
How “Jurassic Park” led to the modernization of dinosaur paleontology - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/23/17483340/jurassic-park-world-steve-brusatte-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-dinosaurs-book-interview-paleontology
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Theodores
This reminds me of the unfortunate logo the email sending company 'bronto.com'
had before Oracle bought them out:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140101030328/http://bronto.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140101030328/http://bronto.com/)

The Brontosaurus in their logo has the tail dragging along the ground, as if
we are still in the 1980's when all dinosaurs were drawn that way. As if they
ever dragged their tails along the ground like that, but it was plausible then
when serious study of dinosaurs was only for small children!

Actually it was only a decade or so when the Natural History Museum in London
changed 'Dippy' to have the correct tail posture, i.e. in the up position, not
dragged along the ground. However, I did not take the Bronto 'product'
seriously in part due to the fact that I despise marketing types (and their
product was shoddy) and in part because their logo was so lame.

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nostromo
This article is... ok. It's a puff piece for a book that is trying to ride the
coat tails of Jurassic Park.

But the headline doesn't follow from the article. The author says that
Jurassic Park has been good for paleontology because it increased public
interest in dinosaurs. But saying it has modernized paleontology is quite the
stretch.

~~~
ghaff
The book actually looks sort of interesting (although reviews suggest it's not
written very well). I'm not aware of other recent books that pull together
recent discoveries although I can't say it's an area that I follow especially
closely.

But, yeah, there's absolutely nothing in the interview to support the claim
that Jurassic Park modernized paleontology. Rather, Jurassic Park represented
an era where: 1.) CGI has getting astonishingly good relative to what people
were used to seeing and 2.) Dinosaurs were being dramatically rethought
relative to the giant lumbering reptiles that were still how most people
thought of them.

~~~
MadcapJake
> 1.) CGI has getting astonishingly good relative to what people were used to
> seeing

Wasn't the first one done with animatronics and costumes?

~~~
codeulike
There's plenty of CGI in the first JP. At the time it was groundbreaking. The
first big reveal of the brachiosaur munching on trees is CGI (this famous clip
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJlmYh27MHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJlmYh27MHg)).
I think most of the big dinosaurs were CGI. Some of the raptor stuff was
costumes. And some of the close-ups were models.

Its interesting to ponder that before Jurassic Park released in 1993, no-one
had ever seen a photorealistic moving image of a dinosaur. Every attempt
beforehand was glaringly obvious stop motion. See
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxSws2W0-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxSws2W0-E)

~~~
ghaff
This is one of the films whose visual impact at the time is hard to appreciate
today. That scene was one in which the impact on the audience was almost as
great as it was on the characters in the clip.

The opening of Star Was was similar (although that was more models-based).

~~~
bonesss
I think a lot of the impact can be recreated, with the appropriate score:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-58hQ9dLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-58hQ9dLk)

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KineticLensman
The interviewee cites [Robert] Bakker [0] as a gateway author into science,
but doesn't actually mention Bakker's excellent 1986 book, 'The Dinosaur
Heresies' which promoted the idea that many dinosaurs were agile, smart and
warm blooded. Bakker had been publishing on this concept since the mid-1970s.
Jurassic Park may have helped with popularisation, but it was Bakker and his
co-researchers who started the modernisation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_T._Bakker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_T._Bakker)

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dboreham
Jack Horner was a big driving force behind the modernization afaik. He was
involved with the original movie. Living near Bozeman I've been able to hear
him speak several times and also run into him at Costco.

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newman8r
Reminds me of the "Scully Effect"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Scully#%22The_Scully_Effe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Scully#%22The_Scully_Effect%22)

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autokad
does anyone know when/why we started going from the dinosaurs went extinct 65
million years ago to now 66 million?

~~~
ghaff
The Chicxulub impact is now generally accepted as the direct cause of dinosaur
extinction. A 2013 paper updated the date of this event from 65m years ago to
66m.

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AlphaWeaver
Made me think of this [0] directly relevant XKCD.

[0]: [https://xkcd.com/460/](https://xkcd.com/460/)

~~~
fhars
Funny thing aubout the hover text for that xkcd is that _Brontosaurus_ has
been ressurected since then....
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-
zoology/that-b...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/that-
brontosaurus-thing/)

