, new dragons with new images". While restoring feathered dinosaurs such as Pyroraptor according to the new research results, the Velociraptor still maintains its original smooth appearance and "integrates" some structural features of the larger Deinonychus. For the Jurassic World series of movies, which are a bit thriller, the Velociraptor, which is presented as a "cold-blooded killer", is obviously more conducive to creating a thrilling atmosphere than a furry appearance.

In fact, the audience does not need to be too critical of the "outdated" settings in the movie. Judging by the knowledge of dinosaurs we have today, both the early "Jurassic Park" movie and the original novel published by American science fiction writer Michael Crichton in 1990 have some "flaws" that are difficult to avoid. The most important flaw is undoubtedly the method of "resurrecting" dinosaurs, which is also the basis for the whole story. According to the author's setting, the genetic material used by humans to "resurrect" dinosaurs is taken from the dinosaur blood left in the body after mosquitoes bite dinosaurs. The ancient insects that bit the dinosaurs came from amber somewhere in the Dominican Republic. People used frog DNA to fill in the missing parts of the genetic information.

▲Comparison between the images of Velociraptor and Savageraptor in the BBC's "Prehistoric Planet" (upper and lower left) and the images in the movie "Jurassic World"

People at that time did think that amber was a perfect "plastic wrap" that could keep the genetic material of animals intact for tens of millions of years. But modern life science research has proven that such a concept is impossible to achieve. After only about 1.5 million years, the "genetic code" carried by the DNA in amber will be broken to the point where it cannot be read at all.

Although bringing back the long-extinct dinosaurs is an unattainable dream, this fact does not detract from the classic status of "Jurassic Park" and the film series. This is because the original novel wants to explore a topic that is far more profound than resurrecting dinosaurs.

Reverence for life is the unchanging theme

There is a continuous theme in both the original novel of "Jurassic Park" and the film series, which is that humans try to control and tame other life forms (such as dinosaurs). However, the instinct of life to "find a way out" to grow and reproduce determines that humans' ambition to conquer nature will always fail due to the smallest mistake.

For example, in the original "Jurassic Park" built by humans, all dinosaurs were artificially selected to be female and intentionally given genetic defects, so that they could only survive if they were kept in captivity and continuously fed with certain drugs. However, after the fence was destroyed and the dinosaurs escaped into the wilderness, the expected genetic defects did not cause all the dinosaurs to die. On the contrary, the surviving dinosaurs, like some modern reptiles (such as the Komodo dragon), reproduced by parthenogenesis, and eventually the island was completely out of control.

In Jurassic World 3, Blue, a female Velociraptor living in the mountains, also gave birth to her own offspring, Beta, through parthenogenesis, thus taking an important step in taking root on modern Earth, and once again proving the timeless motto in the original novel: "Life finds a way." The concept of respecting nature and life in this sentence is the unchanging theme throughout the entire series.

(Source: Jurassic Park)

In Jurassic World 3, humans not only face the crisis of dinosaurs returning to Earth and invading human life; the "super locusts" from Biosyn have also become a thought-provoking undercurrent. In order to ensure the sales of grain seeds, the company bred locusts that were mixed with genes from Cretaceous locusts and were about the size of Chihuahuas, and deliberately spread them into the wild, allowing them to destroy farmland, but not the grain grown from the company's seeds. With the help of the "super locusts"' precise strikes, the company was able to dominate the grain seed market.

▲The Biosyn Genetics headquarters in the film

But Dr. Ian Malcolm, employed by Biosyn, saw the huge risks that this "business model" would bring to human society. As an expert in chaos theory, he knew that humans could not control the direction of life evolution, lacked understanding and respect for the power contained in genes, but could not wait to recklessly operate for small profits, and the result would most likely be the collapse of civilization.

In the scene of delivering an academic speech in the film, Malcolm reviewed the lessons learned in the history of science and technology as a warning to the new generation of researchers. Human research on atomic energy eventually led to nuclear confrontation and an arms race in pursuit of nuclear weapons power. Misunderstandings and coincidences brought humanity to the brink of destruction several times; and rashly cultivating and releasing genetically modified animals with powerful destructive power will lead to even more unpredictable consequences. As time goes by, the super locusts spread into the wild will one day break through the barriers set by the breeders, causing the agricultural civilization that humans are familiar with and rely on for survival to collapse in a short period of time.

The subsequent plot development confirmed Malcolm's concerns. In order to destroy the evidence, Biosyn set fire to the laboratory in an attempt to burn all the "super locusts", but the high temperature caused the control system to malfunction, causing them to escape. Fortunately, the scientists who bred the locusts pulled back from the brink and found a way to exterminate them before the locusts began to evolve further, thus avoiding a catastrophe for all mankind.

For their own selfish interests, humans created animals that did not exist in nature, and eventually paid a heavy price to clean up the mess. This plot also appeared repeatedly in the three "Jurassic World" movies - from the "Tyrannosaurus Rex" to satisfy the curiosity of the audience, to the "Tyrannosaurus Velociraptor" as a weapon research, to the overwhelming "super locusts", whenever humans arrogantly despise nature, they will soon encounter an intractable crisis. These disaster stories are particularly valuable in the increasingly turbulent real world as a warning of "technology out of control". After all, in real life, humans may not always be as lucky as in the movies.

Written by Ma Zhiheng (member of the China Science Writers Association)

Editor/Ding Lin New Media Editor/Lv Bingxin

Image source/"Jurassic World 3" trailer (except where noted)

Produced by: Science Central Kitchen

Produced by: Beijing Science and Technology News | Beijing Science and Technology Media

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