Complaints about Jurassic Park’s scientific accuracy proceed from a couple of false
assumptions. The first, and by far the
most important issue for this discussion is scientific accuracy was never the
avowed goal of Ingen, Masrani, Lockwood’s flunky or anyone else involved with
the physical creation of these animals.
The other assumption deals with the dollar value attached to these
animals. John Hammond tells us they: “spared
no expense,” but, this is clearly not the case.
All the way back in the dark ages of
the early 1990s when the novel Jurassic
Park was released the text pointed out that the characters had a clear
understanding of the “nature” of their creations even if they did not have
control over them. The chapter titled
Version 4.4 records a lengthy philosophical discussion between Dr. Henry Wu,
and John Hammond. Dr. Wu argues that
people do not want real dinosaurs, they “want to see their expectation.” He goes on to point out that “[Jurassic] Park
is entertainment” and “entertainment has nothing to do with reality.” When Hammond protests that changing the
dinosaur would make them less real, Wu responds “They’re not real now […] there
isn’t any reality here.” The take away
point here is that even before the creation of the Jurassic films the franchise
was predicated on the knowledge that the dinosaurs did not reflect reality.
Like the steady drum beat of the Roman
legions this concept is reinforced ad
nauseum in each Jurassic film, right down to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The degenerate CEO of InGen insinuates the artificial construct of the
dinosaurs in The Lost World saying:
“an extinct animal brought back to lie has no rights. It exists because we made it. We patented it. We own it.”
In the following film in 2001, an exasperated Dr. Alan Grant explained:
“What John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park [was] create genetically
engineered theme park monster, nothing more, and nothing less. When Dr. Wu is confronted by Simon Masrani in
2015’s Jurassic World he defends
himself saying: “Bigger, scarier, cooler, [are] the word[s]
that you used in your memo. You cannot have an animal with exaggerated predator
features without the corresponding behavioral traits. […] You are acting like
we're engaged in some kind of mad science, but we are doing what we have done
from the beginning. Nothing in Jurassic World is natural. We have always filled
gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals and, if their genetic code was
pure, many of them would look quite different, but you didn't ask for reality.
You asked for more teeth.” The take away
point here is that explicitly, since the beginning, the dinosaurs were never
meant to be real in the paleontological science sense of the term.
So,
what does this tell us about the great feather schism? Sticking feathers in your butt does not make
you a chicken. Yet, some folks will still
need explaining. If you view the Jurassic Park
dinosaurs in the historical context of cloning it is very easy to understand
why the animals we know to have feathers do not appear with feathers in the
films. Quite a few very smart people
have worked on the science of cloning.
Beginning in the 1920s and 1930s German scientists experimenting with
genetics set the bedrock for what would evolve into modern cloning
research. Frogs were cloned in 1952,
carp in 1963, and a mouse in 1986. By
far the most famous clone, Dolly the sheep, was created in 1997.
The
scientists that created Dolly have stated that it took 277 attempts to achieve
success. What the geneticists have
steadfastly refused to release is the total dollar value of the effort to clone
Dolly. The best guess from other British
scientists put the total at or near £500,000.
Converting currency that comes to $659,630.50 to clone one sheep. If you do a little bit of math you can see
the financial forces at work in cloning.
If an average sheep weighs 180 pounds and costs $659,630 and some change
how much would a full-size dinosaur run?
An adult Tyrannosaurus weighed 9 tons, or 180,000 pounds, 100x larger
than Dolly the sheep. Per pound, that makes
a Tyrannosaurus $65,963,050 before shipping.
The
great feather schism is really centered on the Velociraptor
though. If you read Velociraptor’s 1980’s
Roots then you know that the film Velociraptor is actually built to the dimensions of Deinonychus,
about 200 pounds each. Therefore, each
of the film Velociraptors
cost somewhere around $733,000 each.
Clones of sheep, cows, cats, dogs have all been created since 1997, but,
the limiting factor has been, and will continue to be the cost of
production. It is true the price per
unit of everything drops in relation to the scale of production. But, unless you are talking about producing
millions, or even tens of thousands of Velociraptors reduced unit cost is not going to help you.
We
know that irrefutable fossil evidence found in 1996 proves that non-avian
dinosaurs like Velociraptor
had feathers. The problem for
our beloved Jurassic
Park franchise is that the initial Velociraptors were created prior to this. None of the original three Velociraptors
survived the Isla Nublar Incident in 1993.
The Velociraptors
in The Lost World,
and Jurassic Park III
were created concurrently with the nine animals that were transported to Isla
Nublar before
the failure of the first park. There is
a commonality of genetic material among the Isla Sorna, and Nublar Velociraptors. Therefore, even though we discover non-avian
feathered dinosaurs before the second and third film, the animals in those
films are already alive, or direct genetic descendants of animals that were already
alive. It is very unlikely that anyone
on the board at InGen, or Masrani would say “go out there and shoot those $733,000
Velociraptors so we can make some new ones with feathers.” A constant shown in the films is the concern
that InGen has about preserving their financial investment – the bottom line. Lest we forget, that is why Drs. Alan Grant,
Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm travel to Jurassic Park in the first place.
 |
| Waste Not, Want Not. |
The
above facts and timeline even explain the lack of feathers on the four Velociraptors
living in Jurassic World ca.
2015. Remember that the obnoxious little
boy traps a Velociraptor
in the walk-in freezer during the 1993 Incident. After the fall of the first park, Dr. Wu is
still employed by InGen. Dr. Wu is also,
not an idiot. He is not going to
reinvent the wheel of dinosaur DNA when he has a full grown adult Velociraptor
on ice in the Visitor Center Kitchen. Waste
not, want not. In both Jurassic World,
and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
we see scenes of Dr. Wu, and other nefarious InGen goblins grabbing DNA samples
as they flee like Hood leaving Atlanta.
Therefore,
the Velociraptors,
and by extension all the other dinosaurs in Jurassic Park from 1993 to 2018
have clear and logical explanations for their lack of feathers. When Dr. Wu creates something “new,” or is hired by the
AMNH, or Smithsonian then we can revisit the dinosaurs sans feathers argument. Naked dinosaurs are just fine if the
franchise is working from the 1993 DNA, and the descendants of the original
animals. Who knows what will happen now
that the dinosaurs are with us on the mainland.
Part 2 V1.N3
Next
episode: Wonder Woman, and History.
