"The animals in the mist were perfect apatosaurs, medium-size sauropods. His stunned mind made academic associations: North American herbivores, late Jurassic horizon. Commonly called 'brontosaurs.' First discovered by E. D. Cope in Montana in 1876. Specimens associated with Morrison formation strata in Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. Recently [David S.] Berman and [Jack] McIntosh had reclassified it a diplodocus based on skull appearance."
— Alan Grant narrating Jurassic Park, unaware that Brontosaurus would be reinstated 25 years later
The original Jurassic Park novel was published in 1990, and the first film came out in 1993, and a lot of our paleontology and genetic sciences knowledge has advanced or been reevaluated since then. The franchise commonly uses a handwave that the dinosaurs were created according to specifications that were thought to be accurate at the time, or according to what the corporate executives in charge of the various Jurassic Park sites thought would drive tourists to the parks.
Examples of Science Marches On in Jurassic Park:
open/close all folders
Franchise-Wide
- At the time the novel was published, some experiments claimed to have succeeded in extracting DNA from samples that were tens of millions of years old. One study published just one day after the film's premiere claimed to have recovered DNA from a 120 million year old weevil that had been preserved in amber. Later experiments failed to replicate these results, and they are now believed that have been false positives due to sample contamination. As the half-life of DNA was recently established, we now know for a fact that even under ideal preservation conditions, DNA cannot survive longer than a couple million years (the current record for an identifiable fossil DNA strand is about 2.5 million).
- The series uses a cloning method with is now known to be unfeasible for birds and reptiles, and therefore also couldn't be used for non-avian dinosaurs. The main issue is that birds and most reptiles lay shelled eggs rather than having a uterus. Mammals can simply have the fertilized embryo injected in the host's uterus and it will implant itself, but there is no such process in birds, and transferring and removal of a fertilized egg cell to the petri dish and into the egg is practically impossible in comparison.
- The handwave of the dinosaurs becoming Sex Shifters due to the addition of amphibian genes has been obviated by the 21st century discovery of parthenogenetic births by both condors and crocodiles in captivity.note Both belong to the archosaur clade, like the dinosaurs, and have the same ZW sex chromosome set—also shared with lepidosaurs (lizards), which were already known to sometimes be parthenogenetic (there are two all-female species native to the American Southwest). This means that there's a good chance the dinosaurs could have started reproducing even with their OEM genomes.
- The dinosaurs are all scaly, whereas recent science indicates many should be feathered. Notably, we now know that Velociraptor had feathers and possessed other avian characteristics (this was sort of addressed in the third film by giving them weird looking little feather "mohawks"), as should some other dinosaurs like the Gallimimus and Compsognathus. Jurassic World Dominion compensates a little by introducing Therizinosaurus, Pyroraptor, Moros, and Oviraptor as being feathered, although previous dinosaurs that should be feathered still aren't, nor is the new raptor species Atrociraptor.
- Rather infamously, the novels (and by extension, the films) used a very niche hypothesis that synonymized Deinonychus under Velociraptor. This was a fringe idea, even back then, and nobody has taken the idea seriously in a long time. Nonetheless, the franchise has continued to espouse its dromaeosaurs as Velociraptor due to the Grandfather Clause.
- The Brachiosaurus in the films is based on fossils now considered their own genus, Giraffatitan (the actual Brachiosaurus species, B. altithorax, is known from very poor fossil remains in comparison).
- The franchise portrays its raptors as seemingly being obligate pack-hunters, which was a popular idea with Deinonychus (and by extension, all dromaeosaurs) during the 80s into the early 00s. However, there's very little evidence to suggest any strict social behaviour, never mind a wolf pack-like structure with a dominant "alpha" that the other raptors obey unerringly (the Alpha and Beta Wolves trope itself is now considered a misconception from observing captive wolves).
- All the dinosaurs are portrayed with pronated hands, with the palms facing the chest. It is now known that this position was impossible and attempting to put their hands in such a position would have broken their bones. They are now believed to have held their hands with the palms facing each other like they're preparing to clap.
- The Cearadactylus are depicted as scrawny, delicate creatures with fragile looking wings and an awkward, clumsy gait on the ground. Later discoveries suggest that all pterosaurs were not only much sturdier than they looked, but also scarily competent at ground movement (ornithocheirids like Cearadactylus are even believed to have been able to hop on all fours). Commendably, they're also depicted as being covered in fur.
- Sauropods are depicted with fleshy, malleable lips. Now that better-preserved sauropod skulls have been discovered, particularly of the recently-discovered Lavocatisaurus, it seems sauropods would have had a keratinous sheath forming into what looks like a beak. The Brachiosaurus is also depicted with nostrils on its forehead, which was the main line of thought for sauropods at the time of the first film, but it's now thought they had fleshy sinus chambers which connected nostrils at the time of the snout to the nasal cavity in the skull on the forehead. Later sauropods are accurately depicted with nostrils on the end of their snouts, but the Brachiosaurus still has forehead nostrils, probably due to the Grandfather Clause.
- Both Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus are portrayed as incredibly speedy hunters, the former explicitly stated to be "cheetah speed" and the latter capable of keeping pace with a speeding car. Later studies on dinosaur speed have indicated it's unlikely large theropods like T. rex were capable of speeds over 15 MPH, possibly not even 11 MPH, while dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus did not possess any particular adaptations for speed and would've been far outpaced by modern flightless birds like ostriches or emus.
- Carnotaurus is depicted with rows of osteoderms down its back, but a study on its skin impressions in 2021 found that they were actually placed scattershot over its body rather than in any organized patterns.
- Tyrannosaurus is depicted with a very long and mobile tongue that is even prehensile in the first novel, though this aspect only comes up when it has to reach into tight spaces. The second novel also depicts it interacting with its young using its tongue (similar to how many mammal species will lick at their offspring). However, a 2018 study on dinosaur tongues found that the tongue of large carnivorous dinosaurs were immobile and firmly rooted to the floor of the mouth, like with modern crocodilians. Which is probably a good thing, because the Tyrannosaurus ends up chomping on its tongue with its huge teeth accidentally, possibly killing itself. Since the tongue of the real T. rex is anchored, this could not happen. Other dinosaurs that use their tongues when interacting with humans in various Jurassic Park media (Stegosaurus in The Lost World novelization, Sinoceratops in Fallen Kingdom, and Ankylosaurus and Brachiosaurus in Camp Cretaceous) were also touched on in the same study, with results indicating either flat tongues like with crocodiles and the aforementioned theropods, or weak dexterity akin to what is seen in turtles are more likely for non-avian dinosaurs than extendable tongues akin to mammals.
- The reason Dilophosaurus is given a venomous bite and spit is because of a belief at a time that it had unusually weak jaws which would have had difficulty subduing and killing larger prey. While the more mundane explanation would've been that it therefore subsisted more on small animals in its environment, Crichton went for the much cooler and more speculative idea that it had a powerful venom. The idea is moot nowadays because it's widely believed that Dilophosaurus actually had a powerful, bone-crushing bite.
Jurassic Park (original novel)
- There's an In-Universe example near the start of the book, when Grant spots a herd of Apatosauruses and muses that they are more commonly known by the 1930s misnomer "brontosaurs". Amusingly, this itself crossed over into a real-world example: Brontosaurus has been confirmed as a real species again.
- The novel features the dinosaur Microceratops, which has now been renamed Microceratusnote (due to Microceratops already being used for a genus of wasp), and much of the material previously known of it has now been reclassified as Graciliceratops, with Microceratus being now considered a nomen dubium (a species named from undiagnostic features, thus impossible to differentiate from similar animals).
- Velociraptor is depicted in the novel as being capable of disemboweling their prey with their large sickle-like claws on their feet, which they do to several unlucky humans they come across. This was a commonly accepted theory back in the 80s and 90s, where popular dinosaur media showcase dromeosaurs such as Deinonychus using their sickle claws to slash open their prey. However, studies in the 2000s revealed that the sickle claw is very poor at slicing bellies open and seemed to more functional for gripping prey instead. Amusingly, although the disemboweling sickle-claw theory did make it on to the big screen in Jurassic Park (1993), the raptors in the movie never actually use their sickle claws to disembowel. Rather, they use their jaws and teeth to kill their prey, with the sickle claw only being used to paralyze a single human victim (Udesky in Jurassic Park III) in the entire movie franchise. This allows Alan Grant to quietly debunk his own theory in Jurassic World Dominion without causing any real continuity errors.
Jurassic Park (1993 film)
- The first movie briefly features Metriacanthosaurus as one of the names among the frozen embryos; this is probably supposed to be the much more well-known Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis, which was synonymized as "Metricanthosaurus shangyouensis" in the same book that synonymized Deinonychus and Velociraptor (and even features on the cover◊), but, like aforementioned raptors, this has been rejected by most other paleontologists. This fact was however not well known and naturally, many tie-in media and spin-offs assumed that the embryo referred to Metriacanthosaurus parkeri, which was canonized in Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Evolution.
The Lost World (1995 novel)
- The novel presents Tyrannosaurus with notable sexual dimorphism, with the female being larger and bulkier than the male. This was a popular idea in the 90s and early 00s, due to supposed evidence of egg canals and two distinct Tyrannosaurus phenotypes, showing up in other works like Walking with Dinosaurs and When Dinosaurs Roamed America, but the evidence for it has since been discredited (although it's not impossible, it is purely speculative at best). The film adaptation makes the two the same size, but this probably had more to do with pragmatism (it's much simpler to simply recolour the same props rather than make a different one for an inconsequential detail).
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- The Compsognathus are portrayed with two fingers, but it is now believed to have possessed the usual three.
- The baby Tyrannosaurus is depicted with a short, pug-nosed face, but later discoveries of juvenile tyrannosaurs indicate they actually had very and slender skulls which turned into the massive and robust bone-crushing jaws of the adults as they aged (young Tyrannosaurus were so different from adults that they were classified as their own species, Nanotyrannus, Stygivenator, and Dinotyrannus, for a while).
Jurassic Park III
- The incorrectness of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs is Handwaved and Justified by Grant in that these dinosaurs are mutants, not real dinosaurs; thanks to having their DNA spliced by frog DNA. One of the changes includes putting some feathers on the head of the raptors.
- The movie depicts Pteranodon as building stick nests, having flightless young, and bird-like parental care. However, later fossils of pterosaur eggs and flaplings indicates that they probably buried eggs like turtles, young could fly soon or even immediately after hatching, and most species probably did not provide post-natal parental care.
- In 2014, a more complete skeleton of Spinosaurus was found, which showed that while still a big carnivore, in fact the movie incarnation might be shorter lengthwise and lighter in weight than the actual creature, the Spinosaurus had an even more bizarre shape and was suggested to have been quadrupedalnote and adapted for an aquatic lifestyle, as its hind legs were unconventionally short and possessed webbed feet, much like a duck or a pelican. And then a 2020 discovery showed that Spinosaurus had a paddle-shaped tail, confirming that it was indeed aquatic.
Jurassic World Dominion
- A paper published one month after the prologue debuted redescribed the Quetzalcoatlus genus finding, that their necks would have been longer.
- A mummified specimen of Lystrosaurus discovered a month after the film's release has revealed that the genus had bumps along its back, which the film version lacked.
