Tyrannosaurus next

Aided by new discoveries and refined investigation methods, science is changing the way we see dinosaurs. A little colour doesn’t hurt either, writes Evrim Yazgin.

Close your eyes and imagine a dinosaur. I don’t have any clairvoyant powers, but I’ve a pretty good idea of what most of you have conjured.

It’s a Tyrannosaurus rex – right? It’s the most famous dinosaur, and the easiest for most of us to picture. You’re probably also seeing it as a big greybrown monster akin to the ‘rex’ represented in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park. Am I right?

This is the popular view of dinosaurs, informed by all sorts of media over the years. It’s also, probably, mostly wrong.

Science is showing that much of what we’ve believed in the past about dinosaurs – from where they lived to what they looked like and how they behaved – isn’t accurate. And, in fact, a lot of what is still put out for popular consumption lags far behind our scientific knowledge.

Top billing: dinos on screen

So let’s start by playing fair: media representations of dinosaurs have come a long way.

T. rex was discovered in 1902 in Hell Creek, Montana, US, by the American Museum of Natural History’s famous fossil hunter Barnum Brown. Brown – aka ‘Mr Bones’ – is said to have been named after beyond-legend circus showman P.T. Barnum (1810–91).

Early reconstructions of the “lizard king” showed an erect, kangaroo-like animal. T. rex’s first media appearance was the 1918 film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. Famed for its pioneering special effects work by Willis O’Brien, whose SFX later graced The Lost World, in 1925, Slumber Mountain featured a stop-motion T. rex vs Triceratops matchup three-quarters of a century before Spielberg took on the idea. While nowhere near as “realistic” as Spielberg’s rex, there’s something ­terrifyingly other-worldly about the 1918 version.

The inaccurate upright T. rex lived on in popular media well into the 1970s and ’80s, despite scientific research having shown for decades a much more anatomically correct orientation of the bone joints.

While better in this respect, Jurassic Park’s “Roberta” (the official name of the film’s main villain) still lacks for scientific accuracy. It’s too big; its skull is the wrong shape. And its behaviour, colouration and lack of feathers are all contentious issues.

Dino-lovers of my generation grew up with the BBC’s 1999 series Walking With Dinosaurs. I was four years old when I watched the documentary series, and it changed my life. It was a work of art and a scientific marvel and it sparked the imaginations of an entire cohort of nerdy kids. For the first time, dinosaurs were brought to life according to relatively up-to-date information.

But nearly a quarter of a century on, even this has become outdated. Does it matter? Well, yes.

The media’s representation of dinosaurs has a huge impact into how they are perceived by the rest of us. Depicting scientifically accurate (or, as scientifically accurate as possible) dinosaurs can dispel myths and paint a much more interesting picture of these extinct creatures.

Last year the BBC released a new dinosaur documentary series, Prehistoric Planet. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, the series picks up where Walking With Dinosaurs left off: it provides a visually stunning, scientifically backed view of dinosaurs to a new generation. The first episode begins with a T. rex mother and her feathered hatchlings – swimming of all things! It’s this kind of imaginative thinking about dinosaur behaviour that palaeontologists believe should be more commonplace in our representations of the extinct animals.

Local finds, global learning

On an unseasonably warm, humid September day, I’m in the Melbourne Museum to learn how palaeontological know-how turns a fossil into an understanding of how long-dead organisms lived and died.

Showing me around the museum’s five-million-item fossil collection are Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museums Victoria, and Hazel Richards, a leading curator behind the museum’s latest prize possession – the near-complete fossil skeleton of the Triceratops affectionately dubbed ‘Horridus’.

A seven-metre-long Triceratops horridus, Horridus lived about 67 million years ago – near the end of the era of the dinosaurs. The animal’s one-tonne fossilised remains were found in 2014 in Montana and later brought to Melbourne; they represent the most complete real dinosaur fossil in any Australasian museum. In addition to the 266 bones that make up the main display (including the 261 kilogram skull), which opened in March 2022, curators sought to give a picture of the animal’s habitat. Using a game engine, the team produced scenes from a forest clearing, an undergrowth, and a riverbank to illustrate the triceratops’ environment. The scenes include turtles, crocodiles, other dinosaurs, and even early mammals.

Entering the museum’s protective cool, dry and dark fossil store, Ziegler points to a fossil “assemblage” discovered in Victoria, which includes the fossil remains of many different species within the same rock. He emphasises that such complexes give us a picture of a local ecosystem.

One of the preserved animals is the “southern hunter” Australovenator. The largest theropod dinosaur in Australia known from decent remains, Australovenator would have grown to around 5–6m in length. Ziegler hands me a 3D-printed copy of the ancient carnivore’s claw: my very own Jurassic Park moment.

Ziegler and Richards explain that, more and more, palaeontology relies on the global fossil record.

“Our understanding of the appearance and behaviour of dinosaurs is shaped by the growing fossil collections in museums worldwide,” Richards says. “While some dinosaurs are known from beautifully complete skeletons – like [Horridus] – most individual species are represented only by a few fragmentary fossils. But, because species that are closely related to one usually share many skeletal features, palaeontologists can generalise across related dinosaurs to infer the missing anatomy – at least until more fossils are found to fill in those gaps.”

Palaeontology, like any science, benefits from technology advances. Ziegler points out that new, non-invasive techniques such as micro-CT scanning and even chemical preparations are less likely to damage the fossils than traditional methods. These methods necessarily integrate palaeontology with other science disciplines such as physics and chemistry.

One example I’m shown is an exquisitely well-preserved fossilised fish skull. The delicate bone looks like it could have belonged to an animal that died a few years ago: even its jaw hinges are preserved. But this fish lived more than 300 million years in the past.

“By looking at how living animals behave and use their skeletons, sometimes even tiny pieces of anatomy can tell us a great deal about how extinct animals like dinosaurs probably lived,” Richards says.

“I think all palaeontologists agree that Jurassic Park is responsible for really bringing dinosaurs into the public consciousness,” she says. “It certainly sparked renewed interest in studying dinosaurs, and most palaeos today will speak of it fondly as an influence on their studies and their career.

“Even 30 years and many sequels later, if the average person thinks of a T. rex you can bet it’s the Jurassic Park rex they are imagining.”

But what about documentaries? Richards says it’s all about historical context.

“Any time you attempt to depict science on screen, you are taking a snapshot of the understanding at that specific point in time – but science is a process and as we discover new things, our knowledge grows and changes,” she says.

“Palaeontology is no different. So, it’s inevitable that in the decades since Walking With Dinosaurs in 1999 we will have discovered new fossils and advanced our thinking on how dinosaurs looked and behaved. Walking With Dinosaurs and even Jurassic Park both used the most up to date information available to them to present believable dinosaurs, and I think the care they took means these depictions still hold up really well today.”

Richards says Prehistoric Planet “established a new gold standard for dinos on screen. I wouldn’t be surprised if little kids watching Prehistoric Planet thought the dinosaurs were real, the CGI and behaviours depicted were astoundingly realistic.”

But some palaeontologists are worried that we're not going far enough in showing dinosaurs as real animals.

For the full story on looking Beyond the Palaeo and seeing how dinosaurs are finally getting the makeover they deserve, head below to Cosmos 98 | Beyond the Palaeo