From June 9 you can already enjoy the latest installment of the Jurassic saga: Jurassic World Dominion in theaters. In it, a new generation of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are presented to us, in some cases, with greater realism than in previous installments.
As a warning to the reader, this article may reveal some details about the plot .
In this new installment, we once again meet a tycoon who has decided to create his own biological reserve of extinct animals brought back to life. This is Lewis Dodgson , CEO of the BioSyn company, the same one who hired Dennis Nedry to steal the embryos from the original park, an event that leads to the events we witnessed in 1993, in Jurassic Park .
old and new creatures
Species rescued from Sorna and Nublar appear in the BioSyn refuge, as well as animals captured from the wild after being released en masse during Fallen Kingdom, including the famous Tyrannosaurus rex , the same one that threatened the lives of young Tim and Lex in the original park. . But we also found new animals, which we had not seen before and which are the work of BioSyn.
It is not clear if Dodgson has managed to reproduce these dinosaurs on his own – it seems unlikely that he could have done so in the few years since the events of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom – or if he managed to recover the embryos stolen by Nedry in that foam can. razor , which he treasures, and managed to replicate the technique with reverse engineering.
Among the new animals we find some raptors, such as a herd of four Atrociraptor that threatens the protagonists, or a fully feathered specimen of Pyroraptor . You can also see a specimen of the gigantic Dreadnoughtus , which Professor Grant identifies from visu , an enormous Therizinosaurus , with its powerful scythe-like claws, or the largest carnivore to have walked on dry land: an impressive specimen of Giganotosaurus . Also, some prehistoric animals that are not dinosaurs, such as the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus , the largest flier known to us; or the synapsid Dimetrodon , of which there were already official Kenner toys from the time of Jurassic Park, and that many fans were looking forward to seeing on screen.
“Fearless Moros”
One dinosaur that impresses paleontologists at the BioSyn facility is a small carnivore that lives in a terrarium. Doctor Alan Grant quickly identifies it as Moros intrepidus , a small tyrannosauroid from the mid-Cretaceous period, about 96 million years old.
We already know that the contemporary presence of dinosaurs from different eras is perfectly justified in the films of the Jurassic saga; Being cloned animals, there is no conflict in that, in the same scene, we find Moros intrepidus and Tyrannosaurus rex , even though the former is 33 million years older than the latter. However, it could be considered an error if this happens in a scene that is intended to represent the wildlife of these dinosaurs in their natural habitat.
That failure happens in one of the trailers of the film. In it we were shown how a huge Giganotosaurus entered into mortal combat against a Tyrannosaurus -feathered, by the way-. Immediately before this fight, a specimen of Moros was carefully cleaning the teeth of one of them. Here we find an error not only anachronistic, but also geographical. Moros lived in the same place as Tyrannosaurus , but 33 million years apart; Regarding Giganotosaurus , it is true that it was contemporary with Moros , but in South America. In other words, in the real world, these three animals could not possibly meet.
But back to the movie. The small theropod is shown fully feathered, as would be expected for a member of the group Tyrannosauroidea . Although the first remains of this animal were found in 2013, they had to wait until 2019 for Lindsy Zanno’s team to describe it and publish their findings in the prestigious journal Communications Biology , dependent on Nature . This makes it the most recently introduced animal in the saga since its discovery.
Very few remains, but a lot of information
In reality, the known remains of Moros intrepidus are very incomplete , being reduced to the bones of a hind leg and a tooth, found in the Cedar Mountain formation in Utah. However, these data, added to its geographical location and the specific site where the remains are found, are enough to draw a good number of conclusions.
For example, the remains belong to a juvenile specimen, but which is already approaching adult size. This specimen has turned out to be key in filling knowledge gaps regarding the origin and evolution of mid-Cretaceous tyrannosauroids . Its evolutionary position is known to be after the divergence of the Asian tyrannosauoids, and before the evolutionary radiation that occurred in North America; All of this suggests that Moros intrepidus is an evolutionary precursor of the North American tyrannosaurs .
The presence of the bones of the hind leg are very useful, since, through comparative anatomy, and taking into account the proportions of animals with which it is evolutionarily related, good size estimates can be made. It is estimated that the only known specimen of Moros , as a subadult , could reach 78 kilograms in weight , its hind legs measured about 120 centimeters in height, and it had a total length of just over two meters .
In the film, they assure that this small predator is the first dinosaur recreated with pure DNA, without mixing with frogs, monitor lizards, cuttlefish, snakes or any other living being. In other words, they indicate that the dinosaur we see on the screen is just as it was in its natural environment.
If this is so, the animal that Alan Grant observes so closely must be a calf, since it is considerably smaller than the animal found in Utah.
References:
Zanno, L. E. et al. 2019. Diminutive fleet-footed tyrannosauroid narrows the 70-million-year gap in the North American fossil record. Communications Biology, 2(1), 1-12. DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0308-7
