What’s real, what’s not and what’s local in the new ‘Jurassic World’ movie
The original Jurassic Park movie was groundbreaking and while still fantasy to specific degree director Steven Spielberg and writer Michael Crichton tried to make it somewhat realistic It introduced DNA and cloning to an audience that had mostly never heard of it and of unit it made the velociraptor famous too Related stories Jurassic World needed a restart Steven Spielberg knew who to call Movie Review Jurassic World Rebirth puts a wobbly franchise back on track with superb installment How do you make a Jurassic World movie With these commandments But as dinosaur knowledge has changed and improved generally the Jurassic franchise hasn t tried too hard to keep up with that changing understanding explained Thomas Holtz a paleontologist at the University of Maryland However that doesn t mean he didn t enjoy the latest movie Jurassic World Rebirth even if a minimal liberties were taken Spinosaurus was featured in the third movie But since Jurassic Park III we ve learned that it s more aquatic than we once thought Holtz disclosed In this movie they make it not merely aquatic but they have it out in the open seas for a while And even the proponents of a swimming Spinosaurus don t argue it would swim way far away from shore So it s there to be exciting but that s not really based on the actual understanding of this creature he added While the newest movie in the saga is set on a fictional tropical island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean at least one of the dinosaurs that it features prominently this time dubbed Delores used to roam the D C area when the landscape was radically different It s supposed to be Aquilops Holtz explained Aquilops was an early relative of Triceratops We veritably have teeth from here in Maryland from the site up in Laurel of something like Aquilops or a very close relative Our rocks here are about the same age as the rocks out west where Aquilops was first discovered So fans of the little dinosaur Dolores can know that a creature very much like it used to wander here in Maryland and of discipline the D C and Virginia region back in the middle of the Cretaceous period he added And he did notice other little details in the movie ones that aren t necessarily key to the story but which still mix in particular of the newer scientific discoveries and theories about dinosaurs For instance something subtle and otherwise unmentioned stood out to him when the Titanosaurus appeared When characters are up close near it you see little bristles little hair-like bristles along its legs Holtz mentioned Now we don t yet have those known from these particular dinosaurs but several other types of dinosaurs had simple fuzz-like structures and this is to my knowledge the first time anyone has shown certain bit of fuzz or fuzz equivalents on a sauropod They don t make a point about it He disclosed if you hadn t known about dinosaur hair you might not notice why it was odd in the movie But to him as a scientist who knows dinosaurs that was a cool little bit They snuck a little bit of modern paleontology and speculative paleontology but still supported by the evidence he explained But they don t make a big deal about it which is kind of nice to put things in there so that subliminally people might be picking up on certain ideas even if it s not the primary focus of the story or the adventure It s things like that that has this paleontologist giving Jurassic World Rebirth a thumbs-up He describes it as a fun summer action movie even if the series drifts further away from science by introducing mutant species The movies lately in the Jurassic series have been very much monster movies Holtz noted To be fair the first one was inspired by the old monster movies But I think it s telling that they get a lot of their excitement in the more fresh movies by inventing creatures various sorts of hybrids and mutants rather than the original relatively pristine dinosaurs themselves Source
