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For the past century, carnivorous dinosaurs like Allosaurus—seen here at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County—have been made-to-order movie monsters. Photo by the author.

If we had not discovered dinosaurs, I don’t know whether we could have dreamed them up. So many of the prehistoric creatures were so unlike anything alive today, and dinosaurs seem to keep getting weirder with almost every new discovery. But dinosaurs aren’t just animals. During the past century they have frequently served as made-to-order movie monsters, from some of the earliest silent shorts to modern special-effects extravaganzas. Tyrannosaurus alone has been a celebrated and ever-hungry villain from the original 1933 King Kong to the 2005 remake of the same film. In celebration of Halloween, here’s a short list of some of my favorite spooky moments in the long history of dinosaur cinema. (If you can handle even more horror after this, see Food & Think’s ten scariest food-related moments in film.)

5. Dinosaur SMASH!

By modern standards this pick isn’t scary at all, but what is slot #5 for if not a sentimental favorite?

The direct-to-TV, B-movie The Last Dinosaur was one of the first dinosaur flicks I ever saw. It also has to be one of the silliest. Big-game hunter Maston Thrust—one of the most unfortunately named characters in cinema—is on the trail of a Tyrannosaurus in an isolated lost world. The dinosaurs are all portrayed by people in rubber suits, but before we all got spoiled by the top-notch effects in Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs were just about as good as anything I had seen. But it wasn’t the jaws of the Tyrannosaurus that scared me. In one scene, the tyrant stomps through camp and steps right on the expedition’s scientist without a second thought. That was what scared me—to seem so small and insignificant that a dinosaur might trod right on me without even noticing.

4. Nobody here but us maniraptorans

By any measure, Carnosaur is a crummy dinosaur flick. Roger Corman’s very loose adaptation of the novel by the same name is low-rent dinosaur schlock in its purest form. Still, dinosaurs films are usually more in the “adventure” vein than the “horror” one, and our introduction to the film’s puppet Deinonychus had me looking over my shoulder to make sure there weren’t any poorly designed dinosaur puppets hiding behind me. A farmer driving a truckload of chickens hears something amiss with his cargo. From the brief shots of the chicken cages, the birds would seem to be exploding. When our hapless minor character goes back to see what’s up, he is quickly dispatched by one of the closest, non-avian relatives of the dinosaur descendants he was shipping.

3. Brontosaurus attack!

Everyone knows that the huge, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs were herbivores. That’s why the carnivorous turn a “Brontosaurus” took in 1933′s King Kong creeped me out as a kid.

Early in their adventure across Skull Island’s prehistoric paradise, the film’s human protagonists start crossing a misty lake. Too bad for them a very angry sauropod lives there. The dinosaur goes on a rampage, capsizing boats and tossing crew members around, and the worst part of an amphibious dinosaur is that it can follow you as you try to escape to dry land. Being run down by a sharp-toothed predator is bad enough, but even worse is to be inefficiently torn apart by a primarily plant-eating dinosaur looking for some extra protein!

2. Triple Tyrant Trouble

Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong didn’t match the iconic status of the original—how could it, really?—but the team of special effects masters who worked on the film brought the deadly fauna of Skull Island to life in wonderful detail. No scene better demonstrates just how perilous life on the island could be than Ann Darrow’s attempted escape through the jungle. Darrow, played by Naomi Watts, encounters enormous terrestrial crocodiles and gargantuan centipedes in quick succession before meeting the living descendants of Tyrannosaurus itself (given the name Vastatosaurus in the beautifully illustrated companion guide to the film). While the ensuing battle scene between King Kong and the three dinosaurs is an over-the-top brawl, the initial chase is frightening—especially when a well-camouflaged dinosaur almost gets the drop on Ann. Always mind your surroundings in dinosaur country.

1. Heeeeeeere’s Rexie!

Jurassic Park is full of scary moments. In fact, the original film probably lays claim to all the scariest dinosaur moments in film history. Out of all the film’s scenes, though, the debut of the Tyrannosaurus was what had me gripping my theater armrest in 1993. What should have been one of the happiest moments in the life of a dinosaur fan—seeing the quintessential dinosaur in the living flesh!—turns into a muddy, blood-spattered nightmare of twisted metal. It didn’t matter that Steven Spielberg was obviously going to keep all the principal characters alive through the encounter. Seeing what was arguably one of the scariest apex predators of all time brought back to life—even virtually—was scary enough. Our fascination with dinosaurs has always been safe because the objects of our fascination have been dead for more than 65 million years, but in this short scene the ornery Tyrannosaurus ably demonstrates why some childhood dreams about meeting living dinosaurs may be best left unfulfilled.

From everyone here at Dinosaur Tracking, have a safe and happy Halloween, everyone!

A cast of the sauropod Diplodocus at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah. Our current understanding of sauropods like this differs greatly from hypothetical restorations of "living dinosaurs" in Africa. Photo by the author.

In the annals of science fiction, humans and non-avian dinosaurs have been brought together in a variety of ways. Genetic engineering experiments and time travel are probably the most common these days, but I have always had a soft spot for tales of “lost worlds.” What could be more fantastic than dinosaurs that somehow escaped extinction and persisted in some isolated spot for 65 million years? My childhood self really wanted someone to find a living Tyrannosaurus, Apatosaurus, or Triceratops in some remote locale, and that wish was fed by reports that one elusive dinosaur was hiding in Africa.

First thing first—living dinosaurs certainly do exist. We know them as birds, and a combination of fossil discoveries and laboratory research has confirmed the evolutionary connection between birds and feather-covered maniraptoran dinosaurs. But from time to time, people have proposed that non-avian dinosaurs may also still be hanging around.

The most famous of the supposed living dinosaurs I heard about was Mokele-mbembe. This unknown creature—often restored as a swamp-dwelling, tail-dragging sauropod akin to old restorations of “Brontosaurus“—is said to inhabit the dense jungle in what is now Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At least, that’s the way I was introduced to the legendary animal in the late 1980s. A blurry photograph of a lump in a lake and an ambiguous sound recording made by Herman Regusters during a 1981 expedition to find the animal were cited as possible evidence that a semi-aquatic sauropod was swimming around Lake Tele, and the feature film Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend fleshed out the hypothetical dinosaurs. Tall tales and legends of Mokele-mbembe had been circulating for decades before, and sensationalist basic cable television programs still fund expeditions to try and find the animal from time to time.

Is there any good evidence that a sauropod still wades through the muck of African swamps? Sadly, no. I would be thrilled if a living, non-avian dinosaur really did turn up somewhere, but such a fantastic find would have to be backed up by equally fantastic evidence. Despite the fact that multiple expeditions have been sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo over many years, there is no solid evidence that Mokele-mbembe is a dinosaur or even a real, unknown species of animal. I seriously doubt anyone will ever find any evidence of such a creature at all, and part of the reason why related to a paper published by University of Queensland zoologists Diana Fisher and Simon Blomberg last year.

The major message of Fisher and Blomberg’s study was positive: Some modern mammal species thought to be extinct may still survive in small, hard-to-find pockets of their former ranges. But the researchers also noted that the effort put into finding supposedly extinct species makes a difference as to whether we should expect to find those animals. The researchers found that species that still survived were often found after three to six searches, but if more than eleven searches were made with no results—as is the case for the Tasmanian tiger and Yangtze river dolphin—then the species is probably actually extinct. Since so many searches have been made for Mokele-mbembe with no solid results, I don’t think that there’s actually any large, hidden species there to find.

There is a flipside to that argument, although it also doesn’t bode well for the rumored dinosaur. Many of the searches for Mokele-mbembe have been made by self-described explorers who have little to no relevant field experience in tracking and studying wildlife. Some of these folks are even religious fundamentalists who are striving to somehow undermine evolutionary theory. Their credibility is highly suspect, but you would think that at least one group would have blundered into the animal by now. After all, there has to be a population of animals which would be leaving tracks, scat and occasionally bodies. The evidence for huge creatures living in the swamp should be readily apparent, and the best the many dinosaur hunters can come up with are tall tales and misshapen globs of plaster that look nothing like the tracks the casts are claimed to be.

But the most obvious problem is that there’s no trace of sauropods in the fossil record—at all—in the 65 million years since the end-Cretaceous extinction. Nothing. The last of these dinosaurs died out long ago, and there is not even a scintilla of evidence that sauropods survived past the close of the Mesozoic. If sauropods survived at all we would expect to find some indication of their existence in the fossil record. These were not small animals or creatures that were hidden away in the deep sea. Given the number of terrestrial fossil deposits and they way they have been sampled, Cenozoic sauropods would have turned up by now if they had survived.

There are plenty of other problems with the idea that there’s a sauropod trundling around in the swamps of the Congo Basin. One of the most ridiculous aspects of Mokele-mbembe stories is that the supposed dinosaurs resemble what the searchers expected sauropod dinosaurs to look and act like based on inaccurate restorations. The hypothetical dinosaurs act just like their counterparts in old Charles R. Knight and Zdeněk Burian paintings. Actual, living sauropods would have looked markedly different from those old restorations, and according to recent research, sauropods would have been really lousy swimmers due to the considerable volume of air-filled spaces in their bodies. A sauropod would not be able to act like a crocodile and hide underwater as Mokele-mbembe supposedly does. The weakness of the “Mokele-mbembe as sauropod” hypothesis is underscored by the fact that the supposed anatomy and behavior of the animal is clearly based on outdated images of dinosaurs. As Darren Naish pointed out in his brilliant April Fool’s Day post on Mokele-mbembe from this year, the idea that the animal was an old-school, tail dragging sauropod grates against everything we have learned about sauropods during the past three decades.

Paleontologist Don Prothero also took a few good whacks of Mokele-mbembe in a recent Monster Talk episode. Not surprisingly, Prothero points out that many of the reports about the animal are extremely inconsistent. A number of supposed sightings don’t refer to anything dinosaur-like at all, and even those that do are inconsistent and ambiguous. On top of that, Prothero and the show’s hosts bring up the fact that fanatics in search of Mokele-mbembe can easily misconstrue what local people might be saying about the animal because of a lack of shared cultural background and other translation problems. While visiting explorers often use the term “Mokele-mbembe” to refer to a supposed dinosaur or similar animal, the word can also refer to something that is not real or has no physical manifestation. If film crews and self-described explorers keep passing through and spending money in the region, it’s not surprising that people will tell the monster hunters what they want to hear.

The take-home lesson is this: If you want to find sauropods, sign up to volunteer on a professional fossil excavation with well-trained scientists.

Pumpkin Tyrannosaurus at the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze. Photo by Stacey De Lorenzo.

I really do wish that I were better at carving pumpkins. Sure, I can paint a crummy Velociraptor on the side of the seasonal squash, but the ability to carve a scary dinosaur into a pumpkin is a skill that has eluded me so far. And I have just found out that a group of artists in New York have raised the bar considerably. This year, the annual Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze in Westchester County is home to several massive dinosaurs made from multiple illuminated pumpkins. Ever see jack o’ lanterns that could squash you? These would be the ones.

Pumpkin Stegosaurus at the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze. Photo Stacey De Lorenzo.

Pumpkin Triceratops at the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze, with a guest appearance by the non-dinosaur Dimetrodon in the background. Photo by Stacey De Lorenzo.

Thanks to Laura Downing for the tip and Stacey De Lorenzo for the photographs.

Have you seen a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature in an unusual place? Please send your photo to dinosaursightings@gmail.com.

The Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Photo by the author.

Since the time the English anatomist Richard Owen described Archaeopteryx as the “by-fossil-remains-oldest-known feathered Vertebrate” in 1863, the curious creature has been widely regarded as the earliest known bird. Lately, though, the status of the iconic animal has been up for debate. Earlier this summer, one team of paleontologists proposed that Archaeopteryx was not a bird but actually a feather-covered, non-avian dinosaur more closely related to genera like Microraptor and Troodon. Now a different team of paleontologists has published a paper in Biology Letters that says Archaeopteryx was an early bird after all.

The ongoing back and forth over Archaeopteryx reminds me of the old Looney Tunes bit where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck keep going back and forth over which hunting season it is. “Duck season.” “Wabbit season!” “Duck season” “WABBIT SEASON!” In the same way, the argument over Archaeopteryx could seemingly go on indefinitely. The reasons why have everything to do with how both science and evolution work.

The study of prehistoric life, like any other science, is not restricted to the slow and steady accumulation of facts. Facts are most certainly acquired through studies in the field and lab alike, but to tell us anything significant about dinosaurs, these facts must be understood according to theories and hypotheses. An exasperated Charles Darwin conveyed this truth eloquently in an 1861 letter he wrote to colleague Henry Fawcett:

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view of it is to be of any service!

Facts, theories and hypotheses are all necessary and interacting parts of the scientific process. As new discoveries are made and ideas are tested, the context by which we understand what dinosaurs were and how they lived changes. This is to be expected—there are always more questions and mysteries about dinosaurs than readily available answers. In the case of Archaeopteryx, we know this feather-covered dinosaur lived on a group of roughly 150-million-year-old islands that would eventually become southeastern Germany. Whether or not Archaeopteryx belonged to that successful lineage of feathered dinosaurs called birds, though, is something that depends on other feathered dinosaur discoveries and the techniques used to test ideas about relationships among animals.

Teasing out relationships among prehistoric animals is a comparative science. The key is finding traits that are shared in some organisms due to common ancestry but are absent in others. This can be a tricky process. Due to a shared way of life, for example, unrelated organisms may have developed superficially similar traits through a phenomenon called convergent evolution. Paleontologists must carefully choose the traits being compared, and the discovery of additional dinosaurs adds more grist to the comparative mill.

Archaeopteryx is actually a perfect example of how new discoveries can change our perception of relationships. When the first skeleton was discovered in 1861, nothing quite like it had been found. Archaeopteryx seemed to stand by itself as the first bird. Over a century later, though, the discovery of dinosaurs such as Deinonychus, an updated understanding of dinosaurs and the eventual discovery of many, many feathered dinosaurs illustrated that Archaeopteryx exhibited a number of transitional features that illustrated how the first birds evolved directly from feathered dinosaurs.

The trouble is that Archaeopteryx appears to be so close to the emergence of the very first birds. At the moment, Archaeopteryx is most often regarded as being an archaic member of the group called the Avialae, which contains all birds (Aves) and forms more closely related to them than to other dinosaurs. What this means is that, as our understanding of what a bird actually is changes, the position of Archaeopteryx might shift. The animal might have been one of the earliest birds within the avialian group, or Archaeopteryx might have been just outside the bird group among non-avian dinosaurs.  This is simply how science works and is a wonderful—if frustrating—demonstration of the fact of evolution.

Birds did not simply pop out of nowhere. The earliest avians went through a long period of transformation, and the continuum between feathered, non-avian dinosaurs and the first birds, which paleontologists are now filling in, demonstrates the beauty of major evolutionary change. The debate over the position of Archaeopteryx is happening now precisely because of all the evidence for this evolutionary change that has been accumulated in the past two decades. No matter what Archaeopteryx turns out to be, the creature will remain important to both the historical development of our ideas about evolution and the actual, prehistoric transition from non-avian to avian dinosaurs.

For more on changing perspectives on long-known dinosaurs, see this week’s post on the fate of the horned dinosaur Torosaurus.

References:

Lee, M., & Worthy, T. (2011). Likelihood reinstates Archaeopteryx as a primitive bird Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0884

Xu, X.; You, H.; Du, K.; Han, F. (2011). An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae Nature, 475, 465-470 DOI: 10.1038/nature10288

A statue of Spinosaurus outside Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood. Spinosaurus got a major media boost after appearing in Jurassic Park III. Photo by the author.

I can’t escape Jurassic Park. No, I’m not actually trapped on a tropical isle overrun by hungry dinosaurs, but, as a paleo-focused science writer, sometimes I feel like I might as well be. Not only is the 1993 film the unquestionable standard for all subsequent dinosaur films and television shows, from Walking With Dinosaurs to Terra Nova, but the movie also left a massive imprint on the public’s understanding of what dinosaurs were. Even now, nearly two decades after the movie’s debut, almost any dinosaur discovery involving tyrannosaurs or sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs—often called “raptors” thanks to the same film—can be readily tied back to Jurassic Park. I have even used that trick. What I am wondering, though, is why an 18-year-old dinosaur epic continues to have such a major influence on our perception of dinosaurs.

What focused my attention on Jurassic Park this morning were the various media tidbits surrounding the blu-ray release of the dinosaur-filled trilogy. Actress Ariana Richards, who played “Lex” in the first film, said that the film had an enduring influence because “there’s a quality of this world that Steven [Spielberg] created—and he’s not the only one who as a young person longed to experience the world in a different way, almost to go back in time into prehistory and experience exotic creatures like dinosaurs in your midst.” The fact that the movie is still visually impressive certainly helps. In another interview, special effects artist Dennis Muren said, “I always thought when we did [Jurassic Park] that within five or 10 years it was going to look old-fashioned and obsolete, but it doesn’t.”

Both Richards and Muren touched on significant aspects of why Jurassic Park has been so influential, but I think there might be an even simpler reason. The film was the first time that filmgoers were able to see what living dinosaurs might actually look like. Audiences were experiencing almost the same kind of awe as the characters in the movie—nothing quite like those dinosaurs had ever been seen before.

Dinosaurs had been stomping and roaring across the screen for decades, but they were often portrayed by stop-motion creatures that were clearly artificial. The advent of computer-generated dinosaurs came at just the right time to deliver something that was visually unprecedented. On top of that, images of dinosaurs as slow, stupid, swamp-bound creatures still persisted into the early 1990s. Jurassic Park eliminated these paleo-stereotypes and rapidly ushered in a newer vision of dinosaurs that scientists knew well but that had not yet been fully embraced by the public. Jurassic Park instantly created a new baseline for what dinosaurs were and how they acted.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why the two Jurassic Park sequels are not as beloved as their predecessor, or why it’s easy to pick on the poor writing behind Terra Nova. Dinosaurs had only one shot to make a stunning, computer-generated debut. They certainly did that in Spielberg’s film, but the spread of new technologies allowed digital dinosaurs to become commonplace. Along with the help of documentary trendsetter Walking With Dinosaurs, lifelike dinosaurs rapidly lost their novelty and, sadly for them, are easy prey for critics when they don’t measure up to the standards set by the 1993 film. When the awe is gone, deficiencies in a film, television series or documentary become more apparent. Jurassic Park was so successful because the film combined spectacular visual imagery with an unfamiliar, exciting perspective of dinosaurs. We probably won’t see a combination of such conditions again.

There may never be another dinosaur movie as important as Jurassic Park. Special effects will continue to be fine-tuned, but I can’t imagine them becoming drastically better that what we have already seen. At this point, good dinosaur movies are going to have to rely on solid storytelling. We have brought the dinosaurs back—we have the technology—but now that the novelty is gone filmmakers have to write compelling stories that draw viewers into the worlds they want to create. Without that, we just end up wanting the dinosaurs to devour all the characters we’re supposed to relate to (a feeling I have lately been having in regard to Terra Nova).

The test of this little hypothesis of mine may come in the form of Jurassic Park IV. Rumors about the film have been circulating for a while, but when I met him by chance last month at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, paleontologist and Jurassic Park scientific adviser Jack Horner mentioned that Spielberg has a good story in mind for the next film. Horner even dropped a significant clue as to what the movie is going to be about. “They’ve already brought dinosaurs back…,” he said, “so how could they make the dinosaurs scarier?” The answer is further genetic tampering. Horner also hinted that his 2009 book How to Build a Dinosaur was originally meant to come out at the same time as the fourth Jurassic Park as a kind of scientific companion volume. For those who haven’t read it, the book details Horner’s scientific efforts to take a living dinosaur—a chicken—and turn the bird into something that more closely resembles a non-avian, theropod dinosaur. This isn’t mad science. By reverse engineering “dinosaurian” traits in a bird, scientists might be able to detect how genes and development interacted with anatomy in the evolutionary transformation from non-avian dinosaur to avian dinosaur. The resulting “Chickenosaurus” would be a flashy bonus to our increased understanding of how evolution works.

Even if the next Jurassic Park doesn’t turn out to be immediately as influential as the first in the series, perhaps the sequel can usher in some updated ideas about dinosaurs. For one thing, we definitely need more feathers on the Velociraptor (or whatever sort of creature the raptors are going to be modified into). That is the benefit of having paleontologists work directly with filmmakers on these projects. Yes, there will always be some silly things—such as the fictional frill and venom-spitting abilities of Dilophosaurus—but seeing well-crafted and exceptionally lifelike dinosaurs is a win for paleontology. Not only do we catch a glimpse of what an extinct species might have looked like, but the films also send the audience home with an updated view of what dinosaurs were and might just inspire them to check out the actual bones in a nearby museum. Whatever happens to dinosaur cinema in the future, though, Jurassic Park will always be a classic film, and I know I’ll never forget the first time I saw science and Hollywood work together to bring dinosaurs back to life.