Universal Pictures continues to fire our desires with a second trailer for Jurassic world dominion , where they continue to show us the enormous potential that lies behind the latest installment of this saga that started in theaters 29 years ago with Jurassic park .
The flea circus that was John Hammond’s dream has ended up proving that people were never in control, as Dr. Ellie Sattler warned the capitalist tycoon played by Sir Richard Attenborough.
In the trailer for this new installment, Dr. Malcolm warns us that the power of genetics has been unleashed . Something that we can assume to be true, in light of the fact that we are going to find animals that we have never seen before.
Therizinosaurus , Giganotosaurus or a huge Quetzalocatlus nesting on the One World Trade Center in New York are perfect examples. They were not on the original InGen list , nor were they on the list of animals rescued during the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom . They are completely new creatures , and we will have to wait until June 9 to really know their origin.
Among all of them, two new dinosaurs will undoubtedly attract the attention of the spectators . And it is that Blue and her unexpected cub have been joined by two new species of ‘raptors’. This group of terrifying bird-shaped theropods —as Dr. Alan Grant already indicated in the first film of the saga— have a characteristic sickle-shaped claw on the second toe of their hind legs, and in science they are known as dromaeosaurids .
Atrociraptor, the cruel thief
One of the scenes in the trailer shows us a handful of armed people who are surrounded by four ‘raptors’ who have just come out of their respective cages. They remind us of the classic velociraptors from Jurassic Park , but they have certain different traits. The head is more robust, and the neck and snout are shorter . Its size is similar to that of Blue and its congeners. We might think that, given its size, we are dealing with one of the great dromaeosaurids of the late Cretaceous, such as Utahraptor , Achillobator or Dakotaraptor . But no, this is another exaggeration of cinematographic size , like the one we find in Velociraptor , and that, within the canon, Dr. Henry Wu in Jurassic world explains perfectly: many of the animals looked very different, but the creators of the park did not want realism, they wanted more teeth.
Atrociraptor marshalli is a dinosaur from about 70 million years ago, which lived in what is now Alberta, Canada, and of which we have very few remains, although enough to know certain things about them. For example, we know that it was actually much smaller in size than what they show in the trailer; its length was not more than two meters. Like the rest of the dromaeosaurids, it was completely feathered – this detail is not seen in the Universal images either – and the correct posture of its front legs is palm against palm, not towards the ground like the position of the hands of a pianist. Again, film licenses.
Pyroraptor , the fire thief
The second ‘raptor’ that appears in the trailers is more spectacular . Although it takes up less screen time, it draws much more attention for being fully feathered. Again we find an animal of great size, which invites us to think of those great raptors, however, in reality it was an even smaller species than Velociraptor .
Pyroraptor olympius was a dromaeosaurid closely related to Microraptor , long-limbed and agile, and, like all members of the family, fully feathered . It exhibited a long claw on the second toe of the hind legs, which could measure almost 7 centimeters. Its total length was around 1.6 meters. It lived between 69 and 75 million years ago, in what is now southern France. His name literally means “fire thief from Olympus”, because he was discovered after a forest fire in the area of Mount Olympe, near Marseille.
Although cinematographic licenses continue to be taken in the film —such as the enormous size, or its great swimming capacity, which we do not know—, on this occasion they have opted for a complete plumage and quite faithful to reality : wings with rémige feathers that cover up to the second finger, and a fan of rectrices feathers on the tail. They have even placed a curious plume of feathers on the back of its head, similar to those found on the cardinal. But if these images show us something, it is that, despite what many critics affirmed, with current technology, feathers work perfectly on movie dinosaurs and neither make them look artificial nor stop being terrifying.
REFERENCES:
Allain, R. et al. 2000. A new genus of Dromaeosauridae (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of France. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 20(2), 404-407. DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2000)020[0404:ANGODD]2.0.CO;2
Currie, P. J. et al. 2004. A new Dromaeosaurid from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Alberta, Canada. En P. J. Currie et al. (Eds.), Feathered Dragons (pp. 112-132). Indiana University Press.
