What Jurassic Park Got Right (and Wrong) About Dinosaurs — with Conor O'Keeffe (Museum Educator)

How accurate are the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? Conor O'Keeffe works in museum education and spends his days answering exactly that question for the public.

We go through the franchise's most iconic animals, dig into the real science behind them, and explore the surprisingly dramatic history of palaeontology itself. Conor also has a suggestion for a future Jurassic scene that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

Find Conor at @conorontology on Instagram and Blue Sky.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

They do have this power about them. Dinosaurs have this power. They're like magnets for people, that people are drawn to them in museums because it's this mix of mystery and also like awe for nature. It's a mix of what we know and things that are completely alien to us.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hello and welcome back to Road to Rebirth. I'm Roland Squire. Now I hope you've been enjoying these episodes where I'm exploring a little bit more outside of the actual films themselves. And I was thinking I needed to actually talk about the animals themselves. But I'm not very qualified to talk about them. My knowledge of dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs, lived for more than a hundred million years and then they disappeared. For anybody who is of my vintage and from the UK, you might remember the Early Learning Centre, which was a shop that you could go and buy kids' toys, all sorts of things, kids' tapes. And one of them is the now mythic green dinosaur tape, which was full of songs and facts about dinosaurs with amazing sound effects, all from the early 90s. And it's it's what is still in my head now when I think about dinosaurs. My knowledge, I don't think, has improved since that tape. So I thought it would be worthwhile for me to actually talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. So today it's all about when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. Right, hello, and welcome to the podcast Connor O'Keefe. Thank you very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Thanks so much for having me, Roland. It's an absolute pleasure to be on and to talk all about rebirth and Jurassic in general.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, perfect. Um, so do you work in museum education?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I currently work in the UK, but I've worked in natural history museums in the UK and also abroad in Australia. I've I've made that my career focusing on education for families, children, but also older audiences well, and engaging them around scientific topics that do include paleontology and dinosaurs. So yeah, it's really been a dream come true, I'd say. Um loved museums growing up, always used to visit museums as a kid, and was a massive Jurassic fan as a kid as well. So yeah, it's an honor, basically. Yeah, amazing.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, I can I I can just imagine kind of all the kids coming in with their toys and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, amazing. Um, so uh first question are you excited for rebirth?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yes, uh tremendously so, actually. Uh it's it's an interesting one because I will be honest, we finished the Jurassic World trilogy, and I was like, okay, they build it as the end. I'm happy for it to be done now. Like it's over, maybe there'll be a reboot down the line. I did not expect a new film in the next three years. No, I know, and one that is so radically new as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, and I'm on the dinosaur front that we've seen so far, what's intriguing you there?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, the what when the trailer came out, I think that's when I really got started getting excited. I think some of the pre-release images were exciting as well, like the the photography from the set. But the trailer, because yeah, for me, a huge part of these films is the dinosaurs, and I'm sure for many people listening, they're always excited about the dinosaurs as well as the characters in the story. But specifically every time a new Jurassic comes out, it's like, what are they doing with the dinosaurs? Are they our classic ones? Are they updated? Is it a mix? And this looks like a nice blend of not messing with the classics too much, like the designs we're used to, while putting some kind of twists on some ones that are returning that are maybe were previously less iconic, like the Quetzal Quatlas. Obviously, the Spinosaurus looks very different, but yeah, I welcome this kind of change. It looks like a completely different creature. I think if you're gonna redesign, do it like that, you know, just go for a completely different creature. So, yeah, I think from what we see of the dinosaurs already, I'm really intrigued to see how they play out in the film as well with the Jurassic World trilogy. I did really enjoy that trilogy overall, but the dinosaurs in those films did tend to feel like set dressing at times, and they were quite often you'd have tons of different species in one film all fulfilling the same role, a big loud thing that chases people. Yeah, so I really hope with this focus on like the key species that they're on a mission to find, we're gonna get some unique behaviours, yeah, roles, characters, and I'm not talking like named dinosaur characters, like movie monster characters, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Well, I thought I'd just start by so for everybody listening, Connor is part of the Jurassic Park podcast, and go and listen to those um Dino DNA episodes. They are fantastic. And listening to those in the lead up to this interview, I was just thinking my dino knowledge might actually be stuck in 1993. So I thought we could we could go through the kind of big three of the of of the series, really. T-Rex, Triceratops, and Velociraptor, and just see if you could just give me a bit of background, maybe first on T-Rex, what we know and what the difference is between what we see on screen. Yeah, yeah. Versus the real animal, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Of course, yeah. So I'd be happy to uh just going to preface this as well, though. I do work in museums education, I'm not a trained paleontologist, but I do spend a large portion of my time at work talking to the public about these things and talking with paleontologists as well. So yeah, I will do my best, but also I would definitely recommend, and thank you so much for the shout out, Roland. But do listen to the Dino DNA episodes on these species. We've we've covered these ones, but I'll give you a nice potted history. So T-Rex is a great one because um the the T-Rex that we see in the films for what was known in 1993 is is pretty spot on. It's it's really, really close to what we know from the fossil record. And actually, it really holds up to scrutiny as an overall creature. It really does hold up where our uh knowledge has advanced since then. Is there are lots of scans that are done on the interior of a T-Rex's skull that has been done since then that gives us a better idea of how its brain was kind of um situated within its skull and where the different kind of areas in its brain were larger. So um, for example, we know for sure that it had really, really good, a really good sense of smell. So these are all things that are possible due to increasing levels of technology being implemented into paleontology. But T-Rex was a really well-studied animal uh by the 90s when the first Jurassic Park came out. So that it as I've said, it was really, really accurate in terms of what they knew at the time. Now, there's lots of debates around like the soft uh tissue covering on a T-Rex, so that's anything that's like skin, feathers, that sort of thing. It's harder to preserve in the fossil record, although not impossible. There have been imprints of T-Rex skin uh found. Um, very small sections that all show scales, but that's not to say that it couldn't have had feathers elsewhere in its body. However, there's no current evidence for feathers. But that's why you'll see those kinds of things being produced in things like Jurassic World Dominion, Prehistoric Planet, those sorts of things. So, yeah, overall, T-Rex, from what we see in the Jurassic films, it is it's similar to what the real animal would have been. Of course, there's always uh fantastic artistic license taken with movie making. It could not run as fast as it's shown. That's they've literally admitted to that being a visual trick in the first movie. Um, we don't know what cut colour its skin was, uh, for example. We we do know for some dinosaurs, and I might talk about that later, but not T-Rex, and also that incredible roar, unfortunately, probably not possible with a T-Rex. Uh, but that's not to say it didn't make other sorts of very intimidating noises that we might see in modern-day animals like crocodiles. So, yeah, overall, this this is a dinosaur that they've they've really captured quite well and for good reason. You know, it's it's it's the most famous and most popular dinosaur for a reason at the museum. About you know, 70% of children, you ask them what their favourite dinosaur is, it's a T-Rex. Yep. And there is a good reason for that. It it even if it wasn't this face of paleontology, due to the historical fact of it being discovered at this peak of paleontology in the USA in the late 1800s, mid to late 1800s, and it having that kind of iconography status along with that in the American Frontier, and when it was discovered, it is in itself an incredibly huge and fascinating animal. So I think, regardless of that, it was always going to be destined to be an icon of the dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah. I think also you know it's been in King Kong, you know, back what's that 90 years old now. The the bit that really scares me about the true life of T-Rex is the fact reading in the um rise and fall of dinosaurs by Steve Brasciati. And the fact that they were in groups, yeah. They moved in like big family groups, and that is an absolutely terrifying idea that these colossal creatures hunted in scary enough for velociraptors, but yeah, think of the massive T-Rex, about 20 of those coming out of a of a forest. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I mean, and these these are all things that, you know, it's it's hard to piece together exactly their behaviours because we we're only finding their skeletons in the same location. But yeah, by having all those different individuals of different ages and sizes found in one location, that would definitely show that you know that it's possible that these creatures did move in these groups, which, yeah, as you said, is as if one huge multi-ton beats isn't enough, you know. The idea of of a group of these in any location at a given time, what a nightmare. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Um, so moving on to Triceratops, another key dinosaur in the Jurassic films. So, how does that creature that we see in the films relate to what the fossil record says?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, so Triceratops is a really interesting one. Once again, another really iconic dinosaur, one that actually shared the same habitat as T-Rex, you know, s over 66 million years ago in the in the Cretaceous period. Triceratops in the Jurassic Park films and in a lot of dynamedia, I think um gets almost like done dirty by relation. Like it looks like and the prehistoric rhinoceros, and so the assumption is it is a prehistoric rhinoceros. So whenever you see it portrayed in any of the classic kind of paleomedas, and that does include Jurassic Park, it is it's a it's a it's a rhinoceros with three horns. So that that that basically drips through to its creature design in the film. So not only will it be this kind of solitary animal that's shown to be very kind of territorial, kind of the tough predator, which is probably true. There's it's a reason why it has those huge horns. Um, but the solitary aspect, you know, we do know that they would have had family groups, once again, like we've spoken about with Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's nothing to say that it was necessarily as solitary as it's portrayed in a lot of these media. Um, but also in terms of its design, it's given it's in especially in Jurassic Park, it's given the this quite leathery skin that kind of hangs from its body. Um, its feet are completely mammalian in Jurassic Park and in other kinds of reconstructions from this kind of period where they're kind of like these, it's almost like these um these huge pads, essentially. And triceratops and large dinosaurs would have had these shock-absorbing pads on their feet, but a triceratops' foot in real life was actually really splayed out a lot more like you'd see on a lizard, but with rounded claws. So they were still walking on their tiptoes, essentially, like how you have with modern-day reptiles and lots of other dinosaurs. So that's a key difference there, in that they're kind of shown to be these kind of lumbering beasts, where in real life they would have been a lot more kind of agile and graceful on their feet. In terms of the rest of what we see of triceratops in the films, unfortunately, I think triceratops, despite appearing every single Jurassic film, never quite gets the line right it deserves.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, I'm I'm with you there. Yeah, exactly. Because in Jurassic, Jurassic Park, obviously, it's the the first time they get to touch a dinosaur, have that up-close encounter. It's so emotional, typical Steven Spielberg, the the sentiment of the creature, and it's you know amazingly shot and acted by everybody you've seen. And then within Lost World, you get it breaking out and going through all of the hunters' lodge, essentially, where they've got all the tents and everything, and that was meant to be its key moment, but it's it's still on screen for about 20 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Also, they used the CGI model of the Stegosaurus with a triceratops head pasted onto it in that scene. It's oh I didn't know that. Oh yeah, I mean the thing is, is like I'm all for those kinds of elements of like movie magic. Most people are not gonna notice that. You know, I'm all for the kind of we're making a movie, right? We gotta make things work. Are people gonna notice this? It's at nighttime. No, but it does speak to the the overall kind of sideline of Triceratops that didn't even get its own CGI model until Jurassic World came out. And then yeah, I suppose you know in later films it got kind of usurped by um Nersutaceratops like in Battle of Big Rock and in Dominion. But yeah, it was an incredibly iconic dinosaur in our you know, kind of modern understanding uh and and like culture around paleontology, but also you know, of its time, this was a really, really commonplace dinosaur in that Late Cretaceous North America kind of ecosystem. And a lot of more recent research has shown it to be a really dynamic animal that would have had quite complex kind of social and and family kind of structures, and then also there's been a lot of kind of hypotheses put forward to the fact that potentially that hard beak that has is not just for eating plant matter, but potentially could indicate that's it's it's somewhat omnivorous as well in its diet as like a kind of last resort for finding kind of you know um the nutrients it needs in its habitat. So a really interesting creature. It's you know, there's been lots of studies done on like shock absorption on its skull, imagining how it kind of rams with those horns in its frill. The frill would have mainly been for um presentation to other um individuals of its species for like mating and like dominance displays and such, but also was a really great shield against its neck, against dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex, which we know for sure attacked and and and fought with Triceratops because we have found Triceratops fossils with T-Rex bite marks in them, which have since healed over, which means that the Triceratops survives the attack so much that it's under healing again, which is an incredible piece of of evidence for finding these interspecies relationships, which is so rare in the fossil record. So, yeah, really, really cool herbivore, which we need more.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

That's that that's that that that's the scene we have. Yes, you know, we we can't I I that you know, a T-Rex versus a triceratops, it's it's there, and it's just yeah, maybe maybe we'll get it in the future.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

I think they've done it in a few of the expanded medias, but never in the films. So yeah, still holding out hope for that one.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Great. So now moving on to another iconic dinosaur, which is the Velociraptor. Yes. And I'm sure everybody will be aware that it is very different, probably, to the Velociraptor of the fossil record.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Absolutely. This is a tricky one with knowing where to begin, actually, because there's so many levels to what happens in the filmmaking process that led to what we had in the movie, basically. So it kind of goes back to Michael Crichton's original novel, and he was using a lot of the work by a very prominent paleontologist, especially in the 90s. He's done so much for paleontology. His name is Gregory S. Paul, and he did a uh quite quite a few kind of seminal kind of papers and a huge book as well, which was Predatory Dinosaurs of North America. And in this book, he posited that Dinonicus, which was found in the 1960s in the USA, which is a now known to be like sort of cousin species of Velociraptor, another drumiosaur. He posited that it was actually a species of Velociraptor itself. So Velociraptor is was found in the 1920s in Mongolia and is a very small animal, still would have been very deadly, but very small, about the size of a fox. And essentially, what Gregory Paul had done is he looked at the skeleton of Velociraptor and Deinonychus and decided that these were probably different subspecies but of the same kind of species. So he dubbed Deinonychus Velociraptor Antheropus, which is Deinonychus's species name, Deinonychus Anthoropus, in that book. And Michael Crichton most likely used that book while he was writing Jurassic Park. So that's why you've got Velociraptor being dug up in Montana, because that's where Deinonychus is from. Now, by the time that the film Jurassic Park came out, this he'd already he'd gone back on this. Gregory S. Paul was like, you know what? Hold my hands up, I was wrong. They're two different species. But when it came to putting that script together and making a movie, what sounds cooler? Velociraptor or Deinonychus? And then that's where it all kind of you know spilled out from, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Right, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

So the dinosaurs that we see that are Velociraptor in the films, they're Deinonychus. Even then, they're still oversized, not by much, but by a bit closer in size to Uteraptor, which was actually discovered while they were making Jurassic Park and um published in 1994. So that one was kind of dubbed, you know, um, I think it was Stan Winston that kind of said, Oh, you know, we made the movie, then they found the dinosaur, which is really funny. But yeah, Velociraptor and Deinonychus, so two different species, but both would have been absolutely covered in feathers. We know this for sure. We have found holes in their bones on their arms, uh, where quill knobs would have gone in. This is where large flight feathers would have attached to the animal skeleton. That's not to say these animals could fly, but they had already evolved the feathers that would, you know, in one lineage of the dinosaurs evolve into flight feathers. So you would have used these wings essentially on their arms to save themselves while pouncing um and jumping around on their prey. They definitely had those long killer claws, their iconic killer claws. Maybe not slashing and latching onto things as it was depicted back in Jurassic, but more along the lines of how an eagle will use its talons to hold down prey uh once it's already caught them. And then also another really cool fact about Deinonychus is that we have found clutches of fossilized eggs from Deinonychus, and um analyses on the um the kind of microscopic structures of the pigments and that are still preserved on those eggs would show us that they were actually blue in colour, which is a really, really cool and quite recent thing that we've learned about these dinosaurs. So that could serve all sorts of purposes. The current day birds, there's lots of different ones that have different colour eggs. It could be to do with them being able to spot their eggs amongst um clutches of other individuals. So Dinonychus may have nested in groups, but also to keep their eggs cool as well in the sun. It could be due to due to like the way that they see the world, they might register colours in a different way from us, probably did. Lots of different reasons, but that's a really cool recent find for those for those Synonochus and Velociraptor. I mean, you know, this thing might have been small, but it was vicious. Um, some I'm sure there's some listeners that know of the famous fighting dinosaurs fossil that was found of a Velociraptor locked in mortal combat with a protoceratops, which is just awesome. That might be the best fossil ever found.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah, I think it is, yeah. Whoever, whoever dug that up must have just thought, oh, this is amazing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I think it was actually it was referenced referenced on the most recent season of um Chaos Theory, the the Dream Mux animation. One of the characters um mentions it as like, oh my mother discovered this or something. So I thought that was a cool, cool little nod in the franchise.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, incredible. Yeah. So and and watching all the films, they do subtly change the dinosaurs as the films go on. You know, we get the the quills for the Velociraptors, you know, is a kind of like throwing the bone to the paleontologist for Jurassic for Jurassic Park 3. What I think most spectacularly is the the bit in Dominion that was unfortunately cut, which is the the prologue, of course, which takes us into Cretaceous. Even though I don't think the Gigan Autosaurus and uh T-Rex would have fought, is is this no this is a trap?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Absolutely not. There's a lot, I think in that that scene they kind of just wedged most of the species they were going to use later on. Only very few of those species would have been able to coexist in real life. But yeah, that that's a tricky one that uh with most of the things in Jurassic, you can chalk it up to you know, it's they're they're genetic clones, you know, they're they're not the real animals. But then when you have a scene set in the past, it's it's hard to say that. I would still say it's a film. You know, we don't there all sorts of choices are made for artistic vision, but yeah, um, it made for a good scene.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah, I suppose one of those choices, like an artistic choice made in the Jurassic series, is Dilophosaurus. Yes, absolutely, which is very different to what it was actually like. Yeah. So what what what's the the the background between like what we see of Dilophosaurus and what actually the animal was like?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah, yeah. So I mean this is a really interesting point here because I mean, when we're talking about the way dinosaurs are depicted in Jurassic, they have always changed. And sometimes, you know, there's there can be lots of kind of online debate around this, and and on Dino DNA, we we kind of take the approach of let's learn about the real real world animals and see how those could have informed the design choices we see in the film, rather than being like, This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. Yeah, and sometimes the original Jurassic Park, the you know, they did a lot of effort to bring those eyes to life using the latest and research, but then you've got things like the Dilophosaurus, which is a 100% movie monster. It's yeah, an amazing creature design. Everyone recognises it, everyone knows it. It's like it's like Dremlins, you know, it's got that kind of crunchy analogy. 80s, 90s, kind of almost like stop-motion-y kind of horror, which is great. And it doesn't, it never existed like that. The the Dilophosaurus that we know from the fossil record was about three times larger. It we have no evidence that it could have spat venom at its prey or had an extending thrill like a thrill neck lizard. However, that doesn't make the dilophosaurus in the film any less cool. Um, but yeah, that's what we kind of know of the real-life dilophosaurus. And what's um interesting about what they did with that in the film was that in the original Crioton novel, the Dilophosaurus was the accurate size. And when it came down to making these models um for the films, I th it was maybe Stan Winston and might have been Spielberg looked at the Dilophosaurus size next to the Velociraptor and was like, one of them has to change size because people are gonna think one is the other, and so they shrunk the Dilophosaurus, and a part of it I'm sure was due to the fact that having it be a small, unassuming kind of silhouette, only to be the most horrific thing in the whole film, was just too tantalizing, you know, a narrative choice not to take up. And I 100% back it.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah, yeah, me too. And I suppose that uh going back to what you said at the start about the past, you know, Jurassic World films, the animal swapping in and out, and they could have been any that's not the case, I don't think, with Jurassic Park.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Like that decision was made to make that animal more distinct to the when you looked at the seven species featured in Jurassic Park, on like you know, there's all those those like like um size charts and posters and stuff that came out at the time. Yeah, seven dinosaurs, such distinct silhouettes, every single one of them is instantly recognizable just from a black outline because they're all so different. And then you kind of go along in the series and they kind of continue that trend for the first few films. Lost World introduces more iconic silhouettes, Compsognathus, Stegosaurus, you know, Pteranodon, Jurassic Park 3, Spinosaurus, Ankylosaurus, all very iconic, you know, silhouettes. And then you kind of you it turns out that you start covering off quite a lot of large groups of dinosaurs by this point. Yeah, so you've already done one of each kind of category, you know. You've got the Mosasaur in Jurassic World. So you get along to where where we are in Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, and along with them the other dinosaurs they introduce that are new and are part of a new group, so like Therizenosaurus and non-dinosaurs like Ketzal, Quatlus, the Dimetrodon, other really iconic creatures that we've been waiting for, they start peppering in a lot of kind of what I would say, yeah, kind of not repeat designs, but they're fulfilling the same role in the film, like Atrociraptor, pyroptor. Phyllow dinosaurs, essentially. Kind of phyllodinosaurs. It does almost feel like you get to Dominion and it's like, right, we every Jurassic film, we have to have more dinosaurs. Let's outdo it. Let's there are over 30 different species in Dominion, which from the outside looking in sounds like, wow, what a feat! But when you actually watch the film, yeah, very few of those make any impact on the film or plot. That's why I think lots of you point to the Therizinosaurus scene as being a standout from that film, because they use that dinosaur's unique characteristics and traits to kind of drive that scene forward. Whereas Giganodosaurus, what it does is basically what a T-Rex does. You know, Pyroraptor, what it does is what a Velociraptor does. You know, it's I think that's the thing with rebirth. What I'm really looking out for is yes, we've got these new species, we've got these new designs, but what are they bringing to the film? Yeah, and or are they just gonna bring the same you know, thrills and shocks that we've seen before with a new skin? And I have got a lot of faith actually that this film will deliver some new moments for us because we've got Gareth Edwards, who does big monsters really well, yeah. Um, and we've got a plot that is very it's a almost like a video game plot, but you know, from what we know of it, it does it it it's centered around the animals, which makes me think they've got to do something to make each of these encounters feel very unique, which gives me a lot of hope that we're gonna get those moments.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yeah, I I think it does look quite definitely the design of it is very different, and it feels very Garrett Edwards. I I imagine he's had quite a lot of hand in creating those when you see that titanosaurus uh frills and all of that sort of thing, and just the size and the tail is incredible. Yeah, yeah, it they feel quite different to what we've had before.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, on that titanosaur, actually, I've seen people point this out. This wasn't my discovery, but I've seen people point out that one of the old Godzilla monsters that was actually called Titanosaur had big orange fins on it. And we know Gareth is a big Godzilla fan, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of his input, which is great. I love that. Yeah, bit of speculative paleontology, we don't know for sure an animal that size would have those features, but it's not out of the question, and it adds a nice characteristic to what otherwise would be like the Dread Nortis from Dominion, another huge sauropod. And actually, just on that note, in your your episode where you did the trailer reaction and you pointed out that we've got the the scene where the tail is almost like a tentacle behind the characters. That is so Gareth, isn't it? Like yeah, the he does that with the Godzilla's tail in 2014, does that in monsters, and yet you can really see his vision coming through.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

He's always got to, even in the Star Wars films, he had to have some kind of slippery monster or gullets, yeah. He can't resist it. Yeah, so yeah, uh I wonder how tentacly and monstrous the mutant will be as well in that kind of way. I think that's where he can really have his fun because I suppose that's the same with everybody that's come to this with the Dominus, uh the Indoraptor, you know, they've all had recently, and you know, the Dilophosaurus you know and Spielberg had the chance to actually make the first, I suppose, scientifically accurate depiction of dinosaurs on screen, you know. I think that's probably what they were trying to go for. So they've all they've all had their fun with like creating these monsters, and yeah, it'd be exciting to see what um Gareth Edwards can bring to the party. So when you're at Vin Museums, what what's the main question that people come to you and ask you about dinosaurs?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Oh well, I mean there's there's it depends on who we're who who's coming and asking the question because you got you got the really little kids and they just want to know which one could beat another one in a fight. Right, yeah. Which is I think you know, as much as those big loud scenes in some of the more recent Jurassic films of Dinosaurs are smashing into each other can seem a little bit all right, but when's the plot coming back? For those kids, this is this is a dream come true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to know who can beat who in a fight. So that's a big one. But then when we're talking about like parents, but also we get lots of other visitors, you know, coming in to the to the museum, other adults and such, there are a lot of questions around, you know, could Jurassic Park happen? You know, could you bring these dinosaurs back? Is that a thing? People want to know kind of what that would entail, like how you could go about doing that, what implications it could have. You know, these these are questions that, due to this franchise, are, you know, they it has made dinosaurs feel, you know, like a possibility or something relevant to lots of people that otherwise probably wouldn't look at them again after you turn the age of 13 or something, yeah. Which is really, really cool. Not to say there aren't there's plenty of dinosaur fans who are adults, as I'm sure we all know. But when we're talking about like the general public at the museum, those are the questions that come up a lot. But also, honestly, being in that museum environment and being surrounded by like the giant skeletons and displays and all of that stuff, it does bring out that kind of sense of like childish awe and wonder in adults too. They'll, you know, they'll be gazing up at a fossil. And like I've worked on the museum galleries a lot, um, you know, just kind of with fossils, talking to the general public, doing tours. They'll just ask you the most random questions because they're genuinely interested. Right. Like, oh, yeah, what did this one eat? You know, that sort of thing. Like, oh, what what was like its habitat when it lived? Like all of these kind of like quite detailed questions from people that are just you know out for having a nice day, but the dinosaurs have really sucked them in because they do have this power about them. Dinosaurs have this power. It's like, you know, that they're like magnets for people that that people are drawn to them in museums because it's this mix of mystery and also like awe for nature. It's a mix of what we know and things that are completely alien to us. Like we can look at them and go, oh, that's kind of like a big lizard. That one's a little bit like a bird, but it's like 50 times bigger and it's got huge teeth. That's terrifying, but also wonderful. They're like these amazing kind of like mysteries that I think just capture a lot of people's imaginations. Yeah, it's it's amazing, actually, just being able to talk to you know the general public about science and dinosaurs because once I think a lot another question that comes out a lot is um, how come you put feathers on this one? You know, something like that. Why why is this one not scaly anymore? And that's a lovely question to answer because it speaks to the whole process of science. Science isn't this immovable truth, this fact of the world, it's a process of constantly finding new evidence of challenging what we know and advancing knowledge. And dinosaurs are a perfect way of explaining that to people, and that's really, really important in the world we live in, that people understand how science works and that it is a changing process that is done by people that study things for you know decades at a time sometimes, and they make those informed decisions and debates with other scientists to advance what we know about the world around us, and yeah, it's it's it's really great that dinosaurs act as that sort of like that yeah, that doorway into science.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

I was trying to think of what because I was six when Jurassic Park came out, and I'm trying to think I must have gone to the natural history museum before and where the where those Deinonychus were there, and now they have feathers, and they didn't have feathers when I first went to the museum.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yeah, so those um those Deinonychus that now have feathers in the Natural History Museum, they used to be located where the T-Rex was, and there was a set of three that was surrounding a the carcass of a Tenontosaurus, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

And I remember going to see the first when the T-Rex was put there, and I was with my cousin, and she didn't come in because as you got closer you could hear rules. So that was too much for us. So she had to wait, she had to wait out at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Even now, that T-Rex is gonna be over 20 years old now, but like your kids will refuse to go in, they'll be crying if you scream it, they don't want to go in, the monsters in there. It's incredible. It's it's it it is an older animatronic, but it still has that power because it's T-Rex. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

And is that three what's that three-quarters size?

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Is that yeah, so that T-Rex is smaller than a fully grown adult. Yeah, it's about three-quarters size. So um, I think it that decision was made to literally fit it in the space that was in there. But yeah, it we kind of refer it to as like a like almost like a juvenile kind of size in there. Fun little Easter egg. Those there were three dine on the coast, so only two are in the dinosaur gallery. The third one is now located in the uh restaurant. As you walk into the restaurant, it will greet you in there.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah, it's like seeing old friends when I yeah, oh, like across the table. Yes. Uh so what impact do you think Jurassic Park had on the science of dinosaurs and public consciousness? I expect it had a massive influence.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Absolutely. So I think Jurassic Park, and then I guess the franchise that followed as well, has had such a unique impact on science that I don't think can be said for any other kind of form of pop culture or media in recent kind of memory, in the fact that it not only galvanized entire generations to care about this very specific and very quite niche study in science. Like, yeah, if you think about all of science, you know, space, medicine, you know, all of these things, yeah, fossilized bones of dead animals is you know, it's it's low on the laundry list of what science has done for us in the world, and yet it's so fascinating and exciting. And as you mentioned earlier, Jurassic Path brought those scientifically accurate dinosaurs to the screen in full life for the first time, and that was revolutionary in terms of what people thought about these dinosaurs. There was already a movement um within paleontology called the Dinosaur Revolution um that started, oh dinosaur renaissance rather, that started in the 1960s around the discovery of Dinolychus. That there's the old school of thought that they were lumbering beasts that were destined for extinction because they were old and slow and reptilian, was completely replaced because they now had evidence they were warm-blooded, they were fast movers, and it was becoming more obvious that their extinction was a you know a tiny, tiny, tiny chance that you a meteorite hit the planet, you know. Like that's that's not to do with their own performance, you know. It's it's due to a cosmic, you know, error essentially that they went extinct. But you know, things take a while to re to go from science to the public. Yeah. And Jurassic Park brought everything forward for um the science, essentially. So yeah, it revolutionized how people saw dinosaurs and paleontology, but also it I would say it also revolutionized paleontology in a lot of ways as well. Because you look at the kind of the academics that make up a lot of paleontology kind of offices and departments around the world, a large proportion of those are going to be people that grew up watching Jurassic Park. You know, they were influenced by this film to get into this science, and that cannot be understated, the impact that that has. And I'm not saying they're going into science to become Dr. Grant or anything like that. But you know, they they they have now invested their life into doing something based on a film. And look, I I would count myself kind of amongst that. I'm not a paleontologist, but I got into museums and such. I was interested in dinosaurs already, but Jurassic Park really kicked up a notch because it shows paleontologists at work in the films as well, which is really, really cool. So it's this really unique relationship where both science and popular culture have influenced each other, which is something I just don't think we see in cinema elsewhere. I mean, of course, there are loads of amazing films about space and as I've mentioned, like medicine, other natural sciences, physics, chemistry, but not to this quite the same scale for you know the the size of the discipline that paleontology is, um, which is really, really cool. And also there's been a lot of funding for the department that or the discipline rather of paleontology following Jurassic Park because of this renewed interest in dinosaurs and science and a lot of kind of grants and and research being funded because of the understanding that this is something that people are interested in. Yeah, it's it's been it's been a massive impact both ways.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

Yeah. And um finally, I was wondering what your favourite dinosaur moment is from the films, all books. And uh maybe also what dinosaur would you are you itching to see on on screen if there's one less.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

That's a great point. Okay, two fantastic questions. So I think so the the books and the films present dinosaurs quite differently. The the the dinosaurs in the books are a little bit weirder, which I quite like. They've got like this weird kind of biological horror aspect to them. You know, they can change colour, yeah. They're kind of like these weird mutants of nature, they're faster than people expect. Yeah, they've they have these animal-like traits, but they're they're kind of alien as well. So I do love a lot of the scenes from the books that I love to see translated in the films. I love the scene in the first book where the Dilophosaurs are having like a they're doing like a mating dance across the river. Fantastic bit of like, oh, we're seeing another behavior here and we're interrupting it. This is kind of scary. That was great. Also, the colour changing uh Carnotaurus in the Lost World novel. Yep. All-time one of the best kind of suspense scenes in you know, in the novels. Of course, we got that kind of we've got one scene of the Indominus doing that in Jurassic World. Not enough, in my opinion. I want more of that kind of thing. Yep, yeah, yeah. Would love to see that come over into the films. Um, but then for the films, I really like those moments like we see the the Buck T-Rex in the Lost World kind of nudging the baby on to like you know, take down Mudlow and stuff like these kinds of like moments that give the dinosaurs a little bit more character um and agency outside of just chasing and eating people, although I do love watching that. And the same goes with the raptors in Dress Apart 3 you mentioned earlier. Not only are they more bird-like, but they are dedicated to getting the eggs back. They they set those traps, they follow the cart across the island. That is their mission. They have a mission, they have an actual storyline and agency in the film. And one could even say a conclusion when they kind of you know they they threaten the humans, then they use the resonating chamber, the humans give them the eggs, and they're kind of like, right, we'll leave you alone now. We're gonna head back off into the jungle.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

I love that. You're a bit weird doing that weird like noise at us. What do you want to say? Almost like a cat when you do that to you do something weird in front of a cat, like, all right, yeah, whatever, just give us the phone and we'll go.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, those would be my favorite moments. Um, but in terms of a dinosaur like to see added to the franchise, the thing is, as I mentioned with Dominion earlier, they just kind of threw a whole bunch of dinosaurs at the screen. In doing that, a lot of the ones they threw at the screen were ones I was waiting for for a long time and just didn't get the screen time. Tetzal Coatlis was that's been one I've wanted for ages. It had one scene, I'm so happy it's got a starring role and rebirth. That in a in in a uh you know, like an Aztec like Mayan cell temple as well. Yes, amazing. That's a fantastic set for that, given its namesake. You know, it's yeah, an amazing kind of set piece, I hope. Um, Derosenosaurus was waiting for that for a while. So the the thing is, there's yeah, as we've kind of mentioned, you know, we've had all the different archetypes on screen already. There's very few archetypes left. So if there was going to be a new dinosaur species added, I would want something that once again fills different archetypes. So probably something like a plesiosaurus, another marine reptile, but that has a different function than the mosasaur. The mosasaur, yeah. It's huge, it's the behemoth, it's T-Rex of the ocean. I want something that could kind of perform uh basically the velociraptor-like role of the ocean, something smaller, more nimble, with that long neck. Can imagine that snaking around in a boat, you know, or in a sunken facility and coming after the cast, can come out of the water like you know, the classic 90s film Anaconda, you know, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

I think that well, and it's uh like the the Pleiasaur and uh like Ichthyosaur, yeah, like they were the original, you know, this is what sparked everybody's imagination of with Mary Anning finding them in Lionelegius. And you know, they were in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, they have a big fight in that's in in that in that book. And so it's you know, if people in cinema are always going after kind of literary ideas to try and give their films heft and weight, well, there's enough behind the Plesius or in the Ichtheus. Absolutely to actually finally see it on the room.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Yeah, yeah, the historic context of that would be fantastic. It's like we we finally got iguanodon once again in Dominion scene for a second, but you know, that's a yeah, that's a that's a hugely historically important favourite.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yes, and I d it now am I right in thinking that that dinosaurs changed its n its name recently?

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Yeah, because so um so yes, iguanodon still exists, but one of the original iguanodon fossils found in the United Kingdom. Kington by someone called Gideon Mantel. This was all around the time when the what the actually the word dinosaur didn't exist yet. There was a bunch of different reptilian fossils found. Sir Richard Owen, who who um founded the Naturalist Museum, coined the word dinosaur after studying iguanodon and fossils of two other dinosaurs. But basically, they found more iguanodon specimens in mainland Europe. And then a big review of all of these iguanodon uh materials was done in the 2010s. And it was found that that original, some of those original fossils found in the UK of iguanodon were very different to those found in mainland Europe. They were of a much smaller animal, more grey cyle, uh lightweight bones, so much so it was designated as a new species. They named it Mantelosaurus in honor of Gideon Mantel. So I guanodon lives on, but Mantelosaurus um is what those original fossils that were found that we thought belonged to Iguanodon has now been renamed uh Mantelosaurus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah. That's nice. Because I always think any anybody listening, um, please go and read the Impossible Monsters book by uh Michael Taylor. Yes. Um, which is just I I love the history of the paleontologists who first discovered those dinosaurs, particularly Gideon Mantle and uh Richard Owen, who was yeah, yeah, of a bastard by all by all accounts, particularly to Gideon Mantle. And yeah, if it's just a fascinating thing to think that it's what 250 years are we now? Yeah, about less than that, um, from kind of dinosaurs being given their name and it igniting this religious warfare in the UK. You know, that's it's not just the films that we see, you know, of the dinosaurs fighting each other, and that is the end result of all of this like political and religious turmoil that went on for ages. People were thrown in prison because they um wrote about dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

It's it's the the stories of paleontology and early paleontology specifically are uh yeah, incredible. Like there's those ones in the UK, like you're talking about, then there's also the Bone Wars in the USA, where you had rival paleontologists literally blowing up each other's dig sites with dynamite. Like it was the Wild West. It was Drag Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton is a great kind of fictionalized kind of um account of this. I would recommend that book as well for that one.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

I think they're still trying to unpick the stuff that they were doing to each other. They were both kind of giving names to the same species. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

I mean, so one of the kind of things that happened from that period was because they were in such a race to discover things and and uh one up their opponent, is that there were so many scientific errors made, and they were literally finding parts of the same animals and naming them different things. Um, T-Rex is a fantastic kind of kind of almost an a casualty, almost casualty of this era, in which it was found on three separate occasions in this period and given three different names. And it wasn't until someone looked at all of those and went, actually, these were on one dinosaur. We're gonna go with the name Tyrannosaurus Rex because you know that relates to some of the earliest finds here. It could have been at one point called Malospongulus Gigus, it could have been called Dinosaurus Imperita. You know, these are different names that were thrown out.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

That sounds like a stuff. Yeah, or mad lyrics, yeah. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

The history of paleontology is is fascinating as well. I just also wanted to add, just going back to the earlier discussion, uh, before we wrap up around additions to the franchise, I would along all that those lines of talking about um the kind of behaviors and and and the the dinosaurs having a unique kind of agency within the story, I would love to see some behaviors from modern-day birds that we see adapted into the dinosaurs. And one of them, which I think could be used for a very, very scary effect, is that crows and other Corvids can and parrots can mimic noises of other animals and even human speech. Yeah. I would love to see a very creepy moment in which a sort of a little kind of raptor or or truodontid type dinosaur, it like mimics, you know, a noise or something and and tricks a character. I'm not saying it's gonna say a word or anything like that, it's not gonna talk to a character, but just having it make like like imitate someone's scream in like this horrible, kind of croaky alien way, for them to turn the corner and see this horrible little animal looking back at them. Oh, it would make for such a good scene.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah, it'd be incredible if it was kind of had attacked somebody and then it was replicating their scream for whoever was to come next. Like in Predator, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Yeah, yeah. I think that would be cool. You know, these new kind of behaviours to give the dinosaurs something more to do in the scene other than roar and chase would be great.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Yeah, yeah. And we don't go down the 65 million year film route that was 65.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Yes, 65 years. 65. That was an interesting ride.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Yes. Uh well, thank you so much for joining me. My pleasure. Um, so uh where where can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Yeah, um, so um my at on a bunch of social media platforms is Connor Ontology. That's one NN Connor. You find me on Instagram, more so on Blue Sky as well. Um, and then of course, do listen uh to the Dresspot Podcast. It's an amazing podcast run by Brad Jost Um and Tom Jurassic, and then my segments are in a DNA, but the whole podcast is fantastic. So, yeah, make sure you give it a lot.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

An incredibly um positive podcast as well. It's um yeah, everybody's welcome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible. Absolutely. So, yeah, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you so much, Roland. This has been really fun. My huge thanks to Connor. He is so very gracious with his knowledge, and please go and listen to his Dino DNA episodes over on the Jurassic Park podcast. Just the people he talks to and the way that they manage to get across all of this big information is is is amazing, and it's truly captivating actually. Um, so thank you so much to Connor. Next week I'm talking to, it feels like I'm on a little bit of a um Jurassic Park podcast hit at the moment because my guest next week is none other than Brad Jost, the host of the Jurassic Park Podcast, and we're discussing Jurassic World from 2015. I'm actually going back to the world of the films. We're getting close, people. We're getting very, very close. But until next time, I'll just say thank you very much for listening and goodbye.