Jurᴀssic World Dominion might have been critically panned, but it did finally get some key details right about dinosaurs, according to one expert in paleontology. Spinning off from the wildly successful Jurᴀssic Park trilogy, Jurᴀssic World upped the ante with bigger dinosaurs and even more mayhem. The new Jurᴀssic Park brought back the formally extinct creatures, and they eventually became a global phenomenon after escaping the confines of the park. Dominion finished the first trilogy of Jurᴀssic World movies, and said goodbye to the new heroes while bringing back the classic characters from the original films too.

There was a lot that Jurᴀssic World Dominion did wrong from a story perspective, and critics generally lambasted the big-budget sequel. Its financial success was also somewhat hampered by a mᴀssive budget, and though Jurᴀssic World Dominion‘s box office overshadowed its bad reviews, it was still a disappointment. However, it was the first film in the entire Jurᴀssic Park franchise to finally get some important facts about dinosaurs correct, and represents the first major amendment to the series’ approach to dinosaurs in almost 30 years. Dominion wasn’t perfect, but it earned praise from an expert in the field of paleontology.

Jurᴀssic World Dominion Fixed A Past Inaccuracy With The Franchise’s Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Feathers Are A Big Deal To Paleontologists

In an interview with Variety around the time that Jurᴀssic World Dominion was released in 2022, paleontologist and movie consultant Steve Brusatte explained the biggest change that the trilogy capper made. “I’m really pleased with the feathers,” said Brusatte, describing how the raptors in the film finally had a more accurate look after decades of unrealistic depictions. “That’s the biggest thing of all because we’ve known that dinosaurs had feathers for a long time,” Brusatte continued, though the discovery of dinosaur feathers did happen after the release of the first movie.

The first Jurᴀssic Park film premiered in 1993 (the book was released in 1990), but it would take until 1996 for paleontologists to confirm that dinosaurs were not reptilian but avian in appearance. The 1993 film explains that dinosaur DNA was combined with that of frogs in order to clone the extinct animals, and that is perhaps how the franchise could explain away their inaccurate appearance in the first movie. However, two Jurᴀssic Park sequels and all three Jurᴀssic World films were made after the confirmation that dinosaurs had feathers, and no changes were made.

It’s logical that the franchise wouldn’t want to change the look of their most famous dinosaurs, especially since it would directly clash with what the public erroneously believed to be true. Jurᴀssic Park is a science fiction story, and was therefore able to play fast and loose with the rules to make a more exciting story. Furthermore, many of the dinosaurs featured in the Jurᴀssic Park sequels were from the original project, and would likely look the same. However, the change in Jurᴀssic World Dominion is also logical because nearly three decades had pᴀssed since the discovery of dinosaur feathers.

The Original Jurᴀssic Park Got Plenty Wrong About Dinosaurs

The Foundation Of The Franchise Is Shaky At Best

In the very same Variety article, paleontologist Jim Kirkland is also cited alongside Brusatte, and he was a lot less lenient with the dinosaur-run-amok franchise. According to Kirkland, author Michael Crichton’s research while writing Jurᴀssic Park was built on incorrect information, and that had a trickle-down effect across the entire series. Crichton used Greg Paul’s book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World for research, which incorrectly lumped together the species Deinonychus antirrhopus into the Velociraptor category. As Kirkland mentioned, they are similar but not the same. In fact, Jurᴀssic Park‘s dastardly Velociraptors are actually closer to Deinonychus.

Real Velociraptors were small, and weren’t the mᴀssive beasts seen in movies. Jurᴀssic Park‘s approach to the Velociraptor was based on another species, the Utahraptor, which had only been named the same year that the film premiered. Utahraptor is the largest of the group, and has the same mᴀssive claws shown in the movie. Unfortunately, Jurᴀssic Park is still wrong in the way that the raptors’ behavior is shown, and Kirkland noted that “They show them a little too smart.“ While the raptors were certainly intelligent for the time, they weren’t capable of the higher thinking shown in the films.

As with the appearance of the dinos, the intelligence of the raptors can also be easily waved away because Jurᴀssic Park is a science fiction franchise. However, the changes made for Jurᴀssic World Dominion are important because they show that even past inaccuracies can be rectified with time. It’s highly unlikely that the films will ever become fully accurate to science, especially since new discoveries are bound to come along and change previously-held beliefs. The Jurᴀssic World films are about entertainment first and foremost, so some changes are inevitable.