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livingdebToday I took another Science Study Break where they show media clips and discuss the science portrayed. Today I learned a little about the science (and lack thereof) behind "Jurassic Park."
When that movie first came out I was working in a zoology department, and the first reviews I (over)heard were from faculty members talking about how it was shockingly realistic for a movie.
Today's speaker was a geologist who studies dinosaurs, so he might have a slightly different viewpoint.
Guess whether the following implications from "Jurassic Park" are true or false. Answers, based on how I heard what I think Dr. Rowe said, will be in the comments section.
1. Archaeologists mostly use brushes (like paintbrushes) to dig bones out of the sand once they can see them.
2. You can use machines to send soundwaves through the ground to help you find skeletons.
3. There are strong similarities between dinosaurs and birds such as how the pelvis is tilted, something in the tail, something about the neck, etc.
4. DNA is a blueprint.
5. One could get dinosaur DNA by extracting dinosaur blood from a mosquito trapped in amber.
6. Velociraptor eggs are a more oblong shape than chicken eggs and larger, about six inches long. They are laid out in a semicircle in a nest.
7. One could fill any gaps in the DNA with frog DNA and get a viable specimen.
The next questions are based on "Jurassic Park III."
8. Things can be scanned to make a 3D reproduction of them.
9. The velociraptors in the movie had lifelike movement, given what we know about how skeletons, etc. work.
10. Velociraptors are almost as tall as an adult human movie star.
When that movie first came out I was working in a zoology department, and the first reviews I (over)heard were from faculty members talking about how it was shockingly realistic for a movie.
Today's speaker was a geologist who studies dinosaurs, so he might have a slightly different viewpoint.
Guess whether the following implications from "Jurassic Park" are true or false. Answers, based on how I heard what I think Dr. Rowe said, will be in the comments section.
1. Archaeologists mostly use brushes (like paintbrushes) to dig bones out of the sand once they can see them.
2. You can use machines to send soundwaves through the ground to help you find skeletons.
3. There are strong similarities between dinosaurs and birds such as how the pelvis is tilted, something in the tail, something about the neck, etc.
4. DNA is a blueprint.
5. One could get dinosaur DNA by extracting dinosaur blood from a mosquito trapped in amber.
6. Velociraptor eggs are a more oblong shape than chicken eggs and larger, about six inches long. They are laid out in a semicircle in a nest.
7. One could fill any gaps in the DNA with frog DNA and get a viable specimen.
The next questions are based on "Jurassic Park III."
8. Things can be scanned to make a 3D reproduction of them.
9. The velociraptors in the movie had lifelike movement, given what we know about how skeletons, etc. work.
10. Velociraptors are almost as tall as an adult human movie star.
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Hint
on 2008-04-17 03:28 am (UTC)Answers
on 2008-04-17 03:33 am (UTC)I knew sand was improbable, but I thought the brushwork was true.
2. (sonar machines) False. These machines exist but the results are so inconclusive that they're really no help at all. Also, they are impractical. They are heavy, requiring a truck for transport, but most sites are far from paved roads.
3. (birdlike) True. And after the movie was made, imprints of feathers were found for some types of dinosaurs found in China. So, feathers evolved before flight.
By "Jurassic Park III," they were showing feathers on the velociraptors.
4. (DNA blueprint) True. But the maternal environment is also very important, so just getting some DNA isn't enough.
5. (DNA from mosquito) False. It's true that bugs and other beings get caught in tree sap which can turn into amber. The smell of the tree sap actually attracts insects. But once they are entombed, medical scanning shows that although the cuticle (outer shell) is preserved, it's just a hollow shell. The bacteria living inside the creature at the time of entrapment do what bacteria do and eat the rest.
Also, DNA is really fragile and deteriorates quickly. Some of the more modern frozen things like mastadons might have some intact DNA, but not dinosaurs.
6. (eggs) True. In Mongolia, sandslides covered some nests and the eggs were just like this and arranged like this. Parents were sitting on them just like ostriches do.
7. (frog DNA) Maybe true. Splicing frog DNA with dinosaur DNA to fill the holes just might work because a lot of DNA is unexpressed. You may just need parts of it to be the right length.
8. (scanning reproduction) True. In some cases sci fi writers push real scientists. We now use catscans instead of exploratory surgery, and CT scanners are used in industry. And he showed us a model he made when he got his hands on a dinosaur egg. He scanned the thing and reproduced only about the bottom 1/3 of the egg, where the embryo was, so we could look inside. Here is a similar (http://www.digimorph.org/specimens/neoceratopsian_egg/) picture we saw.
However these scanners take a lot of electricity and might not be too easy to use in a tent.
9. (velociraptor movement) True, the movement was lifelike.
10. (velociraptor size) False. Their skulls are only six to nine inches long. Like many things in movies, they were made to appear larger than life.
Re: Answers
on 2008-04-17 01:51 pm (UTC)A blueprint has a 1:1 correspondence to the final product, which isn't really right about DNA.
DNA is more like a computer program (duh, I'm a programmer), where it contains a sequence of instructions that expand into the final result. It is more efficient than a blueprint.
Re: Answers
on 2008-04-17 11:08 pm (UTC)The professor also compared it to a computer, saying that computers (programs, I assume) have lots of parts that don't get used also.