In 1993, I was just starting my career as a paleontologist, heading out to college, when the movie Jurassic Park opened in theatres. I had already made up my mind about a career in paleontology, well before the movie and book by Michael Crichton had come out.
I read the book in college, not really liking the book that much, let’s just say, Jurassic Park did not have any major influence on me in following a passion in paleontology. However, since the movie came out, most of the students that I teach today were inspired by the movie, in fact there is a whole generation of paleontologists today that have grown up with Jurassic Park, having fallen in love with dinosaurs because this movie, including its sequels, video games, toys and television shows, at least some aspect of the franchise has taught them something about dinosaurs. Well to say, it had an influence on the science of paleontology today, is an understatement.
When the latest movie came out Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, I gleefully took my kids to see the new movie, anticipating that they too would enjoy the spectacle of a good dinosaur movie. Before the film began, I made the prediction that the movie will mostly be about dinosaurs eating people. Afterward, both my kids stated this was true and both stated it was the worst movie they had ever saw, and it has since become kind of a family joke. It nether inspired them to study dinosaurs, nor did it cause them to hold their paleontologist dad in high regard. Instead, they still blame me for ruining their day. Jurassic Park nevertheless is still the major way in which people learn about dinosaurs, whether you like it or not.
In this essay, I want to talk about how Jurassic Park changed the science paleontology, the study not only of dinosaurs, but the study of all fossilized creatures and plants that lived in the past eons of Earth’s long history.
Paleontology Before Jurassic Park
All the iconic dinosaurs that you can picture, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, all those iconic dinosaurs were discovered and displayed in museums the same years that the Wright Brothers were flying the first airplane, and Henry Ford was mass producing the Model T, and World War I had yet to begin. The Great Depression of the 1930s, marked the end of the golden age of paleontology. The science was becoming a dying science with the rise of technology following World War II, with little funding for expeditions to collect new dinosaurs, and few additions and new exhibits at museums. So much so, that during the 1950s and 1960s, the few paleontologists remaining lamented that they were no longer included to the high table of science, with other evolutionary biologists. The advances of genetics in the 1950s and 1960s completely excluded paleontology from much the funding it had received in the 1870s up through the 1920s. A period of fifty grand years of paleontology, when many iconic dinosaurs had been discovered and named. Paleontology was a dying science, and considered old fashion during this period of time in history.
The 1960s and 1970s was the time of massive technological advancement in the race to outer space, and attention was clearly on the exploration of other worlds, and dinosaurs were considered old fashion relicts found in dust covered museum display cases. However, during this time fossil mammals and the study of early humans was in full swing.
This started to change in the 1980s, led by a new concept of dinosaurs as warm blooded and more bird-like creatures that were more intelligent and caring than previously depicted. The 1980s is sometimes referred to as the dinosaur renaissance. Highlighted by two very popular books that came out, near the end of that decade. Jack Horner’s Digging Dinosaurs published in 1990, about baby dinosaurs from Montana, and Robert Bakker’s book The Dinosaur Heresies published in 1986. Both books aimed at a broad audience, and featuring dinosaurs as very dynamic and interesting creatures of the past, highlighting their intelligence and active nature. Dinosaurs were seen not as old bones in museums, but dynamic creatures that were once alive, highly successful and much more bizarre than previously reconstructed. In fact, my introduction to dinosaurs, was Michael Benton’s earlier 1984 book “The Dinosaur Encyclopedia.” It may be surprising today that few books on dinosaurs were published in the 1970s and 1980s. A handful of books for any student wanting to learn more about paleontology, and there was little to read after you finished the “Giant Golden Book of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles”, published in 1981. The success of these popular dinosaur books were starting to generate a stirring interest in dinosaurs among the public’s imagination, but they were rare examples. I remember going to my local library and finding not a single book on dinosaurs. Dinosaurs during this people were not very cool. But things were changing….
In the early 1980s, Michael Crichton begin writing the book that would become Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton was a writer with a knack for writing short suspenseful novels that sold well at airports under a mass market publication model. He was great at quickly writing a novel about a hot topic that sold well on newsstands. He had majored in English in college, but switched over to anthropology, and eventually medicine, graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1969. He wrote under many pseudonyms and enjoyed writing more than practicing medicine, or any scientific research. By the 1980s, he had written many successful suspense novels, wrote screenplays, and even directed some movies under his name. One notable writing credit is the 1973 movie Westworld, about a western themed amusement park, where robots run amok killing the visitors. Its themes closely resemble that of Jurassic Park. As both Jurassic Park and Westworld feature amusement parks which end up killing visitors, written from the point of view of visitors to the amusement park who are adults.
In 1989, Michael Crichton mentioned the idea of the dinosaur novel to director Steven Spielberg, as both were working on the television show ER. The idea peaked Spielberg’s interest, and Michael Crichton finished the screen play and the novel quickly knowing that it would become a blockbuster film. The book and film would make him a millionaire overnight. The rights were sold for $1.5 million dollars, with a cut of the profits of the upcoming movie. The book came out in 1990, with the movie in 1993. The novel was sold in supermarkets, newsstands, airports as advertising and mass publicity for the new movie that was in still in the works. A way to generate buzz about the movie. I remember seeing the book everywhere, which was odd, since dinosaur books were still hard to find in the library. Now you could pick up a paper back in the checkout aisle of your local grocery store.
The book and film closely followed each other, and when the movie came out it was a big hit with movie audiences well-primed for a dinosaur movie.
The film was not the first-time film makers resurrected dinosaurs, dinosaurs were featured in the 1933 King Kong movie, and 1925 movie The Lost World, and the even the early 1914 animated film Gertie the Dinosaur, and movies like the 1966 One Million Years B.C. The major difference was the use of CGI in a movie about dinosaurs, and the move away from jerky stop-action animation which was the major way to feature dinosaurs on film in the past. This made the dinosaurs more realistic on the screen to an audience use to Claymation like animations of the past.
Paleontology After Jurassic Park
The movie had three major effects on the science of paleontology. Good, Bad and what I consider Neutral. Cause and effect are difficult to untangle, as some of this shift may have occurred anyway, even if Jurassic Park was never made. The movie may have only accelerated things during this time. Some refer to the Jurassic Park the movie of 1993, as the peak of the dinosaur renaissance, which likely extends perhaps even today.
The GOOD
Museum attendances rose after the movie, and inspired many museums to feature dinosaurs in their exhibits. This was generated by increased public awareness of dinosaurs, but also the new ways to fabricate dinosaur casts from actual bones, and dynamic new mounts and poses for dinosaurs to be put on display.
Crowds at a museum
Many exhibits were cleaned up and reimagined during this time. The movie also inspired lots and lots of books for kids about dinosaurs, and there is no shortage of children’s books on dinosaurs. Everyone can easily fine a large row of dinosaur books at their public library, both fictional as well as factual. Not only are children’s books on dinosaurs more common today, adult books on dinosaurs are also very common, making it really easy to learn more about dinosaurs than any time in the past. The other good effect the movie had, was that paleontology was cool again, and featured in many television shows. From Friends to Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs!, the BBC Walking With Dinosaurs series of documentaries, and the many new documentaries that have come out featuring dinosaurs in exciting new shows. There is today a much higher likelihood that you have seen dinosaurs in a movie or television show, or a paleontologist as a major character in a series.
And finally, young students were inspired to study paleontology because of the movie, and seek out careers, and there has been a rapid growth in the study of fossils, including many people publishing lots of new research on dinosaurs and other fossils. Much of this new generation of scientists were inspired by the Jurassic Park movies directly.
The BAD
The popularity of the movie lead to a major increase in the illegal collection of dinosaur bones and fossils. Prices skyrocketed, and auction houses moved from selling old works of art to start selling dinosaur bones on the market for huge sums of money to wealthy private individuals. This rise in the price for dinosaur fossils lead to increased poaching of sites on public lands, and the export of bones around the world. The rise in prices also fueled speculation on fossils, not to study the science of the bones or put them on display, but as a way to make money. Many laws were passed to stop the illegal collection of fossils from both private and public lands, but these tended to be poorly enforced, and often restricted actual scientists and amateur field studies.
Strangely federal government funding for paleontology as a science was reduced here in the United States during this time, while corporate partnerships increased. This likely was due to the perception that paleontology was more entertainment rather than educational, or something that the average taxpayer would approve in supporting. Many federally employed paleontologists during this time lost their government jobs. Paleontologists instead had to work with corporations, especially in entertainment and advertising more and more, seeking out sponsorships, and often focusing on iconic dinosaurs for new museum displays rather than fossils that fill in gaps in our collective knowledge. The quest to excavate additional Tyrannosaurus rex specimens for example increased greatly, leading to a gold-rush in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, where they are found.
The NEUTRAL
Paleontology became the study of dinosaurs, and everything became a dinosaur in the eyes of the public. This is sort of amusing, but something that came about with the Jurassic Park movies, which often depict other prehistoric animals other than dinosaurs, but they are lumped together by the public. Dinosaurs became the major focus of the public, moving away from other prehistoric animals.
The other thing that happened was that paleontology moved from the geology department to the biology department. This move was a result of biologists recognizing that dinosaurs and other animals of the past were once living organisms, and likely lived and breathe the same way living animals do today. Paleontology typically before Jurassic Park was found in geology departments, as they are useful for geologists in determining the age and stratigraphic relationships of rocks, as well as reconstructing the past environments that formed the rocks.
This shift of paleontology into biology departments I put this in the neutral category, because often geology departments today have reduced the paleontology courses offered to their students, and many geologists are not trained as much in paleontology as they were in the 1970s and 1980s before the Jurassic Park movies appeared.
Another slight change that I’ve noticed, is that typically when dinosaurs are depicted in mass media, they are reconstructions rather than the old fossilized bones themselves. Prior to Jurassic Park, although there was toys and movies with reconstructions of dinosaurs, they were not the dominate form that the public thought of dinosaurs as, rather they would picture skeletonized old bones in museums.
The advent of Jurassic Park, made the general public quickly recognize dinosaurs from the reconstructed anatomy of these creatures. It is strange to imagine that kids today, can easily recognize dinosaurs only from a reconstruction.
As a scientist, I tend to look only at the fossil bones and physical evidence of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals from what is preserved in the rocks. I tend to avoid putting reconstructions of animals in my videos for this reason, however, most of the public documentaries rather described the fossils themselves, tend to present artistic drawings and models of dinosaurs as the factual basis of their existences. This is not a bad thing, but does lead to a false sense that dinosaurs looked just like what artists imagine them to be, without spending the time to look at the actual fossils themselves. For example, we now know that velociraptor was a relatively small feathered dinosaur, rather than the scaly dinosaur depicted in Jurassic Park, yet most people recognize the Jurassic Park version over a more up to date reconstruction with feathers.
Now, not all these changes are a result of Jurassic Park, and I suspect that the influence that these movies will have on the future maybe somewhat waning, but I’m always reminded that they continue to fascinate people, and will likely continue to do so far into the future, with their evidential replacement likely to stem from new video games and other sources of entertainment featuring dinosaurs.