Does Jurassic Park make scientific sense?

Pedro_P

▼ In 1993, Steven Spielberg's film Jurassic Park defined dinosaurs for an entire generation.
It has been credited with inspiring a new era of palaeontology research.
But how much science was built into Jurassic Park, and do we now know more about its dinosaurs?
As its 25th anniversary approaches, visual effects specialist Phil Tippett and palaeontologist Steve Brusatte look back at the making of the film, and what we've learned since.
So, first of all, what did Jurassic Park get wrong? It started off by inheriting some complications from Michael Crichton's novel, on which the film was based.
"I guess Cretaceous Park never had that same ring to it," laughs Brusatte.
"Most of the dinosaurs are Cretaceous in age, that's true."
The Cretaceous period, which followed on from the Jurassic, was home to many of the dinosaurs which feature heavily in the film, includingTyrannosaurus rex,VelociraptorandTriceratops.
The idea of recreating dinosaurs from preserved DNA also proves problematic.
"In order to clone a dinosaur you would need the whole genome, and nobody's ever even found a little bit of dinosaur DNA," says Brusatte. "So we're talking about something that's pretty difficult, if not impossible."
Quibbling about such details may seem inconsequential. But for a film that proudly treats its prehistoric cast of creatures as characters rather than monsters, Jurassic Park treads a fine line between scientific accuracy and cinematic fantasy.
How to build a dinosaur
Case in point - building an animal that no human being has ever seen, and making it as realistic as possible.
At the time, Jurassic Park was groundbreaking in its use of computer animation in tandem with animatronics.
Stop motion expert Phil Tippett, who had previously worked on Star Wars, was brought in as dinosaur supervisor, a role which would later earn him fame as an  internet meme.
In addition to the film's consulting palaeontologist Jack Horner, Tippett also had a great deal of dinosaur knowledge. "[I] bought every book that came out on dinosaurs. So I was pretty well in tune with what the state of the science was at that point in time," he told the BBC.
T. rex
Tippett remembers having to rein in some of the descriptions from the novel.
"Crichton would have aTyrannosauruspick up the jeep like Godzilla. I was like a reality check to say 'well no he wouldn't do that, because... the physics don't work.'" (▪ ▪ ▪)

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divey

Yes it does, genetic engineering and cloning are proven sciences though their uses have been restricted of late. Waiting for a day when they are used to bring back organisms extinct due to human intervention and not natural selection

niya

it makes sense or not is debatable.i mean what is the use or purpose to bring back Jurassic Era
as in the form of dinos makes little sense to me.those animals had huge apetite so whats the point?
what is its utility?entertainment?does it have any medicinal use?or any other relevant use?or we just
want to play mortal Gods?

scientifically it is now no longer a distant dream due to stem cell n genetic engineering n cloning as well.
but prsonally i feel its a wastage of resources as those animals hardly are known to have any
environmental benefit either to the ecosystem or to us humans.

soothsayer

it is a good effort towards cinematic depiction of a topic which engages the modern day scientist.  its major achievement- keeping public engaged and curious about evolution

parivijesh100

Well, it is a good fantasy for everyone. You get exposed to good cinematic effort.

samgmu

What they show may sound like impossible but could be possible.

tuli08@

It is a good fantasy...even if it is scientifically possible, laws of nature should not be meddled with so that it won't backfire on us later.

samgmu

tuli08@ 8-6-2018 06:39 AM
It is a good fantasy...even if it is scientifically possible, laws of nature should not be meddled w ...

true ... scared of new advances like robots with AI

napster2read

its true that it may seems impossible on today's date, but who can say...befor 30 40 years if someone says that we can talk by video calling by a smart phone around the world that also like impossible at that time. So nothing is impossible...time will say...

wangwilly

I think Jurassic Park is much more have a sense in scientific than a time paradox theory (Schrodinger's cat) because it's based on clone theory which is has been proven