August 25, 2011
Pixar Rewrites Dinosaur History
Artist Donald E. Davis' depiction of the asteroid impact which played a critical role in the end-Cretaceous extinction. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
What if the non-avian dinosaurs didn’t go extinct 65 million years ago? Dinosaur fans love to ask the question—what if one of the most devastating extinctions of all time was cancelled?—and the speculative answers have ranged from fanciful to silly examples of our own arrogance. According to news released this week, the movie studio Pixar is getting ready to present its own version of what our world might look life had Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and their kind been given a stay of execution.
In addition to future releases such as Monsters University and Wreck-It Ralph, WIRED reports that Pixar has announced it’s working on a movie given the thrilling temporary name “The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs.” (This announcement makes sense of rumors that have been floating around since last year that Pixar has been working on a dinosaur project.) The general idea is, “What if the cataclysmic asteroid that forever changed life on Earth actually missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never went extinct?” CNN reports that “This hilarious, heartfelt and original tale is directed by Bob Peterson (co-director/writer, Up; writer, Finding Nemo) and produced by John Walker (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant).” Pixar’s dinosaur film is set to debut in late 2013.
When I heard the news, the first question on my mind was, “What sort of dinosaurs are we going to see?” Are we going to get classic Mesozoic dinosaurs, or are we going to get novel dinosaur species that are the descendants of the Cretaceous survivors? The movie could provide Pixar with a good opportunity to take a subtle but powerful stand for evolution—of course we shouldn’t see Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Spinosaurus and other favorites because evolution would have kept on changing life during the past 65 million years! Actually, I would be a bit disappointed if Pixar didn’t try to introduce new dinosaurs. I know I’ve been critical of speculative dinosaurs before, but in this case, the premise demands species that have never been seen before. Life changes, and dinosaurs would have certainly continued to evolve.
(All this is ignoring the fact that dinosaurs are still around. We really do know what dinosaurs would look like if they survived, because birds—the modern descendants of dinosaurs—are everywhere. Since birds aren’t quite as thrilling as big honkin’ theropods and sauropods, though, it’s understandable that Pixar is focusing on the non-avian dinosaurs.)
Despite the poorly-executed cash grab that was this summer’s Cars 2, I still have faith in Pixar. Not only have they created some of the best animated films ever, they have been behind some of the best films to be released in the past few years, period. I can’t wait to hear more about their alternative history where dinosaurs still rule the earth.
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My guess this isn’t a serious treatment of the subject — it will probably be something more akin to a modern-day Flintstones, imagining what role dinosaurs would play in society. There was a BBC documentary with the same theme a few years ago. And remember, Disney has already made one “what if dinosaurs survived to the modern-day” film: Super Mario Bros., which I have a soft spot for despite being a terrible movie.
**Life changes, and dinosaurs would have certainly continued to evolve.**
Well, they most likely would have changed, but that’s not necessarily guaranteed. Crocodiles really haven’t changed all that much since well before the K-T extinction event.
“we shouldn’t see Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Spinosaurus and other favorites because evolution would have kept on changing life during the past 65 million years! ”
The, um, great white shark would like a word…
Seriously, yes, there probably would be mostly significant changes, given the changes in climate and migration patterns. But some species would have remained the same. And certainly, many would be recognizable (as recreations of our own lineage indicate).
Cars2 was a poorly-executed cash grab? Coulda fooled me. As a NASCAR fan, I can tell you that the racing sequences were spot on. I really enjoyed this one. Everyone gets an opinion. This is mine.
I have to agree with others that have posted, that we might easily recognize many of the same Cretaceous dinosaurs, just as so many other reptiles from the Cretaceous are so relatively unchanged in the past 65 million years. (snakes, lizards turtles and crocs). Brian is right of course, that we could also see some that have changed dramatically as well. What I expect we’ll see in the Pixar film will be at least one speciesa of bipedal anthropomorphic looking dinos that have probably attained a technology level similar if not identical to Homo sapiens. The biggest fault we may see in this film will be the inclusion of humans too in this dino world, which I think every scienist would agree is impossible.
Sharks and crocodiles were around during the time of the dinosaurs, and while those species hit on winning body forms that are still with us today (though it would be incorrect to say they didn’t evolve a lot of variety too, it’s just that the wilder family members went extinct while the conservatives survive today) the dinosaurs, during this time, did evolve an amazingly varied catalog of body forms, from stegosaurs to sauropods to tyrannosaurs to neornithes. Considering the historic plasticity of this group of animals one would expect 65 million years later, their forms could be wildly different.
Actually, I think Brian’s got it right about changes in dinosaurs over the last 65 million years. First, the only living dinosaurs have diversified greatly since the K-T. Second, turnover in dinosaur groups was pretty impressive — compare late Cretaceous communities to late Jurassic ones (or even to the early Cretaceous, which would be about the same time-span). And while some groups (theropods, sauropods) are still recognizable across that time frame, it’s still easy to see the changes in them.
On the other hand, Dan, I would guess you’re right about the stars of the show. (although bipedal dinos makes sense — that seems to be the ancestral state for them, and it never changed in several groups)
“Sharks and crocodiles were around during the time of the dinosaurs, and while those species hit on winning body forms that are still with us today”
Note “body forms” is a general term. A lot of people have a misconception that modern sharks and crocodiles have been around since the Mesozoic. But “shark” and “crocodile” as normally used aren’t species or even genera. The Great White Shark only appears in the fossil record 16 million years ago. The modern crocodile genus Crocodylus dates to the Eocene if not later. So no, crocodiles did not exist during the Mesozoic, though some more primitive crocodilians did.
Similarly, it is unreasonable to think Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs wouldn’t change a lot. All we have to do is look at their evolutionary trajectory over the previous 65 million years to estimate how much things might change between the Mesozoic and today. T. rex wasn’t around 130 million years ago. In fact tyrannosauridae wasn’t either. tyrannosaurs were there, but they were things like Yutyrannus that, again, superficially look like LK tyrannosaurs and have the same winning “body form” but with many important differences.