The Nexus of Art and Science

The perceptions we have of the unknown can change drastically over the course of time.
Not too long ago in the 20s' people thought that sauropods like this diplodocus here walked
around like lizards, lived an aquatic lifestyle, and used their neck as a snorkel.

We know now these assumptions are incorrect and depictions have caught up to these facts. This
is the current model of what they look like.

However, some sources have either not caught up or have deliberately chosen to depict creatures
like these dinosaurs in not so accurate manners. This is done in the name of creating something
more cinematic and fantastical. One of the biggest franchises of dinosaur media, Jurassic Park,
is a testament to the capacity to shape how people see different things. This beloved classic
and the rebooted title of Jurassic World, are a big influence in how people perceive dinosaurs.

It doesn't take much proofreading to see just how off Jurassic Park's dinosaur models are
from the real thing. The carnivores are depicted as blood-hungry beasts and the herbivores as
hapless and peaceful creatures. This kind of narrative tends to be a trope for sci-fi. In reality
predators are fairly lax as long as they're not hungry while herbivores tend to act more paranoid
and hostile, sometimes territorial and competitive. Though given how starved the dinosaur
models look, no on can really blame them for being so bloodthirsty. These models lack soft
tissues, like fat and other body bits that you wouldn't get from the skeleton. They should look a
lot chunkier.

Another detail they didn't adhere to is the use of slit pupils in the raptors. That's
something you see with animals who's heads are much closer to ground level, like cats and
crocodilians. Slit pupils are helpful when predators want to see horizontal movement in sharp
focus from low to the ground. The raptors are much too tall to make proper use of those kinds
of eyes. The t.rex however has round pupils, which holds up to current canon. Another
anatomical issue is how the wrists moved. The wrists of theropods, upright meat eating
dinosaurs, would have not have been able to hold their hands out straight. Their hands,
skeletally, are always folded in like they're holding a ball.

In fact, the raptors in the movie aren't even velociraptors. Velociraptors are two feet tall and
those would be the ones to possibly have slit pupils. The species in the movies is more closely
modeled after dromaeosaurid deinonychus. But something that all the raptors, and possibly
the t.rex were lacking, was feathers. Since the 90s there has been evidence in the Liaoning
site in China that therapods had developing feathers. While the movie, coming out in 1993,
has the excuse of the discovery being relatively new, Jurassic World did nothing to reprimand
any of these scientific errors. There is a brief line where a scientist says "you didn't ask for
reality" when they bred and filled in the missing genome of dinosaurs with other animals.
That being said it doesn't outright address to the audience that the dinosaurs in Jurassic World
are deliberately designed to look like the Jurassic Park depictions. Still to this day our scaleless,
starving dinosaurs is what we're familiar with.
Science is ever evolving and telling us more about these amazing creatures and it's
rather surprising that people aren't aware of just how off the mark Jurassic Park's models are.
In 2016 a fully preserved dinosaur tail with feathers was found in a piece of amber.
There's even enough left over protein on various remains that some dinosaurs have been
accurately recolored. Microraptor for instance was black like a crow. That's about the
most solid evidence someone could ask for. But that being said, it’s not biased towards
any side of the debate. A study published in June 2017 suggests there was evidence that
t.rex was indeed featherless, according to a preserved fossil of t.rex skin. In the same way
large mammals are overall hairless, its not farfetched to say large theropods like t.rex are
indeed scaly kings or perhaps only feathered in infancy. But what about kings of the water?
Spinosaurus, the largest theropod known with a massive signature sail on its back, was a
river dwelling fish hunter. But beyond that it's possible that they walked on all fours unlike
other theropods. Looking at these developments of how animals walked and moved is
astounding. In the 20s it was depicted walking splaylegged like a lizard with a dragging it's tail
to walking horizontally. Recently it’s anatomy has been revised to the point it's nearly quadruped
again, but more because of how it's body weight is distributed rather than being lizard-like.

(images depict oldest to newest reconstructions from top to bottom)

This shows just how much things change, and things will only continue to change
with time. Maybe it had a tail fin for all we know.

The unfortunate thing is that movies like Jurassic Park, as entertaining as they are, help
perpetuate outdated depictions of dinosaurs. People see them as monsters, not as animals
that filled their own niche with distinct and different behaviors. There is beauty in their
normalcy, and people don't want to see that because it's boring. People thinking that isn’t
all that bad, but what is bad is when people view these new developments in paleontology
as straight up conspiracies. There are some people that do in fact think that feathered
dinosaurs are a ploy. A way to push some sort of agenda instead of just updating what
we previously knew about these creatures. These are usually people who don't believe in
evolution at all, and believe that feathered dinosaurs can't fit in a creationist narrative. In
reality its very possible to be a creationist while also acknowledging updated dinosaur
appearances but people can be defensive against anything that might challenge their
longstanding perceptions. The most popular piece of dinosaur culture doing nothing to
update it's depictions for nearly 30 years does not help this mindset and sets the standard
for other movies and media to do the same.

These movies hold a big piece of our childhoods and there's nothing wrong with some
hollywood fun. That however does not stop it's effects on the public's perception on what
dinosaurs were. With Fallen Kingdom coming out soon it will continue to shape how we view
them. But even then, we've come a long way since the lizard diplodocus of the 20s' and
perhaps bit by bit people will get to see these feathered beauties on the silver screen. Who’s
to say people’s favorite dinosaurs can’t both be terrifying and a fluffy oversized chicken?

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*Blue lined sketches provided by me