Jurassic World, Part 2: Is the Game Better Than the Movie? and I-Rex VS Mewtwo.

“…here we are, hunter-gatherers wandering among the wreckage of our own making, and evolved to play with evolution.” - George Gessert, “Why I Breed Plants.”

So, I mentioned last section that I’ve been playing Jurassic World: the Game. I love this game to death, and actually think it’s better than the movie. 

I know, I know: I speak madness, this is Sparta, GET REKT. Hear me out. 

One of the things I really hated about the movie was how forced a lot of the things felt. For a few examples: “FAMILY IS THE BEST THING EVER EVEN THOUGH I’M AT A DIVORCE HEARING,” “Remember that one time we made out? Yeah, we’re a couple, now,” “WE’RE KIDS LET’S BE REBELLIOUS AND STUPID!” (more on this later), “weaponize all the things” (more on this later, too), and, most importantly, “TAKE THAT, YOU GENETIC FREAK! Whaddya mean, ‘I’m just as spliced?!’” 

That last one is not only the main point of this article, but also one of the main points of Jurassic Park as a whole: how far can science go before its wax wings melt? 

This is where the game really stands out. Aside from more character development and more dinosaurs overall, I have to mention how the designs really made the whole point about wax wings better than the movie. It did that mostly by having more dinosaurs, allowing us to interact with said dinosaurs, and doing slightly different things with them. 

For example, in the movie, we see raptor training. Vic Hoskins, a person working with both InGen and the military, mentions weaponizing the raptors, suggesting them as mine-sniffing dogs with talons among other things. Hoskins also suggests selectively breeding raptors for loyal strains. In the end, the training/conditioning wins out, but here’s the kicker: there is nothing wrong with selective breeding, especially for loyalty/docility. What’s wrong, really, is the military’s intent for such a thing. 

You do realize he was selectively-bred, right? 

Get this: the domestication of the dog predates the invention of the wheel. Dogs have been confirmed man’s best friend since 15,000 BCE; the wheel was invented around 3,500 BCE. It has been proven, multiple times, that not only are dogs and wolves the same species, but that all you have to do to make a wolf into a dog is select the brood for tameness. In foxes, this took only four generations; in wolves, with how similar their social structure is to that of humans, it may have taken even fewer than that. For the record, feral dogs have reverted almost entirely into wolves, yes. They’re called dingoes. 

Imagine doing that with raptors. Wouldn’t that be AWESOME? Since this type of breeding also creates new patterns (specifically piebaldism - irregular white patches on a creature’s coat), we could have a variety of raptors tailored to the demands of anybody with the time and money for a pet raptor! Want one with a nifty stripe like Blue? You got it. An all-white one? Doable. Orange? Sure, why not! 

And y’know what? The game actually encourages this. 

Image from the JW Wikia, but I have one, too. 

JW the Game has an arena function. In order to get stronger dinos, you have to fuse two of them together. The results lead to cleaner patterns and brighter colors, similar to the selectively-bred Okeetee corn snakes (they are not a heritable morph - they are “cleaned” wild-colored corn snakes). The tradeoff is camouflage for a pattern that rakes in the dough. All you have to do is mate/evolve your dinosaurs. It’s no worse than trying to select for, say, deeper purple in albino reticulated pythons, along with a good temperament. Always go for temperament. 

“But that’s unnatural!” 

No, no it isn’t. Allow me to elaborate on why it is perfectly fine using “fuck” in every sentence with several different meanings. 

Nature does not fucking care what humans do to its creatures. As long as things are fucking and their offspring continue to fuck, the species survives. Mother Nature is a fucking bitch; as long as you fuck and your offspring can fuck, you win. It doesn’t matter if a fucking wolf does it with a fucking dog- humans are the ones who care. As far as the wolfdog is concerned, it is still Canis fucking lupus, and can still fuck either of its parents while producing offspring that can fuck. That is how animals fucking win. That is all that fucking matters to nature: fucking. 

What is unnatural is that male dinosaurs aren’t fucking acknowledged. We don’t even know if there’s a fucking stud, who, by the way, must be doing a lot of fucking if he exists. If anything, preventing the dinosaurs from fucking naturally like that is more unnatural than selectively breeding them. At least with selective breeding, there is fucking going on. 

I’m done with the F-bombs, now. Hopefully, they make the point. Your move, Catcher in the Rye. 

The problem: even selective breeding, an art as old as humankind, has very bad connotations, nowadays. PETA has made sure that selective breeding is linked with puppy mills, cross-eyed white tigers, and generally illegal activities. This is not to say that such things don’t happen at all with inbreeding, or that puppy mills are A-OK, but it is still an art almost as old as humanity itself, and will not go away. Generally speaking, humans move forward with their inventions, not backwards. This applies to breeding, too; for example, Siamese cats have had the exact same issues with crossed eyes as white tigers in the past (it’s the same type of albinism, even), but selective breeding, including outcrosses, overcame that hurdle. We’re generally pretty good at picking out traits we like and accentuating them without causing too much damage - i.e. making it so that the organisms can’t fuck. 

Refer back to the quote we opened with: we have evolved to play with evolution. Selective breeding is selecting for traits we like, rather than being stronger or faster. Considering that humans can be treated as their own extinction event, perhaps it’s about time we looked at selective breeding as its own, bizarre adaptation: a genetic response to a new environment. In this case, that new environment is us. 

So, again, let’s loop back to something I said in the beginning: part of the point of Jurassic Park is a sort of “wax wings of Icarus - don’t fly too close to the sun/play God” analogue. While we could argue that Indominus rex makes the point pretty clear by herself, might the game actually make it better? 

A liger, bred for its skills in AWESOME. 

Hybrids, in general, are a sort of breaking point for humans as far as science is concerned. You can mate a lion and a tiger, for example, making a liger, but the liger is going to have a few problems. For one, they suffer a lot of the same issues as large dog breeds; because the growth inhibition gene in lionesses is not at all present in ligers, they grow huge, to the point where their hearts literally cannot support them. Female ligers can indeed reproduce, but males are almost certainly sterile. Sterility happens rather frequently in hybrids, and remember our golden rule: Fuck. Once you can’t reproduce well, Nature herself flips you off as a species. This isn’t even touching sci-fi splicing; sometimes, crossing two things is enough to make Nature go “yeah, NO.” (Also, to preemptively cut off any anti-gay stuff? This has to happen to an entire species, and nature always has a few individuals that won't pass on their genes.) 

Before I go into how JW: the Game shows this better than the movie, I’d like to talk about Mewtwo. 

Scan from Bulbapedia. Should've just used mine. 

For those of you who do not know who or what Mewtwo is, you’re either really old or are not from this planet. I will nonetheless explain. 

Mewtwo is a Pokemon created from a single bit of DNA from Mew, said to be the progenitor of all Pokemon-kind, and Arceus knows what else. In its PokeDex entries, it is said to have been created by a scientist “after years of horrific gene splicing and DNA-engineering experiments.” Things like having the “most savage heart among Pokemon” and thinking only of combat also come up repeatedly. And yet…

…there are a few reasons that people are not piss-shit terrified of Mewtwo. No, if anything, Mewtwo is regarded as the only 100% badass Pokemon - even by people who are not fans of Pokemon. A lot of this has to do with how Mewtwo was softened as a character for the first Pokemon movie; watch the Japanese movie and/or the dubbed “Birth of Mewtwo,” and see exactly how anthropomorphized and softened the “most savage heart” became. 

Mewtwo was designed, from an artistic standpoint, to be a freak; like, seriously, that neck tube looks wrong. So was Indominus rex. Both are intelligent, cold-hearted, ruthless in battle, and meant to look like bastardizations of nature. They nonetheless are marketable badasses. 

Is it any wonder that this thing got the most merch? 

(Also, you aren’t marketing the hell out of something being a blend of T-Rex and raptor…why? “Part T-Rex. Part raptor. ALL AWESOME.” Also also, no, albinos are not scary; if anything, white and melanistic animals make things even more of an attraction! (See also: white tigers, black “panthers,” and NOLA’s white alligator.) Now fire your entire marketing department and anyone who kept THOSE TWO GENES a secret. The rest…people won’t care after that, trust me.) 

What the movie didn’t tell us was that there were more fused dinosaurs besides Indominus. Some of them, like the Stegoceratops, also got toys, despite not being in the movie. Others, though… 

This is Koolasaurus, the only fused amphibian in the game, but I'm pretty sure Pepe the frog has more reasons to live. 

I’m gonna throw it out there that the JW game doesn’t do enough with pterosaurs (or amphibians, for that matter). No long-tailed pterosaurs until the Dimorphodon update really stunted the potential for a giant, beaky wyvern-splicer. The fused monster (yes, only one fused pterosaur) for them simply looks like…nothing compared to the phoenixian Lv. 40’s until it fully evolves. All splicers start out with this pink-grey mush color to them, while the selectively-bred parent species look like something out of Avatar. It’s a kinda-dinosaur molded out of clay versus a living work of modern art. 

But oh, no. You look at the other two crosses of what should be badass dinosaurs, and things start looking so much worse. 

I'll give you the crack, okay? By the way, I don't own any of these caps because I'm not cool enough. 

I am, of course, talking about the Spinoraptor and Carnoraptor. One of these barely has feathers and has huge, pink, bulging eyes with tiny pupils, like some sort of dinosaur drug addict. The other has the cool horns of a Carnotaurus…stunted into little demonic nubs, along with wrinkly skin like on a shrunken head and black, beady eyes. If Indominus was not enough of an indication that insane splicing was not the answer, oh my gods, look at her creepy as hell siblings. 

Indominus kinda beat us over the head with “this is WRONG” while looking completely badass - just like Mewtwo. Her possessed siblings do so in a much more subtle and chilling manner. That is art. 

Now that's more like it! 

Granted, the evolved hybrids look a lot cooler. The gray mush of Tropeogopterus becomes just as bold as any other pterosaur, and even if Carnoraptor and Koolasaurus look just as freaky as before, it’s an improvement over the color gray. Evolve anything but Indominus, and it looks decent (red stripes and spikes...yawn). So, what else does the game do that the movie doesn’t? 

Pretty much just generic kids in the movie. Not so in the game. 

At this point, I’m going to bring up the two kids. Zach, the older brother, is a techie; he reminds me a lot of my (younger) nephew in that he’s concerned about things regarding technology, and is the type of kid who freaks when a place has no cell phone reception (which I think he got from his mom, but I digress). Gray, the younger kid, is into things like science and math, and is just giddy to see dinosaurs and be out in nature. Although these sides of these characters were probably in the movie on some level, I think one exchange really hammers in the key difference between the two: 

Zach: This is awful! There’s no cell phone reception! 

Gray: I know, isn’t it great? 

That bit, right there, cements these two as characters. (It also proves that the people who made Gray’s character really don’t know anything about how modern kids act, but more on that later.)  It’s not verbatim, but the exchange really stuck out. Zach’s character is consistently tech-oriented, while Gray is an absolute geek about the natural world. The movie focuses on the sibling relationship between these two, which, while realistic, feels cheap and forced in places (“Y U NO BOND WITH CLAIRE?!”). They could’ve had something more interesting and insightful if they had given the two more traits (or emphasized extant traits) beyond “they’re brothers; the younger kid likes dinosaurs, older brother is borderline stupid and generally a rebellious teenager.” 

I would like to note that the Wikia says absolutely nothing about Zach’s character and a lot about Gray’s character. I’ll get into why this matters in a bit. 

While it wasn’t necessarily crystalline in the movie, in the game, these kids are really, really symbolic in a way that doesn’t beat you over the head…as much as the movie did in spots with different characters. Look at that dialogue I pasted up there, and the purpose of these two siblings suddenly becomes clear: Zach is obsessed with technology and would probably die without his phone, while Gray is a junior paleontologist. These two are extreme representations of nature VS technology, with Gray being nature boy and Zach being glued to his phone. Even their names hint at this if you squint. 

Now, mind, they are still characters. They are also still older and younger siblings. For example, the Wikia describes Gray as a little bit hyper, and getting on Zach’s nerves from time to time. Zach nonetheless tries to keep a reign on his little brother, even if he has a rebellious side himself. 

Um, question: why not switch these two? I don’t really object to the younger sibling being aligned with nature and the elder being concerned with his iPhone, but symbolism aside, which is more realistic? Drawing from my own relatives, I know the opposite from experience: the older brother is more concerned with math and science and is a Boy Scout, and the younger one wants his tablet PC, his dad’s phone, or really, any screen to stare at and tap on. Kids these days are growing up with devices that their older siblings never encountered; it would make a lot of sense for a kid in that day and age to be tired of dinosaurs, which have been “normal” for much of his life, while the older sibling is more concerned with not only the names, but the processes that created them to begin with, as well as the older Jurassic Park. It would also make more sense for the younger sibling to be more hyperactive not just because he's a little kid, but because he’s grown up in a world that encourages technological ADD (which I have STRONGLY experienced with a friend’s little brother). 

Now, here’s why they didn’t do that: Gray is not only symbolic of nature, but also of the Jurassic Park fanbase. Really into dinosaurs? Check. Kinda knows when things are about to go wrong, sort of like an animal sense? Check. Knows stuff about the old park? Oho, checkaroonie. Again, though - wouldn’t this make more sense on the older brother? 

The world as most humans know it. 

Maybe, maybe not. It’s a sad fact of American culture that adults usually aren’t into nature. The mature world of man is not a world of wild animals  - it’s a world of metal and people on their phones on a constant basis. In the adult mind, humans have exceeded nature already, and don’t really see it as a threat. People who really like animals tend to be more in-tune with their inner child, so I can see why the writers did what they did with these characters. 

In short: while I don’t entirely agree with the positions of younger and elder siblings, I respect the creators’ choices. It just could have been more powerful if this had been fleshed out, and maybe switched. I do mean “fleshed out” and not “beaten into our skulls,” the latter of which ironically makes things less effective. 

In the end, the two siblings have to settle their differences and work things out in order to avoid being eaten by Mewtwosaurus. The humans eventually sic the natural (but still very spliced) dinosaurs on the freak they have created, and win out by playing off of both conditioning and natural behavior. In other words, a compromise between tech and nature was reached. We've evolved to play with evolution, but that doesn't mean we control it entirely, nor does it mean that we won't make icky-looking mistakes. 

While the movie does make the point of wax wings on its own, it feels like the game does it better. It doesn’t beat you over the head, lets you interact more with the dinosaurs than humans we are supposed to like (even then, Blue the raptor is the best character in the movie), and actually teaches you, the player, more things than the movie ever did without you realizing it. Nostalgia Critic was completely right in that the movie should maybe have been more about cool dinosaurs doing cool dinosaur things than about forced stereotypes, whether girls can ever have it all or not, and not-at-all subtle callbacks to the first movie (Jaws was very cleverly inserted, though). It’s still worth seeing, so go ahead and give it a watch - and then go play the game on your tablet or phone. If nothing else, it’s a fitting complement to a decent flick. 

Welcome to Jurassic World (Part 1): Stop Hating on Kermit!

e been playing waaaaay too much Jurassic World: the Game. No, that isn’t the reason I haven’t updated anything. That, well, I might be moving my blog to Tumblr, or at least another account. We’ll see, but it's pretty likely that this will be a massive, three-part "grand finale" of sorts. 

Anyways. Jurassic World. Fun ride of a movie, which is amusingly about an amusement park. I want to take a D-Rex home. Working on it in the game. D-Rex should have looked more freakish if they put cuttlefish in there - c’mon, at least give us the neat W-eye! My general thoughts on the movie will get their own blurb later. Also, for whatever reason, JW and JP both hate frogs, even though it’s probably entirely unwarranted. 

Why? Because, from the get-go, dinosaurs could reproduce without a male. 

Who's the man in this, again? 

Read that sentence again. 

Read that sentence three times if you have to. Let it sink into your brain: even without as much genetic meddling that Jurassic Park had, from the get-go, the potential for every dinosaur on the island to reproduce asexually, and then sexually. 

Now, here’s my disclaimer: Crichton was largely using the frogs for genetic freak purposes. The whole point of Jurassic Park was that, maybe, there are some buttons science shouldn’t push. The frogs are the bad guys for art rather than any logical reason. I realize people back then didn’t know precisely how close birds were to dinosaurs, but there’s still no reason to use frogs other than HERPDERP SCIENCE EFFED UP. Use lizards. Or chickens. Science can get those very easily. 

So, just how is this possible, anyways? What could prompt natural dinosaurs to reproduce without a male? It’s all genetic…as nature intended?! 

I’m tempted to assume that most people reading this have taken basic biology in high school, sex ed, or both. All you really need to know for this is that human (and other mammal) females have XX sex chromosomes, and males have XY. Women are the only sex that could possibly reproduce without a male, but in mammals, that’s pretty much unheard of, and all of the offspring would be female clones of the mother. 

That is not the case with the rest of non-mammals. 

For many other creatures, including everything from butterflies (yes, butterflies are more like birds in this regard), to lobsters, to chickens, sex is determined by a system called “ZW.” What this means is that the males are ZZ (no, not ZZ Top, but if that helps you remember, go for it) and the females are ZW. 

That thing, with the females having two different letters (heterozygous), changes everything. Parthenogenesis, AKA “virgin birth” if you’re not a fan of Greek, occurs with a female egg effectively impregnating itself. It has been known to occur in lizards (most notably whiptail lizards, who are only female, and Komodo dragons), snakes (boas, Burms, and Brahminy blind snakes - again, that last one is only female) and a special breed of turkey literally bred because people thought this parthenogenesis thing was just too darn cool. No, chickens laying eggs by themselves doesn’t count; the eggs you buy at the grocery store are effectively chicken periods. Enjoy your Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich! 

ZW animals can produce parthenogenically by either all-out cloning or half-cloning. A full clone is exactly that: a perfect clone of the mother. The half-cloning, however, includes only half of mom’s genes - twice over. For ZW, that means one letter gets repeated. 

Umm...girls? Your lesbian sex is legal, now. Everywhere. 

Remember what’s special about ZW: the male has ZZ. Through half-cloning, a mother lizard can create an entire clutch of males. They’re almost identical to her in every way except sex. Then, they can just go ahead and do it again with mom, or maybe even the odd WW females. ZZ Top will always be male. I’m sure they’re thrilled to be in a lesson about dinosaur sex. 

Parthenogenesis gets less frequent down the evolutionary “line,” but it’s not like dinosaurs grew out of it. If you must make evolution linear, dinosaurs are like a link between reptiles and birds. We’ll get to crocodiles; for now, well, birds are capable of it, too. 

BUT…they’re not as good at it. 

Parthenogenesis in birds usually results in duds. Either the eggs aren’t quite fertile, embryos die early, or the offspring have reduced fertility. An exception occurs in turkeys, who, for reasons not entirely clear, have mastered the art of giving birth without a dad. These are all ZZ males, who have then been rebred to virgin-birthing females in order to create a more stable strain, and eventually a breed. These ZZ Toms (the joke will not die as I write it!) are almost indistinguishable from your average turkey. 

If half-female, half-male chickens are possible...imagine a raptor like that. 

This is just the tip of the genetic weirdness iceberg possible without the frog. ZW is also capable of the weird chimerism called “bilateral gynandromorphy,” in which individuals are literally half female and half male. (XY can also do this, but very rarely.) Also, what if, like crocodilians (read: other archosaurs) dinosaurs had temperature-determined sex determination? I realize Crichton was using the frogs for freak’s sake, but the poor frog seems to be the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in that world. Give other animals a chance. 

Newsflash: Proteins and Dinosaurs with Funny Names!

So, I know a few people taking biology, organic chemistry, and other such things. It came up that the only reasons a Classics degree like mine was good were 1. it stokes your imagination like crazy and 2. it helps you name things for science. This led to a discussion about how things are named, including the rather bizarre Dracorex hogwartsia.

Dracorex hogwartsia was an herbivorous pachycephalosaur  ("thick-headed" dinosaurs). Like a certain other pachy who will definitely be getting some limelight this Halloween, it was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota.

Indeed, this dinosaur does look a fair bit like a dragon. The dome found on most pachies is reduced in Dracorex, leading to a very dragonlike skull. Primeval took advantage of the similarity: in one episode, a knight and a "dragon" crossed a time gap; they went so far as to give the Dracorex little fins, furthering the "dragon" idea.

But "hogwartsia?" Really, science? Forgive my use of internet slang, but "LOL."J.K. Rowling was, of course, thrilled to have a dinosaur name inspired by her work. Warning: people who know Latin tend to know science, and Rowling knows helluva lot of Latin.

Dracorex's odd pseudo-Latin is nothing compared to what some scientists have done with proteins, however. No matter how many pop culture references are named in dinosaurs, they cannot compete with how scientists have named genes and proteins lately. There have been a number of proteins named after video games or video game characters, proving just how nerdy scientists really are.

This is fanart. Not mine, just adorable.

Hey, weren't the new Pokemon games released this month? Why haven't I done anything on Pikachurin - the electric protein named after the most iconic Pokemon in existence? (There was also a carcinogenic gene that Nintendo sued over - this is not that gene.)

Pikachurin is a protein that helps the perception of light in mammalian eyes. Thisprotein is also known by the equally funny-sounding name EGFLAM ("EGF-like, fibronectin type-III and laminin G-like domain-containing protein")- we'll stick with Pikachu, thanks. It was named after Pikachu because it moved "lightning fast" and conducted electricity from the eyes to the brain. It's pretty much necessary for the human eye to function. Not a bad thing to name after a colorful electric rodent, although I'm sure the protein being discovered in Osaka, Japan had something to do with it.

Pikachu was not the first video game mascot to get his own protein. That honor goes to the sonic hedgehog protein. It is one of three genes in the "hedgehog" protein channel, with the other two being "desert hedgehog" and "Indian hedgehog." Sonic is the best studied, and with good reason: this protein has an impact on anything from brain development to the growth of digits and limbs. It's responsible for limb regulation in cetaceans, so if you ever see a dolphin with unearthly feet near the base of its tail, blame Sonic for that.

There have been some objections to naming a gene "sonic hedgehog," namely that it removes some of the sobriety that science is so well-known for. Me? I think once you've named a protein channel "hedgehog," you've already opened yourself to jokes. It's just a slippery slope like that.

Creature Feature: Amargasaurus

Despite the strange subconscious connection between dragons and snakes, there is a very strong idea that dragons were either the last few remaining dinosaurs or based off of dinosaur bones. It's a valid theory to explain where the idea of dragons (and gryphons!) came from, even if snakes share a loooot of symbolism in the collective subconscious as guardian serpents. After all, who's to say that some dinosaurs didn't survive into medieval times? Then, well, humans were dicks and killed off the dinosaurs that weren't from the Congo. We're probably the meanest species ever, and wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars are a thing.

Anyways, dragons.

This is an Amargasaurus. It was found in La Amarga Arroyo, Argentina. The name simply refers to the area in which it was found. Like all sauropods, it was an herbivore, and lived in the Cretaceous Period with 95% of the other popular dinosaurs. It was relatively small, being only 30 feet (~10 meters) long. Yes, "as long as a school bus" is indeed small by sauropod standards.

Amargasaurus is probably the dinosaur that looks the most like a dragon. The long neck. The spikes. Since this is a sauropod we're talking about, it might even have given rise to lake/river monsters with only the head and tail visible beneath the water. It would indeed have looked like a bizarre giant snake. If there is any dinosaur that screams "dragon," it's Amargasaurus.

Disclaimer: May not be correct.

As of this entry, Amargasaurus is the only sauropod to ever flaunt spikes. Nobody knows what these neck and back spikes were for. A while back, it was popular to depict Amargasaurus with a sail spanning those spikes; this has since gone out of fashion, making it the most boss-looking longneck ever instead. Other theories include a mating display and, well, defense. Spikes are quite the fitting way to protect the most vulnerable part on a sauropod's body, no?

Despite looking a loooot like a Western dragon without the wings, Amargasaurus hasn't had very much screentime. Sure, it pops up in Fossil Fighters and Jurassic Park games, but that's about it. It suffers from the same syndrome all duckbills that aren't Parasaurolophus and all pterosaurs that aren't Pteranodon do: it doesn't fit the "modern analogy" mold and doesn't look a damn thing like the Apatosaurus or Brachiosaurus, AKA the "default" sauropods. It's also not as big as either of those two sauropods, making it possibly the most underrated sauropod ever. Try calling it a dragon; people will totally buy it.

Creature Feature: Lambeosaurus.

It seems that filmmakers have decided on a "set" of dinosaurs that must always make it into every dinosaur movie ever. T-Rex is pretty much a given. Triceratops is also popular. If there is a pterosaur, and there usually is, it's either a Pteranodon or some bastardization thereof. Miscellaneous herbivores include Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, with Brachiosaurus being almost too distinct to be generic. They also usually include this one:

For those of you wondering what this bizarre-looking creature is, it's called a Parasaurolophus and is one of the many duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) out there. It seems to have become the "default" duckbill. I'm not quite sure what "modern parallel" people see in Parasaurolophus and other hadrosaurs (ancient water buffalo?), but I digress. Point is, as with pterosaurs, there's always that one hadrosaur that popular culture falls back on.

Maybe it's about time we looked at some of the other hadrosaurs on this blog, yes?

Lambeosaurus probably should be the strange duckbill everybody knows. It has a very good fossil record from Canada, Montana, and Baja California. There is some debate over exactly how many species there are in the genus, but specimens are nonetheless plentiful. It is named for the guy who discovered the first few fossils, Lawrence Lambe. Like most of the cool dinosaurs, it is from the Late Cretaceous. It is also the largest hadrosaur, getting up to 50 feet long from head to tail.

As with many hadrosaurs, the most distinguishing feature about Lambeosaurus was its crest. This crest was hatchet-shaped, making the dinosaur look like a cassowary and a unicorn at the same time.  It's hard to get more awesome than that, yet here hadrosaurs are stuck with the goofy Parasaurolophus as their representative. Kinda sad, really.

Nobody is 100% sure what these crests were for. Snorkels and salt glands are also on the table. Maybe they could even make noise; again, people love shilling Parasaurolophus for this ("it's a dinosaur with a built-in trumpet!"). There is adequate evidence that hearing and sight were a Lambeosaurus's strongest senses, so all of the above are possible. We've never seen hadrosaurs in action, or in color, for that matter, so the purpose(s) of these crests will remain a mystery until we invent time machines.

I cold get into more about what makes a hadrosaur a hadrosaur, but that is best saved for another time. Hell, I should just make a "Hadrosaur Week." They're really rather interesting, albeit not my favorite dinosaurs.

Bio-Art: Case Study- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate.

You knew we would get to Monster Hunter at some point. It's not quite as scientific as most of the other bio-art entries, and such things might eventually merit a blog of their own, but a lot of the monsters in this game are exactly what this blog is trying to encourage: realistic, freaky creatures that make one realistically shit one's pants.  Really, it was inevitable; this blog has loads of amazing monster potential, and nothing has realistic monsters quite like the ones found in Monster Hunter.  (That said, all of the images here belong to Capcom et al., and are being utilized to review and advertise the game. Buy it. I did.)

For those of you unfamiliar with Monster Hunter, it is the child of Cabela's big game hunting simulators and Dungeons and Dragons. The jist is that you play a monster hunter, and are required to hunt monsters for fame, fortune, and resources. The more you hunt, the better you get, and the more things you unlock in-game. There's a plot, but most of your time is not spent getting intimate with it.

So, why is it being featured here? There are a few reasons. The first is, obviously, that we were blown away by how beautiful the art was in general. This is a gorgeous game that saps the power of one's 3DS like nothing else. It is also crack after a bit.

The second? So much effort went into these creatures that somebody, somewhere, did some serious research. Mating habits are detailed. These monsters have ecological niches to fill. They even death twitch after being killed. I actually see a lot of monsters sporting parts from animals found on this blog, so creature lovers, take note. Using real creatures as a basis works. These all look possible...for the most part.

That said, onto what we all came to see: MONSTERS!

First thing's first: There are a lot of dinosaurs in this game. They're usually referred to as wyverns, but "Call a Smeep a Rabbit" and all that. "Wyvern" seems to mean "anything big with scales" here; it may in part be a "lost in translation" deal, but yeah, dinos are dragons and dragons are dragons. The dino-dragon above is called a Jaggi, and sports traits of the Jurassic Park Diplocaulus (which in turn got its frill from the frilled dragon of Australia) and various small theropods, including raptors. Behaviorally, they act very canine, with Great Jaggi sounding like a wolf at one point.

The Jaggi is just one example. Another interesting not-dino, Aptonoth, looks like a mix between a Parasaurolophus, ankylosaurid,  and Chasmosaurus. It's a docile herbivore that doesn't attack you on sight, so take as many notes as you like. There is also one in the marina as a pet.

Arzuros is supposed to be a bear - sort of like Winnie the Pooh if he got hit by gamma radiation and ran out of honey. It also contains the distinct look of the ever popular honey badger, particularly in the golden fur.  If you know absolutely nothing about honey badgers, know that they don't give a darn about anything and eat cobras for fun. Throw in a tortoise and you get Arzuros. Why Transformers Beast Wars Fuzors never made this combination is beyond me; seems like something they might do.

Altaroth are almost direct imitations of honey pot ants. Not much more to say. Korea and Japan seem to love the creatures, though. Now you know what they're based off of - who says you can't learn stuff from video games?

Of course, we went ahead and did research beyond the first few quests. Meet Deviljho or "Evil Joe," one of the most terrifying bosses in the entire game. He looks like a tyrannosaurid mixed with Anhanguera. We'd like to think this guy's tail was inspired by Uromastyx, but geckos (like the leopard gecko) and gators are far more likely sources.

Design aside, Deviljho is...funny. He's supposed to be intimidating, but it's hard to make "it ate EVERYBODY" realistic. Humans aside, such a creature could not feasibly survive; the creators tried to combat this by making it nomadic, which is a decent way out that also adds randomness to Jho's appearance. Regardless of the occasional silliness, many of the MH3U designs are refreshingly realistic, intimidating, and very well-done.


 

Bio-Art: Universal Studios?!

Yeah, OK, this is cheap of me. I'm on vacation in Florida right now and just got out of Universal Studios Orlando. Jurassic Park has been covered at least once on this blog. It's fitting enough that the ride should get some coverage.



This is one of the best rides ever for dino fans. Period. The animatronics are so well-done that you can't hear or see the gears turning. The textures are darn awesome. Underwater hadrosaurs are beyond awesome. My only regret is that there were not more nicely-done dinosaurs in the area. Apparently there's a "pet" Triceratops roaming the area, but you have to let that dino come to you.

C'mon. This ride is better than the live gator show that is apparently just down the street and you know it. Free advertising for an awesome theme park, too. If only they actually had more dinosaurs. 

Creature Feature:

Ever think about how huge an honor it must be to name a dinosaur? The result is then recorded for generations to come- at least, until somebody finds that it belongs to an existing species and needs to be merged. Oh well.

Michael Crichton received the honor of being named after a dinosaur in 2002 when an ankylosaur was dug up in China. The ankylosaur was named Crichtonsaurus bohlini; a second species in the genus was found in 2007. Crichtonsaurus was around during the Late Cretaceous- the last period before the KT event, which wiped out the vast majority of dinos. On the plus side, at least it got to hang with T-Rex, Triceratops, and a bunch of other popular dinos we all know and love.

Don't know who Crichton is? Of course you do. He's the guy who wrote Jurassic Park! Without him, many of us would not be into dinosaurs. Many of us would also not own pet reptiles; Jurassic Park made owning lizards, particularly the frilled dragon, very fashionable. The world would not be the same place without Crichton. He deserves a dinosaur.

Crichtonsaurus was technically a nodosaur, not an ankylosaur. The general idea is still the same: an armored, herbivorous mass of scale and plates. Many ankylosaurs also had a club on their tails which could be used like a mace. They're neat creatures, and this blog needs more of them. It's still far from what one would expect if they heard that the author of Jurassic Park got his own dinosaur.

We want something that'll look cool on a logo, darnit!

Really, though? It doesn't matter if this dinosaur was a clunky, herbivorous tank instead of a massive predator like T-Rex. If anyone deserved a dinosaur named after them, it was the author of Jurassic Park. Without him, the world would be a very different place.

Creature Feature: Irritator.

You are not misreading that header. It is not Pokemon Week again. There really is something with the simple name of "Irritator." Let us show you.

I'll show YOU irritating - try being DEAD for a couple million years! - from Wiki.

This is a dinosaur named Irritator challengeri. It was found in Brazil in 1996. Like other spinosaurids, it was either carnivorous or piscivorous - there's still a fair amount of debate on that regarding spinosaurids in general. It lived in the early Cretaceous, which means it did not quite coincide with Tyrannosaurus and a great amount of the most popular dinosaurs.

Before you mention that this sounds like Latin done by a moron who was trying to sound smart, no, it was made by scientists after racking their brains trying to figure out what exactly this thing was. It was first classified as a raptor for some very questionable reasons, including that the snout had been lengthened just to make the specimen more impressive. It might even be the same thing as Angaturama, another spinosaurid found in the same time and place. Irritating indeed.


Despite being named by scientists, Irritator was not discovered by scientists. They named it, but they were not the ones to dig the skull up. The skull - the only part we have - was found through the illegal fossil trade. As mentioned above, it was doctored to look more impressive, making scientists ball up paper in frustration. The good news? It's still the most complete spinosaurid skull today.

Now for what you really came to see: Irritator in the flesh. Contrary to its mildly-annoying name, Irritator was a beast. Imagine a crocodile walking on two legs. Now imagine that it weighs 2-3 tons and is 8 meters long from head to tip of the tail. Imagine that it had a neat-looking fin and could all but breathe underwater with its nostrils located towards the top and back of the jaw. That was Irritator, AKA "Jaws meets Jurassic Park."

Irritator has not had much love in popular culture. To its credit, however, the "Dinosaurs Alive!" attraction at King's Island starts with Irritator. It's hard to imagine a Vivosaur more trollicious than Dimorph in Fossil Fighters, but if Irritator ever made the cut, I'm sure he would live up to his name. Don't expect to see him as a Jurassic Park threat, though...at least, not with a name like that.

Creature Feature: Apatosaurus.

So I have this theory about the Brontosaurus...



...yeah, it's really Apatosaurus. Allow me to explain.

Apatosaurus was a giant sauropod from the Jurassic Period.  It was over 23 meters (75 feet) long from head to tail. It was a titanic herbivore that, aside from being gargantuan, could use its tail as a whip - either as a weapon or to warn others of danger. Its forelimbs also had strange thumb spikes that may have been used to make nasty marks in predators. Most of them have been found in the Morrison Formation, located in the Southwestern United States.

For those of you with no background in scientific nomenclature, Apatosaurus is a generic name. There are actually several species of Apatosaurus. Since we can't use the typical breeding litmus test to determine species, placing extinct things in the right genera can get tricky.  We have to go by things like size, bone count, and dentition. Given how a skeleton can change over time, this causes some major classification issues.

Old, OLD Apatosaurus assemblage.

Putting dinosaur skeletons together is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You have a bunch of pieces before you and they all have to fit together to make one final image. You don't know what it'll look like in the end, but it'll be something.

Now, imagine that you don't have just one jigsaw puzzle on the table. No, instead there are several jigsaw puzzles that have all been mixed together. If you're lucky, some of the pieces have remained stuck together from the last person who assembled them. With no picture to guide you, it is your duty to put the pieces together into something plausible. Kinda makes you feel sorry for paleontologists,  doesn't it?

Brontosaurus excelsius was first classed as Apatosaurus excelsius in 1903. Since then, paleontologists have dismissed Brontosaurus entirely. If Dinosaurs Alive! was correct, the first Brontosaurus specimen was a chimera with Camarasaurus as well. Talk about a mistaken identity.

Now that we actually have the dinosaur named properly, Apatosaurus has become rather popular in film and video games. Littlefoot from the Land Before Time was an Apatosaurus. The first image I posted was from Primeval, whose Wikia makes note of the confusion with Brontosaurus. Basically, if it doesn't have the lumpy head of a Brachiosaurus, the creators probably had Apatosaurus in mind.

Belated Bio-Art: Dinosaurs Alive!

Phew.

The trip to Ohio completely exhausted me. I got my first roller coaster headache; the nephews, put together, were a real hassle; the drives there and back were long and tiring. I was tired for DAYS on end.

Y'know what made it worth it? DINOSAURS.  Kings Island had a whole sub-park full of them! Here, have some! (Warning: Pic-heavy.)



 This fellow was right inside the gate to Kings Island. It's either a Dilophosaurus or a Monoloph - either way, cool!

Carnotaurus- my favorite giant theropod. Look at the horns, not the useless arms.

 Ah, Stegosaurus - one of the few dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that was actually from the Jurassic.

Anhinguera, one of the freakier pterosaurs out there. They had another, smaller one suspended later on the park.

I have a theory about the Brontosaurus. Unfortunately, these are proper Apato's, so it doesn't really count.

Finally, the exhibit ended with a T-rex VS Triceratops showdown. OK, technically not - the sign rightfully pointed out that adult preds usually don't go after healthy adult herbivores. After seeing "Rex VS Triceratops" on the map, it still felt a little bit like a cheat.

Now, should you make a trip to Ohio just to see a park full of robot dinosaurs? I'm going to be honest and say that this one's entirely your call. Is it cool to see that many robot dinosaurs in one place? Sure. Have I seen better? Yes (the Kokoro ones at the Sue exhibit were awesome). If you're going to Kings Island anyways, by all means shell out the extra 5 bucks to see Dinosaurs Alive!. I'm just not 100% sure if it's worth going far out of your way to see. Peace, and more pics tomorrow!

News Flash: A Real Jurassic Park?!

I would have posted this earlier had it not been fungus week. An Australian billionaire has decided to turn science fiction into science fact by making a real-life Jurassic Park. I wish I was kidding, but he's also apparently trying to build a working replica of the Titanic. You know, because the original worked so well and had no architectural flaws whatsoever. Here's the story on this nutter's latest plot:

"It could be the most incredible case of real life imitating Hollywood.
A controversial Australian billionaire is believed to be drawing up secret plans for a real life Jurassic Park.

Mining magnate Clive Palmer, who has already embarked on a project to rebuild the Titanic, is rumoured to be announced the plans at a Brisbane press conference tomorrow. 

Online reports claim the billionaire is already working with the team who created Dolly the sheep for the incredible plan.
It would be based at Palmer's recently purchased super resort in Coolum.

Mr Palmer has refused to comment on the plans, and is believed to be saving his big reveal for Friday's press conference.

However, the Sunshine Coast Daily claimed it had received a tipoff from the same source who provided the it details of towering hotels and a giant ferris wheel, similar to the London Eye, at the resort.

A spokesman confirmed Mr Palmer would hold a press conference in Brisbane on Friday.

He has already revealed plans to bring one Hollywood blockbuster to life, and announced earlier this year he would build a replica of the ill-fated cruise ship Titanic."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2182751/Is-Australian-billionaire-launch-real-life-Jurassic-Park.html#ixzz23DDwaXm7

Did this guy honestly learn nothing from the books? Or movies? Part of the point of Jurassic Park was that there was such a thing as going too far with science. The dino-park was an example of science gone wrong.  This is not a good idea.

Fun for the whole family!

On the plus side: If you do decide to make this, and it does work, would a pet Dimorphodon be too much to ask?

Creature Feature: Troodon (or "Reptoids for Dummies.")

It's 2012. That means you all are probably sick of hearing about the apocalypse, the New World Order, or how you're going to Hell for listening to Lady Gaga. There's even the crazy idea that the world is secretly run by a bunch of lizard-people, perhaps explaining some of what The Lizard did during the Spider-Man movie.

Enter reptoid theory- the idea that, somehow or another, we ended up being the puppets of humanoid reptiles. Some say they're from the constellation Draco or another dimension; others say they evolved from dinosaurs like Troodon.

Troodon as a genus contains several species, all of whom were native to North America. They were theropods like the ever-popular Velociraptor, and were only about 2 meters long from snout to tail. Although they were probably carnivorous most of the time, the way their teeth are worn suggests that there may have been vegetation on the menu as well. We think they went extinct in the Late Cretaceous.

As the name would suggest, Troodon had very strange teeth.Unlike most theropods, their teeth were edged like a saw. This has led to a few confusing things: for example, originally, all we had of these guys were the teeth. They were slated alongside pachycephalosaurs (i.e. those dinosaurs with crash helmets) until more complete specimens of Stenonychosaurus were discovered. This dinosaur was later renamed Troodon, but the whole genus is rather shaky. We still don't know why the teeth of a carnivorous dinosaur are serrated like that, but Troodon may have eaten plants, too.

The Troodon we know today also had extremely dextrous hands. Exactly what it used this dexterity for remains a mystery. If it ever used tools, well, we wouldn't be surprised. If it washed fruit with them, so much for being a carnivore.

Remember that entry on Carnotaur? Binocular vision was another one of Troodon's bonuses. This critter is leaning more and more toward the predator side, even though the odd jaw and teeth suggest plant matter as well. Okay, now this is just getting creepy.

So we have an omnivorous dinosaur with dextrous hands, binocular vision, and possibly an omnivorous diet. That's right: They were pretty much the raccoons of the dinosaur age. 

Troodon was also the Einstein of dinosaurs. There's a little something called the EQ- basically, a brain-to-body weight ratio - that theoretically determines how intelligent something was/is. Troodon had an EQ six times higher than that of any other known dinosaur. As per a statement by National Museum  of Canada curator Dave Russell in 1982, if they hadn't gone extinct when they did, they probably would have evolved into a creature similar to humans - perhaps so similar that they would have evolved a placenta. Also, if any dinosaur was capable of surviving a mass-extinction event, it would probably have been a Troodon.

Russell's models.

Suddenly, global warming and the prevalence of reptoids in media make a lot of sense, don't they? Just a thought.

Creature Feature: Carnotaurus

OK, I gipped you guys yesterday and the day before. Here's a cool entry to make up for my doing nothing but quoting a newspaper and a disgusting YouTube video.

Let's look at Dinosaur Satan for a minute. Dinosaur Satan, properly called Carnotaurus sastrei, was found in an Argentinian deposit dating back to the Late Cretaceous. As the name "meat-eating bull" would indicate, it was a giant, carnivorous beast with pointy horns. It was roughly 8 meters from head to tail and a little over 3 meters high. We don't know what it ate beyond "meat," but large sauropods may have been on the menu.

The Carnotaurus is probably the last dinosaur you would ever want to see in a dark alley. It's big, its mouth is full of teeth, and it can turn its head unlike any other theropod. It had binocular vision, which means, yes, both eyes would be sizing you up like a cheeseburger. Oh, and then there are those horns. Nobody knows what those horns were for, but after the teeth and the front-facing eyes, would you really want to risk being skewered by them? Didn't think so.

Then it would come out farther and you'd see its hands. Carnotaurus had the most useless forelimbs of any dinosaur, even compared to the weird two-fingered hands of T.rex. They had four digits total, but only two were functional. Even those lacked claws and were largely vestigial in nature. One may have been a combat spur, but the range would be very poor.The limbs on Carnotaurus do not even have joints.



What Carnotaurus lacked in dexterity it made up for in speed. Look at a good drawing and it's easy to see that Carnotaurus was built like an ostrich. Long neck, legs, and tail mean that it was built for speed. There's a chance that it was the fastest non-avian dino to ever walk the earth, running at up to speeds of 31 m.p.h (50 km/h).

Although Carnotaurus had a lot in common with feathered dinosaurs, we actually have a good record of this dinosaur's skin.  Unlike some other large carnivores, the sample of Carnotaurus skin we have is rough and bumpy - more like a lizard's than a bird's. Like the skin of an alien crocodile, This thing was not only fast, it was armored. In other words, Carny is prime dragon fodder.

This potential has not gone unnoticed by filmmakers. The main antagonist in Dinosaur was a Carnotaurus. Jurassic Park II, the book only,  also had a Carnotaurus in it. Alas, it lacks the 'true terror' status...so far.

Creature Feature: Baryonyx.

For those of you following my Twitter...yes, I got into Fossil Fighters (Champions) again. No, I do not intend to get as competitive with FFC as I am with Pokemon. Apparently the hardcore fanbase demands that you not only excavate a gold fossil perfectly for your team, but also demands that it be attached to a Tyranno to make a T-Rex Lord.

Everybody wants the T. rex. Rex this, rex that, rexrexrexrexrex seems to be what draws people, whether they're deep into dinosaurs or not. I know that comparing a long-extinct predator to Charizard (i.e. cool, powerful, but overrated) is poor showmanship, but if the glove fits, well...OK, T. rex is one finger short of wearing Charizard's glove perfectly. Thing is, as much as I respect T. rex (I come from the city with SUE, for crying out loud) dinosaurs are still dinosaurs. Seeing any thunderlizard in the modern day would be quite terrifying. No need to focus on the 'rex so much.

I wish I knew who did this.

Most carnivorous dinos would be just as terrifying as a 'rex, especially this thing. Seriously, this dino looks freaky. Hell, it isn't even going to eat us (we hope), but who wouldn't run screaming after seeing those claws, that mouthful of hooklike teeth, and a build that looks a lot more streamlined than good ol' T.rex?

The monster has a name: Baryonyx, literally "heavy claw." There has only been one species discovered, so it's safe to just call it by the generic name. It was discovered near Dorking, England. The specimen there was 28 feet from head to tail and probably weighed around 3,700 pounds, but it might not even have been fully grown. However big it was, it lived in the Early Cretaceous (130-125 m.y.a.), a smidge earlier than T.rex. It was most closely related to Spinosaurus, another large, carnivorous dinosaur that tends to be overshadowed by the 'rex, and Suchomimus, the only other piscivorous dino on record. 

Right off the bat, Baryonyx has mean-looking claws. We think it used these digits to hunt much like a modern grizzly bear - wait for fish, then strike. Worse still, Baryonyx had thumbs. Claws and thumbs? If the scientists who made Jurassic Park ever become real, we should tell them not to resurrect Baryonyx. These fishers were supposedly pretty intelligent, too, adding yet another fear factor.

Aside from its claws, Baryonyx also had teeth that makes anyone looking at them either freeze or run. It's almost as if a crocodile's mouth got slapped onto the body of a land-walking dinosaur, then made plausible by the creature's long, straight neck and fishhook claws. Baryonyx had 96 teeth in total- almost twice as many as Tyrannosaurus - and each and every one of them was serrated like a finely-edged saw. .Like its menacing claws, these teeth were used solely to catch fish. We're actually pretty sure about that...although Baryonyx have been found near Iguanadon skeletons as well. We might be more screwed than we thought.

Again, who did this?

Just to reiterate: T.rex is still awesome, but there are plenty of other things that could easily be just as terrifying. We cool, Sue? I'm going to get out of here before limbs get lost.