We all love Jurassic Park, but nothing's perfect.
Yes, it's unreasonable to expect director Steven Spielberg and writers Michael Crichton
and David Koepp to know everything about dinosaurs and prehistoric eras.
But the film still committed a number of easily avoidable sins, and glossed over stuff that
should have been explained more thoroughly.
Here's a look at some of the dumb things about Jurassic Park that everyone just ignored.
Mosquito-oh-no
In the movie, park owner John Hammond's introductory video shows viewers how Jurassic Park is even
possible: a super-scientific process that includes the extraction of dinosaur blood
from mosquitoes preserved in amber.
"Oh, Mr. DNA!
Where did you come from?"
"From your blood!"
In the movie, scientists stick the needle into the amber, extract the dinosaur blood,
and then, well, you know the rest.
But in real life, extracting dino DNA from a 60 million-year-old mosquito isn't actually
possible.
Although the amber does preserve the mosquito nicely, time would still take its toll and
the tissue would decay.
But let's pause for a second and imagine that, sure, you can just clone a big ol' dinosaur
from a few drops of blood.
So why is Hammond wasting his time and fortune cloning gigantic killer reptiles?
He could be saving lives and actively improving the world by making new kidneys, or livers,
or hearts or—
"Hold onto your butts."
—right, or even butts!
Fraudulent fossils
Jurassic Park's mosquitoes were unearthed near the Dominican Republic, but in reality,
it simply doesn't produce fossils that old — the oldest amber discovered in the region
only dates back 15 million years.
Sorry, Spielberg, you've still got nearly 50 million years to go before getting dinosaur
blood.
Now, if you want a wonderful vacation spot, rich with coconut drinks, cocoa beans, creepy
parrots, and awesome baseball players — well, the Dominican Republic is the place for you,
man!
Problem plants
Meanwhile, the movie’s paleobotanist Ellie Sattler observes and makes notes about Cretaceous
plant life that somehow flourishes in the park.
But how did the plants even get there?
We know scientists were able to recreate dinosaurs using the mosquito, but how were they able
to reproduce and replicate extinct plants?
Last time we checked, mosquitos don’t eat no salad.
"You don't win friends with salad.
You don't win friends with salad.
You don't win friends with salad."
Besides, we all know that messing around with cloning can yield unpredictable results.
"That's chaos theory."
Chances are pretty good that if the dinosaurs hadn't gotten all aggro and murdery, the plants
would've.
"Feed me!"
No leg to stand on
Jurassic Park features scenes in which brachiosaurs lean back on their hind legs to reach higher
branches containing leaves — which are poisonous, by the way — for them to chew on.
It looks pretty cool, right?
Great bit of movie magic happening.
Of course, those dinosaurs weren't actually able to stand on their hind legs: they weren't
built to support themselves that way.
Oh, well.
Anyway, everyone knows dinosaurs had other, way more exciting ways of reaching higher
branches.
Why can't these movies ever be accurate, man?
What the frog?
In the movie, the dinosaur DNA that's extracted from fossilized mosquitoes is buffed up and
completed with frog DNA to fill in the missing sequences.
"We use the complete DNA of a frog to fill in the holes and complete the code!"
This raises a number of critical issues, arguably the most important of which is the fact that
filling in missing genomes with cross-species DNA isn't really feasible at all.
But even accounting for suspension of disbelief, there are a number of closer relatives readily
available, like birds or crocodiles.
And given the choice between a frog or a crocodile, which do you think would be more likely to
do a good dinosaur impression?
Too much poop
The movie shows Dr. Ian Malcolm stumbling upon a sick triceratops' heaping mound of
doodle.
"That is one big pile of s---."
While that has now become an internet meme, it's also a pretty accurate statement: although
we don't know much about triceratops poop, given the size of tyrannosaurus droppings
archaeologists have found, it's likely that the giant pile of dino doo seen in the movie
is way, way too big.
A real dinosaur wouldn't have been able to poop out such a gigantic pile -- even after
a bunch of ice cream.
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