‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Finally Fixed An Issue With ‘Jurassic Park’ That Drove Paleontologists Nuts

There’s a common theme among reviews for Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth and possibly final installment of the Jurassic Park/World series. See if you can guess it.

From Mashable: “A big, dumb animal that deserves extinction.”

From Entertainment Weekly: “Let’s get these dinosaurs to the nearest tar pit.”

From Collider: “Please, God, let this franchise go extinct.”

And my personal favorite, from The Independent: “Yikes!”

Jurassic World: Dominion has a 33 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest among all the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies. But in one respect, it’s better — or at least more accurate — than Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster masterpiece.

[Dominion paleontology consultant Steve] Brusatte’s job on the new film was primarily that of an asset-on-call, being available for any questions creatives on the film had relating to the film’s dinosaurs. Brusatte aimed to make Jurassic World Dominion the most accurate depiction of dinosaurs yet, all coming down to one mega-important detail: feathers.

“I’m really pleased with the feathers,” he told Variety. “That’s the biggest thing of all because we’ve known that dinosaurs had feathers for a long time, but they haven’t made it into Jurassic World, frustratingly. Or Jurassic Park.”

Brusatte said he was “always annoyed” about the lack of feathers, but he understood why the more bird-like dinosaurs didn’t make their Jurassic debut until Dominion, as “the first film came out before the discovery happened,” Variety explained. Or it’s because dinosaurs with feathers look stupid. One of the two.

Another paleontologist was less forgiving. “The whole thing drove me nuts,” Jim Kirkland raged. “They could have just said, you know, ‘Oh, originally we were using frog DNA as the template. Now we use chicken DNA, so we get much better dinosaurs.’ And then you get feathered dinosaurs! And you’ve explained it in one sentence!”

Never challenge a paleontologist to a dinosaur trivia-off. You might go extinct.