Have you ever wondered if “Jurassic Park” was realistic? Jeff Goldblum’s sexual magnetism is certainly accurate, but what about dinosaurs?
Enter Mark Loewen, a paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History and an associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at U. In June, Loewen criticized the accuracy of Hollywood depictions of dinosaurs for Vanity Fair in a video that racked up nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube. You can watch the video below.
“I love those movies – some of them are awful, but I still love them,” Loewen said. “Before becoming a paleontologist, I became a geologist because I wanted to travel through time. Looking at the rocks, you can literally see what past worlds looked like! Seeing reconstructed dinosaurs in movies is the same thing. It’s fun to see how we can use fossils to imagine what these animals might have looked like.
Loewen is perfectly suited for this job. In the early 2000s, he and his mentor Scott Sampson created a class called World of Dinosaurs, GEO 1040, where students watched movie clips and analyzed the veracity of dinosaur depictions. He expanded on this idea to create Science and Cinema, GEO 1000, a science non-major class that analyzes science in movies. By studying the dinosaurs, natural disasters and science fiction presented on screen, students learn the fundamentals of science while having fun celebrating or scolding various films.
“I consider myself a science evangelist,” Loewen said. “Movies are a sneaky way to show U students how cool these concepts are. I mean, isn’t this one of the most awesome courses you can take? Get science credit to watch movies and learn about science!
A former Science of Cinema class now works at Vanity Fair and recommended Loewen for the video series, which coincides with the release of “Jurassic World: Dominion” (2022). A professional film crew shot his interview in the museum’s paleontology collections. If you watch the video carefully, you can see dinosaur specimens that Loewen himself discovered and named. U students can use their UCard to visit the museum for free, and during the museum’s annual Behind-the-Scenes event, you can visit the collections and see fossils and specimens not on display on the ground floor.
“I named 13 dinosaurs, and a lot of them are in the museum,” Loewen said, “My favorite is Lythronaxan old cousin of the T-Rex. Lythronax stands for “King of Gore” or “Gore King”. It’s a big, bloody dinosaur on the way to becoming a T-Rex.
Loewen cites the classic Disney segment “Fantasia” (1940), “Extinction of the Dinosaurs,” as an early catalyst for his love of dinosaurs. He analyzes the scene in the Vanity Fair video and gives it props for being the first film to show dinosaurs living in their ecosystem. He calls it an important movie because it “sets the scene that dinosaurs are those iconic beasts of the past.” However, he explains that the animation reflected people’s understanding of creatures in the 1940s – animals were slow moving and dragged their tails while moving. It wasn’t until much later that we realized that many dinosaurs were agile and fearsome hunters.
For all the older millennials, be relieved – Loewen confirms that fossils of long-necked baby dinosaurs such as Little Foot in “The Land Before Time” (1988) had big puppy eyes and delicate little beaks – so they were really as cute as the cartoon. However, Sara the Triceratops and Little Foot the Brontosaurus did not co-exist at the same time, so would never have met to become friends.
It also criticizes certain aspects of the original “Jurassic Park”. However, Loewen applauds the film for its accuracy based on our understanding in the early 90s.
“’Jurassic Park’ was one of the first accurate depictions of dinosaurs. They don’t act like lizards. They act like ferocious birds of prey,” Loewen said. “But when it came out, we didn’t know dinosaurs had feathers. Back then, many scientists would have told you that dinosaurs did not become birds. Forty years later, 100% of dinosaur paleontologists will tell you that birds are actually dinosaurs, and we have feather evidence for almost every type of dinosaur. In the new movies, most dinosaurs have feathers.
Editor’s Note on Conflicts of Interest: The author’s favorite movie is “Jurassic Park.”
Watch Mark Loewen’s review for Vanity Fair