Paleontologist Rates 14 Dinosaur Attacks In The "Jurassic Park" Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider
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00:00So you can see the hands coming down to open it, and of course the hands do not operate
00:10that way.
00:11The accuracy of the actual model is really quite bad.
00:15My name's Dr. Dave Hone, I'm a palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London, I've been
00:19working on dinosaurs for about 20 years now.
00:21Today we're going to look at dinosaur attacks from the Jurassic Park movies and judge how
00:25real they are.
00:34Something like Gallimimus would evade a predator simply through pure speed.
00:37So this is one of the ones where for its time it's pretty good, but it's increasingly got
00:42dated.
00:43We now are very confident that the ornithomimosaurs as a whole would have been feathered.
00:47One thing I've noticed actually this time around is that they have a tendency for the
00:51feet to run parallel to one another, and they should actually start to swing into the
00:56midline as they take each step, and you can see that from the footprints of these animals
01:00when they move at high speed.
01:02I think this has come from the animators, I've seen the footage, they're literally running
01:05around in the parking lot and they videoed that and then used that to build the animal
01:10models, but we don't run quite the same way that dinosaurs do.
01:13So it's a very human-like running action and not quite a dinosaur-like running action.
01:23T-Rex was definitely an active hunter, the idea that it was just some kind of scavenger
01:27and couldn't hunt isn't true at all.
01:29It was hunting far more like a wolf than something like a cheetah.
01:33T-Rex is an efficient mover over long distances, so it's far more likely to just be wearing
01:38stuff down by just having a decent turn of speed that it can hold for a very long period
01:43of time.
01:52Just using the power bite that T-Rex has got is what you need to kill stuff.
01:57This is a T-Rex tooth.
01:59This is the root, so this would sit inside the jaw, but this is the crown sticking out
02:03in the mouth, which can then go into what it's trying to bite.
02:07And you can see that it's sharp, but it's also very, very thick and very, very strong.
02:11This will puncture through bone.
02:13I really do like the way it feeds, actually.
02:15That's something that we do have a much better handle on, and this is directly linked to
02:18what modern birds do.
02:19It's pinning the thing down with its foot and then coming in with the head and pulling
02:23back.
02:24And that's what you'll see loads of birds do, but also we've now got analyses of the
02:28muscle structure to show that this actually is probably how they dismembered carcasses.
02:32I'd give this one something like a seven.
02:36Must go faster.
02:40It's not a great representation of a T-Rex.
02:41If you look at what our understanding of the animal was at the time, it's pretty good,
02:46but there's a few things with the shape and structure of the head and where the eyes sit
02:50that aren't great.
02:51And our modern interpretation would definitely streamline that a bit.
02:55It would be a bit less gnarly, and in particular, it would have lips covering the teeth, so
03:00it would not have the crocodile-like overbite.
03:03Wood does not shatter on impact from blunt force.
03:14That's not how wood works.
03:16It's never going to be able to shatter a tree as it runs through it.
03:19It's far more likely to break its legs.
03:20A bunch of the big carnivores have relatively strong heads, and Tyrannosaurus is one of
03:26them, and it's actually been suggested that they might have fought one another, at least
03:30in part, by smashing their heads into them.
03:33So it's totally something I can see it doing with a car like this.
03:36It may not be able to bite it very easily.
03:38It could presumably hit it with its head.
03:48We only have vague estimates as to how quick these animals could really be.
03:52It is almost certainly moving way too fast in this clip to be even close to catching
03:56a jeep.
03:57Footprints will give you an idea of the size of the foot, which will actually give you
04:00a good idea of the size of the animal, and then how far apart they are as it's stride
04:03length, and then how quick it might be moving.
04:06But nowadays we'll also do complete muscle reconstructions, working out where all the
04:10muscles go on the animal, how big and heavy it was, how much power they can generate,
04:14and therefore how many steps they can take, and get an idea of how quick they are from
04:18that.
04:19I'd give this clip a four.
04:20A T-Rex is nothing like that fast.
04:22It would never be able to burst through a tree like that.
04:24It would just break its leg.
04:26This isn't really going to happen.
04:38So the first problem they've got is that Velociraptor is really not that big at all.
04:42So even reaching up to a human-height door handle is going to be a challenge for them.
04:46So you can see the hands coming down to open it, and of course the hands do not operate
04:50that way.
04:54They can absolutely do that because the whole point of that claw being hinged up is it's
04:59like a cat claw.
05:00It is retracted, so it's held free from the ground.
05:02So as you walk around, and just normally walking and gripping the ground, you're not abrading
05:07the tip of the claw.
05:09So you're keeping it super, super sharp.
05:11You don't want to tap your claw all the time and give away where you are and what you're
05:14doing, and you're blunting the thing you've designed, or sort of evolved to keep as sharp
05:19as possible.
05:26Those aren't very big strides.
05:27The name Velociraptor means speedy thief or speedy robber.
05:31They were quite quick, but they're quite quick for very small animals.
05:35They're not, again, they're not super sprinters.
05:37I'd give this clip something like a six, because the way it's hunting is really, really accurate.
05:42The accuracy of the actual model is really quite bad.
05:46And again, even for the time, even if you ignore the feathers, it's just two and a half
05:50times the size it should be.
05:58That dog-like grabbing something and shaking it, I mean, maybe they could do it, but they
06:03certainly don't have any of the kind of specializations to do that from the muscles.
06:08And from what we see from the bites we have from T-Rex, from what we think are failed
06:12attacks where the animal has survived, because we can see healing on the bones afterwards,
06:16they're just simply taking one big bite out of things.
06:19So the bite power on the jaws and the strength of the teeth means they can just bite through,
06:25you know, even very, very large thick bones.
06:33Velociraptor attacking a T-Rex, even at this scale in the movie, this is like a badger
06:39taking on a grizzly bear.
06:40You know, it's not going to end well.
06:42There is no way on earth they would attack something that size.
06:45So they're going to be taking, again, for real-world velociraptor-sized stuff, they're
06:50going to be taking rabbit-sized or hare-sized or badger-sized prey.
06:55They are taking relatively small things that they're capable of completely overpowering
06:59with their size.
07:06We don't really know what dinosaurs sounded like.
07:08There's a bunch of ideas we can put on the table, because what do we know what things
07:12like crocodilians, the kind of noises that they make and how they produce them.
07:16It's things more like ostriches and actually things like chicken and ducks that make relatively
07:20simple sounds is what dinosaurs are going to be limited to.
07:24The roar is absolutely fine.
07:25That deep-bodied whole roar kind of noise is absolutely something a bunch of crocodiles
07:30already do.
07:31So there's no reason to think big dinosaurs couldn't do it.
07:34Whether or not they did do it is another question entirely.
07:37I'm going to have to give it like a three.
07:40The way they attack, they just wouldn't attack anything like that.
07:43They screech before you attack and alert the enemy.
07:46I think overall I'd give the original Jurassic Park something like a seven for realism.
07:50If you remember what we knew at the time and what we had solid information on, it's actually
07:55still pretty good.
08:02So the adult Stegosaurus are really very good.
08:04I think they're one of the best overall models in the entire franchise, except they're really
08:10too big.
08:11Not quite as bad as Velociraptor, but they should be about two-thirds of that size.
08:16Just don't think they're very quick.
08:17It's not their size that makes them slow, it's their build.
08:20They're really weirdly back leg heavy.
08:22So they've got giant back legs, but their front legs are really quite small.
08:26The back legs are going to drive a lot of power, but the front legs are not going to
08:29provide much speed at all for a very big animal.
08:32I am not very quick, but I think I'd fancy my chances running away from one.
08:36I think if there was a big tree I could get behind, I think that would be your best bet.
08:45Tail spikes are obviously going to be used to stab something.
08:48The question is what?
08:50Because the obvious interpretation is this is an anti-predator defense and it's to fight
08:54off potential carnivores.
08:56But babies are much more vulnerable to carnivores than adults, and the babies don't have them.
09:01So it's more than a strong possibility that these are actually primarily used for fighting
09:05other Stegosaurus.
09:07The plates on Stegosaurus are one of those things that have been debated pretty much
09:11since it was first discovered, but I think we're increasingly coming around to the idea
09:16that these are basically display structures.
09:19They're often argued to be armor, they're not armor, they're not going to protect you,
09:22they don't protect your flanks or your head.
09:31With a rotten log like that, I'm absolutely sure the tail can go straight through it.
09:35What I'm less clear about is it's got to rotate the tail right the way over to bring
09:40those spikes down, and the tail is fairly stiff.
09:45Sweeping sideways is one thing, but coming over the top, I really doubt they could do that.
09:50I'd give this clip about an 8.
09:52Other than the tail flipping over and them being a bit too big, this is a really accurate
09:57depiction of probably how they defended themselves.
10:06So those are massively, overly shrunk down.
10:09The original Consignathus is about this big, with a head like this, and then we know that's
10:15a juvenile from the bone texture, so it would probably be an animal maybe this big.
10:20So not like that.
10:22This is the opposite of the Velociraptor problem.
10:25This is a third or a quarter of the size it should be.
10:29So how on earth you'd begin to piece together some kind of group hunting is impossible,
10:35and indeed the Consignathus fossil that we have has the bones of a lizard inside it showing
10:39what it was last eating.
10:41So yeah, it's a generalized predator of small prey.
10:48Consignathus, the real one, has a rather bigger head and rather bigger teeth than the model
10:57used here, but its head would be comparable to that of something like a modern house cat
11:03or a mid-sized monitor lizard or something like that, and they're more than capable of
11:10breaking the skin and giving you a very nasty bite.
11:13So yeah, that bit at least is vaguely realistic.
11:16Piecing struggles to pick up a single one.
11:19They weigh about a pound each.
11:22Just roll around on the floor and crush them.
11:25I'm gonna have to give this clip something like a three, but the idea that these tiny
11:30dinosaurs would just swarm over something human-sized, particularly something that they
11:34already know is a threat and can hurt them, is really unrealistic.
11:37Don't move!
11:38Don't move!
11:39Don't run!
11:40Don't run!
11:45The whole T-Rex's vision is based on movement is a nonsense built on a nonsense.
11:50It's just not true whatsoever.
11:51Standing still might be quite good because everyone running away is probably a bigger
11:55distraction, but I still probably wouldn't want to try it.
12:04T-Rex would have had pretty thick skin, but it's not gonna be some kind of like armor
12:09that you can't penetrate with something like a well-powered dart of something like this
12:15with the right pneumatic weapon.
12:17I'm sure that would go straight into it.
12:19I imagine something like a rhino, which really does have kind of thickened skin, is probably
12:24gonna have as thick or similar levels of protection.
12:28Give it about a seven.
12:29The models are really nice and the way they move is really good.
12:32I think I'd probably give the Lost World overall a seven.
12:35The Stegosaurus is really good and just generally how they move and how they act is pretty cool.
12:46Pteranodon was not picking up people with its feet.
12:49Their feet are, or indeed pterosaur feet as a whole, are structured really very similarly
12:53to ours.
12:54So if you try and pick up something big like a dog with your feet, you are not going to
13:01be able to manage it with your toes.
13:03They don't have gripping feet or claws or anything like a bird of prey whatsoever.
13:09So it's now trying to lift double its mass.
13:11That would also compromise the way that it would fly.
13:14They're not doing anything like this at all.
13:16These are beak-feeding animals.
13:18They're much more like your average bird in that regard.
13:21Flying down, grabbing something as it flies past.
13:24Well, they could probably fly out of the egg.
13:27Pterosaurs, we think, are what we call hyper-precocial.
13:30They are effectively active and functioning animals from the minute they hatch, or at
13:37least within a couple of hours or a couple of days, they could probably get up, run around
13:42and even fly.
13:43So a nest like this, if you're going to have a pteranodon nest, you're going to have to
13:49effectively get up, run around and even fly.
13:51So a nest like this with babies in it long term is not how we think they're reproducing.
14:01Really very large animals indeed.
14:04But pterosaurs are very lightweight.
14:06Even an animal this size would weigh less than a human, like 50 kilos.
14:11They're not very heavy at all, despite their huge size.
14:15The way they move on the ground in this is really, really accurate.
14:18This is how we think they walked.
14:20They were quadrupeds.
14:21They're walking on their hands and their feet like a really kind of giant upright bat.
14:25It's pretty much the only way you can realistically articulate the limbs to get them to stand
14:29and get them to walk.
14:31Really definitively, we have trackways and footprints that show them walking on all fours.
14:35And they have very distinctive shaped feet and hands.
14:38I'd give this one about a five.
14:40They're really, really accurate and very, very good.
14:43But the way they act and behave is really unrealistic.
14:47I am a Jurassic Park 3 semi-fan.
14:51I think it's a far, far better film than most people think it is.
14:56And some of the models are very, very good and very well done and move much more realistically
15:01and act much better than we've actually seen in the previous films.
15:04But there are some really clunky bits to it as well.
15:07So I'd probably give it a six overall.
15:09Ankylosaurs, they can absolutely hit big carnivorous dinosaurs with their tail clubs.
15:19It would have been something they could defend themselves with.
15:22But that's almost certainly not why they evolved.
15:24The actual armor and the club itself probably primarily evolved to fight other ankylosaurs.
15:29This is a display of dominance.
15:31This is competing for territory or for mates or things like this.
15:34And that's why they're built like that.
15:38It's just a kind of bonus that they can then use it to defend themselves from predators.
15:51So the structure of the tail is such that you've got the actual club.
15:54Then you have what's called the handle, so this big long strip of really stiff and rigid bone.
16:00And then the main muscles there will pull the tail side to side.
16:04So it could probably move up and down a bit.
16:06But this is fundamentally a thing that swings side to side.
16:11And indeed, you know, the club kind of reaches a kind of slight side point.
16:15That's what you want to be swinging into your opponent, not hitting it with the flat of the underside.
16:19It's not a great representation of the tail.
16:22The whole tail appears to be flexible, so it doesn't appear to have the handle in there at all.
16:26And then the way it would carry it as a result of that is wrong.
16:30It's nothing!
16:32Indominus rex flips it over, but then kills it by biting the armoured head,
16:36not the completely unarmoured rest of the entire dinosaur.
16:40The head of an ankylosaur is a solid block of bone.
16:44Like, they even have a bony plate that sits on the eyelid,
16:48so when they close the eye, they have an eye shield.
16:51That's not the bit to bite!
16:54Given this a two, like, no part of this is really very realistic or convincing or accurate.
17:05Dimorphodon is particularly characterised by being, like, really short and blocky and kind of robust.
17:11The list of things wrong with that model starts at the tip of the nose and ends at the tip of the tail.
17:16It's f***ing dreadful.
17:18The fingers are in the wrong orientation, the leg shape is wrong, the wing shape is wrong.
17:22It's got the wrong number of toes.
17:24It's got these gripping feet which pterosaurs don't have.
17:27The tail is far too flexible and it looks like it's too long.
17:36As a predator, you're catching very small things with very quick reaction times.
17:41You need to be able to snap your jaws very quickly in order to be able to grab them and kill them.
17:46Velociraptor has something very similar.
17:49You have this real trade-off between speed and power.
17:52And they have gone for speed.
17:54You can see where the model starts going wrong with dimorphodon in the teeth.
17:58Because dimorphodon literally means two types of teeth.
18:01And yet in this film it has one type of tooth.
18:04So that's not a great start.
18:07It should have a few of those fangs at the front.
18:09And then behind it should have a row of much, much smaller little teeth.
18:14We think it's a generalised small predator.
18:16So it's biting and killing rats and lizards and that sort of thing.
18:22Killing them with those sharp teeth.
18:24Breaking them up with those smaller teeth behind.
18:26And then swallowing them.
18:28I'll give it a 1 because you won't let me give it 0.
18:31There is nothing to like about this clip as a pterosaur researcher.
18:36Other than it's got pterosaurs in it.
18:38For the first Jurassic World movie, it's a significant downgrade on the earlier ones.
18:44Most of the models are nothing like as good as you had even 20 years ago.
18:50So I'm going to give it a 5.
19:00Baryonyx is a really cool, weird, interesting dinosaur.
19:04It would have been lovely to see something that's far less generic.
19:08Or at least rather different to what we've seen from things like T-Rex.
19:12Which we've seen so many times before.
19:14So it's a relative of Spinosaurus.
19:16Which have these very, very long and narrow jaws.
19:20And do have something like a crocodile appearance.
19:24But in this model here, they've squashed the head.
19:28That's not how the jaw articulations are built.
19:30There's no other dinosaur that can do something like that.
19:33I can't see why it would particularly be beneficial.
19:35It's when you're trying to grab a fish.
19:37Opening it to 90 degrees does not help you grab a fish.
19:41Worse, it means there's loads of water in the way when you're trying to do that fast bite.
19:49That is a big, strong animal.
19:51I think in a wrestling match for a chair, you're going to lose.
19:57This is not a dinosaur that is going to be able to climb up a ladder.
20:01The arms can't reach that far forward.
20:04They don't hook like that.
20:06The arms are big and strong.
20:08But not strong enough to lift the body.
20:10So Baryonyx are fundamentally fish eaters.
20:13So they're sticking their head into water and grabbing fish and eating them.
20:16But they also have these really strong arms with big claws.
20:19And to be honest, we're not very sure what they're doing with them.
20:22One possibility that I've suggested is that they're actually quite useful for digging things.
20:26They might be good at things like clawing into riverbanks.
20:29Going after stuff like turtles and other things that might end up in the mud.
20:33I'd give this clip maybe a 4.
20:35It's a really interesting animal and it's just a shame we don't really get to see it.
20:41Depending on your taxonomic interpretation,
20:47this is either a young Pachycephalosaurus or an adult Stygimoloch.
20:52I don't think it's going to get through that.
20:54But like a garden wall of one layer of bricks?
20:57Yeah, I think they'd do it some real work.
21:03This is the skull of a little thing called Stegoceras.
21:06This is part of the same group.
21:08This entire top half of the skull is solid bone.
21:12Absolutely solid.
21:14And then on top of that there'd be some kind of cap of keratin or horn-like sheath on top of that as well.
21:20So literally half the head is bone.
21:23That is going to be a solid dome maybe this big.
21:26On a neck that is relatively set to be rigid and absorb a lot of force.
21:32So this is absolutely an animal that can lower its head and then deliver a huge amount of power in a straight line.
21:38If that thing is capable of going through a brick wall and it gets a full impact in your chest,
21:52I think your ribcage is basically gone.
21:56I can't imagine anyone would survive an impact like that.
22:00I mean, people get killed from single hits from things like sheep and goats if they catch you wrong.
22:06This animal is capable of delivering a lot more power.
22:08I guess I'd give this an 8.
22:10I think it's maybe a bit extreme with the way it's getting through the walls and busting the lock open.
22:15But it's a really nice model and it is an animal delivering a lot of power with its head.
22:21Overall, Fallen Kingdom, I'm not a fan.
22:25A lot of the models are not very good.
22:27A lot of the behaviours are not very good.
22:29I'd give it a 5.
22:37It's great that we're finally getting fully feathered dromaeosaurs which should be fully feathered.
22:43The feathering is okay.
22:46But Pyroraptor is not a particularly big dromaeosaur.
22:49It's Velociraptor-ish sized again and yet again it's been blown up to this giant animal.
23:07There were species that occupied arctic environments which were not dissimilar to what we see now
23:13in northern Russia or Scandinavia or Canada or northern parts of the US or on mountainsides
23:19where it would have been cold for much of the year.
23:22But there's a difference between surviving in cold conditions and diving and swimming in freezing water.
23:28There's an odd group of dromaeosaurs called the Halsgoraptorines from Mongolia
23:33and they are suggested to be quite good at swimming but they are built rather differently.
23:38What you have here is an animal that's swimming almost like a crocodile.
23:42Its feathers are splayed out sideways.
23:44It's not paddling with its tail and yet somehow moving at high speed.
23:48Pyroraptor is about as adapted for swimming as a pigeon or a magpie.
23:52If you chuck it in the water it's going to thrash around and then drown.
23:56This is a 2.
24:04So Therizinosaurus has these weird giant claws that gives it its name scythe lizard
24:10and we really don't know quite what they're doing with them.
24:14Our best interpretation is that these were actually something like we see in the giant ground sloths
24:20that were around even a few tens of thousands of years ago.
24:23Reaching up, hooking on branches, pulling stuff down, separating leaves and making them accessible.
24:34Pyroraptor
24:39They're very, very unusual because although they're extremely long they're also really quite thin.
24:44So they're not very strong.
24:46They would not be very good at, for example, stabbing through a Giganotosaurus
24:51and not just all snapping off.
24:53If you stab that into something and you hit something solid like a bone
24:57which is very likely when stabbing another large dinosaur, the claw is going to break.
25:02I really like the model.
25:04The big three-way fight and the giant stabbing thing is really bad, like a 3.
25:09Dominion is really horribly unrealistic.
25:13So many of the models are not good.
25:16So many of the actions are not good.
25:18Some of the things that are going on just don't make sense or work well at all.
25:21I'd give it a 3.
25:23My favourite dinosaur from the Jurassic Park movies is the Stegosaurus from The Lost World, the second one.
25:30I think it's a great model, a really nice animal.
25:33I like the colour pattern, I like the design, I like the style of it.
25:36I generally like the way it behaves. I think it's really nice.
25:39More realistic dinosaurs, please.
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