Quarantine entry #109 - July 8

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I planned to finish talking about Dougal Dixon’s initial speculative zoology trilogy today, but given all the excitement that arose about the dilophosaurus, let us talk about this dinosaur instead.

Why is the dilophosaurus so famous? Because it appeared in the very first JP film, and by now ‘everybody knows’ that its’ depiction there was wrong. However, what ‘everyone’ seems to miss here is how the movie differed from the novel in this aspect, as well as the ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’ docu-film as well.

First, about Mr. Crichton’s ‘true’ dilophosaurus. In the JP novel, it was bigger and more formidable than its’ movie counterpart was, plus it was brighter – with a bright red crest and a spotted body, (reminiscent of the modern leopard, just as the ‘raptor’/velociraptor/Deinonychus was reminiscent of the modern tiger). Moreover, while it did take a backseat to the novel’s raptors and rexes, it was still a formidable dinosaur…while in the movies the dilophosaurus was more of a one-time wonder instead, an analogue of a random wandering monster in the various RPGs.

This brings us to ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’, a 2001 documentary movie, made by the Discovery channel, as a responsa to BBC’s ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ mini-series. Whether or not it was an appropriate and a proportionate response is another thing, but right now, we are talking about the dilophosaurus instead. There, it had appeared in the movie’s Early Jurassic segment, alongside Anchisaurus, a prosauropod dinosaur, and syntarsus, another theropod carnivore.

Let us elaborate. First, the segment itself was about the saurischian dinosaurs, the carnivorous theropods, and the herbivorous sauropodomorphs – prosauropods and sauropods. While a theropod and a sauropod are built very differently, a prosauropod and a theropod share enough common features to establish a common evolutionary relationship. That said, the evolutionary/taxonomic relationship between the prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs is not as straightforward as everyone assumed that it was in the late 20^th century/the early 2000s – i.e., the two groups were cousins, not an ancestor and a descendant, as it was once assumed.

…Getting back to the theropods, the dilophosaurus in that film was much larger and formidable than it was in the JP movie – it was bigger and stronger than the other theropods there, and it had powerful jaws, sharp claws, and strong forelimbs to bring down its prey – the prosauropod Anchisaurus, even though the latter tried to fight back. There was also some inter-species combat too, after that, and given the fact that that version of dilophosaurus had almost a dragon-, or a crocodile-like appearance, this brings us back to the Nat Geo article. To wit, it claims that everything that we knew about dilophosaurus is wrong. To that, I reply – no, we did not. We just ignored it, because we liked JP better than real life because reasons. In RL, the dilophosaurus was noticeably much more formidable than in the JP movie…and it probably was not venomous either, though the evolution of venom in vertebrate animals is a separate story entirely and we’ll leave it along for now – let’s just assume that dilophosaurus probably wasn’t venomous and leave it be.

…The point is that, again, yes, the JP movie did distort the real-life dilophosaurus into something else, something false, but at the same time, by 2001, plenty of people, (especially among the scientists) knew that, and in the U.S., they actually tried to fix the dilophosaurus’ image in the ‘WDRA’ film – which became forgotten quickly enough in the next 19-20 years. Ergo, it is ‘our’, i.e., the public’s, fault as well, that dilophosaurus’ image became so distorted in the last 19-20 years…

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!