When “Jurassic Park” debuted in theaters 25 years ago, the prospect of human-made dinosaurs felt like pure science fiction.
Now, it might be closer to reality than ever before.
At least, that’s what paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner says. He’s been a dinosaur consultant on all five “Jurassic Park” films, and was even the inspiration for the first movie’s protagonist, Dr. Alan Grant. In 2015, Horner told People that dinosaurs could be making a comeback, and he has even experimented with mutating chickens back to their prehistoric roots.
And it’s possible future dinosaurs — on or off screen — may look a bit more like chickens, too, as evidence shows that dinosaurs likely had some type of feathers. Visual effects specialist Phil Tippett told the BBC he’s learned a lot since working on the first “Jurassic Park.” “I have completely different ideas of what [dinosaurs] should be like now,” Tippett said. “If we were making a different dinosaur movie that didn’t have to be Jurassic Park, I would do things totally differently.”
Tippet described the real T-Rex as “like a bus-sized Big Bird from hell.”
Now, amidst the release of the franchise’s fifth film, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” we wonder: how far off is this new storyline from reality? And if we do have the ability to reverse extinction, should we?
*Text by Kathryn Fink*
GUESTS
Adam Rutherford, Geneticist; host, “Inside Science” on BBC Radio; author, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes; @AdamRutherford
Steve Brusatte, Paleontologist and author, “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World”; @SteveBrusatte
Jill Pantozzi, Managing editor, io9; founder, TheNerdyBird.com; @JillPantozzi
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