Jurassic Park with Travis Holland

Adele’s chats with special guest, Dr Travis Holland about Jurassic Park! 

We talk about the film 30 years on, how it changed the public perception of dinosaurs, especially theropods like Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Dilophosaurus (for better or worse), and how JP made terrible lizards into movie monsters. 

 Plus the secret ingredient to good science fiction, Spielberg and Crichton's representation of women, and sciencey stuff including blood-filled mosquitoes in amber, the complexity of cloning,  de-extinction of the Pyrenean ibex, and the whethe or not T rex had a toothy grin or luscious lips.

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Transcript

Adele: On today's bonus episode, we're talking about Jurassic Park with special guest Dr. Travis Holland. This episode, we discuss the lasting legacy of the film 30 years on, IRL instances of mosquitoes trapped in amber, how Jurassic Park did Dilophosaurus dirty, and the distinction between Deinonychus and Velociraptor. It goes without saying, this episode has major spoilers.

(00:29.546)

Adele: Pals in Palaeo presents Jurassic Park with Travis Holland.

(00:39.586)

Adele: This is Pals in Paleo, the podcast that's obsessed with dinosaurs, fossils, paleontology, all that good stuff, and especially Jurassic Park on today's bonus episode. Who is this weirdo talking to you? Well, I'm your host, palaeontologist, PhD student Adele Pentland. You can stay up to date with the show by following us on Instagram @palsinpalaeo. 
 
 Now before we get into our very special bonus episode I actually have a little announcement and I have our first ever language warning. It's the first maybe only time a swear word has popped up on the show but Travis directly quotes the movie so we did it with good reason I promise.

I try my best to make the podcast enjoyable for everyone by explaining jargon terms and keeping it clean. But we are talking about a movie that has a PG-13 rating and the book also has some kind of heavy themes. So just want to put that all out there. Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss one of the most popular movies of all time about a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques. I call it...

Billy and the Cloneasaurus. I'm just kidding. I've already made this joke once already, but we are ready to talk about the OG original gangster, Jurassic Park.

(02:11.214)

Adele: Pals in Palaeo acknowledges country and the traditional custodians of the land throughout Australia and their connections to land, sky, waterways and community. We pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode was recorded on Koa country in Winton, central western Queensland and we recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. This was and always will be Aboriginal land.

(02:44.214)

Adele: This is Pals in Paleo, the show that is obsessed with prehistoric pop culture and talks about Jurassic Park, maybe a little bit more than we should. But today we're leaning really hard into that. And on this bonus episode of the show, we are talking about a movie, which has inspired an entire generation of palaeontologists. This is a huge task, but I'm not going this one alone.

I have with me today, Dr. Travis Holland, a senior lecturer in communications at Charles Sturt University. Travis also hosts the podcast Fossils and Fiction, which I've been a guest on a couple of times, and even though Travis is not a palaeontologist, you're still a bit of an expert when it comes to this topic, because you've written about Jurassic Park and the impact that it's had on my generation and this like next wave of palaeontologists. What is it about Jurassic Park? That draws you in and why does it still have our attention after 30 years? 
 
 Travis: Yeah. Just a light question to open there, Adele. 
 
 A: Yeah. Just, you know, a softball question. 
 
 T: Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Actually, we should be honest. I harassed you to let me on the podcast after, after your Dominion episodes. So-
 
 A: you didn't harass me. Honestly, I was happy for it though, because, you know, Dominion was a weird one to talk about first. But in saying that I had the idea of talking about Jurassic Park for an episode, but I'm like, there's so much to discuss. Like, and it's a movie that a lot of people love. A good mate of mine, Jake Kotevski, I interviewed him, uh, for the episode on mega Raptors and he basically said he became a palaeontologist because of Jurassic Park. So it's kind of intimidating to talk about something that means a lot to a lot of different people.

T: I think this is a really, it's a really interesting question. The influence that Jurassic Park has had on paleontology. And as you point out, I'm not a palaeontologist. My academic background is in media and communication. My first sort of academic publications were talking about the Simpsons, which you and I have talked about in the past as well. And, uh, and then I kind of moved on in the last. 
 
 A: We're big fans of the Simpsons here. 
 
 T: Yeah, exactly. Uh, and the last little while I've returned to…

(05:04.158)

T: I guess the representation of science in media across a broad kind of cross-section, but I'm coming at it that from a cultural studies perspective. And I've spent the last few years in particular, re-examining Jurassic Park. So I've written and talked a lot about Jurassic Park. I've had a bunch of articles on the conversation and a book chapter as well. And then there's my podcast where it comes up way more than it should as well. Mostly I try to focus on, on the paleontology there. But the interesting thing about this film is:

It was a real break, or a real break from tradition, I guess. It was the first time that we saw dinosaurs that looked real, right? That looked like real animals, most importantly, that were walking across the screen and living and breathing. And, you know, the breathing is really important. You can do all sorts of things with stop motion, but it's incredibly hard to make an animal look like it's actually breathing. And we saw that with the Triceratops, for example.

So you saw these animals in lifelike actions and poses and movements and behaviours for the first, basically the first time. But it sat in conversation with all these other dino films that had come before. So Spielberg was a big fan of the 1920s Lost World movie and he was a big fan of King Kong and the scene where it fights, where King Kong fights a dinosaur, which I think is a Tyrannosaurus as well. So there's a lot of influences of those films in Jurassic Park. And then there's also the influence of something like Land Before Time, which Spielberg and various others were consulting producers on. 
 
 And so all of that fed into Jurassic Park and made it this sort of cultural moment. If you look at the history of it, it came right at the end of what was called the sort of the dinosaur renaissance, right? That period of science through the seventies, eighties. 
 
 A: Like the resurgence.

T: Yeah. It was a, it was a real period where dinosaur science had died off effectively. And then it lost popularity, I guess, in the face of the space race and things like that. 
 
 A: Yeah, absolutely. And that's funny that you mentioned it because at one of the unis that I used to be at the paleontology department effectively went extinct. And they made a big focus on science! On science… On astronomy and that side of things like space science. So yeah, there is that tension in a weird way.

(07:27.594)

T: I think historically that was the pattern we saw that paleontology and dinosaur science in museums were really strong in the first half of the 1900s. And then that kind of died off as other new sciences, the sciences of the future, as you might want to describe them, sort of came to prominence. And then we got this dinosaur renaissance where there was a lot of new discoveries, a lot of research and Jurassic Park came right at the back of that, took all that research, bundled it up and served it up to the public for the first time. So.

T: That was the breakthrough there. There was a breakthrough in filmmaking and then a breakthrough in the presentation of dinosaurs that hadn't been seen. And it's had this impact for 30 years now. 
 
 A: Yeah. You mentioned before that we have those moments of them breathing and behaving as animals. And I forgot about this line until I rewatched the movie in the last week. Alan says, you know, they're not monsters, Lex, they're animals. And while some of the more like recent Jurassic World movies, have less of this, I feel like one of the really wonderful things about Jurassic Park is that you just have those moments where there are these neutral interactions or slightly positive interactions between humans and dinosaurs, whether it's attending to the sick Triceratops or the sauropod coming and having a sniff of Alan and Tim and Lex and the tree and stuff. And then another really cool thing about Jurassic Park is that it really made the comparison and drew parallels between dinosaurs and birds as well.

(08:54.974)

T: So that's one of those things where I think that it took the science and made it public, you know, Spielberg, he was making a movie, like there's no bones about it. He was trying to make an entertaining movie. And in some ways that's where the simplified understanding of phylogeny and genetics and all of that comes in. But by the same token, I think the filmmakers did try to take the science and faithfully recreate that within the confines of a blockbuster film as well. 

But also for me, one of the most iconic moments is the first moment you see a full-size dinosaur, right? The Brachiosaurus walks up in front of them, reaches up to the tree branches, and then the camera pans away and shows these herds of dinosaurs, the parasaurs and the Brachios are there in the paddock in the fields down in the valley. And that's really the moment there's this kind of swell of triumphant music and then one of Ian Malcolm's famous lines of he did it, the crazy son of a bitch, he did it, which I think is a- 
 Sorry, I don't know if you can swear on this podcast, but I just did. 
 
 A: I generally try not to. 
 
 T: If you're quoting Ian Malcolm, it's, uh, it's allowed surely? 
 
 A: I can always just tick explicit content on the episode. 
 
 T: So yeah, well, that's right. Um, so that to me is that moment, which really says to the public, have a look at these, these majestic creatures for the first time. 
 
 A: Yeah. And an entire ecosystem, I guess they're sort of in their own little herds. Like you have your hadrosaurs, your Parasaurolophus, they're sort of together. And then you have your long neck dinosaurs, your sauropods, they're together, but it's still really important to kind of see them as part of an ecosystem.

That would have interacted with one another and shared space with one another. I think not one of the pitfalls, but I think it can be really easy in paleontology to, I guess… what's the saying? Lose the forest for the trees. Where you sort of looking at something with your nose up against it, that you can sometimes miss the bigger picture- I, I can sometimes fall into that trap when I'm doing some of my stuff. But again, like, you know, just within a couple of seconds you have your mind blown.

(11:18.846)

A: And you're just like, Oh, wow. Like look at them all. And the music also is just fantastic. It's truly iconic. 
 
 T: And you know, that's what you get when you put a master composer on a soundtrack with John Williams, just on that scene while we're there, you were talking about the artwork of Charles Knight, I think in a previous episode. 
 
 A: Oh yeah. Chel mentioned it. Um, so in the Dominion episode. Yeah.

T: Sauropods in water. And that scene is-
 
 A: Yes, sauropods in water. I did see the sauropods in water, but they got out of it!
 
 T: Right. So, I think that scene is actually deliberately referencing Charles Knight's work of the sauropods in water. 
 
 A: Yeah. 
 
 T: But it shows them walking up out of the water. And it's part of that symbolism of saying, this is how we see dinosaurs now. Look at them. They're coming out of the water.

A: Yeah. We are departing from this old idea. Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned it. Cause when I was rewatching it, I had my phone with me ready to take notes for today's conversation and I had my fingers poised. I was like, and then I was like, “OH! Uh, oh, no, it's okay. Like calm down.” 
 
 T: Yeah. I knew, I knew you would note that. So I thought I had to get there. 
 
 A: Yeah. I'm very protective of my sauropods. My boss works on them. One of like my really good mates works on them. I help them with their stuff. So I just want people to know the truth about sauropods. And like we've worked on footprints from sauropods as well. They're walking on land. Like it's, they're fine. It's fine. 
 
 T: But I think that's the really deliberate reference to the evolution of the science. 
 
 A: Yeah. We were saying before, I think before we hit record, it's a fairly long movie, but within these couple of seconds scenes, they're very intentional about some of the messages surrounding these animals. It's very clever. And Jurassic Park obviously had palaeontologists as consultants as well. 
 
 T: Yeah. Jack Horner, I think worked on it. 
 
 A: And that definitely helps. And I'm not just saying that because I want to get paid to be a consultant on a dinosaur movie or anything like that. I just think that-

(13:34.418)

T: As if you don't, the next trilogy is going to have Adele Pentland's name there as a consultant. But Jack Horner was on Jurassic Park and then there was, I think Robert Bakker was also involved and he's mentioned directly in the film by Tim. Tim compares Robert Bakker's book to Alan Grant's. 
 
 A: Yeah, in one of Tim's like first introductions or interactions with Grant, he's, you know, sort of following him around and trailing after him and saying, “Oh, but his book was a lot thicker than yours” and all this stuff. 
 
 T: It's a really nice piece of world building that like aside from Jurassic, you know, setting fictional characters in a universe where they're interacting with or talking about real people really grounds the story. And that's something that Michael Crichton did very well. And Spielberg tends to do pretty well. And certainly in the Jurassic franchise, he did that very well. And it's just nice to have those nods to the people who were involved as consultants or whatever. There's.

There was one in Dominion too. I think Steve Brusatte at a, um, uh, the, the lecture theatre where Ian Malcolm gives a lecture was named the Brusatte lecture theatre, if I recall correctly. So yeah, there was a little nod to him as well. 
 
 A: Yeah. I love a good Easter egg. 
 
 T: So yeah, one day we're going to see the Pentland lecture theatre, I'm sure, in one of the Jurassic films. 
 
 A: We'll see. Um, so we've mentioned, I guess that first introduction to the life-size breathing dinosaurs. What other things do you think of when someone says to you, Jurassic Park? 
 
 T: Well, obviously there's the T-Rex and I mean, the logo right is a T-Rex. And then the T-Rex breaking out is one of the most iconic film scenes of all time. And then you get almost a recreation of the logo of it standing in the visitor centre as well. So the T-Rex is so iconic within Jurassic Park. And although the T-Rex has always been a popular dinosaur, I think Jurassic Park has definitely given it a second life. And then it probably also popularized Velociraptors and even Dilophosaurus, but both of those in a way that I think some palaeontologists probably regret. 
 
 A: Yeah, I have, I have thoughts. Dilophosaurus… I mean, the whole frilled neck spitting venom thing.

(15:54.51)

A: There's no science supporting it. And then even just a very, I guess, basic thing, they use the words toxic and poisonous interchangeably. And I know that happens commonly, but that's, that's not what that means. You know, if something is poisonous, that means that you've eaten it and it's having an adverse effect on your body. But if something is venomous, then that means it's tried to sting or bite or inject you with something.

And then that nasty compound is in your bloodstream. And yeah, it's, it's really common for people to say, um, like a snake is poisonous or whatever. And my knee jerk reaction a lot of these days is, “Oh, how did you eat it? Did you have it on a piece of bread with some tomato sauce?” But yeah, I, I was sort of trying to dig into, okay, why, why did they do this to Dilophosaurus? And I thought I saw something about... they thought that the jaws were kind of small?
 
 So then they kind of ran with the idea that, oh, well maybe it's immobilizing its prey with a venom or something. And of course there are reptiles that have venom and stuff like that, but there wasn't any evidence of space for glands or there wasn't, you know, a mechanism for injecting or anything like that. 
 
 T: And of course those things, yeah, they would never fossilize anyway, right? So, or very rarely.

A: Yeah, it just looks like with theropod teeth, for most of them, their teeth are serrated and they're like steak knives and they're just, you know, taken chunks out of something. 
 
 T: What's interesting about the Dilophosaurus is, we often refer to monsterisation and that's often shorthand for just making something bigger, which the Jurassic Park franchise is kind of guilty of across the board. But they actually made the Dilophosaurus much, much smaller as well.

Uh, so they made it smaller, but then gave it two other features that kind of turned into this combination of a, a Cobra and a dinosaur. So-
 
 A: Frilled neck lizard as well. 
 
 T: Yeah. Plus the frill neck. 
 
 A: So I suppose that kind of makes sense though, just in terms of how the Dilophosaurus interacts with Nedry at the start, because he, he underestimates it. He's quite patronizing, you know, “Here, boy here, get the stick you stupid dinosaur” and all this stuff.

(18:13.838)

A: So that when all of a sudden, you know, it attacks him, it really enforces the idea that his downfall is because of one grade and two his ego. 
 
 T: Yeah. His own hubris, right? Not taking time to understand the animals that he was working around. Something else I think that's really iconic about Jurassic Park that people don't realize enough is while it was a movie about dinosaurs, the dinosaurs weren't on screen that much.

There was a real minority of screen time. Now that was for two reasons. The first is that the technology simply isn't there. You know, we don't have CGI just to generate as many dinosaurs as you like. So the technology just wasn't there at that point to constantly be generating new dinosaurs and have them occupy the whole story and the whole screen all the time. But also it actually is better storytelling. It creates more of an atmosphere. You know, you see the raptor and the prelude and you just see its eye and then it's a good...

like halfway through the film then before you even see the other dinosaurs the first time and the T-Rex, the T-Rex suddenly comes on in the final act sort of thing. 
 
 A: Yeah. I suppose that's easy to forget too, but as you said before, having the dinosaurs, you know, not be there the whole time, it really makes you pay attention to when they are there, but also anticipate when they're going to show up because even if you aren't really big on dinosaurs, but you've heard about Jurassic Park, you know, they'll appear at some point. 
 
 And then, yeah, there'll be jump scares when all of a sudden someone will turn around and they'll pop out or they'll be at glass waiting. 
 
 T: Yeah. Even the Dilophosaurus was introduced early in the film because it was the first dinosaur on the tour, but they didn't see it, you know, they were sitting there against the glass, like looking for it and it wasn't there. And then it only came out much later. That's what happens in a zoo, right? Or a safari. Animals sometimes they don't perform on cue. 
 
 A: Yeah. Or they're asleep if you do see them and you just see their back. That can happen too. That and Dr. Sattler and Dr. Alan Grant's like willingness to try and go to these crazy lengths to, you know, effectively get in the vehicle with the stranger who's promising this nice stuff in order to fund their dig for the next three years or so. Those are probably some of the most realistic things in the movie.

(20:27.318)

T: That's one area where the, where the book, I think provides an explanation that the film didn't quite get to. And that's Hammond was much more well known to them than it seems like he is in the book. So I don't know that they'd met him before, but he had certainly been funding a lot of their work prior to that. So they knew who he was when he turned up and offered them more money. Then yeah, they were willing to jump at it. I guess like many scientists would be. 
 
 A: Yeah, it is a little bit strange because he just kind of rocks up out of nowhere, in the helicopter, the sand being blown around sort of compromises the dig that's going on and then he just kind of breaks into where they're staying and just helps himself to their champagne and stuff. And they're like, what, who are you? You know? So, okay, that makes a bit more sense. 
 
 T: They certainly were more familiar with him. You also get a bit more of a backstory in the book about a Gennaro, the lawyer. He's running around interviewing people who've had interactions with Hammond. And there's a little bit of tension there about, the lawyer says something about “they're going to try and shut you down, John.” 
 
 Like if your investors unhappy, if I'm not satisfied, they're not satisfied. And what it turns out is they wanted the palaeontologists to come and look at the park, but Hammond wanted to do his showman thing of turning up to invite them personally and act like it was a personal act of grace, but actually his hand had been forced and he'd been forced to invite these experts. So yeah, you actually get a really, a much more richer understanding of Hammond's motivations from the book than you see in the film.

A: Yeah. You mentioned before some of the things that you think about when someone says Jurassic Park are the dinosaurs and obviously they're the stars of the show, but I often think of amber and the cane that Hammond has as he walks around and stuff. And it's probably because I'm biased. So I did my honours degree on Amber and spent a lot of time looking down a microscope, trying to find insects in amber and

(22:26.434)

A: For one thing, they're really hard to find, but the other thing that's really interesting to me about, I guess, Jurassic Park is that there haven't been that many mosquitoes found in amber. And there's been a couple instances where they've found mosquitoes in the fossil record, but in terms of getting, you know, the whole trifecta of finding a mosquito in amber…

(22:56.274)

A: …that's from the dinosaur age, getting those three things to line up is pretty slim. So as of this recording, there's no published reports of an engorged mosquito from the age of dinosaurs in amber, but there are a couple of fossils that come close and tick like two out of the three boxes that I just mentioned. So the first one I want to talk about was published by Dale Greenwalt and colleagues in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October, 2013. So, you know.

A: Well after Jurassic Park had come out, because what, it came out in 1993?
 
 T: Yeah.
 
 A: Yeah, the year I was born. The title of that paper is, “Hemoglobin-derived porphyrins preserved in a Middle Eocene blood-engorged mosquito”, and I should say, I don't have a solid understanding of what haemoglobin derived porphyrins are, because I'm not a wizard when it comes to chemistry. But I do know when the middle Eocene is. Spoiler alert, this is after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.

A: So that mosquito is like 46 million years old and it wasn't actually fossilized in amber either. It's preserved in fine grain sediment. So it's like kind of been squished against a rock, but yeah, it's just got a big like swollen abdomen and it's little spindly legs, you know, you know mosquitoes. And the scientists working on this fossil, even though this mosquito did have blood in its body when it entered the fossil record, the palaeontologist couldn't work out what animals blood it had consumed either.

A: But yeah, it's funny in the abstract of that paper, Greenwalt and colleagues, they mentioned that large fragile molecules like DNA don't survive the fossilization process. It definitely feels like they added that in specifically because of Jurassic Park and they knew how like the press would respond. But yeah, the just quickly, the second paper I want to talk about that second mosquito paper, it's from the Cretaceous. So this one lived in the age of dinosaurs. This mosquito is in amber, but there's no blood inside it.

A: And yeah, that was discovered or was published, I should say in 2019 in the journal of historical biology by George Poinar and colleagues. He's like the godfather of amber research. He's a legend, but yeah, no blood. But interestingly, they did kind of point out maybe mosquitoes could have been vectors and spreading malaria when the dinosaurs were around, but that was kind of more something that was mentioned when…

(25:22.178)

A: … George Poinar did interviews. There wasn't really anything about it in the paper. So just, um, just any chance to nerd out about amber, I'll take it. And yeah, I kind of know a little bit more about amber than I do … de-extinction and cloning and stuff, which I suppose is the other thing that pops up in the movie and the book as well. 
 
 T: The thing about de-extinction is if we are going to start down that route, it needs to be proved with more recent animals first. 
 
 A: Yeah.

T: You know? And that's why there's some companies out there who are targeting the thylacine and the mammoth and things that are much, much more recent. Now the thylacine is a hundred years, a little over a hundred years since its extinction and the mammoth is about what, 10,000 years or something. So-
 
 A: Something like that, like definitely last ice age. 
 
 T: If you're going to start down the day extinction route, you've got to start there rather than looking 66 million years in the past. So

A: Yeah. Start small, get your proof of concept first. You mentioned like, de-extinction through cloning. So I've mentioned before on the podcast that they've tried to successfully revive and I guess de-extinct a fossil plant from, I think it was like fruit tissue or something like that. And they managed to do that, but I was like, okay, cool plants. That's one thing. How about vertebrates? Like, has it been done with vertebrates?

A: And I was looking it up and one of the first search results that popped up in Google was something called the Pyrenean Ibex, a wild species of mountain goat. And if you look at it, the headlines will say, this is the only species that has gone extinct twice. So what happened was they had this wild species of mountain goat and conservationists as could see the writing on the wall. They could see that. it was eventually going to go extinct. 
 
 A: So they had actually collected some tissue samples and stuff and kept them on ice as a just in case. But the last member of the species died on the 6th of January in 2000. And they know how it died because they found the last member of this species, Celia, crushed under a tree. So that sucked. But then they were trying to clone it and try and bring the species back from extinction.

(27:35.182)

A: I think they ended up making, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of embryos. They tried to implant, I think 50 or so of those 50, maybe four took? And then of those four, one clone, one cloned embryo, I should say. It took a couple of breaths, but it eventually died soon after being born because its lungs hadn't formed properly. And the fact of the matter is…

A: That if you want to bring back an entire species, you kind of need more than one individual, even less than 50, less than 500 can get really dicey. It really depends on what you're talking about, but essentially things go through something called a genetic bottleneck. And I remember in biology at uni, they tried to sort of explain this concept with lottery tickets? It's a sucky situation if everyone has the identical number on their lottery ticket.

A: Because you'll either win? But most of the time you'll all lose. You want a bunch of different numbers for your lottery tickets. So when there's not a lot of variation in the gene pool and something like, Oh, I don't know… COVID comes along? And no one's immune and no one can cope with the disease. And that spreads through the entire population? Well you have an extinction on your hands. So yeah, clones or no clones, just bringing back extinct animals from really small populations, it's really hard to do. 
 
 A: And then as other scientists found from trying to clone the Pyrenean ibex, it's really hard to get that to take. And there's, I think there's still members of the same genus maybe, or related mountain goats, but anyway, they published about it in 2019. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, if anyone's interested.

T: No, that sounds really interesting research. I think there was a similar thing with a horse or a mule from Central Asia that was important to Mongolian people culturally, and it was going extinct. And so maybe they cloned it or hybridized it with some other horses to bring it back. So, but I could just be talking about random stuff there.

(29:40.566)

A: Hey, it's Adele. I realized you already heard me rant about the extinction of the Pyrenean eyebags, but I just wanted to let you know, I had a quick look online and the species Travis is talking about here is Przewalski’s Horse. I'm going to recommend you listen to episode 188 of Just the Zoo of Us to learn more about that, but just want to reassure you this horse does exist and Travis isn't making it up. Okay. Back to the show and back to the interview.

T: I really didn't plan to make this conversation a book versus film thing, but actually this is another area where I find the Jurassic Park book to be much more enlightening than the film ever was. Because it does talk a bit more about the way that precisely what you're saying that these are cloned animals who are not well, they are not adapted to our world properly and stay susceptible to illnesses and diseases that we had never thought that they would be sick too. 
 
 T: So that's shown with the Triceratops, but there's actually much more detail about the way the animals get sick and die and how many die in utero effectively or in the eggs and during the cloning process in the book. So it's something that they go through. Another area that was really simplified is the amber thing. So also in the book they talk about grinding up bones. So they were- InGen was buying up huge, a huge number of dinosaur bones.

A: Wait, what?! 
 
 T: Yeah, you're going to be horrified by this being a palaeontologist. InGen was buying up dinosaur bones and grinding them up to extract tiny little bits of DNA out of these huge reserves of bones they were kind of buying on the black market and all over the place. It really goes into InGen's shady side and Hammond’s shady side much more. So. 
 
 A: Yeah, right. 
 
 T: It wasn't just the amber, it was also, yeah, buying bones. Grinding them up.

A: Yeah. I suppose there's only so much you can do when you have Mr. DNA giving what, like a three minute explainer on how they did it. Yeah. I really liked it in the way that Alan, Ellie and Ian kind of go, we've had enough of this. We want to get off the ride. 
 
 T: And even that scene where they decide to get off the ride is kind of emblematic of their bigger story because they come into this and even Ian who was effectively looking for a reason that this is going to fail, or looking for a reason the whole time that it's not going to work, because that's his kind of theory on it.

(31:50.89)

T: They come into it and they are awed and they're overawed and they see dinosaurs for the first time and they're like, “Wow, I can't believe they did this.” They are just, as any of us would be. They're just full of this kind of wonder at what's occurring. And then as things start to unravel, as the chaos takes hold.

T: They see the problems more clearly and their task becomes convincing Hammond and others that this is a problem, that this is not going to work. And we need to get out now and save ourselves. You know, in Ellie, there's a scene there where Ellie's sitting there and convincing Hammond. And she says like, “People are dying, John. It's not, it's not a game”. Basically we need to deal with this and stop being just optimistic because people are dying. 
 
 A: Yeah, definitely in the movie, it feels like he doesn't appreciate that until it's his own… his own blood, his own grandkids possibly in danger. 
 
 T: In the film, Hammond is played with this very kind of childlike wonder. He's just a jovial old guy who just happens to have a lot of money and this is his lifelong dream. He's not the kind of shady businessman you see in other versions, but nonetheless, he does have that sense of irresponsibility about him. You know, and this book chapter that I wrote with a colleague of mine, we describe some of the male characters as hunters.

T: And Hammond was one that we put as, uh, as a Hunter in this kind of categorization we put up. And that was because not because he was out there with the guns, but because he was someone who thought he could control what was happening. 
 
 A: Yeah. Call the shots and I guess sort of like be the mastermind behind it all. Um, just as a really quick aside in the movie, Hammond is played by Richard Attenborough and he, he's now deceased. Um, he's the brother of David Attenborough. 
 
 A: It was interesting watching the response online of people thinking and just confusing one brother for the other and thinking David Attenborough had died. 
 
 T: Yeah. 
 
 A: And, um, yeah, some people just having the retort of, ah, yes, I loved his dinosaur documentary referring to Jurassic Park. 
 
 T: It doesn't help that he's been since done some dinosaur documentaries. Very good ones.

(34:11.502)

A: Prehistoric planet. Yeah. 
 
 T: Yeah. It's quite funny. And you know, in an alternate history, we might ask whether Attenborough would have been cast in that role if it wasn't for his brother's expertise. You know, he wasn't actor in his own right. Absolutely. But I feel like the kind of personality played in there. 
 
 A: Definitely. Something that I forgot to mention with Amber, and this is, I guess, in a similar vein to my gripes with Dilophosaurus… They mentioned amber is fossil tree sap and it's not. I'm so annoyed. 
 
 A: So amber is fossil resin and yes, it oozes out of a tree, but sap is sugar and you can't fossilize sugar. Like you can't, it can't be done! Oh, and, um, just in my own personal life, this came back to kind of bite me on the butt. So I mentioned before I did my honours on Amber.

A: In my 15 minute presentation, you know, worth, I don't know, 15% of my final mark for that degree, I'm giving this presentation. I'm giving definitions and explaining what amber is and stuff. And, you know, for like a minute, I'm just like, amber is not fossil tree sap. And at the end, when it's question time, one of, um, one of my fellow students goes, so is amber fossil tree sap?

A: And the person next to them just face palm like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe you asked that”. But as a palaeontologist, I'll encounter stuff like this and I'll be like, why is this happening or why does this keep happening? And then yeah, rewatching some Jurassic park. I'm like, “Oh, this is where it comes from”. Kind of similar ground penetrating radar. 
 
 T: Right. Which just doesn't work. 
 
 A: No. We really want it to work. It would make our lives so much easier. 
 
 T: Imagine the fossils that are out there waiting to be discovered that are never going to be found because no one's going to dig in the right place, right? 
 
 A: I don't want to think about it. 
 
 T: And that's where ground penetrating radar would be great, but it just doesn't work because the bones are the same thing as the rock around them. 
 
 A: Yeah. The density is really similar. So I remember hearing rumours…

(36:22.518)

A: When I was a tour guide working at a dinosaur museum, there was someone who wanted to make this their whole PhD, like come out, try and use ground penetrating radar to help us find dinosaur bones. And I thought I heard my old boss mention that yeah, they could detect that something was there, but they couldn't tell whether it was just a big lump of rock, whether that big lump of rock was a dinosaur bone or the third scenario. 
 
 A: If that big lump of rock had dinosaur bone on the inside. It just, it just wasn't possible. But yeah, like in the movie, it looks very convincing and it just looks so simple. And again, if that movie came out 30 years ago and it's 2023, where's that ground penetrating radar? 
 
 T: Yeah. Well, what I think Crichton did and then Spielberg followed on was they took some trends that were underway and extrapolated them out. This is what good science fiction authors do.

T: They take some trends that are happening or some ideas that are playing out and they kind of extend them logically and say what's going to happen. And although it's set in the 90s and the presumption is that this is almost mature technology at that point, given the clarity of the picture, in actual fact, you know, quite more saying, well, this is a possibility. Someone somewhere was talking about this as a possibility. And so I've taken it to the logical conclusion, which might still be 50 years down the track or it might be a breakthrough tomorrow.

T: And he was kind of doing the same thing with basically all the science with the DNA discussions, the amber, everything. And by no means am I claiming that we're on the cusp of breakthrough in finding dinosaur DNA. But there has been now many more soft tissue discoveries, right, in bones and all sorts of other things. And traces of other DNA have been found. The question is whether it's dinosaur DNA or not, or how complete it is, yadda yadda, no one knows really. So

T: I absolutely, to be clear, I'm definitely not claiming this and I wouldn't have the expertise to claim it in the first place. But Crichton was taking that in the 90s and extending the trend. And all science fiction that does that tends to have an impact. 
 
 A: Yeah.
 
 T: But the naturalistic aspects of Jurassic Park, the observing the dinosaurs in their kind of, you want to say natural environment or the naturalistic setting, a safari type setting, as opposed to a sort of zoo, was also an impactful thing.

(38:46.038)

T: And I think that, you know, we kind of skirted around this before, but actually that's one of the things I love about those films and why Prehistoric Planet is fantastic as well. And I even love there's a video game, Jurassic World Evolution and Jurassic World Evolution too. And I love playing that game. 
 
 A: Oh yeah. You've sent me screenshots from that. 
 
 T: Yeah. It's a park builder, but park building aspect is like, that's the main purpose of the game, but actually for me, it's secondary. I just love putting dinosaurs in these environments and watching them. It's so much fun. 
 
 A: Yeah. There’s like another video game that does that. Is it arc evolution or something like that? 
 
 T: Yeah. 
 
 A: I haven't played it, but my sister-in-law is into it. 
 
 T: There's a couple of others. I think Path of Titans is another one. There's a few others going around that are kind of similar. So, but yeah, just, just observing the dinosaurs is so cool and, and taking photos of them. So I even wrote a kind of, um… I wrote a short story that was a kind of dinosaur revival thing as well. And I cantered it around a couple of scientists and they, their main interest was just watching the dinosaurs and seeing what happened. 
 
 A: Yeah. 
 
 T: And I sent it to a couple of magazines and the editors came back and were like, nothing happens. And I'm like, yeah that’s- 
 
 A: that's, that's the point. 
 
 T: That was deliberate. Like it was, yeah. Anyway, I thought that was interesting, but apparently not. 
 
 A: I mean, well. If you want to talk more about movies versus books and hot take, I generally think that books tend to be better than the movies, but you know, the pacing is really different in books. You know, you can have a couple of chapters where not much happens or it's mainly just, you know, people sort of talking and that kind of thing. Whereas movies, it has to be constantly going. And if it's not going, then I suppose there's foreshadowing and setting things up for what's going to happen. And I guess getting the audience excited.

T: Yeah. Michael Crichton's kind of… I can't claim this for every book. I haven't done an exhaustive study of Crichton's work, but the books I have read, he does do this thing where he has an inciting incident right at the front. And then he leaves that there as a mystery that unfolds gradually over time. So in Jurassic Park, it was dinosaurs turning up on the mainland initially. So there was this attack on a little hospital village, a little hospital in a, in a small Costa Rican village.

(41:05.194)

A: Wait, is this in the first book? 
 
 T: Yeah, I think so. And then it took a long time for that to unfold what was actually going on there. And so there was this character, Marty Gutierrez, I'm going to say, who was a, an American, but working in Costa Rica at this hospital. And he was kind of trying to figure out what happened. And then in the second one in the lost world, there was a dinosaur carcass showing up. So similar sort of thing. These animals that had been washed up from the islands were showing up and they were kind of getting cleared up by the military and even in the film that's reflected because you get the Raptor being transported and that's a kind of inciting incident. 
 
 T: Jump back and into the lost world, you get the little girl being attacked on the beach. So you do get those incidents, but, um, yeah, he did the same thing in the Andromeda Strain as well, which was another kind of horror book that he wrote. And yeah, he sets up these inciting incidents and then it all plays out as a big old mystery until you get to the island. 
 
 A: Let's circle back to Velociraptor. And I suppose the way that they're sort of perceived as being intelligent, you know, in terms of testing the fence, hunting cooperatively as well, opening doors and communicating vocally. I feel like… and I'm not sure if this is just because this kind of distinguishes them from T-Rex or it kind of sets them up as antagonists that are after Alan and the gang, but they're, they're things that animals just do generally. 
 
 A: So the other day I was looking after two like little kiddy goats and I had them in a pen, like a small pen that I had to sort of like crawl into. And it just so happened that I had finished bottle feeding these two lambs that I had for like a week or so. And they could see me feeding the goats and they're like, “Well, where's ours?” And they're going around the pen, they're baaing, they’re pawing at it, they're doing this, they're doing that. 
 
 A: They actually nudged the latch closed. So then I had to pick up a stick and sort of undo the latch from the inside because my own pet sheep had locked me in a small pen that I can't stand up in. And I love my sheep, but they're not known for being the spartan animals, you know? So it was just kind of interesting to me to have these experiences, but then to see, you know, just these little lines of dialogue.

(43:23.218)

A: “Oh, you know, we'll be safe. It's not like the velociraptors are going to learn to open doors or anything like that”. I mean, anyone who's had the misfortune of trying to use the bathroom and then having a dog or another domesticated animal just kind of burst in there, we'll kind of know they want to know what you're doing, you know, even if you want a moment of privacy. 
 
 T: Yeah. There's an issue that humans do quite regularly of assuming that something mimicking in action or undertaking an action is doing it with the same logic and reasoning that we use. 
 
 A: Yeah. Anthropomorphizing. 
 
 T: Yeah. And I'm not saying that humans are smarter in every circumstance, but the point is there are different types of intelligence on the planet. 
 
 A: Yes. People who make bins in national parks will tell you there is unfortunately considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists. 
 
 T: Yeah. I love that meme.

A: And trying to make a bin that the bears can't get into, but the people can still work out is actually very difficult. 
 
 T: Yeah. And that's exactly kind of it, right? Applying human logic to animal actions, even when they follow the same kind of pattern often doesn't make sense. Particularly if those animals are not in the same phylogenetic clades as us, you're probably on safer ground, assuming that mammals and particularly primates are following a similar logic to us. But who knows how reptiles think? It doesn't mean it's not smart. 
 
 A: Yeah. Or a bird thinks. 
 
 T: Yeah. It doesn't mean it's not smart, but it's not following our neural pathways. 
 
 A: I was just thinking before as well, it's interesting because as the velociraptors are going after Tim and Lex in the kitchen, it can't discern between Lex's reflection and Lex, and it ends up like, temporarily knocking itself out because it's just lunged at this shiny surface.

A: Which I don't know, maybe that's like a bird thing? Cause there are animals that can tell the difference between their reflection and another animal of its own species. I don't know off the top of my head how many there are, but I think it's in a couple of different groups of animals too. It's not just like a primate thing. It's not just a bird thing. 
 
 T: Yeah. There's certainly been cognitive tests that look at that...

(45:41.11)

T: But that said, if you want a practical demonstration, there was a really great video going around recently where they placed a large mirror in the forest and there were all sorts of animals sort of interacting with it. I think bears and various others interacting with the mirror and you could see a puzzlement on some of them. So giving that example kind of immediately goes against what I just talked about. 
 
 A: So sorry, what was the example? 
 
 T: So bears interacting with large mirrors and they were kind of confused. They seem to think that there was another bear there, but they couldn't work out. 
 
 A: Oh, yeah.

T: Where it was when they went behind the mirror. 
 
 A: Oh yeah. Like where'd it go? 
 
 T: Yeah. So that was a big surprise by mirror reflection. It's the video that I've anyway, um, it's a whole, whole side track. 
 
 A: I'll have to have a look at it. Once we wrap up this episode. 
 
 T: On the question of ancient DNA, there was a really good book I read earlier this year called ancient DNA by Elizabeth Jones. So if I can make a recommendation, I suggest that book.

T: And it's talking about these from a sort of cultural studies perspective, I guess, talking about these efforts to revive animals and looks at some of these. And I think she calls it the, the Jurassic Park effect. That question of every time people talk about dinosaurs is when, you know, when can we revive them? 
 
 A: When can I have my pet dinosaur? 
 
 T: Yeah. I mean, I would love a Parasaurolophus as a grazing animal in my backyard or something like that. We all would, but it's not going to happen. 
 
 A: Yeah, it would be good. So dinosaurs underwent something called island dwarfism, which is something that happens like just generally ecologically. And the principle is that if you're on an island, well, you kind of, you're on an island, um, and you only have limited food resources. So often over enough time, the animal will actually sort of get smaller in size if it was quite large. And so, yeah, it would be cool to have some island dwarves, but sometimes I have enough trouble recording with my pet birds.

A: Cause, they'll just decide they want to start screaming as I’m trying to record. So I'm like, can I cope with a dinosaur?
 
 T: Yeah. That's a good question. I think Europasaurus is a famous example of an island dwarf, isn't it? Is it an island dwarf sauropod? 
 
A: Yeah. And they didn't realize they were fully grown adults until they did bone histology. So cut through the bones and kind of treat them like tree rings to see.

(48:06.21)

A: If they had they finished growing and yeah, they had, this was, this was their final evolution. If we're going to use the Pokémon analogy, that was as big as they got.
 
 T: *laughs* I'm looking at a reconstruction of the Europasaurus skull and it's as big as the person's forearm.
 
 A: Oh wow. Okay.
 
 T: It's like a quarter the size of a Giraffatitan. 
 
A: Oh, okay. Okay. That really demonstrates it. Yeah.

T: So I think it's important to emphasize that Jurassic Park, it's gone on to influence all these other media as well. So although it was very much a break in tradition in some ways, it introduced a bunch of new stuff, including the CGI, animal sounds, and the ways that they were recreated. It also still then sits in this ongoing history of films. And so what we've seen is the Dilophosaurus and Velociraptor in cultural memory are basically the animals from Jurassic Park.

T: And that's probably unfortunate from a science perspective, but it also allows people to have those conversations. So, you know, you can say, are you being churlish by correcting people all the time? That's kind of one perspective. But the other perspective is, well, actually, it allows the opportunity for us to say, well, yeah, look, they're really cool animals, but this is what the real animal looked like. And in some ways it's actually much cooler. For the Dilophosaurus, it was much bigger, had these really prominent head crests. And for something like the Velociraptor…

T: …you know, it was probably a good mother, it was a nesting animal, and this is what it did, rather than being this just kind of horrific predator. So it gives you the opportunity, it gives you the opening to tell people this positive story of the science. And that's the role I think pop culture can play in these conversations quite often. You can take the pop culture stuff that people know and use that to educate them. It's already sparked the idea for it, right?

T: So then you can take it a step further and start to break down the scientific concepts. And I think that's what you do really well by talking about, well, actually, this is the technical word for amber. Um, and those kinds of things as well. So.
 
 A: Circling back to Velociraptor again, I just remembered Jake Kotevski, who was on our Megaraptors episode. He messaged me after the Dominion episode, and he wanted to just mention why Velociraptor is the way it is. So I'm just going to read this message from Jake.

(50:19.114)

A: “Hey, just listen to your dominion episode. Velociraptor is the way it is because of Greg Paul. So he put out a paper in the nineties that suggested Deinonychus be a junior synonym of Velociraptor.” And a junior synonym is basically a double up. So the idea of a junior synonym is that you've given a name to something and we already have a name for it. So then the rule is that, and I'm using air quotes for rule.

A: So what happens is that the one that came first, we use that name and then that second name, it just kind of gets lumped in with that first one. Um, and Crichton based his work on that. “In the novel, Dr. Grant asks the species, which Wu replies, Velociraptor mongoliensis. And Grant replies, I just dug up antirrhopus. Antirrhopus being the species name for Deinonychus.”

A: And then, yeah, he goes on to say, Michael Crichton acknowledged Gregory S. Paul and the Jurassic Park novel as having drawn from Paul's work. Paul notably created the classification of Deinonychus as a species of Velociraptor in his 1988 book, Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, which was used in the novel itself. And I should actually point out, I actually haven't read the book. I'm a fake fan. I did watch the movie this week, but I haven't read the book. 
 
A: I've heard from mates of mine as well that sometimes the way the female characters are written in the book isn't super... 
 
T: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I think Spielberg made the female characters much stronger than they were. 
 
A: “We can debate sexism and survival situations when I get back.” You know, that one line I'm like, oh, I'm a bit in love with you. 
 
T: Yeah, Spielberg certainly made the female characters better. 
 
A: Yeah, I can't… I think it might have been my friend César who mentioned that Lex just has these moments where she kind of puts people in danger because of these involuntary reactions she's having to these dinosaurs and just stuff like that. 
 
T: Yeah, it absolutely is. Crichton was much poorer representation of female characters than Spielberg. And that goes for Sattler as well as for Lex. Lex was the junior of the two children in the book. And I'm pretty sure it was Tim who did the hacking as well that kind of saved everyone in the control room in the book.

(52:36.502)

T: So yeah, Lex basically was there to scream, which is unfortunate. So yeah, it was certainly a major failing in the book at the way those female characters were written. That said, I think he, I think he did a better job with Sarah Harding in The Lost World. And I think actually Crichton's Sarah Harding was much better than the film's Sarah Harding, but The Lost World was a whole other conversation. 
 
 A: Oh yeah. Yeah. We might have to have you back on for Part 2, but yeah, let's stick with Jurassic Park.

T: But that debate about the origin of the Velociraptor, yeah, I've absolutely heard that before too, that really he was basing it on this one claim from a scientist. So even then it's not like it was inaccurate. I guess the question is the extent to which they did their due diligence, you know, but they are filmmakers and writers, not scientists. So they kind of go off whoever's spoken to them most recently. 
 
 A: Cause yeah, Velociraptor is meant to be, I think about the size of a Turkey. 
 
 T: Velociraptor mongoliensis, absolutely. It's also just a cooler name, right? Because you could say the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park are actually Deinonychus, or they're actually Utahraptor or Dakotaraptor, you know, which are the North American species. And that makes sense then that Grant was digging them up in Montana, but Velociraptor mongoliensis is Mongolian. 
 
 A: Yeah, just getting to the dig in the Badlands and stuff. I was not super impressed with the way they were doing their dig. Not going to lie. Uh, I have never seen a full, just beautiful laid out, articulated. So in life position, skeleton in loose sand, like in beach sand, but you can just gently brush away. 
 
 A: I'm not the expert when it comes to field work and stuff, but I've done digs down in Victoria on the Cretaceous coast in Winton recently went to Brazil. And yeah, most of my experience comes from like the Winton area, but I've spent like 28 weeks in the field over my life, like.

A: That's half a year. That's a fair chunk of time. Never have I ever seen anyone, gingerly brush away at some stuff. And I actually made like a Instagram reel a little while ago, kind of poking fun at this. And I was so happy when people called me out on it, being like, that's not real. I'm like, yeah, that's the point. Cause it was a how they think we dig versus how we actually dig video. 
 
 T: Yeah. Again, this comes back to how do you tell a good story, right? And sort of jumbled bones in heavily compacted matrix that takes weeks to dig apart is not a good story.

(54:57.49)

A: I know you want to be introduced and feel like you're entering the world of paleontology by being on that dig. 
 
 T: There was a lot of tropes used in Jurassic Park. So, you know, they adopted these tropes from previous movies for the dinosaurs, but they also did it for the, the palaeontologists. You know, you get Grant kind of the typical outdoorsman vaguely Indiana Jones-ish. And.

T: Actually, Harrison Ford was the first choice apparently for that character before Sam Neill. 
 
 A: Really? I am learning so much. Also heard Arnie was maybe an option, but that was like a different director or something like that. It's wild. 
 
 T: Yeah probably. Throughout the Jurassic films, you get these characters, which are kind of the great white hunter, which is this 18th century trope of basically an Englishman going off to Africa to hunt big game. There's a whole bunch of real and fictional representations of that character. This is something else we talked about in our book chapter. And obviously Robert Muldoon in the first film is that so-
 
 A: um, what's the book by the way?

T: The book is called gender and action films, but my colleague Lisa Watt and I wrote a chapter about gender in Jurassic Park, basically. So, um, I can send you a link. Unfortunately, it's not open access, but as for all academics, anyone can reach out to me and I'm happy to pass on a PDF. 
 
 A: Yeah, absolutely. Same goes with me. I'm not putting things behind a paywall because I hate you. I'm putting it behind a paywall because I'm poor and I can't afford to pay whatever fees this publishing house wants to ring out of me. I can't afford to do it every single time. Got to be picky and choosey. 
 
 T: Absolutely. For sure. If someone's interested in the full chapter, just flick me an email and you can just find me through Charles Sturt unis website.

A: Now it wouldn't be an episode on Jurassic Park without a discussion on T-Rex. And I was thinking while I was watching the movie, those teeth are on show the whole time. 
 
 T: Yeah. The lips! 
 
 A: There's been that recent- yeah, dinosaur lips. 
 
 T: I think this was the closing line in my Conversation article saying about how, while some of the more recent Jurassic movies have adopted the science, you were kind of stuck with designs that were established in the 90s for the existing characters, so to speak.

(57:12.374)

T: And so that's for the velociraptors and for the T-Rex, especially when it's exactly the same T-Rex, even though you had a Moros intrepidus as feathered in Dominion, which is, I think, a Tyrannosaurid, if I'm, if I'm correct. It's within that family, I'm pretty sure, even though it's a small one. 
 
 A: Hey, it's Adele, just editing and fact checking this episode. So Moros intrepidus is actually a type of Tyrannosauroid. And you're probably wondering now, okay, Del, what's the difference between a Tyrannosaurid and a Tyrannosauroid? So Tyrannosauridae is a type of family, but Tyrannosauroidea is a super family. So if we imagine a nesting doll situation, Tyrannosaurids fit within Tyrannosauroids. All this to say, Travis was basically right. Moros intrepidus is within this family. Okay. Back to the show. 
 
 T: Anyway, the, the notion of the lips. And so that was the question I ended with, you know, perhaps the next Jurassic film will have a full lip to Tyrannosaurus. 
 
 A: Yeah. So if anyone's confused about what I sort of mean by that, there are quite often papers on Tyrannosaurus Rex published by palaeontologists. And I do wonder if this is part of like the Jurassic Park effect on palaeontologists, but…

A: It does seem to me to be a very deliberate thing to have, you know, this massive dinosaur with its teeth bared the whole time, right? It does make it a bit more menacing. 
 
 T: Makes it much more menacing. 
 
 A: Yeah. But yeah, I think there was a recent paper describing or comparing, I should say, dinosaur teeth and croc teeth, because crocs have their teeth out, you know, never smile at a crocodile. And yeah, they found that teeth on the surface that is next to the tongue, is different to the teeth that are sort of visible and you can see with the naked eye. 

A: And they kind of attributed that to the teeth being in almost two different environments, a wet and a dry environment. Whereas with dinosaur teeth, there's no erosion on one side. The assumption is that they're in a constantly wet environment, therefore they're covered by a lip and you'd only see them when they're opening their mouths.

(59:28.838)

T: So you get these kind of soft tissue arguments. You know this more than me, but I do read the scientific literature, even if I'm not in that space and you get these kind of soft tissue arguments back and forth all the time and there's differing lines of evidence. And I certainly can't argue one way or the other, but it is interesting. You get one paper comes out and then six months later, someone will reply and give a different line of evidence and it's like, oh, who knows where this is coming out. And.

T: I think the debate about Spinosaurus is the same. Some of it's relied on osteology or the bones. 
 
 A: Oh. 
 
 T: Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't open this debate, should I? But then others is, it's how are the soft tissues arranged? Nobody knows. 
 
 A: You know what? Let's just save all the controversy surrounding Spinosaurus for an upcoming episode on Jurassic Park 3, everyone's favourite Jurassic Park movie. 
 
 T: Yeah, Jurassic Park 3. What was interesting about that is how much time the Spinosaurus spent in the water there. Like it was basically... semi-aquatic as the science shows nowadays. 
 
 A: I do remember seeing that one in cinemas with my mom. And ironically, I was terrified of the pterosaurs. Before we wrap up, can you quickly tell us a little bit more about Fossils and Fiction, the podcast that you host? 
 
 T: Yeah. So what I'm trying to do with Fossils and Fiction, it's an experiment. For me, this is part of my academic work in looking at how people tell scientific stories and particularly, paleontology stories and stories of extinct life. 
 
 T: So for me, it's a creative work, but I spend the time interviewing people like yourself who are doing interesting work in the field to find out the kinds of stories you're telling. And so I had you on to talk about your research initially, and then I had you on for an episode about Pals in Palaeo, and I've had other podcasters on recently. I interviewed Garrett from I Know Dino, was my most recent episode. 
 
 A: Oh yeah, he's great.

T: Um, and I've been to some other attractions and things as well. So yeah, there's, um, lots of interesting episodes there. It's, it's a research project more than it's a podcast. So, um, sometimes it's very lightly edited, but yeah, I'd love for people to check it out if they're interested. Otherwise, uh, you can Google me and see the kind of work that I do. 
 
 A: Yeah. The article for The Conversation as well. 
 
 
 

(01:01:47.198)

T: Yeah. You can, you can search me and I have articles on the conversation about Jurassic Park and things too. And also the Simpsons. So yeah, look me up. 
 
 A: Well, thank you so much for chatting, reaching out to me for one thing. And I'm so glad that we had this conversation. Hopefully we've sort of done it justice, but yeah, thank you so much for spending time with me and chatting to me and sharing your knowledge about Jurassic Park. 
 
 T: Adele I really love your podcast and I recommend it to people. 
 
 Adele: Well thank you so much. 
 
 T: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much.

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Adele Travis, thank you for taking the time to talk to me about Jurassic Park and chat with other kick-ass palaeontologists on fossils and fiction. Again, I've guested on a couple episodes now and we chatted about for Draco, which is also on Pals and Paley episode three and SciCom. So you can find those episodes on whatever platform you're listening to now.

The Pals and Palaeo podcast cover art is by Jenny Zhao, one of the founders of Crumpet Clubhouse, a collective of freelance creatives. Our theme music is by the Power Rangers of pop punk, Hello Kelly. They are on hiatus, but I highly recommend you still check out their album, Sweet Nostalgia. So good. And for my deep cut recommendation, I'm gonna suggest you listen to Paper Bag Princess from their self-titled album.

Speaking of Hello Kelly, thank you to Francie for editing our show too, rounding out the rough edges on the audio. You can find Francie's solo project, Francie Planet on Spotify. There's some really cool demos that pull at the heartstrings the same way Hello Kelly does, so you can find him on there. Final thank you is perhaps the most important one of all. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.

Hope you learned something and enjoyed this episode. If you wanna give back to the show, you can leave a review on Apple podcasts or rating on Spotify that really helps us grow. And if you're listening, shares on social media also go a long way. Pals and Palaeo will be back with more prehistoric pop culture and maybe even some facts on the form, function, and family groupings of fossils in the next episode. But until next time, catch you on the flip side. Just keep digging.