History Trivia / JurassicPark

* ''Trivia/{{Jurassic Park|1990}}

!![[Literature/JurassicPark The First Novel]]:

* AccidentallyCorrectZoology: Grant and the kids are attacked by the adult tyrannosaur while riding a raft down the river when it swims after them, for several years after the novel's publication it was highly debated whether ''Tyrannosaurus'' could swim or not, in recent years there has been evidence that theropods such as tyrannosaurs could actually swim.
* ExtremelyLengthyCreation: Creator/MichaelCrichton spent years working on the story, trying to convince himself the premise was not so unlikely. He had to do a lot of research before he could.
* RecycledInSpace: Large portions of the plot are recycled or expanded from Crichton's earlier work, ''Film/{{Westworld}}''.
* TechnologyMarchesOn:
** The park staff don't realize the dinosaurs are breeding because they set the tracking program to stop counting when it hit the expected numbers just to save processor cycles. A bit short-sighted at the time, but a completely alien concept to a modern reader whose phone has more power than the entire island is said to.
** The park is explicitly stated to be running on three Cray X-MP supercomputers. At the time, those were the best in the world, but by modern standards they're completely obsolete: compare their [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockspeed clockspeed]] of 105MHz to the iPhone 5s, which runs at about 1.2GHz. That's right: a modern phone has more processing power than a supercomputer in 1990, by a full order of magnitude.
* TorchTheFranchiseAndRun: A bit of a preemptive [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-Zagged]] example, but the novel wasn't necessarily meant to have a sequel, so Crichton had Isla Nublar [[KillItWithFire firebombed]], killing all of the dinosaurs on it. That didn't stop Spielberg from convincing him to write a sequel, anyways. However, he did include a SequelHook in the epilogue where Dr. Martin Guitierrez talks to Alan [[spoiler:about the possibility that some Velociraptors (and/or other dinosaurs) had managed to escape the island's destruction and vanish into the Costa Rican jungle]].

* ScienceMarchesOn: A lot of the incorrectness is due to this. It was what was believed to be true in 1990 (when the book came out) or 1993 (film).
** At the time of the first film's production, some experiments claimed to have succeeded in extracting DNA from samples that were tens of millions of years old. [[https://www.nature.com/articles/363536a0 One study]] published just one day after the first 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, [[http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555 DNA cannot survive longer than a couple million years.]]
** 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 Shifter}}s due to the addition of amphibian genes has been obviated by the 21st century discovery of parthenogenetic births by both [[https://www.audubon.org/news/newly-recorded-condor-virgin-birth-another-way-birds-are-reptiles condors]] and [[https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/world/crocodile-virgin-birth-parthenogenesis-scn/index.html crocodiles]] in captivity. Both belong to the archosaur clade, like the dinosaurs, and have the same ZW sex chromosome set--also shared with lepidosaurs (lizards), which were [[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/ already known]] to sometimes be parthenogenetic (there are two [[OneGenderRace 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''. ''Film/JurassicWorldDominion'' 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 GrandfatherClause.
** On a related and more minor note, the first novel features the dinosaur ''Microceratops'', which has now been renamed ''Microceratus''[[note]]Notably, ''Film/JurassicWorldDominion'' not only features this dinosaur, but it is correctly identified as ''Microceratus''[[/note]] (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''. 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 [[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A18fIcKdcTL.jpg the cover]]), but this has similarly been rejected by most other palaeontologists. The ''Brachiosaurus'' in the films is also 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.
** 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.
** The third 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.
** Since they're genetically created, however, it may get a free pass; the dinosaurs were created according to specifications that were thought to be accurate at the time.
** 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 [[NonIndicativeName misnomer]] "brontosaurs", and now that ''Brontosaurus'' has been [[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brontosaurus-is-back1/ confirmed as a real species again]] this is also an OUT-of-universe example.
** 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 GrandfatherClause.
** The ''Spinosaurus'' in the third film. Subsequent fossil discoveries have found that its legs were much shorter than in other large theropods, its feet were probably webbed, and it would've possessed a paddle-like tail for swimming. New weight estimates have also found that, although it got longer than ''Tyrannosaurus'', it was slightly lighter on average.
** 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.
** The baby ''Tyrannosaurus'' in ''The Lost World'' 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'' and ''Stygivenator'', for a while).
** The second 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 ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' and ''WesternAnimation/WhenDinosaursRoamedAmerica'', 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).
** ''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 [[TongueTrauma chomping on its tongue]] with its huge teeth accidentally, [[UncertainDoom possibly killing itself]]. Since the tongue of the real ''T. rex'' is anchored, this could not happen.
** 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 [[RuleOfCool 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.

* AscendedFanon: There's a bit of history behind Rexy the ''T-rex''[='s=] name. During film production, the handlers referred to the animatronics by the nickname Roberta, which was used in some circles to refer to the character herself. Later, when it became clear that the ''T. rex'' in ''Jurassic World'' was the same one in ''Jurassic Park'', fans started using Rexy, based on a common misspelling of the nickname Rexie (used by Muldoon to occasionally refer to the adult ''rex''). Rexy would become the most commonly used reference over the next few years, but was never included in the canon until the relatively obscure young adult novel ''Literature/TheEvolutionOfClaire'' came out. Here, it was the name used by the Jurassic World handlers for her. Since then, the name Rexy has shown up in multiple sources including ''Camp Cretaceous'' and ''Jurassic World Alive'', with the fandom largely using it as her official name. That being said, she's never referred to by any name in the films.

* TorchTheFranchiseAndRun: A bit of a preemptive example, but the novel was never meant to have a sequel, so Crichton had Isla Nublar [[KillItWithFire firebombed]], killing all of the dinosaurs on it. That didn't stop Spielberg from convincing him to write a sequel, anyways.

** The {{handwave}} of the dinosaurs becoming {{Sex Shifter}}s due to the addition of amphibian genes was probably completely unnecessary with the discovery of parthenogenetic births by both [[https://www.audubon.org/news/newly-recorded-condor-virgin-birth-another-way-birds-are-reptiles condors]] and [[https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/world/crocodile-virgin-birth-parthenogenesis-scn/index.html crocodiles]] in captivity. Both belong to the archosaur clade, like the dinosaurs, and have the same ZW sex chromosome set--also shared with lepidosaurs (lizards), which were [[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/ already known]] to sometimes be parthenogenetic (there are two [[OneGenderRace 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.

* ScienceMarchesOn: A lot of the incorrectness is due to this. It was what was believed to be true in 1992.

* TheWikiRule: The [[http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Jurassic_Park_Wiki Jurassic Park Wiki]].

* AscendedFanon: There's a bit of history behind her name. During film production, the handlers referred to the animatronics by the nickname Roberta, which was used in some circles to refer to the character herself. Later, when it became clear that the ''T. rex'' in ''Jurassic World'' was the same one in ''Jurassic Park'', fans started using Rexy, based on a common misspelling of the nickname Rexie (used by Muldoon to occasionally refer to the adult ''rex''). Rexy would become the most commonly used reference over the next few years, but was never included in the canon until the relatively obscure young adult novel ''Literature/TheEvolutionOfClaire'' came out. Here, it was the name used by the Jurassic World handlers for her. Since then, the name Rexy has shown up in multiple sources including ''Camp Cretaceous'' and ''Jurassic World Alive'', with the fandom largely using it as her official name. That being said, she's never referred to by any name in the films.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The novel is a classic that anyone with even passing familiarity with the genre or franchise will pick up. To a modern reader who does that the tech base borders on SchizoTech. The genetic engineering (it's well beyond mere cloning) is still out of sight in 202X and beyond but anyone reading the book has far more computer resources in their pocket than all of Isla Nublar, nevermind the desktop PC. Most of the plot would still work but specific items like saving processor resources by restricting the count or the US government noticing the amount of hash power Hammond had piled up are downright historical artifacts.

** ''Tyrannosaurus'' is depicted with a very long and mobile tongue that is even prehensile in the first novel. 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 [[TongueTrauma chomping on its tongue]] with its huge teeth accidentally, [[UncertainDoom possibly killing itself]]. Since the tongue of the real ''T. rex'' is anchored, this could not happen.

** On a related and more minor note, the first novel features the dinosaur ''Microceratops'', which has now been renamed ''Microceratus'' (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''. 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 [[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A18fIcKdcTL.jpg the cover]]), but this has similarly been rejected by most other palaeontologists. The ''Brachiosaurus'' in the films is also 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 ''[[PteroSoarer 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.

** On a related and more minor note, the first novel features the dinosaur ''Microceratops'', which has now been renamed ''Microceratus'' (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''. 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 [[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A18fIcKdcTL.jpg the cover]]), but this has similarly been rejected by most other palaeontologists.

** 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 ''Spinosaurus'' in the third film. Subsequent fossil discoveries have found that its legs were much shorter than in other large theropods, its feet were probably webbed, and it would've possessed a paddle-like tail for swimming.

* AccidentallyCorrectZoology: Grant and the kids are attacked by the adult tyrannosaur while riding a raft down the river when it swims after them, for several years after the novel's publication it was highly debated wether Tyrannosaurus could swim or not, in recent years there has been evidence that Theropods such as tyrannosaurs could actually swim.

* FranchiseZombie: After the success of the first movie, Steven Spielberg became interested in making a sequel and wanted Michael Crichton to write a novel that could be used as its base. Crichton had never written a follow-up to any of his own novels before, but published ''LiteratureTheLostWorld1995'' (the only sequel he ever wrote). He had to make some {{Retcon}}s in order for the new book to fit in with on-screen continuity -- most notably, bringing back Ian Malcolm, who died in the first book but survived in the movie. (As it turned out, [[ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated he was prematurely declared dead and made a recovery]].) Four more movies have since followed without any source material from the original author, aside from [[RefittedForSequel scenes from the books that had not yet been filmed]].

* FranchiseZombie: The success of the first movie made Michael Crichton be commissioned to write a sequel that could be made into a film follow-up, and ''Literature/TheLostWorld1995'' even had to make some {{Retcon}}s to fit in with the on-screen continuity (most notably, Malcolm's death was explicit in the book, but given he survived the film, turns out [[ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated he's still alive]]). Four more movies have since followed without any source material from the original author (aside from [[RefittedForSequel scenes from the books that had not yet been featured]]).

** While the novel and film of ''Jurassic Park'' were part of a renewed surge of public interest in dinosaurs in the late 1980s and early 1990s (see ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'', for instance), the blockbuster success of the film once and for all cemented their pop culture image as intelligent and agile instead of dimwitted and slow. This reflected the Dinosaur Renaissance in paleontology which had started in the late 1960s, gained traction in the 1970s and inspired said surge by the 1980s. And the film also pretty much singlehandedly elevated ''[[RaptorAttack Velociraptors]]'' to [[StockDinosaurs stock dinosaur]] status.

** 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.") In addition, the size and proportions of the ''Velociraptors'', are closer to that of ''Deinonychus'' than ''Velociraptor'', due to the belief at the time that species currently classified as ''Deinonychus'' were thought to be in the ''Velociraptor'' genus.

* TechnologyMarchesOn: The novel is a classic that anyone with even passing familiarity with the genre or franchise will pick up. To a modern reader who does that the tech base borders on SchizoTech. The genetic engineering (it's well beyond mere cloning) is still out of sight in 201X and beyond but anyone reading the book has far more computer resources in their pocket than all of Isla Nublar, nevermind the desktop PC. Most of the plot would still work but specific items like saving processor resources by restricting the count or the US government noticing the amount of hash power Hammond had piled up are downright historical artifacts.

*** This is common throughout the film franchise, with unused concepts from both earlier drafts of the script and the original books going into each of the sequels: an early scene with the daughter of an American family on vacation being attacked by a compy in the first book is reworked as a the daughter of a ''British'' family on vacation being attacked by [[UpToEleven a whole BUNCH of compies]]; the ''Tyrannosaurus'' attacking Grant and the kids on a boat in the first book was reworked into the ''Spinosaurus'' attacking Grant and the ''Kirbys'' in ''Jurassic Park III''; and a dropped concept of ''Pteranodons'' attacking a helicopter that was considered for the endings of both ''The Lost World'' and ''Jurassic Park III'' finally made it to film in ''Jurassic World'', though near the end of the second act instead of the third.

* AccidentallyCorrectZoology: Grant and the kids are attacked by the adult tyrannosaur while riding a raft down the river when it swims after them, for several years after the novel's publication it was highly debated weather Tyrannosaurus could swim, in recent years there has been evidence that Theropods such as tyrannosaurs could actually swim.

* AccidentallyCorrectZoology: Grant and the kids are attacked by the adult tyrannosaur while riding a raft down the river when it swims after them, although for several years after the novel's publication it was highly debated weather Tyrannosaurus could swim, in recent years there has been evidence that Theropods such as tyrannosaurs could actually swim.