Dino Makeover

Dinosaurs are back in action this summer in the movie Jurassic World Dominion, which hits theaters June 10. In this new installment, the park’s cloned dinosaurs go global. Humans have to figure out how to share their world with dinosaurs—from tiny Moros intrepidus to massive Gigantosaurus.

Scientists have learned a lot about dinosaurs of all kinds since the first Jurassic Park film came out in 1993. That’s why Jurassic World Dominion director Colin Trevorrow knew he wanted to bring these discoveries to the big screen. So he asked paleontologist Stephen Brusatte to consult on the film as a real-world dinosaur expert.

Look out for dinosaurs this summer! The movie Jurassic World Dominion opens on June 10. It’s the final film in a series about bringing dinosaurs back to life. In this installment, the dinosaurs spread around the world. Humans have to figure out how to keep them under control.

The first Jurassic Park film came out in 1993. Since then, scientists have learned a lot about dinosaurs. Colin Trevorrow, who directed Jurassic World Dominion, wanted to use this knowledge. So he hired a dinosaur expert to advise on the film.

Brusatte is a professor of paleontology and evolutionary biology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. During production, anyone working on the movie could ask him questions. “It’s my job to tell them what we do know, what we don’t know, and what’s reasonable speculation,” Brusatte says.

As a paleontologist, Brusatte finds and studies fossils, the preserved remains of ancient life. By examining fossils of bones, he can get a better idea of what different dinosaurs looked like and how they would have behaved. For example, the shape of a claw fossil can tell him if a dinosaur was a predator or a planteater.

Before working on Jurassic World Dominion, Brusatte was often asked about how accurate the film franchise’s dinosaurs were. The one thing he would bring up was feathers.

“These dinosaurs would not have looked like lizards or crocodiles,” he says. “They would have feathers.” Steven Spielberg, who directed the first Jurassic Park film, couldn’t have known to put feathers on dinosaurs back in 1993—it’s a more recent discovery.

That’s why Jurassic World Dominion is an opportunity to show even more realistic dinosaurs in action. “When the film comes out, so many people are going to see an image of dinosaurs they haven’t seen before, and it will be the real image of dinosaurs,” Brusatte says.

Stephen Brusatte is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Anyone working on the movie could ask him questions about dinosaurs. “It’s my job to tell them what we do know and what we don’t know,” says Brusatte. Sometimes he also helped filmmakers make an educated guess.  

As a paleontologist, Brusatte finds and studies fossils. Fossils are the preserved remains of ancient life. Fossil bones can help Brusatte understand what different dinosaurs looked like. Sometimes they can even tell him about how dinosaurs lived. For example, the shape of a claw can tell him if a dinosaur hunted animals or ate plants.

The Jurassic Park series is very popular. People often asked Brusatte about it even before he worked on a film. They wanted to know how realistic the dinosaurs were. The one problem he would mention: “These dinosaurs would not have looked like lizards or crocodiles. They would have had feathers,” he says.

When the first Jurassic Park film was made, scientists didn’t know that dinosaurs had feathers. That was discovered more recently. Jurassic World Dominion is an opportunity to show even more realistic dinosaurs, says Brusatte. “When the film comes out, so many people are going to see an image of dinosaurs they haven’t seen before,” he says. “It will be the real image of dinosaurs.”