Book: Jurassic Park

[MightyDavidson]

I read the book at age 10 or thereabouts (I was reading 5th grade level books in the 1st grade, so reading above my demographic was nothing new for me). I saw it on the family bookshelf and thought "Hey, the movie was scary but cool, the book must be even better!"

I don't remember much about the more preachy elements. The DNA stuff wasn't too hard to follow for me. The chaos theory made no sense whatsoever to me. But Dennis Nedry's death scene. It took a few reads for me to fully realize how graphic and horrifying it was. But once I did, hoo boy was that nightmare fuel!

Reading up on Chaos Theory (i.e. briefly glancing at Wiki) I can safely say that this is not something that can ever be accurately explained in a novel about dinosaurs in an interesting way and CERTAINLY not on a film. I never understood the whole ''water is going in a different direction on my hand'' example either.

Really, reading all Ian Macolm's preachy speeches about Chaos Theory in the books I got the impression that he wasn't the genius mathematician Hammond thought he was but rather a self important jackass who cared more about being right about Chaos Theory then the job he was hired to do. I mean he makes it clear that he thinks it's absolutely impossible for the dinos to be contained cause of Chaos Theory, is he really going to turn in work that proves his precious theories untrue?

[Jonathan101]

The water example is just him arguing that nobody could predict how the water would have flown down her hand, and that it was wrong to expect it to fall the same way as it had before.

He could have chosen a better example than that, especially since they were in a moving car, but that's the gist of what he meant.

Basically he's arguing that there are almost always variables we can't account for- or, we CAN account for them, but we choose to ignore them because it's too tricky and tedious and messes with our ability to get round to "doing" stuff.

He's probably wrong if he's arguing that it's "impossible" to predict these things (the water, the park etc) but he's probably right if he's just arguing that it is difficult and people (like Hammond) are too recklessly impatient to appreciate it.

[Archanubis]

i never had a problem with the dinosaur not being accurate as it been implied certain liberties were taken cause they can never be certain on how dinosaur really look like. Which was why woo arguement with hamlin. We can then say the fact the raptor lack feathers or that they were bigger then actually species is nothing more then woo manipulation with there genes so they look like how people perceded they would look like.

Velociraptor weren't that big but the Utahraptor were. So it's either a case of the geneticists getting the name wrong because they weren't actually paleontologists or Hammod calling them Velociraptors cause he thought the name sounded cooler.

It's mostly because Crichton used the name Velociraptor for the animals, but used the larger, Deinonychus as the "physical model" for them (though he based that on, at the time, at least one paleontologist considering Deinonychus a larger species of Velociraptor (it isn't)). The movies scaled them even further up to Utahraptor proportions (the discovery of which, btw, was made public practically right before the movie was released).

If you want more information on these two "raptors," check out these videos:
Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong: Deinonychus [url]https://youtu.be/kFd5f75CN38[/url]
Your Dinosaurs are Wrong: Velociraptor [url]https://youtu.be/y-3bImbSJCM[/url]

[Seaward]

It's mostly because Crichton used the name Velociraptor for the animals, but used the larger, Deinonychus as the "physical model" for them (though he based that on, at the time, at least one paleontologist considering Deinonychus a larger species of Velociraptor (it isn't)). The movies scaled them even further up to Utahraptor proportions (the discovery of which, btw, was made public practically right before the movie was released).

If you want more information on these two "raptors," check out these videos:
Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong: Deinonychus [url]https://youtu.be/kFd5f75CN38[/url]
Your Dinosaurs are Wrong: Velociraptor [url]https://youtu.be/y-3bImbSJCM[/url]

Sort of. I'm not sure if you're repeating the oft-mentioned idea that the 'raptors in the park were supposed to be Deinonychus but it's mentioned during the introduction of the Velociraptors that their genetic material was recovered from China, and they're referred to more than once as Velociraptor mongoliensis. Grant mentions the supposed reclassification of Deinonychus as V. antirrhopus but goes on to clarify that the animals in the part are V. mongoliensis. Which is odd, since if he wanted to upsize them he had the perfect excuse to right there, but deliberately doesn't take it.

Then again, the description of the animals as 'six feet tall' with, as I recall, heads about two feet long is a little too big even for Deinonychus, and the animals in the movie are smaller than Utahraptor, which has been reconstructed at some slightly terrifying sizes for a dromaeosaur.

Funnily enough, a species discovered after the film released, Achillobator giganticus, is a dromaeosaur that better matches the size and proportions of the on-screen Velociraptor and was discovered in Mongolia. Which means, though it obviously wasn't intentional on Crichton's part, in the universe of the books and movies it's entirely possibly that the DNA sample came from this as yet undiscovered Achillobator and the InGen scientists working assumed it was V. mongoliensis and called it such.

[Archanubis]

Then again, the description of the animals as 'six feet tall' with, as I recall, heads about two feet long is a little too big even for Deinonychus, and the animals in the movie are smaller than Utahraptor, which has been reconstructed at some slightly terrifying sizes for a dromaeosaur.

Yeah, Utahraptor was MUCH bigger and stockier than expected.

[MightyDavidson]

Then again, the description of the animals as 'six feet tall' with, as I recall, heads about two feet long is a little too big even for Deinonychus, and the animals in the movie are smaller than Utahraptor, which has been reconstructed at some slightly terrifying sizes for a dromaeosaur.

Yeah, Utahraptor was MUCH bigger and stockier than expected.

They were supposed to be 2M tall at the hip weren't they? Utahraptor I mean.

[Seaward]

Then again, the description of the animals as 'six feet tall' with, as I recall, heads about two feet long is a little too big even for Deinonychus, and the animals in the movie are smaller than Utahraptor, which has been reconstructed at some slightly terrifying sizes for a dromaeosaur.

Yeah, Utahraptor was MUCH bigger and stockier than expected.

They were supposed to be 2M tall at the hip weren't they? Utahraptor I mean.

Reconstructions are somewhat imprecise, but the estimates for the larger specimens vary from 1.5m at the hip and 4.65m long at ~300kg, to 7m long and weighing around 500kg. The lower limits put it at around the same size as the movie version, but I still think Achillobator matches it better.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That's what I remember reading, that they ironically did around the same time find raptors that resembled the ones in the movie which should have been the size of the dilophosaurus.

I was really old when I came to the realization that the poison that dilophosaurus spit was completely made up.

[J!!]

Something Chuck hasn't mentioned is that it's questionable whether a hypothetical cloned dinosaur could even survive in the modern earth's atmosphere, which has a significantly lower O2 content than they evolved to breath. This is also why insects don't grow as large as they used to, as their inefficient respiratory system can't extract enough o2 to keep support them above their current size.

Imagine going to see the dinosaurs, and they're all these stunted, lethargic things, struggling to breath.

[J!!]

And that's not even considering that their immune systems would be 65million years out of date, compared to modern viruses & bacteria.