Are the Jurassic Park creatures dinosaurs, or something else?

Back when I was a little nerd munching popcorn in the theater dark, there was no question. These were dinosaurs. Michael Crichton was one of several authors to play with genetic engineering as a method to bring dinosaurs back - see also Carnosaur and even the G.I. Joe episode “Primordial Plot” - but this was just a very 90s way to bring people into contact with dinosaurs. We’d done time travel. We’d done isolated jungle plateaus. We’d tone temporal misalignment with archosaurs and Pleistocene peoples. But there was no question that the ingenuity rested on the idea that the T. rex, Velociraptor, Triceratops, and other animals in the films (mostly) represented our best understanding of what the Mesozoic animals were really like.

But as I acted as a guest on It Came From a Monster Movie! last night - episode coming this summer - Henry the host insisted that the franchise’s creatures are not dinosaurs but genetically-modified monsters. This is the new text that comes from the old text. In the original novel, geneticist Henry Wu explains to John Hammond (and us) that many of the dinosaurs in the park would have looked quite different if the scientists had used complete, accurate genomes. In the movie, this takes us to the transness of the dinosaurs - the amphibian DNA used to fill genetic sequence gaps that allows inGEN’s dinosaurs to spontaneously change sex. The newer Jurassic World spinoffs and reboots have compounded the concept even further, bringing us dinosaurian creatures that never existed but have been cobbled together to inspire more soda sales at park concession stands.

I think we’ve been misled again.

Consider this. How much of our DNA is human DNA? When we say our genomes express only a 1% difference from those of chimpanzees, for example, that number comes from an overall count of base pair differences and not some small cluster of definitive human genes.

Now let’s unpack this a little further. We know we share many, many traits with other living things. Four limbs, hair, the ability to produce milk, bones, a circulatory system with hemoglobin-rich blood, and so much more. These shared anatomical traits come with shared genetic traits. Part of the reason that researchers study fruit flies, for example, is because they share many of the same genes that we do - very ancient bits of animal DNA that perform the same way in them as in us. So what, then, if some future corporate scientist wanted to make a Holocene Park filled with humans but had to fill gaps in our genomes caused by genetic degradation? Chances are they could look to the genetics of most any animal to find what was missing and fill out the sequence, and it wouldn’t make us part chimpanzee, fruit fly, armadillo, or sperm whale.

Crichton needed a gimmick to give us a twist, something surprising to underscore our inability to control nature and give Ian Malcolm - basically Crichton’s voice in the novel - something to talk about. It’s the same logic, oddly enough, that sets off the chain of grotesque events in The Fly, also starring Goldblum, through the idea that any exchange with a seemingly lower animal would turn us into one. But this is all science fiction and the nature of narrative, not a scientific fact. If Wu and other scientists used amphibian DNA to complete dinosaur genomes, there’s no indication filling in those shared pits in the genetic sequences would make the dinosaurs hybrids or part frog. It’s only the mythology of the movies that makes it so.

Jurassic Park has always unmade itself as it makes itself. The second film is a way to close a plot hole, brilliantly taking a flaw and turning it into a whole new trope of “the other island.” The series has continued to unmake and reassemble itself through its’ 21st century iterations, dinosaurs said to be boring while they still get us into the theater and all the animals said to be hybrid monsters so that we’ll accept the Indominus and Indoraptor and Distortus. We could surely argue - and I would argue - that a genome does not an organism make, and the behavior of the park dinosaurs has no check on it. Animals recreated in lab isolation have no parents, no social group, no natural environment to learn from and shape, and so we’d never be able to tell whether Rexy is being extra aggressive or her hunting behavior is a natural reflection of Maastrichtian T. rex. But genetically, the shift from Jurassic Park dinosaurs to Jurassic Park hybrid monsters is something the franchise fooled us into rather than a point that actually makes sense.

When I look at those dinosaurs, as I did in the summer of ‘93, I still see the living, breathing creatures so many of my favorite books told me about.

They’re still dinosaurs to me.

Scribblings

• Paleontologists have just announced a new giant dinosaur, an immense titanosaur that’s the first of its kind from the mid-Cretaceous rocks of Thailand. I’ll tell you more about Nagatitan at National Geographic.

• 2023’s Tropical Storm Hilary sent baby great whites scrambling out of their nursery. How did they know to leave, and could ancient sharks - like baby megalodon - have responded in a similar way? My latest for premium subscribers, here.

• TV loves pack-hunting dinosaurs. But did carnivores like Albertosaurus really hunt this way? The evidence is wobblier than Walking With Dinosaurs suggest. I dig into “The Pack” for premium subscribers.

• Last week’s new article, about when mackerel sharks started to get big, is up free on my blog. To help support writing like this, consider upgrading to premium.

Ear Perks

• Do you want to date monsters? Sure, we all do. Check out the trailer for Welcome, Dear Human.

• Language matters, especially as we try to fight colonialism in paleontology. Letícia Machado Haertel has an insightful essay on why differences between Germany and Brazil’s language around returning the dinosaur Irritator are important to pay attention to.

• What we used to put into letters, journals, and scrapbooks now goes online, which is never as permanent as we might like to think. If you want to know how to become a better digital archivist, especially for queer media, check out this webinar from The ArQuives.

A final note. Last week I mentioned Freddie, the void cat who had seemed to be outside for some time and had no chip or tag. Turns out an elderly neighbor had put the little guy outside when he wasn’t supposed to, and Freddie belongs to someone nearby. Freddie’s home and safe now, with a promise he’ll remain an indoor kitty, and though I feel a little foolish I’m still glad he’s got a loving home.

The experience, especially after losing Hobbes, has left the house feeling a little empty. Maybe someday I’ll extemporize on why I feel three cats has always been good kittylibrium in my home, but Splash and I are already looking at shelter listings. It is kitten season, after all.