Just got back from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Anybody know when that next movie, Godzilla vs Mosasaurus, comes out?

haltraveler:

tyrantisterror:

carnivorecreations:

riftwitch:

sanktpolypenbourg:

riftwitch:

Reminder that we have absolutely no evidence that there wasn’t some member of the dilophosaurus family that was venomous, or that projectile vomited stomach acid to ward off predators(much as many modern day birds do).

Reminder that we have absolutely no evidence that there wasn’t some bulky offshoot of the dromaeosaur family that traded its feathers for lizardlike scales. There is, in fact, some evidence that from an evolutionary standpoint, dinosaurs were able to switch between the two relatively easily.

Reminder that wyverns are fucking real. They’re small and kinda poofy, but I mean, what else are you gonna call a bat-winged theropod?

Reminder that we know less than 1% of the organisms that have ever lived on Earth. Sure, most of those unaccounted for are microorganisms, but even a tiny percentage of animals on the planet is still a metric fuckton.

And most importantly of all, reminder that there is zero shame in indulging fantasy. 

Also what a lot of people are missing when it comes to things like JP’s fantasy dilophosaurus: Nature is fickin’ WEIRD. No, we have no proof dilophosaurus specifically had bizarre adaptations like that - but we know for SURE some dinosaurs must have had them. Strange features that don’t show up in the fossil record. JP’s reconstruction of dilophosaurus has like a 99,9% chance of being scientifically inaccurate - but it’s making the reconstructed ecosystem more accurate.

And I want to see more of that.

This is a very good point! It’s also the primary reason for the dilo’s infamous venom in the first place.

The thesis of Jurassic Park, between the book and all the movies, is that life will always throw you a curve ball. There are all sorts of things the animals can and will display, which we have no way of preparing for until we know they’re there. The dilos having venom is specifically cited as one of the first obstacles that they’d failed to consider.

When Spielberg came into the picture, his aim was not to completely 100% portray the prehistoric world, using only what we know was there. It was to make the dinosaurs come to life. Accuracy was secondary to naturalism. And in the natural world, animals have all sorts of bizarre things going for them!

This is actually one of my favorite things about the new JWorld Evolution game. A very small part, mind you, but still… that Deinonychus design they did? That shit is off the chain.

Frontier couldn’t go the scientifically accurate route because, well, Jurassic Park- but they couldn’t make it a classical retro Deinonychus either, because that’d look too much like JP’s version of a Velociraptor. So to make it more of its own thing they went down a route similar to the JP1 Dilophosaurus.

See, even taking into account how much we don’t know about Deinonychus’ appearance, it’s safe to say that the Evolution Deino looks nothing like the real thing. Not just because of the standard JP problems like scaly skin and pronated wrists, but because it’s got this weirdly upright posture, there’s a huge boneless crest on the head that’s unlike anything we know on dromaeosaurs, and its got a deeply inclined, finny looking tail like some sort of overgrown newt. It’s total fantasy, separate from almost everything we know about it.

And it’s great!

The game’s dinopedia makes a point of telling you that Deinonychus originally hailed from much swampier terrain than Velociraptor (which is true!), so to differentiate it they ran wild with that idea. All the made up traits start to come together when you think about it in that context: this is what would happen if the JP raptor were a real animal with a cousin adapted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Like a fictional, lizardy equivalent to Halszkaraptor or Austroraptor. It’s no closer to reality than something like the ARK dinosaurs or Godzilla, but it feels that way because it matches its described environment, its fanciful parts are within the realm of improbable-but-technically-not-impossible speculation, and the narrative treats it as an animal rather than a monster. Contrary to what a lot of people (myself included) were afraid, it actually fits perfectly into its world.

As an added bonus it’s just weird enough that dino-crazed children are probably going to ask questions about it, like whether or not it’s real or how anyone could ever think that’s a Deinonychus, and that’ll put them on track for learning about the real animal and other fun science subjects like what does and doesn’t fossilize.

So yeah, inaccurate but naturalistic: not the worst approach for pop culture dinos, especially when you’re dealing with something like Jurassic Park where authenticity is explicitly off the table.

The JW:E deinonychus also homages the original novel, which has a scene where either a compsognathus or a juvenile velociraptor (both escaped from the island) attacks a little girl.  The dino in question escapes capture, and the description the girl gives - of a lizard standing on its hind legs - is incorrectly identified as a basilisk lizard.  Eventually they find a half eaten carcass and realize it CAN’T be a basilisk lizard, at least not any that belongs to any known basilisk lizard species.

Why bring this up?  Well, here’s the specific lizard in question:

And here’s JW:E’s “Rainforest” skin Deinonychus:

Clever girl.

I don’t get why realistic dinosaurs are “off the table” for the Jurassic Park franchise. The franchise is literally FOUNDED on revolutionarily accurate dinosaurs. 

That said, the rest of the points made here are very good.

I personally don’t disagree with that sentiment, I’m just calling it like I see it. No one in charge of the movies has seemed particularly bothered about authenticity since the first film; TLW if you wanna be generous.

If things like feathered dromaeosaurs have any chance of showing up in this series I think the best time for it would be after Fallen Kingdom. The characters seem to be stepping back from that whole “themepark monsters” ideology and want the audience to sympathize with the dinosaurs again, as animals. If any more (non-weaponized) dinos are bred after that point, I think it’d make sense for them to be more realistic looking. The mindset in keeping them around has changed and they no longer need them to be attractions, so the need to alter them should be gone too. That’d open the door to more science in your science fiction, some new sights to bring back the awe and wonder of the original film, and the fun of seeing the classic JP dinosaurs interact with their “new” purebred ancestors. I think it’d be a good opportunity to give both audiences a bit of what they want and turn the series in a new direction.

Buuuuut they’re totally going to make an Indominus rex with fire breath and wings or something instead so I’m stickin’ to my assessment of “off the table”. <=/

riftwitch:

sanktpolypenbourg:

riftwitch:

Reminder that we have absolutely no evidence that there wasn’t some member of the dilophosaurus family that was venomous, or that projectile vomited stomach acid to ward off predators(much as many modern day birds do).

Reminder that we have absolutely no evidence that there wasn’t some bulky offshoot of the dromaeosaur family that traded its feathers for lizardlike scales. There is, in fact, some evidence that from an evolutionary standpoint, dinosaurs were able to switch between the two relatively easily.

Reminder that wyverns are fucking real. They’re small and kinda poofy, but I mean, what else are you gonna call a bat-winged theropod?

Reminder that we know less than 1% of the organisms that have ever lived on Earth. Sure, most of those unaccounted for are microorganisms, but even a tiny percentage of animals on the planet is still a metric fuckton.

And most importantly of all, reminder that there is zero shame in indulging fantasy. 

Also what a lot of people are missing when it comes to things like JP’s fantasy dilophosaurus: Nature is fickin’ WEIRD. No, we have no proof dilophosaurus specifically had bizarre adaptations like that - but we know for SURE some dinosaurs must have had them. Strange features that don’t show up in the fossil record. JP’s reconstruction of dilophosaurus has like a 99,9% chance of being scientifically inaccurate - but it’s making the reconstructed ecosystem more accurate.

And I want to see more of that.

This is a very good point! It’s also the primary reason for the dilo’s infamous venom in the first place.

The thesis of Jurassic Park, between the book and all the movies, is that life will always throw you a curve ball. There are all sorts of things the animals can and will display, which we have no way of preparing for until we know they’re there. The dilos having venom is specifically cited as one of the first obstacles that they’d failed to consider.

When Spielberg came into the picture, his aim was not to completely 100% portray the prehistoric world, using only what we know was there. It was to make the dinosaurs come to life. Accuracy was secondary to naturalism. And in the natural world, animals have all sorts of bizarre things going for them!

This is actually one of my favorite things about the new JWorld Evolution game. A very small part, mind you, but still… that Deinonychus design they did? That shit is off the chain.

Frontier couldn’t go the scientifically accurate route because, well, Jurassic Park- but they couldn’t make it a classical retro Deinonychus either, because that’d look too much like JP’s version of a Velociraptor. So to make it more of its own thing they went down a route similar to the JP1 Dilophosaurus.

See, even taking into account how much we don’t know about Deinonychus’ appearance, it’s safe to say that the Evolution Deino looks nothing like the real thing. Not just because of the standard JP problems like scaly skin and pronated wrists, but because it’s got this weirdly upright posture, there’s a huge boneless crest on the head that’s unlike anything we know on dromaeosaurs, and its got a deeply inclined, finny looking tail like some sort of overgrown newt. It’s total fantasy, separate from almost everything we know about it.

And it’s great!

The game’s dinopedia makes a point of telling you that Deinonychus originally hailed from much swampier terrain than Velociraptor (which is true!), so to differentiate it they ran wild with that idea. All the made up traits start to come together when you think about it in that context: this is what would happen if the JP raptor were a real animal with a cousin adapted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Like a fictional, lizardy equivalent to Halszkaraptor or Austroraptor. It’s no closer to reality than something like the ARK dinosaurs or Godzilla, but it feels that way because it matches its described environment, its fanciful parts are within the realm of improbable-but-technically-not-impossible speculation, and the narrative treats it as an animal rather than a monster. Contrary to what a lot of people (myself included) were afraid, it actually fits perfectly into its world.

As an added bonus it’s just weird enough that dino-crazed children are probably going to ask questions about it, like whether or not it’s real or how anyone could ever think that’s a Deinonychus, and that’ll put them on track for learning about the real animal and other fun science subjects like what does and doesn’t fossilize.

So yeah, inaccurate but naturalistic: not the worst approach for pop culture dinos, especially when you’re dealing with something like Jurassic Park where authenticity is explicitly off the table.

riftwitch:

carnivorecreations:

You probably need to be brought up to speed, don’t you? It has been a pretty long time, I guess… even longer than it feels. I’ll start from the beginning, then.

Ten years ago I was on one of my mountain hikes when I did something stupid. I found something I’d never seen before, a round metal object, and like a dummy I went and picked it up, bare handed. As soon as I did the thing clung to me like a magnet and starting burning like hell. Eventually I got it off, but when I did it broke into a million pieces, and they were so brittle that all I have left is dust. Since then I’ve figured out where the sphere came from and what it was doing to me (at least in a general sense), but if you asked what it was for or what it was made out of I still couldn’t hazard a guess.

Without anything left to show I figured there wasn’t any point in telling anyone, so I just kept an eye on my health and tried to go about the rest of my week like normal. It didn’t work. The sphere’d changed me on some level: not physically or genetically (the doctors said everything looked normal to them), but somehow I was getting stronger and faster. I just woke up one morning and accidentally ripped my sink off the wall.

Then the mental side effects came in. At first I thought I was going crazy, like I had schizophrenia or something, because I kept hearing these voices. Technically “hearing” isn’t the best word for it, but it’s so hard to describe to someone who’s never felt it…

You know how in those old science fiction stories there were always those psychic people called telepaths? The ones who could just look into someone’s head and know exactly what they were thinking? Well, I was becoming what’s called an empath, which is kind of the same idea, but with feelings instead of thoughts. Without even meaning to I was picking up on the emotions of everyone and everything around me, so it kept feeling like I wasn’t alone in my own head anymore. In a way I guess I sorta wasn’t.

For about a week after I went on like that, accidentally using this new sense I’d acquired and losing my composure. Getting freakishly strong overnight was hard enough to get used to, but the “voices” were just too much. I was sure there was something wrong with me, and no matter which doctor I went to or what medicine I took, nothing helped. So I got desperate. Really desperate.

Instead of trying to shut the “voices” out, I started listening to them. I realized that one in particular was louder than all the rest, and I got it in my head that if I went looking then maybe I could find out who they were, and somehow that might give me answers. It sounds like a terrible idea now, almost as stupid as sticking your hand on some damn thing you’ve never seen before, but sure enough it actually worked. I found out exactly who that “voice” was coming from.

A kaiju. Theraga.

I’m sure I never would have gone if I’d known he wasn’t a person, but I’m glad I did. It was my first step towards being able to see things the way they really are. Kaiju aren’t demons, or even monsters, really. Not the kind we’re used to, at least. They’re like the minds of human beings, in the bodies of natural disasters. Nature personified. None of them are inherently good or evil, but they’re all smart enough to make that choice for themselves, and strong enough that when they do the whole world feels it.

Theraga’s one of the good ones, just a big, saber toothed softy. I was terrified of him at first, of course, but his only reaction to seeing me was curiosity. Once I understood he wasn’t gonna eat me, I gave the empathy thing a shot and… well, I guess you could say the rest is history now, huh?

Fast forward ten years. Me and the big guy have been keeping ourselves busy; we’re officially partners now, part of a larger alliance tasked with the protection of the human race. No big deal. We’re actually a really good team now, because even though he can’t talk, we’ve gotten to know each other so well that he doesn’t need to. We’ve been all over the continent, doing everything in our power to be a force for good. Stopped disasters, shut down a terrorist organization, and yeah, fought a whole lot of kaiju.

It hasn’t all been fighting, though. Remember how I said I figured out more about that orb? That’s because I found more of them up in the mountains, and the place where I think they came from: the Gens Perdita. The scholars all said it was the greatest discovery of the modern day, but unfortunately there’s a little more to it than that. The day I set foot in that ship was the day I changed Tarrun.

The Gens Perdita is not of this world. My team and I checked it out front to back and so did others; there’s not a single bit of that craft made from materials found on Tarrun, and what’s left of the captain sure doesn’t look human. There’s tech on that ship so advanced it makes the Iridians look like cavemen. The computers look nothing like machinery and the holding cells in the back are taller than a house. I can’t think of anywhere else those orbs could’ve come from, but at this point they’re the least of our concerns.

New technology comes with new information. Cracking the Perdita’s archives took linguists years, and time after time their breakthroughs always lead to some kind of suspicious disaster that sent our knowledge backwards. When I interfered enough to finally get the truth out, the public lost their mind. Riots in the streets, vandals after the ship, and more than a few attempts on my life. People just couldn’t handle what the Gens Perdita had to say.

The alien race that built her, whoever they were… they knew our gods. The Elder seven, straight out of Hebdomism. And they did not have kind words for them.

The Elder Gods, the peaceful and all-knowing deities that most of modern civilization’s been worshipping for centuries, are assholes. They’re not divine, they didn’t make Tarrun, and they don’t care about us. They’re cosmic parasites.

The ship’s archives say they feed off of emotion, so to ensure a steady supply they masquerade as gods and surround themselves with sentient life. If all goes as planned they get pampered and praised for as long as their subjects exist, constantly growing stronger from the misguided love being heaped on them. And if it doesn’t go so well? Then they keep their subjects in a state of perpetual torture to harvest their suffering. Either way it makes no difference to them. Food’s food.

Now that the toku’s out of the bag, you can probably guess which fate they have in store for us. As I write, the gods are already descending on our world. The first one touched down in Nalassa this morning and it was a bloodbath. All seven will be here by the end of the day, and I can confidently say that we as a species are not even remotely equipped to defeat them. A lot of people still don’t even believe that we need to.

There is one key thing working to our advantage, though. Our planet is infested with their natural enemies.

Whatever kaiju are- mutants, mega-fauna, some other kind of “god”- they’re the antithesis of the seven. They’re the only thing we know of that comes anywhere close to being as powerful as them, and I’ve seen with my own two eyes that they can hurt each other. The builders of the Gens Perdita knew it way before I did, because that’s exactly why they built it. The cells in the ship’s rear are all locked and full of comatose kaiju. Monsters from other planets that they gathered up as their army against the gods. I guess they got found out and wrecked before they could ever use it.

There’s something else, too. Not quite as amazing as a celestial conspiracy, I suppose, but pretty close.

We’re not alone. Not just in the universe… but on the planet. Tarrun is not the only continent. We are not the only humans. And there are many, many more monsters than Theraga and I ever could have imagined.

Now we just have to figure out how to get them on our side.

Did I reblog this, or did I just like it so that I would be able to go back and reblog it later at a more opportune time?

I don’t remember…

I don’t think you did, but at any rate thank you for doing so!

I just finished rewatching Planet of the Monsters. It… was actually a lot better than I initially gave it credit for, I have to admit. I need to stop being so hyper-critical of new things.