Six Foot Turkey: What Jurassic Park Got Wrong (And Right) About Dinosaurs
Do blockbuster movies have an obligation to accurately represent science?
When the smash-success Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993, it inspired a generation of dinophiliacs and helped to usher in a new “golden age of paleontology.”
But it also froze the public’s perception of dinosaurs in time, and popularized inaccuracies that people still believe are true today.
So what happens when the biggest source of information on a scientific field comes from a fictional monster movie? In this episode, three Jurassic Park superfans (one paleontologist, and two podcasters) try to sort it all out.
Featuring: Gabriel-Philip Santos
Credit: Ivan Radic (CC BY 2.0) https://bit.ly/3NB9Wwl
LINKS
Want to learn more about dinosaurs? Check the publish date before you check it out from the library! And here are some good options:
Smithsonian’s The Dinosaur Book (pretty much all of the Smithsonian books are good for younger readers)
Want to get a more global perspective of where dinosaurs have been discovered? Check out a dinosaur atlas book.
For older readers, or anybody who loves a good coffee table book, check out this entry featuring a number of excellent paleoartists: Dinosaur Art II (Taylor has the first one and loves to show it off). Also: A truly disheartening read about people who think feathered dinosaurs are an attack on masculinity.
Check out the new Apple TV series, Prehistoric Planet.
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If you’ve got a question for the Outside/In[box] hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: What was your favorite scene from the movie?
Gabriel-Philip Santos: It's definitely that that part in the beginning, right when they're driving up and then Dr. Sattler is all like this...this plant shouldn't be here, Dr. Alan Grant pulls off his glasses…
Nate Hegyi: This is Gabriel-Philip Santos - paleontologist, movie buff, and self-professed nerd.
Hammond’s all like, “Welcome to Jurassic Park” And then the music starts playing.
When Gabriel saw Jurassic Park in theaters - he was just four years old.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: And it was so awesome and I was so hyped for the rest of the movie. And then things changed when there is that huge tone shift and it became a horror movie and I was pretty much like burying it for the most part until the kitchen scene with the velociraptors. That was just too much for me.
Nate Hegyi: But even though his mom had to take him out of the theater…
… EVEN THOUGH he was not yet in Kindergarten… Gabriel looooved this movie.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: That is definitely one of those core memories, as they call it for me.
Nate Hegyi: And Gabriel was not alone. I was obsessed with Jurassic Park when I was a kid. Producer Taylor Quimby still is - he’s snuck clips of Jurassic Park into at least two different episodes of Outside/In.
Taylor Quimby: My favorite one to say on a regular basis is the Samuel L Jackson Line. Hold on to your butts, which he says twice.
Nate Hegyi: With a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Hold on to your butts.
Gabriel-Philip Santos:I sometimes, like, randomly pull out. Like you didn't say the magic word.
Nate Hegyi: I have that go through my head when I can't get the password in. Like I've forgotten a password, like a really important website. I was like, What was my password? And I'll just like, imagine, what's his face going, “I didn't say the magic word.”
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: None of this is that surprising, right? When it first came out in 1993, Jurassic Park was the highest-grossing film of all time.
It kicked off a franchise that’s still going today - lunchboxes, LEGO sets, comic-books, kid’s cartoons, and a total of six blockbuster movies - the latest of which is hitting theaters the same day this episode is hitting your feeds.
[trailer clip]
But more than that, Jurassic Park re-invigorated public interest in dinosaurs. If you’re anything like me, just about everything you know about the subject comes from this franchise…
Nate Hegyi: if you were going to put it like a percentage on it, how much of the general public knowledge about dinosaurs do you think can be attributed to Jurassic Park or the Jurassic Park franchise in some way?
Gabriel-Philip Santos: A percentage? I'd say… Maybe like… The general public? Maybe 80%.
So… is that a good thing? I mean, what happens when you’re learning science from a monster movie?
“Hold on to your butts.”
[sfx raptor sounds]
[theme]
Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, I’m Nate Hegyi. And today, we’re going back in time to talk about how the Jurassic Park franchise has both advanced, and misinformed the lay public’s understanding of dinosaurs.
Joining us is resident dinosaur nerd Taylor Quimby, who is still mad that the Jurassic World raptors aren’t scientifically accurate…
Taylor: Team feathers, represent.
Nate: and Gabriel-Philip Santos… an ACTUAL paleontologist who thinks… maybe it’s not such a big deal.
[theme fades]
Nate Hegyi: So Taylor, for the few folks who never saw it, do you think you can summarize Jurassic Park in just a few words? And obviously, spoiler warning, if that even applies here. Taylor Quimby: Scientists clone dinosaurs using ancient DNA, rich guy creates dinosaur theme park on remote tropical island, dinosaurs escape and destroy theme park before it opens.
Nate Hegyi: Great. So I loved Jurassic Park growing up too, but Taylor, you argue that you are more of a stan than I am.
Taylor Quimby: Oh yeah, When I grew up I wanted to be a paleontologist because of this movie.
Nate Hegyi: I did too. Didn’t work out, eh?
Taylor Quimby: It’s never too late Nate. Don’t push me.
Nate: Hegyi: And you still follow dinosaur news today?
Taylor Quimby: I do. And one thing I didn’t appreciate when I was a kid, is that Jurassic Park came out at the end of a period that scientists call the “dinosaur renaissance.”
So we know today that modern birds evolved from a subgroup of dinosaurs called theropods, this isvelociraptor and T-rex, things like that. Nate Hegyi: These are the carnivores, AKA meat-asauruses, right? Taylor Quimby: Exactly. And the bird connection was made way back when the first feathered dinosaur was discovered in 1862… bonus points if you know it.
Nate Hegyi: [groans] Okay, plus one for being a bigger dinosaur jurassic park fan.
Taylor Quimby: It is archaeopteryx.
Nate Hegyi: Third grade version of me knew that.
t
Taylor Quimby: But anyway, this connection was largely dismissed because at that point most fossils didn’t appear to have a furcula, or what you and I would call a wishbone.
Nate Hegyi: No furcula?
Taylor Quimby: What the furcula right?
Nate Hegyi: You were just setting yourself up for that one. You had that one in your back pocket.
Taylor Quimby: .But even as that started to change in the 1960s, during the dinosaur renaissance, and scientists started to see more and more links to today’s warm-blooded birds, movies continued to depict dinosaurs as lumbering, cold-blooded reptiles.
[T-rex roar and music]
This is a clip from 1977’s The Last Dinosaur. What does this T-rex look like to you Nate?
Nate Hegyi: It looks like someone saw Godzilla, and said how can we make it worse? It looks like a man in a rubber suit. That guy is roasting in there.
Taylor Quimby: But but, you know, a lot of the dinosaurs depicted throughout these decades, you'd see them looking a lot like this, like Godzilla, like they're they're standing straight, straight up. Right. And that was that. All that stuff was just standard, even as the science was changing right up until Jurassic Park.
[t-rex roar]
[mux]
Taylor Quimby: So that, obviously, is the iconic T-Rex roar from Jurassic Park. Nate Hegyi: That's awesome. That's a mix, by the way, of elephant, an alligator, and tiger sounds. And I want to say that in the newer movies, the sound designers used a lot of walrus sounds too.
Taylor Quimby: I don't know what a walrus sounds like.
Nate Hegyi: Well, it sounds a little bit like a dinosaur.
Taylor Quimby: Awesome.
Nate Hegyi: Plus one for Nate.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Okay. So I think it’s easy to forget, because it’s been out so long, how revolutionary Jurassic Park really was.
The dinosaurs were faster, and scarier, and more lifelike thank they’d ever looked before.
And science wasn’t just a plot device - the movie seemed to be saying - you think you know dinosaurs? Well think again.
Dr. Alan Grant: No, seriously? Well, maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present day birds than they do with reptiles.
Taylor Quimby: So this is the paleontologist from the film, Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neil. He’s looking at a velociraptor fossil towards the start of the movie, pointing all this out to a bunch of people at a dig site.
Dr. Alan Grant: …Look at the pubic bone turned back just like a bird. Look at the vertebrae full of air sacs and hollows, just like a bird. And even the word raptor means bird of prey. Smarmy kid: That doesn't look very scary.
Taylor Quimby: Little brat. Nate Hegyi: Are you going to play the best part? “It slashes you here, and here, right across the belly.” Taylor Quimby: Oh wow, you do know your Jurassic Park. Very good.
Dr. Alan Grant: Point is, you are alive when they begin to eat you. So show a little respect? Smarmy kid: Okay.
Taylor Quimby: I mean, just as like a from a film buff point of view, this is fantastic in scene exposition. Yes. But more than that, it is actually teaching the audience about the dinosaur renaissance. Like this is a cool little history lesson about how birds evolved from dinosaurs. So, you know, my argument Jurassic Park is an amazing monster movie, but it's its emphasis on dinosaur science that partially what made it resonate with so many kids.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: So I own all three. I have the special editions and everything. When when three came out, I was obsessed with the Spinosaurus, just like a lot of other people. But yeah, nothing beats one for me.
Same. I feel the same way.
So this again is Gabriel-Philip Santos. I reached out to Gabriel, because he squarely at the intersection of paleontology and pop culture. He specialized in marine mammal paleontology but today he oversees the fossil collection at the Raymond M. ALF museum of paleontology in California.
And as a movie geek, he’s not afraid to lean into the fandom in order to get people into science.
He and some friends started a group called Cosplay for Science, and for example, dressed up as Dr. Alan Grant at a comicon in Pasadena to teach people about fossils.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: They weren't looking at us as scientists, bestowing information onto the the less intelligent. They saw us as just other nerds who they can connect with. And then when they discovered we were actually paleontologists, something changed. Their eyes lit up and they're like, I've been talking to a paleontologist this whole time. I have questions for you.
And we've done it with Star Wars, Pokemon, Game of Thrones, so many other cool franchises where folks just find a find, find us and connect with us as as people as as people who love paleontology, who love science.
Nate Hegyi: Do you have any peers who became paleontologists, at least in part because of Jurassic Park movies?
Gabriel-Philip Santos: Oh yeah. I have a ton of friends in paleontology who can really attribute them deciding to become a paleontologist because of that movie. You know, they call us the Jurassic Park generation. Funny enough, I'm actually not one of them who became a paleontologist because of Jurassic Park. But a lot of my friends did become paleontologist because of it.
So you don't think there was like an inner Dr. Alan Grant who was just like screaming to get out and.
You know, there might have been, but it was like very, very deep in my mind and very drowned out by the voices of my parents who I love, who are very supportive of my career now. But, you know, that's how it was back in the day.
Do you know if the movies have shaped actual research in any way, like whether certain projects get funded or which dinosaurs get more attention, like the movies have any kind of role in that, do you think?
You know, I do think that the movies have played a part in. In what in which paleontologists that were inspired by them, what they decide to work on. And that leads to very specific discoveries…
[mux]
TQ: So So here’s a really obvious example of how Jurassic Park influenced the field of paleontology. In the movie, they are able to clone dinosaurs because they discover fossilized amber with ancient mosquitoes trapped inside, that still have dinosaur blood in their little bug bellies or whatever. And the same year that Jurassic Park was released, Jack Horner, the science advisor to the film, was awarded a grant to study ancient DNA.
Nate Hegyi: [react or] Doesn’t that seem ironic? Like, it didn’t work out well in the franchise. You’d think he’d maybe steer clear.
Taylor Quimby: Right?
Dr. John Hammon: Our scientists have done things no scientist has done before.
Ian Malcom: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
And to be clear, it is NOT possible to clone dinosaurs, and we do not actually have dinosaur DNA. But anyways, there have been other less ironic ripple effects - after the movie, museums rushed to have more exhibits, which meant hiring more paleontologists. And all those kids who got into dinosaurs because of Jurassic Park - now that they’re grown up, the field has exploded.
So Scientists refer to now as the Golden Age of Paleontology.
An average of 45 new dinosaurs have been discovered every year since 2003!
Nate Hegyi: Wow.
Taylor Quimby: That’s like… hundreds. Obviously.
Nate Hegyi: That’s a lot of dinosaurs. So many dinosaurs!
[mux fade]
But here’s the thing - even though Jurassic Park revolutionized the public’s perception of dinosaurs, it also kind of froze it in time. So when we talked with Gabriel, I conducted a little experiment… You remember this Nate?
Nate Hegyi: Unfortunately, yes I do.
Taylor Quimby: I'm sorry to put you on the spot Nate but can you just list off all of the dinosaurs that you can as fast as possible that you know the names of?
Nate Hegyi: Go now?
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Do it.
Nate Hegyi: Sorry. Tyrannosaurus Rex. Velociraptor. Utahraptor, oviraptor? Stegosaurus. Triceratops. Brachiosaurus, brontosaurus. God. The duckbill dinosaur, which I can't remember its scientific name. What are the little ones? Procompsognathus?
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Compies.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, compies..
[bell SFX]
Okay - so then, I asked Gabriel to do the same thing.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: Yeah. I mean, there's been a ton of dinosaurs discovered even in like the last ten years. Like, you know, let's see, like Dreadnoughtus or Sauroposeidon. Mononykus. Therizinosaurs. Allosaurids. Tarbosaurus from Mongolia. Teratophoneus, diabloceratops. This is no longer a valid taxon, but I still love dracowexhogwartsia, which is just a pachycephalosaurus.
Nate Hegyi: I feel so bad because I don't recognize a single one of those dinosaurs, which definitely shows that my knowledge is based off of Jurassic Park. And if you were going to put it like a percentage on it, how much of the general public knowledge about dinosaurs do you think can be attributed to Jurassic Park or the Jurassic Park franchise in some way?
A percentage, I'd say. Maybe like. The general public. Maybe 80%.
[mux]
Taylor Quimby: So what all this means, Nate, is that 80% of the public is VERY wrong about a lot of dinosaur science. Because a lot of the most famous dinosaurs we know today, look nothing like they did in Jurassic Park.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about after a break.
Nate Hegyi: But first, a quick reminder that Outside/In is listener supported. We don’t put the show behind a paywall - we just put it out there into the world, and hope that all ya’ll who love it will make the choice to toss a few bucks in our direction. I mean who would guess this works? But it does.
Taylor Quimby: Life finds a way, Nate.
Nate Hegyi:Indeed it does. So donate now - there’s a link in the show notes. Be right back. [pause]
Taylor Quimby: He left us… he left us!
Nate Hegyi: He left us!
Taylor Quimby: But that’s not…
Taylor Quimby and Nate Hegyi in unison: …what I’m going to do.
[BREAK]
Nate Hegyi: Hello and welcome back… to Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi. Here with producer Taylor Quimby, who was just telling me that Jurassic Park is FULL OF LIES.
Taylor Quimby: Lies!!!
Nate Hegyi: So what kind of stuff are we talking about?
Taylor Quimby: Well, it’s a lot of little things. You remember the acid-spitting dinosaur that eats the guy who played Neumann in Seinfeld? [SFX of dilophosaurus]
Nate Hegyi: Dilophosaurus. I heard that it doesn’t actually have that big frilly thing around it’s neck.
Taylor Quimby: That’s true! But also it didn’t spit acid.
[SFX of acid spitting]
Nate Hegyi: I know.
Taylor Quimby: Did you know that instead of being like four feet tall and kind of cute, they were WAY bigger. Like 8 feet tall, eight-hundred pounds?
Nate Hegyi: What? I will admit, Taylor, I did not know that.
Taylor Quimby: That’s what I’m talking about here…. also a T-rex’s vision?Nate Hegyi: HIs vision is based on movement.
Taylor Quimby: That’s what you’ve been led to believe, Nate!
Dr. Alan Grant: Keep absolutely still. His vision is based on movement.
Nate Hegyi: You mean that I couldn’t just survive a T-rex attack by standing still? Taylor Quimby: Uuuh, no. And even if you could, I’m pretty sure it could smell you?
Nate Hegyi: Riiiiight.
Taylor Quimby: Also, real velociraptors were much smaller. The movie version was based off another dinosaur called Deinonychus.
A lot of this stuff I think is pretty easily overlooked, especially in the first movie. But there’s one huge that I keep coming back to, because it isn’t like a little detail, and it’s bothered me and a whole bunch of other people more and more with every Jurassic sequel.
And it’s this: Velociraptor and deinonychus, and a whole bunch of other dinosaurs, were totally covered in feathers. Which, I don’t know if we talked about this when I pitched this episode. Were you aware of that.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. I knew they had feathers. I think I read about it in a book.
Taylor Quimby: And does this drive you as bananas as it does me?
Nate Hegyi: Nope!
Taylor Quimby: Does this get under your skin?
Nate Hegyi: But you seem pretty worked up about this. Like maybe more than the actual paleontologists are.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah, well, let me explain why. A few years ago, my son, who's ten right now, he went through a pretty big dinosaur phase as a lot of kids do. And so we went to the library to pick out some books at some point, and there's just a whole ton of them in the kid section. Of course, some of them are illustrated storybooks for little, little kids. And then there's this sort of like, you know, early educational books that are cool and not too heavy and that kind of thing. Right. And yeah, as I start flipping through all of these, I realize almost all of them feature the same handful of dinosaurs with the same scaly skin that was modeled decades and decades ago. And maybe I should have expected that. But like you make a book in 1975, that book is still maybe going to be in the library in 2022. Right. It's one thing to put something out in 1993 and then have the science evolve and like, you know, and because things become outdated, that is just the way it happens. But it's another thing to keep doing it once you know it's wrong because then you are spreading misinformation.
Nate Hegyi: Right. Yeah. I mean. Does it matter? All the dinosaurs are dead. You know, it's not like your misinformation about great white sharks that causes people to have undue fear of great white sharks, even though your chances of actually being killed by them are really, really, really low.
Taylor Quimby: But like, if people actually watched Jaws and that was the basis of all their scientific understanding of sharks like that would be a problem.
Nate Hegyi: Right, right. Right. Okay. Yeah. No, this is yeah, this is a I mean, this is a problem, especially if you're trying to teach your kid. So I can see where it would be frustrating, especially for a nerdy guy like yourself.
Oh yeah, thank you. So to get back to our story. After the original Jurassic Park… there was this growing desire among dinosaur nerds to see some feathers, you know, in the movies.But there was also another wing of fans who basically think feathered dinosaurs aren’t as scary… and feel like their childhood idea of dinosaurs is being ruined by a push for quote unquote scientific accuracy. And not to go to far into the weeds here,because this is probably a very small group of people, but there are some online trolls and whatnot who argue that feathered dinosaurs are part of a leftwing push to like, stamp out masculinity or something.
Nate Hegyi: What??? These are weeds we don’t kneed to get into, that seems a little kooky to me. Taylor Quimby: Point is, when the franchise announced the reboot, Jurassic World, there were a lot of opinions flying around.
And then on March 20th, 2013… The director Colin Trevorrow tweeted two.. Controversial words: No Feathers #JP4.
Nate Hegyi: Oooh..
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Gauntlet thrown.
Nate Hegyi: oh yeah. why aren't they adding feathers to the dinosaur? This is this is terrible. This is going to change. This is going to mess with people's perceptions of science and dinosaurs and things like that. So, yeah, there were definitely was a lot of talk about it and a lot of people were very upset. And I understand why they were upset as to why they didn't include feathers on like the velociraptor, like blue and them in Jurassic World. But I wasn't really one of them.
Nate Hegyi: So you weren't bothered by it that much that they didn't have feathers? Why? Why weren't you bothered?
You know, like I have I have a good group of friends who we're all kind of sort of in the same boat. And I know I might get hate for this, but for me. The Jurassic Park Jurassic World franchise, it's a science fantasy science fiction movie. Right. When they create these movies, the the the people who are creating it, what they're trying to do is tell a story. They don't have any real obligations to be scientifically accurate. They don't really have an obligation to be like, you can use our movie as an educational resource. They're just trying to make something that, in a very capitalistic sense, will make money, will bring in audiences. And for a lot of people. That old look of dinosaurs, that monster look is what can draw people in. And again, for me, it's not their job to make sure that they're up to date on all the latest research, to make sure that people are leaving the theater, having a better understanding of the science of paleontology. Their job is to tell a story of man's hubris in thinking they can control nature for capitalistic gain. And I think that's what they kind of did. For me, it's our job as the paleontologists and the educators to bring in to bring in people and say, like, did you love that movie? Did you see the dinosaurs? They look so cool. Right? But let me show you how we think they look like now. They can be just as scary. They can be just as weird as cool. And it's.
Taylor Quimby: Cool. Can I. Yeah. Can I just jump in and say, you know, for for my part, because I was definitely I was definitely somebody who was like pooh poohing the no feathers when the Jurassic World movies came out. And a big part of it for me was that I thought that the feathers were so cool that I actually I was like, I think it would be awesome, not just for, like, some sense of scientific accuracy, although I'm like for that. But, but I think it could have been revolutionary. Like it could have blown people's minds. And I dislike the notion that a feathery dinosaur is not scary looking because like, have you seen Raptors? Like there are some freaky birds out there who are terrifying, especially when you cover their white feathers in blood for goodness sakes. Like I think it could have been really cool. And so it seemed like a missed opportunity to me.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: No, I totally agree with you. I think I've been chased by geese. I know how scary birds are. So I totally agree that I think dinosaurs with feathers is just as scary. But I also, you know, I've seen the discourse of people like I used to scroll through Tumblr and like people are all like, why would you put feathers? It makes them not scary. And so I think, you know, everyone has their own perception of what's scary and what's not. And don't get me wrong, I do think that if they included feathers, it would have been a great job to change the perceptions of what we consider what we think about dinosaurs in the modern era. I think that that would have been cool. But I'm also not going to I'm not going to harp on it. I'm not going to, like, fixate on that when. When we could do that. It's a it's a cool chance for us. And so, you know, it's a it's a complicated thing. It's complex. But I'm also I don't really care too much.Nate Hegyi: Do you think on the whole, people know more or less about dinosaurs because of the films?
Gabriel-Philip Santos: People definitely know more about dinosaurs because of those films. Like, you know, there's still good there's there's a lot of good in that movie. Like, first of all, just the fact that they can understand scientific nomenclature, right? Like Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, these are scientific names. So that's really cool. People know just just the fact that they know these dinosaurs walking into museum, they can see a fossil and understand that this was once a living animal and know what they are. So without those movies, I don't there's so many people who may not know what a dinosaur is, who may not go see a museum because they didn't get that exposure to a dinosaur and then expand their mind from there. So I think Jurassic Park did a wonderful thing for a lot of people in getting them to know that there was life before us here on the planet Earth.
[mux]
Taylor Quimby: He makes a great point. I mean, how many other scientific names do people know about, like your average animal?
Nate Hegyi: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's it's it's a wonderful point. I mean, I don't even know what the scientific name is for a great white shark or, you know, half the animals that are still living on this earth.
Taylor Quimby: So I loved Jurassic Park, but never had a lot of love for the sequels, obviously. But one thing I’ve realized, is that the people who love the franchise as a whole, these movies are a universe in themselves, like the Marvel Universe, or Star WArs, or Star Trek.
And a lot of them don’t care about the science so much as they do the consistency of the storytelling.
And you know, that’s a valid point. So just to get a sense of what I mean, I want to play you a video clip from YouTuber Klayton Fioriti, who has produced literally 100s of videos about the Jurassic World Universe - which get anywhere from fifty-thousand to several hundreds thousand views.Video: Camp Cretaceous recently showed off a couple of female T-rexes that look way inaccurate that are already established as coming from Isla Sorna. This is something that I felt like I might as well talk about while the movie still has a few months before it’s released. Canon is important. If you don’t have canon,you don't have rules, you don’t have a universe… so that's…
Taylor Quimby: So you get the idea, right?
Nate Hegyi: Like, yeah, well, this guy is like the number one fan. This, he beats all of us.
Taylor Quimby: It's not even that he's the number one fan. It's like he approaches this from such a completely different perspective. Like he and I are not even a part of the same argument.
Nate Hegyi: And didn’t they come up with a retroactive explanation for why they don’t have feathers in the new movie anyway?
Taylor Quimby: They did - there’s a throwaway line about how using amphibian DNA during the cloning process means that the dinosaurs don’t look the way they would have millions of years ago.
Nate Hegyi: Hmm.
Taylor Quimby: So I think Gabriel, who is a movie nerd, is just much more understanding of what fandom is, and how fans interact with the movies differently than pure dinosaur geeks.
And he pointed out that science education is really a form of privilege - and if pro-feather people aren’t careful, they can wind up doing more damage than good.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: some people might call me naive or whatever, but I don't like to be negative about these kinds of things because, you know, a lot of people don't like to interact with scientists because they might feel they have this perception of like, oh, I don't want to sound dumb or science isn't for me. And when you go on Twitter and you're like saying things like, I can't believe that you like that because there's no feathers, do you imagine how many people are going to read that and feel bad and just pull away further from science versus like. It's a movie. It's fine that it's not real. It's okay.
Nate Hegyi: So Taylor, you’ve obviously been more aggressive on the feather front than Gabriel.
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Team Feathers.
Nate Hegyi: Did he say anything that resonated with you?Taylor Quimby: He said a lot that did. And you know… I’m into a lot of nerdy stuff, and it’s interesting to see how inconsistent I am about when I do and do not choose to suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment.
But the thing he said that really changed my mind on some of these issues was about a type of scientific accuracy that gets totally ignored in the feather debate - and something that the new movies have done better than the original trilogy. Representation. Gabriel-Philip Santos: For something like Jurassic Park, even in the very first few movies. The majority of the cast was white, but. There are paleontologists of color. There are paleontologists all around the world. And still we continue to do that to this day, where scientists are perceived as mostly white male people who wear lab coats and are often what considered shown to be. I don't know that the right term for it, but like socially inept or neurodivergent, you know, things like that where it's like and it's shown and sometimes in such a negative, negative way that I think there there in that is where they have a greater responsibility in showing how science is and getting people's perception of science.
That's why I don't think the feather thing is so high up on my list when there are so many more things that I feel like they have a responsibility to show in movies.Nate Hegyi: Like if you were, let's say, Universal Pictures tapped you to be the director of the next Jurassic World, like what things would you be like? I really want to make sure this is accurate, whether it's the representation of who the scientists are or things like that. And like if you were to pick like top three things, that would be important to you to make sure are absolutely accurate. While the rest you can be like, go to the wolves, have fun with it. It's just a it's just a blockbuster movie.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: Woo! Okay, you've given me a lot of power here. So if I was if I was in charge of directing a movie, which, you know, if somebody out there is listening, I'm welcome to take that call. The first thing I would definitely do is really show kind of the hardships when it comes to working in the field of paleontology. So that's funding, right? Like you see, like Dr. Grant's and Dr. Sattler is camp in the first movie and even in the trailer for Jurassic World. No way in heck. There's a field camp. Look that nice, right? So that's just something I would try to have just. It's a little thing, but I feel like it goes a little bit long, a long way of showing really what field paleontology could look like and give people just a better idea of what what we do out there. So like you had said, I really would love to just cast something that's much more diverse with more backgrounds and different types of opinions within paleontology. Right. So let's I know Dr. Ellie Sattler is a paleo botanist, but you don't really get to see that other than a few lines here and there. That's something that would be really cool showing paleontologists from international places that are experts like velociraptors from Mongolia. There are really awesome Mongolian paleontologists out there who are doing that work, but nobody knows their name, nobody knows who they are. And it's same thing if we're talking about dinosaurs from South America, Africa really getting to show like this is a global field, right? It's not just North America in the badlands of Montana.
It's not some dude who looks like Indiana Jones wearing a cowboy hat and a plaid, which I do own, but I don't wear all the time. But I think I think that could create this cool connection for other folks who watch this movie. Like that person. That character looks a lot like me and they're a scientist. That that's cool. I could do that. And I think the last one, you know, if, if it was up to me, I would try to make the dinosaurs a little bit more accurate, you know, because I have that ability, I have the knowledge, I would give them the feathers, I would make them a little bit chunkier, too, I would say. But that's me as a paleontologist getting the role of a director. I still would want to make sure, Oh, you know what? Oh, I take it back. I want to take one back because I want it to go back to its horror movie roots and make it have that where you you you bring them in and make them feel like I love dinosaurs. This is beautiful. And then pull the carpet under them and be like, haha, I got you. You're going to be scared. Now for the last hour of this movie.
Nate Hegyi: You want the four year olds of the future to be terrified.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: Yes, because I had to go through it.
Nate Hegyi: Gabriel, thanks so much for talking with us.
Gabriel-Philip Santos: It was it was totally my pleasure. I had a good time. And I love being able to to freely rant about my passions and education and storytelling and Jurassic Park.
Nate Hegyi: So Taylor, are you going to see the new movie Jurassic World Dominion?
Taylor Quimby: Well, big trailer came out a few months ago. And guess what? They're bringing in some feathered dinosaurs.
Nate Hegyi: What are they really?
Taylor Quimby: Yeah. Pyro Raptor.
Nate Hegyi: What is a pyro raptor? Fire Raptor?Taylor Quimby: Maybe it's going to, like, shoot flames out of its mouth.
Nate Hegyi: There's a fire raptor. Whoa.
Taylor Quimby: Anyway, yeah. I mean, I've been complaining about this for years, and if they're going to put feathers in there, like, I should go ahead and see it in theaters just because. What about you?
Nate Hegyi: Oh, you know, I don't know. I'll see it with my dad, and he'll really love it. And I'll be like, Oh, I didn't like it as much. And he'll be like, Oh, it was awesome. You shouldn't take it so seriously.[mux]
Nate Hegyi: We’ve got links to a couple of Taylor’s book recommendations for parents looking for cool and UP-TO-DATE dinosaur books for kids, those are at outsideinradio dot org, and in our show notes. And for people curious to learn more about dinosaurs, Apple TV is out with a series called Prehistoric Planet right now, hosted and narrated by David Attenborough. Which - by the way, brother of Richard Attenborough, who played Dr. John Hammond in the original Jurassic Park!
Taylor Quimby: Oh my god, I didn’t know that!Nate Hegyi: I get five points for that one.
And tell us what you think about the new Jurassic World - are you Team Feathers, or Team Scaly Skin?|No shame, either way - Tweet us at outsidein radio, or join our private facebook page and hit the comments.