The upcoming "Jurassic World" is a great excuse to look back on "Jurassic Park." The movie pushed the boundaries of film technology, won numerous awards and, of course, featured dinosaurs. But even with a movie this great, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Plot holes find a way."
There were a lot of scientific liberties taken with the movie which wouldn't happen in real life. For one, according to paleontologist and "Jurassic Park" consultant Jack Horner, digging up a bunch of mosquitos and grabbing material from them to clone will more often than not give you a bunch of new mosquitos (partly because any potential dino DNA would be too broken down to use). Second, and you should probably remember this for survival, staying still in front of a real T-Rex is not going to help much.
Inaccuracies aside, there's one plot hole so big, it's literally 65 million years in the making ...
Image: Giphy
Wow, hold on to your butts.
The supposed inaccuracy has bounced around online since the '90s, claiming most of the awesome dinosaurs like T-Rex and the raptors weren't even around in the Jurassic Period. (Clever girl, Internet.)
Even the tagline for the movie, "An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making," seems to refer to the Cretaceous, as the Jurassic Period took place much longer ago.
So with this in mind, The Huffington Post spoke with the "Jurassic Park" consultant himself, Jack Horner, to find out what's what.
"It is [accurate]," Horner replied when asked about the claim that the dinosaurs were from the Cretaceous Period. "The reason is the animals that sort of typify dinosaurs are ones that have lots of accoutrements like spikes, horns, shields and so on, and so most of the ones with those kind of accoutrements are from the Cretaceous."
Even so, Horner says the discrepancy was never discussed on set. "There's no reason for it to be," he told HuffPost. "It doesn’t matter what you call the park. Calling it 'Jurassic Park' doesn’t imply that the dinosaurs are from the Jurassic. It doesn’t imply anything really. It’s just the name of the park."
It should also be noted that not all dinosaurs were from the Cretaceous. Horner says the Stegosaurus was actually from the Jurassic period. However, the majority did come much later.
So, still have plans to catch "Jurassic World" in theaters come June 12?
Image: SportsAlcohol
This post has been updated to clarify the science behind why "Jurassic Park" probably wouldn't happen in real life.
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