January 2, 2026 • 7 mins
What Did Steven Spielberg Get Right and What Did He Get Wrong About Real Life Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park? An Eminent Paleontologist Breaks It Down. We Also See How and Why the Movie Was Made the Way It Was.
Also, Feel Free to DM Me If You Have a Story You’d Like Me to Cover . . On Facebook It’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the greatest blockbuster adventure flicks of the nineteen
nineties and beyond was Jurassic Park. But did you ever
wonder how true to life the dinosaurs Steven Spielberg put
on movie screens are compared to the real life dinos
he based them on. I'm Patty Steele. What Jurassic Park
got right and what it got wrong about those prehistoric creatures?
(00:23):
That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory.
Jurassic Park and its six sequels have thrilled audiences since
the first one debuted in June of nineteen ninety three,
a summer blockbuster that captivated the world and was the
biggest ever money maker up to that time. It's been
(00:46):
a huge hit, with multiple viewings in my house. There
were two sets of trilogies, Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.
Then another flick was added to the Jurassic World series,
which came out last summer crummy ratings. But what is
it that God is all so excited about animals that
went extinct sixty six million years ago? It's just that
(01:10):
these beings inhabited the Earth for around one hundred and
eighty million years. Humans at least Homo sapiens like us
have only been here for three hundred thousand years, and
our earliest ancestors showed up only about six or seven
million years ago. But all we saw of dinosaurs were
skeletons and fossils until Jurassic Park brought them to life.
(01:32):
Stephen Spielberg said he wanted to show that, for the
most part, dinosaurs weren't monsters, they were animals, and he
wanted to portray them as accurately as possible. He even
had the imminent paleontologist Jack Horner on board as a
consultant for the entire production, but of course they were
also making an action adventure flick and they needed drama.
(01:56):
Horner said there were a lot of inaccuracies, but he
said the film is not a documentary, and I was
happy with having some fiction thrown in. My job was
to get a little science into Jurassic Park, but not
to ruin it. While the sequels sort of focused on wild,
rampaging dinosaurs, Horner said that in reality, visiting a dinosaur
(02:17):
park would be kind of like going to a wild
animal park. As long as you keep the windows rolled up,
nobody's gonna hurt you, but he said, I guess that
doesn't make a very good movie, does it. So what
doesn't follow science in Jurassic Park? Well, first off, microbiologists
say gathering dino DNA through a mosquito trapped an amber
(02:38):
after biting a dinosaur one hundred million years ago just
wouldn't work. DNA doesn't last. It degrades as far as
they've seen after a million years at most, said Horner.
Even if they had dinosaur DNA, we wouldn't know how
to actually make an animal just from DNA. The animal
cloning that we do these days is with a live cell,
(03:00):
and we don't have any dinosaur live cells. The whole
business of creating a live dinosaur is a lot of fiction,
at least for now. And what about the animals themselves,
signed Toss say, Spielberg and crew really did their homework.
They praised the premise in the flick that dinosaurs eventually
evolved into birds, which was a pretty new discovery back
(03:22):
in the early nineties. They now say that the closest
living relative of a t rex is the chicken. Now,
on the other hand, paleontologists say a lot of dinosaurs,
like veloci raptors had brightly colored feathers, which of course
we don't see in Jurassic Park. While that discovery came later,
the Jurassic franchise mostly stuck with featherless dinosaurs just to
(03:46):
be consistent, but a few feathered dinosaurs were added in
Jurassic World Dominion, although some of the filmmakers thought they
looked like big chickens and weren't all that scary. Jack Horner,
the paleontologist, said, Steve and Spielberg made the point several
times to me that feathered, colorful dinosaurs are not very scary.
(04:07):
Scaly creatures in gray and brown and black are a
lot more scary. Horner said he considered the colors to
be the most inaccurate part of the film's dinosaurs. He
also said, in addition, the animals are often shown roaring,
but in actuality, since dinosaurs evolved into birds and birds sing,
I think most dinosaurs actually sang rather than growled. In
(04:31):
the movie, the roars of the t rex were created
by mixing the recorded vocals of a baby elephant, a tiger,
and an alligator, none of them singing. Some other changes,
Spielberg purposely altered the size of some of the on
screen dinosaurs so audiences wouldn't confuse them with another species
shown in the film. But they were even careful there.
(04:54):
They created some of these fictional dinosaurs by studying the
DNA of various times and combining them to create the
kind of animal they needed for the storyline. They frequently
added dramatic coloring, frills that could fan out in battle,
and feat that could accommodate puppeteers inside some of the dinosaurs,
(05:15):
all in an effort to add to the story. Again,
not a documentary. Now, on a funny side note, the
Jurassic Park script called for a dinosaur to spit black
venom on the face of the character Dennis Nedri played
by Wayne Knight. That was a great scene, but the
slime they used left a stain on Wayne's face, a
(05:36):
problem for him when he had to leave the Jurassic
Park set to film his role as the Nasty mailman
Newman on Seinfeld. So, if you're a fan of the
Jurassic films or an ardent student of dinosaurs, understand that
the point of the original novel by Michael Crichton and
the original movie from Stephen Spielberg was to give us
(05:57):
a broader sense of these amazing animals. They rule the
earth for hundreds of millions of years, far longer than
we've been around. I hope you're enjoying the Backstory with
Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or subscribe
for free to get new episodes delivered automatically, and feel
free to dm me if you have a story you'd
(06:18):
like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and
on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories
a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
(06:39):
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know. M
One of the greatest blockbuster adventure flicks of the nineteen
nineties and beyond was Jurassic Park. But did you ever
wonder how true to life the dinosaurs Steven Spielberg put
on movie screens are compared to the real life dinos
he based them on. I'm Patty Steele. What Jurassic Park
got right and what it got wrong about those prehistoric creatures?
(00:23):
That's next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory.
Jurassic Park and its six sequels have thrilled audiences since
the first one debuted in June of nineteen ninety three,
a summer blockbuster that captivated the world and was the
biggest ever money maker up to that time. It's been
(00:46):
a huge hit, with multiple viewings in my house. There
were two sets of trilogies, Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.
Then another flick was added to the Jurassic World series,
which came out last summer crummy ratings. But what is
it that God is all so excited about animals that
went extinct sixty six million years ago? It's just that
(01:10):
these beings inhabited the Earth for around one hundred and
eighty million years. Humans at least Homo sapiens like us
have only been here for three hundred thousand years, and
our earliest ancestors showed up only about six or seven
million years ago. But all we saw of dinosaurs were
skeletons and fossils until Jurassic Park brought them to life.
(01:32):
Stephen Spielberg said he wanted to show that, for the
most part, dinosaurs weren't monsters, they were animals, and he
wanted to portray them as accurately as possible. He even
had the imminent paleontologist Jack Horner on board as a
consultant for the entire production, but of course they were
also making an action adventure flick and they needed drama.
(01:56):
Horner said there were a lot of inaccuracies, but he
said the film is not a documentary, and I was
happy with having some fiction thrown in. My job was
to get a little science into Jurassic Park, but not
to ruin it. While the sequels sort of focused on wild,
rampaging dinosaurs, Horner said that in reality, visiting a dinosaur
(02:17):
park would be kind of like going to a wild
animal park. As long as you keep the windows rolled up,
nobody's gonna hurt you, but he said, I guess that
doesn't make a very good movie, does it. So what
doesn't follow science in Jurassic Park? Well, first off, microbiologists
say gathering dino DNA through a mosquito trapped an amber
(02:38):
after biting a dinosaur one hundred million years ago just
wouldn't work. DNA doesn't last. It degrades as far as
they've seen after a million years at most, said Horner.
Even if they had dinosaur DNA, we wouldn't know how
to actually make an animal just from DNA. The animal
cloning that we do these days is with a live cell,
(03:00):
and we don't have any dinosaur live cells. The whole
business of creating a live dinosaur is a lot of fiction,
at least for now. And what about the animals themselves,
signed Toss say, Spielberg and crew really did their homework.
They praised the premise in the flick that dinosaurs eventually
evolved into birds, which was a pretty new discovery back
(03:22):
in the early nineties. They now say that the closest
living relative of a t rex is the chicken. Now,
on the other hand, paleontologists say a lot of dinosaurs,
like veloci raptors had brightly colored feathers, which of course
we don't see in Jurassic Park. While that discovery came later,
the Jurassic franchise mostly stuck with featherless dinosaurs just to
(03:46):
be consistent, but a few feathered dinosaurs were added in
Jurassic World Dominion, although some of the filmmakers thought they
looked like big chickens and weren't all that scary. Jack Horner,
the paleontologist, said, Steve and Spielberg made the point several
times to me that feathered, colorful dinosaurs are not very scary.
(04:07):
Scaly creatures in gray and brown and black are a
lot more scary. Horner said he considered the colors to
be the most inaccurate part of the film's dinosaurs. He
also said, in addition, the animals are often shown roaring,
but in actuality, since dinosaurs evolved into birds and birds sing,
I think most dinosaurs actually sang rather than growled. In
(04:31):
the movie, the roars of the t rex were created
by mixing the recorded vocals of a baby elephant, a tiger,
and an alligator, none of them singing. Some other changes,
Spielberg purposely altered the size of some of the on
screen dinosaurs so audiences wouldn't confuse them with another species
shown in the film. But they were even careful there.
(04:54):
They created some of these fictional dinosaurs by studying the
DNA of various times and combining them to create the
kind of animal they needed for the storyline. They frequently
added dramatic coloring, frills that could fan out in battle,
and feat that could accommodate puppeteers inside some of the dinosaurs,
(05:15):
all in an effort to add to the story. Again,
not a documentary. Now, on a funny side note, the
Jurassic Park script called for a dinosaur to spit black
venom on the face of the character Dennis Nedri played
by Wayne Knight. That was a great scene, but the
slime they used left a stain on Wayne's face, a
(05:36):
problem for him when he had to leave the Jurassic
Park set to film his role as the Nasty mailman
Newman on Seinfeld. So, if you're a fan of the
Jurassic films or an ardent student of dinosaurs, understand that
the point of the original novel by Michael Crichton and
the original movie from Stephen Spielberg was to give us
(05:57):
a broader sense of these amazing animals. They rule the
earth for hundreds of millions of years, far longer than
we've been around. I hope you're enjoying the Backstory with
Patty Steele. Please leave a review and follow or subscribe
for free to get new episodes delivered automatically, and feel
free to dm me if you have a story you'd
(06:18):
like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and
on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories
a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
(06:39):
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
know you needed to know. M
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