Last 2 decades, discoveries and study in China have recovered at least five species of feathered dinosaurs. But they all associated with the theropod group of “raptor” dinosaurs.
Now in a discovery reported by an international team, the new dinosaur species, Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus showed that feathers were all in the family. That’s because the newly unearthed two-leg runner was an “ornithischian” (beaked dinosaur), belonging to a group distinct from past raptor discoveries.
“Probably it means the common ancestor of all dinosaurs had feathers,” says lead author Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science in Brussels. “Feathers are not a characteristic just of birds but of all dinosaurs.”
One question that roams about the original sci-fi thriller directed by Steven Spielberg released in 1993 “Jurassic Park” is why the dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park don’t have feathers in any of the movies.
Jurassic Park series focussed on wildlife themed park set-up by the billionaire philanthropist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). The park featured numerous dinosaur species that had been created genetically by a team of scientists in order to bring some of the species out of extinction back to life again. A group of tourists, including grandsons of Hammond, toured around the park until an act of sabotage caused the security system to go down, putting every life on the island along the edge.
While regarded as one of the best dinosaur movies and finest blockbusters ever, Jurassic Park has come under fire with immense criticism from expert paleontologists. They often point out inaccuracies centering on the movies’ illustration of dinosaurs. When the first Jurassic Park film premiered, it was at the start in a major building block of the public understanding of dinosaurs, perhaps the biggest being the fact the creatures actually had feathers.
In recent decades, it has been found that all species of dinosaurs had feathers, at least when they’re at a young age. Even though in Greek the word “dinosaur” means “fearsome lizard”, the creatures didn’t belong to reptiles, they are early ancestors of birds. While the original Jurassic Park accepts this evolving perspective, it and all of the succeeding films still went with the more classical versions of the Dinosaurs, much to the concern of paleontologists.
Many of the Dinosaur species featured in Jurassic Park should have had feathers, including the velociraptors. It was believed that Spielberg and the creative minds behind the movie decided not to show the feathers due to their plan to realize them via CGI. CGI in the early 90s is very difficult to imply… and portraying feathers rather than scaly skin needs more effort and detailed graphics.
In 2015, Jurassic World put forward an explanation for the featherless Dinosaurs and explained that their Dinosaurs have been genetically modified and their DNA is not completely from Dinosaurs only. It showed that they had been using that method in the whole series which explained why the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park also weren’t scientifically and historically accurate in the decades earlier. It seems more likely that the filmmakers used to show how most people would perceive dinosaurs in the hopes.
