National Geographic's Antidote To Terminal Monster Saturation

The palaeontology community's members are all in therapy, thanks to Jurassic World's insistence on filling a(n ENORMOUS) fictional theme park with some of the worst reconstructions of Mesozoic reptiles known to man. The TetZoo guys didn't even make it to the end of their own review*, with Darren Naish weeping uncontrollably after only fifteen minutes, and transmission being cut seconds after what can only be described as a muffled thud. Listeners were left to make up their own minds as to what had transpired, with many speculating that they'd just heard Naish's mercy killing at the hands of John Conway. The Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs blog clearly comprises a masochistic crew, who offered up not one but two reviews on JW. (And they just added a third about an hour ago.)

The point is, you don't have to look too far to find a palaeo community review for this year's main Summer blockbuster. Jurassic World has attracted much attention since people began speculating as to how they might depict some of the film's key creatures. It's nearly two decades since John Hammond demonstrated how you should NEVER EVER run a zoo and, in that time, dinosaur reconstruction has evolved at an unimaginable rate. Would Jurassic World reflect this? Would we get feathered 'raptors'? Would they possess the correct wrists described by Dr Alan Grant RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST MOVIE? And, most importantly, would their T. rex still move around the park, one earthquake-causing footstep at a time, taken every thirty seconds? ("T. rex doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt!" Not gonna happen. Not when everything within a couple of miles knows you're coming.)

Chris Pratt's character taunts Jurassic World's Velociraptors by demonstrating the range of motion they should be able to achieve with their arms. (Copyright © 2015 Universal Pictures.)

By now you already know the answers. You've either seen the film or read the reviews, so in the interest of avoiding repetition, I'll spare you a long and damning run-through of how bad they got it. Jurassic World was, for me, an enjoyable monster romp - a worthy sequel to Jurassic Park. I got giddy sat at home, waiting to leave for the cinema. I got chills hearing the music. And I nearly wet myself during the tag-team end battle. But it's not a film about dinosaurs. It is, however, a love letter to the first film, as demonstrated by numerous references and nods to Jurassic Park. It also flicks the Vs at the less-well-loved Jurassic Park III, if only by having the first film's T. rex smash through a mounted Spinosaurus skeleton during the final reel. And remember how the JP3 promo art made use of a triple claw-gash to form the III? The only reason I could see for Improbable Indominus rex having four manual digits was so that Universal could use the same trick for this fourth instalment. Pfft.  Yes, it's daft, overblown, and it makes scientists cry. But it's fun and noisy and holds children's attention for the duration.

These are the take-home points of the Jurassic Park series:

• Revived Mesozoic animals will, upon their release, always, ALWAYS go bat-shit crazy and attack every human in sight, irrespective of their general temperament when confined, or whether they're piscivorous, carnivorous or veggie-saurus, Lex, veggie-saurus!
• Large theropods will announce their approach with impact-tremor footsteps. They will then stand and roar, I guess because they're sporting types, and think it fair to offer their intended prey a chance of escape.
• A hunting dinosaur has no concern for its own wellbeing. It will happily smash through buildings, walls, perimeter fences and steel doors in order to catch prey. It will go to any and all lengths to catch a person, inconvenience be damned. It has no concept of 'too much effort'. (Extinction hypothesis?)
• Indominus rex was originally engineered as a means to retrieve broken-down gyrospheres, hence its enormous gape. Probably.
• Jurassic Park films would all end after only ten minutes if ANYBODY had conducted a decent risk assessment analysis. Ergo, in the JP universe, people are really, really stupid.

So will the Summer of 2015 go down in history as the moment when film & television decided that palaeontology ≠ sexy? Not quite.

Before they took a blood shower: Dr. Luke Gamble at front and, left to right, Matthew T. Mossbrucker, Dr. Steve Brusatte and Dr. Tori Herridge. (Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Channel.)

Thank the flips for National Geographic's 'T. rex Autopsy'. If you've not seen it, the premise is a straight-forward one: make a fully-furnished Tyrannosaurus rex corpse, hire a team of palaeontologists and vets, and set them to work dissecting it. Obviously turning that into a reality was anything but simple, as palaeontologist and adviser-to-the-show Dave Hone explains (here). And they do a brilliant job. The dissection team does not behave as if its members are crawling over a special effect. They do their level best to convince the viewers - and themselves - that the animal is real. For the most part they pull it off, too. Excepting the odd, faked, reflexive cough at smells we know aren't there, their reactions at having been presented with a 'real' non-avian dinosaur are a joy to watch. My seventeen-year-old daughter arrived home partway through the programme; gawping confusedly at the television screen, she enquired as to where on earth the makers got hold of a fully-fleshed dinosaur. That's how good it is. Of course, if you're looking for the tells which betray the animal's synthetic construction, they're there, well hidden. But who cares? Disbelief is easily - and wilfully - suspended.  Hats are tipped at those who conceived, designed, and executed this remarkable piece of television. It more than makes up for those well-documented missed opportunities of Jurassic World.

A few weeks ago LITC announced the Jurassic World challenge. In order to try to increase awareness of real palaentology, and perhaps direct some funds back towards it, LITC suggested that if you go to see the film you could spend at least the equivalent amount on something which will benefit palaeontologists, research institutions, palaeoartists and museums. You could buy a book, or a piece of palaeoart, or donate to a museum or crowd-fund someone. There's loads to choose from if you look around.

Since I have bills like everyone else, it would help me enormously if people bought a t-shirt from my Redbubble page. You can show off your pop-culture-savviness with a hyper-daft Guardians-Jurassic-World-How-To-Train-Your-Dragon mash-up, or keep reminding everyone that T. rex Autopsy was the best thing on telly since sliced tyrannosaur.

Juraasic World and T. rex Autopsy fan art t-shirts, available at my Redbubble page, here.

It's good to get that JW stuff off my chest. Normal service will resume soon. There's a stack of stuff sat there in draft, including more wandering sauropod ecosystems, more Yi qi, and more pterosaur quad-launching. Laters!

*Of course TetZoo did the whole interview. Listen to it - its very entertaining.

Learn To Let Go: The Ever-Changing Look Of Dinosaurs

I recall several occasions from my college days when tutors advised students not to get too precious about their work. This wasn't just a sly put-down; it was practical advice. Colossal (but avoidable) balls-ups, ranging from illustrating a tortoiseshell butterfly with incorrectly-arranged leg segments, to dropping a cup of hot chocolate on a near-complete painting could be soul-destroying, severely limiting your options for correction. Often, there's only one option: start again. Illustrating in college was very different to illustrating commercially. The most noticeable difference was that a college assignment would give up an entire term to one brief, whereas commercial briefs were rarely so generous. During my briefest of flirtations with Dorling Kindersley, I'd get a call in 5pm with a couple of details for a required illustration, and my deadline would be 10am the next day. I guess that's not typical, but it does serve to demonstrate that there's not always enough to time to sit back and bask in your illustrative awesomeness when you've only had about three hours to throw something together. In short, it taught me not to be too precious about my work. (Even if it survives the production process long enough to be seen by its target audience, it's then got to run the gauntlet of critics and trolls...)

Few people would argue that 2014 has been anything other than a cracking year for palaeontology. More specifically, dinosaur fans got to open their Christmas presents early, with the release of new reconstructions of Deinocheirus and Spinosaurus. The latter has been a mainstay of popular palaeontology literature for over half a century, with many dinofans relatively confident of the animal's real-life appearance. On the other hand, Deinocheirus has often featured in those very same books for the opposite reason (explained here simply for those weary blogonauts who may have stumbled across Pteroformer by accident). Deinocheirus mirificus was discovered in the mid-'60s by Professor Zofia Kielan-Jaworoska, during a Polish-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi desert. The mostly-scattered skeleton of D. mirificus comprised some vertebrae, ribs and two enormous arms and scapulae. In spite of a few peculiarities, the arms resembled those of other ornithomimids. The key is in the 'enormous' bit: 2.4 metres is a lot of arm. And it's easy to see why that would cause excitement. Deinocheirus is a theropod and theropods are traditionally murderers. Enormous heads full of lots of teeth, which themselves are always compared to steak knives - well, at least in '80s dinosaur books. But it's their arms which this is all about, and when someone finds what is, at the time, the biggest set of theropod arms ever, well, they must belong to the biggest theropodan murderer ever.

Deinocheirus mirificus: Reaper-saurus or nay? Speculative reconstructions of this animal depicted it as everything from a giant dromaeosaur to a tyrannosaur. It's as if people wanted it to have been a killer. Available on a t-shirt here! (Copyright © Gareth Monger)

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was also initially known from similarly-scrappy remains, though enough was recovered for a tentative reconstruction on which palaeoartists would base their illustrations and sculptures for years to come. Spinosaurus's exact relationships with other theropods were largely unknown, allowing artists a certain amount of leeway regarding which better-known theropods they stuck a sail on the back of. Before 2014, reconstructions of Spinosaurus rarely moved it away being the top predator of its time - perhaps of all time - and the much-loved oft-maligned Jurassic Park III did nothing to change this. It did, however, hammer home the long, slow snout for which spinosaurs are now so-well known. It had already featured in many '90s images, but there's nothing like a Jurassic Park film to shoehorn a dinosaur's image into popular culture.

And so 2014 happened. Papers were released and rumours confirmed. Museums and dinosaur parks alike bulldozed their now-redundant mounts and fibreglass monstrosities and Dorling Kindersley deleted its back catalogue. I exaggerate, of course. But of the two animals, Spinosaurus was the major upset. Its new look rendered nearly all previous reconstructions inaccurate, but also caused a bit of a stink among fanboys, many of whom didn't like the new 'design'. The paper written by Ibrahim, et al (2014) showed Spinosaurus to be heavily modified towards a largely-aquatic lifestyle, its hindlimbs reduced to the extent that running around on land was unlikely. It didn't take long before people took to social media to complain about the new reconstruction, and that's understandable - it's awkward. It doesn't fit with people's preconceptions of how theropod dinosaurs should look. Even some dinosaur workers remained unconvinced (see here and here for initial responses from Mark Witton and Scott Hartman). It's worth noting that, as an aquatic non-avian theropod, it represents something of a first, so there's nothing to compare it to. In case you missed it, here's Davide Bonadonna's illustration for National Geographic:

Two Spinosaurus aegyptiacus swim for their food in Davide Bonadonna's dynamic illustration. (Copyright © National Geographic. Used with permission.)

It was interesting to note so much nostalgia for the older, inaccurate, versions of Spinosaurus. Of course, Deinocheirus didn't attract much of that, for its own, older reconstruction(s), was a far-from-settled affair. But it did serve to remind us that we must not take for granted the reconstructions of extinct animals. For me, an illustrator, these updated versions are exciting; they break rules and challenge our ideas. But some people reacted as if this represented something wrong with palaeontology. Questions were posted in social media palaeontology groups, such as, "What do you think is cooler, spinosaurus [sic] with long legs or short legs?" Responses ranged from those directly answering the question, to those querying what 'cool' had to do with anything. Could it be that there are people who think that this will boil down to a popularity contest between old and new restorations? Or maybe a whole generation of Jurassic Park III fans is upset that there is no longer any point in asking palaeontologists who would win in a fight between a Tyrannosaurus and a Spinosaurus.

Deinocheirus mirificus wades out into the shallow waters of a Late Cretaceous Mongolian landscape. (Copyright © Andrey Atuchin. Used with permission.)

For many, first contact with extinct dinosaurs is made through illustrated books on the subject. Naturally, these animals' life restorations may be remembered into adult life and may continue to represent a strong connection to childhood. The nuances of a particular illustration or sculpture or animation might leave a mark which never fades. But it seems many people - perhaps those who have maintained only a passing interest - regard their personal nostalgic response as more important than the science. It might seem trivial, but it soon becomes an issue with which palaeontologists must contend when inexplicably popular media portrayals fail to keep up with science. By its very nature, palaeontology is constantly evolving. It follows that its pictorial representations will evolve too - whether you like it or not.

Big, big thanks must go to Andrey Atuchin and Davide Bonadonna, both of whom supplied digital versions of their excellent illustrations at very short notice, allowing me to use them in this article. Click their names to visit their websites.