Before we begin, this is a follow-up to an article written in 2020 on our current understanding of the animals in the Jurassic World series. I recommend checking out that article here first if you haven’t already.
This time we will cover the new prehistoric animals introduced in Jurassic World: Dominion, which had not come out yet at the time of the original article.
Some of the dinosaurs we discussed last time got a bit of a makeover in Dominion. In our previous article, we discussed how bipedal dinosaurs could not hold their hands in a “bunny-handed” position with the palms facing backwards. Instead, their arms were locked with the palms facing inward (as if they were about to clap). For Jurassic World: Dominion, this issue was fixed! Theropods like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus now hold their forearms in the correct position. One exception, however, is Blue the Velociraptor and her parthenogenetic child, Beta, who still retains the incorrect hand posture.
While we are on the subject of Tyrannosaurus, according to behind-the-scenes interviews, the production crew went into ILM’s old files from the 90s and found the original CGI model of T. rex used for the first few films. This was used to bring the current version back on model with those versions, which consequently made them more accurate in the process.
ILM’s original Tyrannosaurus, while taking some liberties, in particular giving the face more character, was actually a pretty close match for a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton for the time. Its overall bulk was also increased from Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, bringing it closer to what we think a real T. rex would look like now. I’m overall quite satisfied with how the animal looks in the film.
Another dinosaur that received a glow-up is Parasaurolophus, which was given an entirely new model. The redesign brings it much more in line with our current understanding, featuring a more accurate body shape, a thicker neck, and pseudo-hoofed forelimbs. However, they are still depicted as primarily bipedal. Hadrosaurs are now believed to have been habitual quadrupeds.
A smaller, but still notable improvement can be seen in Stegosaurus. Despite only a minor appearance in Dominion, it is correctly shown to hold its tail raised off the ground rather than sloping downwards as if to drag, as in the previous two films. It has also been given its beak back, which was inexplicably absent in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Jurassic World: Dominion also introduces several franchise firsts, which we’ll explore in detail in their respective sections. Most notably, feathered dinosaurs finally make an appearance, despite their presence in the fossil record being well-established even before The Lost World was released in 1997. Additionally, the film includes the first prehistoric animals from before the Mesozoic era, and not just one, but two. We’ll start with those.
Dimetrodon
As mentioned above, Dominion introduces animals from before the Mesozoic, the “Age of Dinosaurs/Reptiles,” including species from the evolutionary line eventually leading to mammals. Dimetrodon is by far the most famous of these.
It’s often the only stem-mammal the general public is aware of, and even then, it’s typically assumed to be a reptile or even a dinosaur. It does look quite superficially lizard-like, which contributes to the confusion.
This resemblance stems from its position as a primitive member of the mammal lineage, one that retains a body plan similar to the common ancestor of both mammals and reptiles. That ancestor likely possessed a lizard, or salamander-like body plan with four splayed legs, a stout, belly-dragging body, a large head, and a long tail.
Dimetrodon matched this general shape, except for its most iconic feature, the large sail on its back. There are around a dozen species of Dimetrodon known from the fossil record. We’ll assume the animal depicted in the film is Dimetrodon grandis, the largest and most famous species.
The sail is formed from long, spine-like extensions of the vertebrae, with a webbing of skin stretched between them. In the real Dimetrodon, the sail had a distinctive, almost tetragonal shape, with a sharp drop to a smaller section over the neck.
The Dominion version, by contrast, has a smoother, more circular outline. Research on the surface texture of the elongate vertebrae suggests that the tips may have been exposed, creating a subtle spiny fringe along the sail’s edge.
The head of the film version is another notable issue, having a shape seemingly inspired by the Jurassic Park T. rex as much as the skull of the real animal.
Supposedly, it originally had a head shape better matching the fossil record but Spielberg himself requested it be changed to be more T. rex-like. I am unaware of the origin of this rumor, however. Otherwise, the Dominion variant shows just minor proportional errors.
Lystrosaurus
Dimetrodon isn’t the only stem-mammal introduced in Dominion. We’re also treated to the small dicynodont Lystrosaurus. This animal lived during the Late Permian and Early Triassic periods, just before the rise of dinosaurs, and holds the distinction of being one of the few species to survive the most devastating extinction event in Earth’s history, the End-Permian Extinction (or “The Great Dying,” as it’s sometimes called). Dicynodonts were stout herbivores and more closely related to modern mammals than Dimetrodon.
Stem-mammals aren’t my area of expertise, so I consulted Henry Thomas, a palaeontology master’s student at Idaho State University who has worked on Lystrosaurus specifically, to help with this section.
The most obvious anatomical error is the addition of a large, expanded “frill” at the back of the skull similar to those seen in ceratopsians. Some later dicynodonts (specifically kannemeyeriiforms like Placerias or Argodicynodon) did have expanded parietals and squamosals, though even among those, the degree of flare seen here is extreme. In reality, Lystrosaurus had a low, boxy skull.
Other minor anatomical tweaks include legs that are slightly too long and splayed out, and tusks that point forward rather than downward. Ideally, the tusks should be positioned more vertically, and the overall body posture made more compact. The skin texture is relatively smooth in the film, but mummified specimens of Lystrosaurus published after the production of the film show a bumpier texture.
Interestingly, the depiction of Lystrosaurus with sparse hair-like filaments is speculative but not implausible. While no direct evidence of fur exists for dicynodonts, there are coprolites (fossil feces) from the Permian that seem to include traces of hair alongside dicynodont bones. The inclusion of a few strands for visual flavor doesn’t clash with current understanding of the animal.
In a deleted scene, the animal is shown grabbing and decapitating an Oviraptor with its jaws in a cock-fighting type scenario. Lystrosaurus is modeled in real life as having a relatively fast, snapping bite, suitable for feeding on tough, fibrous plant material, which makes this surprisingly plausible.
Quetzalcoatlus
Here is another animal that has been long overdue for representation in the Jurassic Park franchise. The largest flying animal known to science, with a wingspan of perhaps up to 12 meters. In 2021, a huge new monograph (a comprehensive collection of papers) on Quetzalcoatlus was published, giving an in-depth overview of the known fossils.
Experts are in disagreement on how Quetzalcoatlus lived and fed. It was traditionally pictured with a vulture-like habit, flying great distances to feed on carcasses of giant dinosaurs, or as a marine fisher like some other pterosaurs. In the 2000s, a new hypothesis gained traction, suggesting they instead primarily walked around on the ground, snatching up smaller animals with their long necks and giant, beaked heads. This “terrestrial stalker” model has proved popular in recent years and would certainly fit well in a Jurassic film, if you imagine a human as the smaller animal in question.
However, the 2021 monograph offers another possibility. Based on the depositional environment of the fossils, the authors propose that Quetzalcoatlus may have hunted in shallow water, probing the mud for invertebrates.
In Dominion, we see Quetzalcoatlus dramatically attacking and bringing down a small airplane. It is thought that large pterosaurs were probably not suited for hunting in the air. That said, it’s not hard to imagine a large pterosaur perceiving an aircraft as a territorial threat, and from a cinematic perspective, placing a giant pterosaur alongside an airplane to emphasize its size is a no-brainer.
This brings us to the biggest issue with the pterosaur in Dominion: it is way too big. Fans have attempted to work out its scale based on the model of plane seen in the movie and get a wingspan of somewhere around 25 meters, double the animal’s real wingspan of 10-12m.
Outside of this the design is quite good! The only real issues are the neck being short and the head too small in comparison to the body. Film producers seem to dislike how ungainly giant pterosaurs look with their enormous heads on long necks, as this same issue can also be seen in the Walking With Dinosaurs 3D movie (2013).
The designers also took some liberties with the shape of the beak, but it is nothing a keratin covering couldn’t potentially account for. We know many other pterosaurs had soft-tissue display structures on their heads.
I am a big fan of the colour scheme and overall design seen in the film, and I wish it was used more!
Microceratus
Microceratus actually traces its presence in the franchise all the way back to Michael Crichton’s original novel, where it appeared under the name “Microceratops”. That name, however, had already been assigned to a genus of wasp, so the dinosaur was officially renamed Microceratus in 2008.
It was an early member of the ceratopsian group, best known for its large, horned representatives from the Late Cretaceous. These famous giants, like Triceratops, evolved from small, agile, bipedal ancestors more reminiscent of typical fleet-footed herbivorous dinosaurs. Microceratus was one of these early forms. At this point in ceratopsian evolution, horns had not yet developed, but the characteristic hooked, parrot-like beak was already present, as was an enlarged ridge at the back of the skull that would eventually evolve into the distinctive frill of later species.
In Dominion, Microceratus is depicted with a bizarrely stunted face and overly large eyes, likely an attempt to make it appear cuter or more stylised. However, skulls of early ceratopsians such as Aquilops and Auroraceratops suggest the real animal had a longer, lower-profile skull, with a much subtler frill than what’s shown in the film.
The forelimb correctly shows three elongated digits and a reduced fourth, but the fourth should lack a claw, and there should be a fifth, even smaller digit alongside it. Despite these quirks, the rest of the animal’s design is mostly fine, and I appreciate the vibrant colorations it is given.
Iguanodon
It is almost surprising it has taken the franchise this long to give us one of the original dinosaurs; and for much of history, the most iconic, eventually supplanted as the great American dinosaurs like Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus were discovered.
In Dominion, the animal appears only briefly in the background, very much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. If taken at face value, the film version is not too bad. The skull shape isn’t quite right and the body form is a little too hadrosaur-like, I suspect it was probably modified from the existing Parasaurolophus model. The most glaring inaccuracy is the forelimbs, which are far too small. Iguanodon is famous for its large thumb spike, which was part of an extremely robust and muscular forelimb. While this structure likely evolved for weight-bearing, it could also have served a defensive function, making the real animal more physically imposing than shown here.
However, it’s possible that this design wasn’t actually based on Iguanodon at all. For many years, a smaller, more lightly built English dinosaur was considered a species of Iguanodon, before being reassigned to its own genus: Mantellisaurus. This animal had a smaller skull and more gracile forelimbs, and is often found to be slightly more closely related to hadrosaurs than Iguanodon proper. If we assume that the animal in Dominion is meant to represent Mantellisaurus instead, the design comes notably closer to the real thing.
Dreadnoughtus
Dreadnoughtus, discovered in 2014, is a great choice of animal for Jurassic World. Alongside its charismatic name, it is one of the most completely known of the giant titanosaurs, a group of animals that has gained considerable attention since the original Jurassic Park film. These were a group of sauropods from the Cretaceous, after the heyday of the Jurassic superstars like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, and the largest land animals to ever live on the earth.
When it was first published, Dreadnoughtus was touted as the largest titanosaur. This does not seem to have been the case, as there are more fragmentary species that reached even more colossal sizes. That said, Dreadnoughtus does offer one of the most complete skeletons of a giant titanosaur, estimated at around 26 meters long and possibly as heavy as 49 tonnes.
The version seen in Jurassic World Dominion is quite good, at the very least serviceable as a depiction of this animal. It has the same problems as the other sauropods discussed in the previous article, that being overly thick, elephantine limbs. Titanosaurs in particular had columnar hands that usually lacked the bones that support the claws completely, meaning it was unlikely it had the wide feet and elephant-like nails depicted in the film. The tail may also be proportionally too large, but this is a minor nitpick.
Giganotosaurus
According to palaeontologist Thomas Holtz, people have been asking for Giganotosaurus to appear in a Jurassic film since The Lost World in 1997, so it has been long overdue. In the film it is stated multiple times that it is the “largest predator the world has ever seen”. We’ll get it out of the way, this is not true.
When it was published in the 90s, the narrative was indeed that it was larger than Tyrannosaurus rex, and thus had supplanted it as the largest theropod (the group including all meat-eating dinosaurs and also birds). The truth is that it was in the mix with a handful of other species as the largest theropods in terms of body length, though the fragmentary nature of the remains makes its exact size hard to determine. In either case, the two apex predators depicted in the original Jurassic Park series, T. rex and Spinosaurus, have it beaten for mass and length respectively.
In terms of the overall appearance of the animal in the film, while the general body-shape looks decent for what we know of large carcharodontosaurs, it has been significantly monsterized.The clearest example of this are the giant spines on the animal’s neck and back. This was discussed in depth in the previous article but, we do not know of any structures like this from the fossil record and at that size they would probably require some sort of internal bony support which you would expect to be preserved (for example, crocodile armor is extremely common in the fossil record).
However, if any large theropod was significantly scaly or armored looking, it would probably be an allosauroid like Giganotosaurus. We know for example that Concavenator had large rectangular scales on its tail, as did Allosaurus on the underside of its neck.
More frustrating to me is the treatment of the skull. Carcharodontosaurids have extremely tall and narrow skulls in comparison to tyrannosaurs, and this could have been used as a neat contrast with T. rex. Instead it is given a wide, flat skull like all the other Jurassic World theropods. Giganotosaurus itself also has a uniquely squared-off lower jaw which could have been used for further characterization, giving it a “square jaw” look, but this detail was omitted.
Moros
Moros is a small tyrannosauroid described in 2019 during the development cycle of the film. It is likely writer/director Colin Trevarrow saw news articles on the publication and decided to include it in the film. Similarly to Microceratus and ceratopsians, Moros represents a smaller, faster running member of the tyrannosaur group that would later become giants like T. rex by the end of the Cretaceous.
The proportions of the legs are in fact, quite similar to the fast-running “ostrich dinosaurs” like Gallimimus, suggestive of a pursuit predator. This is also one of the few examples where the animal depicted in the film is much smaller than reality. Shown in the film as a diminutive, cat-sized animal, the actual fossils show a hind leg over a meter long, meaning the whole animal would have been around 1.5m tall at the hip. This puts it closer in size to the Jurassic Park raptors. Of course, it could be that all the animals shown in the film are juveniles, which seems plausible given they are suggested to have been only recently cloned.
Moros is depicted covered in a full coat of downy feathers. This is known from the fossil record to be the case for tyrannosauroids. I discussed in our previous article how skin impressions seem to suggest that large-bodied, Late Cretaceous tyrannosaurs seem to have lost their feathers even though they evolved from feathered ancestors. Being one of those ancestors, Moros would be expected to have a covering of feathers with a simple structure, like those of an emu or kiwi. We see this from beautiful impressions from the early tyrannosaurs Dilong and Yutyrannus.
If it were up to me, I would have used Dilong in place of Moros. It was the first feathered tyrannosaur ever discovered (and so historically significant) and more closely matches the size of the animals seen in the film.
The film’s prologue sequence also shows Tyrannosaurus rex in the Cretaceous with light feathering over its back. While we do have skin impressions showing that parts of T. rex were scaly, none of the current evidence rules out this reconstruction. In fact, some palaeontologists still consider partial feathering more plausible than a fully scaly alternative.
Therizinosaurus
Therizinosaurs are one of the coolest groups of dinosaurs to rise to prominence since the original Jurassic Park, and I’m glad Therizinosaurus is finally getting its due. It was the first member of the group to be discovered, known since the 1940s, but remained an enigma for decades. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, more specimens belonging to this group began to emerge, gradually clarifying their place in the dinosaur family tree.
Unfortunately, the actual animal Therizinosaurus is still known from very few remains, meaning our picture is unclear and has to be based on other related species. New specimens could always come along and render our current depiction inaccurate. This also means we can’t exactly say the Jurassic World version is wrong, just that it does not quite match what we know from other therizinosaurs.
What we do know is that Therizinosaurus had enormous forelimbs with great hooked claws reaching a meter in length. These were probably used as hooks for vegetation used in foraging. More complete species show us that therizinosaurs in general were stout, with large bodies, short hindlimbs with four-toed feet, relatively short tails, long necks and small heads. The overall picture almost resembles a goose trying to be a giant ground sloth.
Therizinosaurus is the largest known member of the group, potentially standing up to 7m tall, which the movie accurately depicts. It is shown with a shorter neck, longer legs and larger head than what we know from other therizinosaurs, making it look somewhat more like a generic theropod. Again, we can’t say for certain this is wrong (and the head-neck ratio isn’t too far from the early therizinosaur Beipiaosaurus) but it isn’t what is known from other members of the group.
In Dominion, Therizinosaurus is portrayed as extremely territorial and aggressive. It’s shown obliterating a deer with its claws and slashing at large carnivores. We have no direct evidence for this behaviour, but I’ve seen some people criticize it on the grounds that Therizinosaurus was a herbivore. Personally, this doesn’t strike me as implausible. Plenty of modern herbivores are highly territorial and aggressive when threatened, or for no reason at all. I quite like the idea of Therizinosaurus acting like a giant angry goose, personally.
Oviraptor
So here we have yet another instance of an animal posing as something else, and also another sincere attempt at a feathered animal. This, like most depictions of Oviraptor in the 20th century, is based on a beautiful complete skeleton going by the specimen number MPC-D 100/42. This specimen has still never been formally described but has been suggested to belong to the related oviraptorid Citipati. It may belong to its own genus however, it has long been awaiting a formal description.
In the opening Cretaceous sequence we see the Oviraptor feeding from the eggs of another dinosaur. This is where its name comes from as it was originally found alongside eggs presumed to be from a Protoceratops. We now know these were actually its own eggs, and it would have been protecting them during some sort of environmental event, likely a sandstorm. Multiple different specimens of oviraptoridae have now been found preserved in this way. So, it is unfortunate we have named a group of animals “egg thieves” when they seem to have actually been quite devoted parents.
The appearance of this animal in Jurassic World Dominion (appearing only in the extended edition) is actually not bad at all. Our knowledge of oviraptor life appearance mostly comes from several beautifully preserved fossils of Caudipteryx and Incisivosaurus from the early Cretaceous. As discussed in the dromaeosaurid section, we also know that oviraptorosaurs had wings on their arms, though smaller and less well-developed than those of dromaeosaurids and early birds.
They also have large fans of feathers on the ends of their tails, likely used as mating display structures.
The wings seem to have possessed several functions, as well as likely being used for display, they were used for covering the eggs whilst nesting, and would have served as useful aids when running at high speed. These functions are all seen in ostriches today.
Atrociraptor and Pyroraptor
For the entire history of the franchise so far “Velociraptor” (aka. Deinonychus, see our previous article) has been the sole representation of the “raptor” dinosaurs in the family dromaeosauridae. This changed with Dominion with not one, but two new members being introduced. These are Atrociraptor and Pyroraptor, two dromaeosaurids from the Late Cretaceous of Canada and France respectively. Both of these animals are problematic in that they are known from extremely fragmentary remains, which makes judging their appearance a difficult task. Atrociraptor is known from only the jaws, while Pyroraptor is a barely diagnosable mix of bone scraps, most notably being some foot bones including the iconic raptorial “killing claw”. There is little doubt in my mind these two genera were chosen for their charismatic, marketable names and nothing more.
We will tackle Atrociraptor first as there is less to say here. The animal is depicted more-or-less the same as the franchise’s existing Velociraptor design, only really distinguished by a boxier head – which is appropriate, the real preserved jaws of Atrociraptor are much shorter and taller than Deinonychus or Velociraptor especially. Much like discussed last time for Velociraptor, the animal should be smaller (though as we only have one specimen we don’t have a good idea of how big they could get) and covered in feathers. Like the other animals in Dominion, they did at least correct the posture of the hands this time around. The animals are depicted as much more brutish than the intelligent Velociraptor. Our knowledge of extinct dinosaur intelligence isn’t specific enough that we can make this claim one way or another, both were probably intelligent by general animal standards.
There is more to say about the Pyroraptor as it is the first time a dromaeosaur has been properly depicted with feathers in the franchise. The male Velociraptor in Jurassic Park III was shown to have small quills on the back of the neck, but this is not adequate. Given the fossils of Pyroraptor are little more than scraps, we’ll instead judge the depiction of feathers relative to what we know of real dromaeosaurids.
We have quite a few fossils of dromaeosaurids with impressions of feathers preserved on their bodies. I believe it is still somewhat of a misconception among the public (even those that accept feathered dinosaurs) that the idea is still theoretical based on their relationship to birds. This is not the case, we have hundreds of specimens from dozens of species with feathers preserved in the rock alongside the skeletons. This is only possible in rare sites where preservation conditions are just right, typically this means rapid burial in fine-grained sediments.
From the specimens we have so far, there are two flavors of feathers in dromaeosaurids, the very small species that seem to have been capable of some kind of primitive flight (eg. Microraptor, Wulong, Changyuraptor) and have aerodynamic wing feathers and large secondary “wings” on their hind legs, and the larger dromaeosaurids that do still retain wings (eg. Tianyuraptor, Zhenyuanlong) but seem to have downier body feathers and so far do not preserve wing feathers on their hind legs (eg. Sinornithosaurus, Daurlong).
This latter group would be the group you’d expect Atrociraptor and Velociraptor to fall in, and indeed Velociraptor preserves the quill-knobs on the arm that would have supported the wing feathers in life.
The remains we have of Pyroraptor indicate a small animal, so it is possible it fell in the former category, but due to its fragmentary nature, its exact relationships are unclear. It may even belong to the unenlaginae, a subfamily of dromaeosaurids with adaptations for fishing (something like a raptor version of a heron).
In the film, Pyroraptor is depicted in the larger size category (in fact, almost identical in size to real-life Deinonychus) so we’ll judge it based on dromaeosaurs as a whole. It is shown to have its whole body and tail covered in short body feathers with longer display feathers down the length of its tail and on its neck. This is all consistent with what is seen in the fossils, tail fans seem to have been standard in the dinosaurs closest to birds. Microraptor, Daurlong and Tianyuraptor both preserve long feathers on the back of the neck. The face and legs are shown as mostly bare in the film’s Pyroraptor. Multiple specimens preserve feathers in both these areas, but their potential loss in some species is extremely plausible to me, as modern birds show bare faces and legs all the time. This was likely just as variable in extinct feathered dinosaurs. As mentioned before, larger species with preserved feathers have so far not revealed preserved feathers on the legs.
Finally the wings. The film does an admirable job of depicting accurately large wing feathers on its Pyroraptor, which seems to have been the case for the vast majority of oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurids and troodontids (relatives of dromaeosaurids with running adaptations). Unfortunately it falls into a common trap of not having the wing feathers attach correctly to the fingers – having the full hand free and mobile. Modern birds have primary feathers (the main and outermost wing feathers) attached to their hand, and fossils indicate their dinosaurian ancestors were no different. Overall I think they did a reasonable job, and the general public are not going to notice small errors like the attachment of the primary feathers so this is absolutely a win in my book, and a big step forwards.
Behaviorally, the Pyroraptor is also shown diving and swimming under the ice, something like a giant cormorant. While there were aberrant dromaeosaurids that may have been adapted for this type of behavior (and Pyroraptor was possibly related to them), the morphology depicted in the film is of a standard dromaeosaur for which this is extremely unlikely and even unrealistic. I find this unfortunate because a tense scene with the animal over cracking ice could have easily been done without twisting reality like this (or they could have leaned into it being related to the more aquatic-adapted dromaeosaurids).
Jurassic World Dinosaurs in the Modern Era
The last article mentioned the highs and lows of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs in the franchise. We must keep in mind that paleontology progresses over time. This can skew how we look at the critters featured in the films.
The Cretaceous Prologue was an interesting foray into showcasing accurate dinosaurs. Still, it fell a bit short with many creatures close but just missing the mark. Suffice it to say, mixing species from different habitats and time periods offended some fans.
Ultimately, Jurassic World: Dominion achieved a healthy amount of accuracy by Hollywood standards. We got to see fully-feathered dinosaurs, updates to mistakes from prior films, and the introduction of many new creatures. Only time will tell if Jurassic World Rebirth continues to showcase more credible prehistoric animals.
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