Return of ‘Jurassic Park’ and dinosaur resurgence

• The 1993 film Jurassic Park transformed the cultural DNA of dinosaurs, transforming them from textbook curiosities into Hollywood royalty.
• The film’s science was flimsy, with the Velociraptors scaled up to nearly double their actual size and the T. Rex’s vision not based on movement.
• The film also leaned deeper into American military-industrial fantasies, with recent entries featuring weaponised Velociraptors, genetically engineered hybrid killing machines, and a Mosasaur the size of a battleship.
• The “Jurassic Park Effect” turned casual curiosity into career paths, with children imagining dinosaurs as dynamic, intelligent, and graceful creatures.
• The film’s release led to a renaissance in palaeontology, with new dinosaur species being discovered at a rate of around 50.
• The sequels of Jurassic World sting a little as they recycled familiar nostalgic images rather than reflecting what science had since uncovered.
• Jurassic Park introduced the concept of “de-extinction,” which is now a reality where resurrecting lost species is no longer impossible.
• Ben Lamm, founder of Colossal Biosciences, believes the woolly mammoth will walk again by 2028, using ancient DNA, comparative genomics, and somatic cell nuclear transfer.
• The film warned about the dangers of turning nature into a spectacle while becoming the most breathtaking spectacle ever made.
• The plastic toy dinosaurs clutched by children today are in a very real sense made of dinosaurs, moulded into choking hazards and Happy Meal replicas of the creatures.