Jurassic Bark

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It's rather fun and (at least sometimes) illuminating to go fault-finding
in Jurassic Park, but maybe we should be more bashful in our
Crichton/Spielberg-bashing. The team behind the movie have made a better
effort to get things "right" than most makers of science-fiction movies, so
let's grant them the right to add some details for effect as long as it's
not too flagrant or ridiculous.

Adding venom to Dilophosaurus seems no less allowable than adding color to
its skin, which you must do to make it look alive even though we know
nothing about its real color. And, yes, it might have been "better" to use
birds or even humans rather than frogs for the complementary DNA, but there
was a purpose to the frog, namely to introduce propensity for
hermafroditism. If we can swallow the necessary but preposterous
precondition of amber-begets-DNA-begets-dinosaur, we should be able to
swallow that the choice of the frog was not based on phylogenetic
proximity. And as for the proper time designation, would a more accurate
title, like "Mesozoic Park", have made such an impact?

Some of the alleged errors are no worse than the delightful little joke
when Velociraptor stalked beneath a metal grid and the light that sieved
through spelt out the letters ACCGGATTCC... etc. on its skin. Light doesn't
behave that way, but we don't care just now.

So let's allow the moviemakers some freedom with the details, particularly
with regard to such cases where paleontologists don't have a full answer
either, like the nature of Tyrannosaurus' vision, the maximum size of
Velociraptor, etc. (I agree, though, the cow-like aspects of Brachiosaurus
were unbecoming, and the dung heap was way-way oversized.) They have used
science as framework and inspiration, and rather than pointing out that
this little nut should be there instead and that little bolt was a wee bit
smaller, we should use the limelight they have provided to bring our
thoughts across on the whole thing. We should point out how palaeontology
is the basis for their spectacular reconstructions, that some aspects of
the reconstructions are well supported whereas others are more or less
guesswork, but that every scientific interpretation needs to be tested and
retested against new evidence, and, of course, that in order to do so we
need to keep the science alive and evolving and wouldn't it be lovely if we
could have some more money for field work in Mongolia?

I guess, though, that Bennington's kids might prefer finding plain errors
in the movie. No big problem, just as long as they remember that there are
errors and ERRORS and that even well-established TRVTHS occasionally turn
out to be errors.


Stefan Bengtson                      _/        _/ _/_/_/    _/        _/
Department of Palaeozoology         _/_/      _/ _/    _/  _/_/    _/_/
Swedish Museum of Natural History  _/  _/    _/ _/    _/  _/  _/ _/ _/
Box 50007                         _/    _/  _/ _/_/_/    _/    _/  _/
S-104 05 Stockholm               _/      _/_/ _/   _/   _/        _/
Sweden                          _/        _/ _/     _/ _/        _/

tel. +46-8 666 42 20
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e-mail Stefan.Bengtson@nrm.se