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Gone were the ponderous, tail-dragging movie monsters of yesteryear.
But ever sinceJurassic Park, dinosaurs on the big screen have stayed frozen in time.
It might be easy to dismiss questions of paleontological accuracy as specialist griping.
Now, increasingly in movies including some ofJurassic Parks own grand-sequels these animals feel like placeholders.
Theres no mystery left: If youve seen one cinematic dinosaur, youve seen them all.
Dinosaurs have been a staple at the movies since thereweremovies.
By the 1980s, however, the scientific paradigm had shifted.
Scientists learned that dinosaurs were likely warm-blooded, active, and behaviorally complex.
(Dinosaurs were clappers, not slappers, as the paleo-people say.)
But I dont think it’s possible for you to seriously fault any of those designs, Brusatte said.
McCreery and his colleagues work also ended up becoming the template for decades of subsequent dinosaur films.
(And commercials he recalls watching television once and thinking,Oh, thats our raptor.)
That, to them, is what a classic dinosaur looks like, McCreery said.
For contemporary audiences, as time goes by, that becomes the standard.
By the time Universal revived theJurassic Parkfranchise in 2015, the scientific consensus on dinosaurs had again advanced.
Jurassic Worldand its immediate sequel made no particular effort to keep up.
(Many said the same about the new films themselves.)
The reasoning given, in-film, was that the dinosaurs werentrealanimals,but genetically engineered monsters.
Its just not going to happen.
Its not thinking about them as animals.
Its thinking,We need something big with a lot of teeth.
But feathers are, in some sense, the least of it.
Why not allow dinosaurs the courtesy of beingweird?
Its been 30 years, in other words.
Maybe its time to try and leave the park.
