Could a ‘Jurassic Park’ ever work? JV Chamary takes a look
The original Jurassic Park film featured iconic species like Brachiosaurus, Triceratops and T. rex. Would these really be the best candidates if science could recreate dinosaurs for a wildlife park?
What would be needed for a real Jurassic Park?
Before adding fauna, we need flora – prehistoric plants to produce energy for a sustainable ecosystem and self-replenishing resources so that animals could feed themselves, instead of relying on zoo keepers.
This results in a food chain with nourishment levels in the form of a pyramid. At the base are producers – plants that feed consumers, herbivores like Triceratops, which in turn feed one or two levels of carnivores and omnivores, with apex predators like
T. rex top of the food chain.
The next step is to pick a geological period. In a park with a Triassic (252-201 MYA) theme, many plants are leftovers from the Carboniferous period (359-299 MYA) – giant horsetails and seed ferns with woody trunks up to 12m tall. Feeding on their leaves we have the early sauropod Plateosaurus (‘broad lizard’) that, unlike its more familiar descendants, was bipedal with a short neck.
Our ‘Triassic Park’ has quadrupedal, long-necked sauropods too – like Antetonitrus (‘before thunder’, named because it lived before the ‘thunder lizard’ Brontosaurus). The meat-eaters include early theropods like the dog-sized Coelophysis (‘hollow form’), Eodromaeus (‘dawn runner’) and our park’s top predator, the terrifying Herrerasaurus (‘Herrera’s lizard’).
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But what about an actual ‘Jurassic Park’ (201-145 MYA)? First, we need plants at a variety of heights. At ground level, the period had ferns and cycads whose cones were pollinated by insects such as beetles.
There were primitive, mid-size trees like gingko and ancient conifers like monkey puzzle. The forest canopy consisted of tall, coniferous trees such as the Wollemi pine.
Having vegetation at various heights helps prevent competition between herbivores – it’s what allows gazelle and giraffes to live side-by-side on the African plains today, with the short species grazing on grasses and the tall one browsing from trees. The animals exploit different resources within the same space, occupying separate niches.
‘Niche partitioning’ explains the huge diversity of sauropods in the Jurassic (one rock formation in the Western USA contains seven to eight species in one place). In our park, we have plants for different species. Leaves from treetops are stripped by a high browser, the 30m-long Brachiosaurus (‘arm lizard’).
Ferns are eaten by a low browser, such as the 15m Dicraeosaurus (‘forked lizard’). We have other herbivores too, including the renowned Stegosaurus (‘roof lizard’).The late Jurassic was a golden age for plant-eaters, meaning it was also a good time for meat-eaters.
During this period, the 10m-long Allosaurus (‘different lizard’) was the top predator. It goes in our park, along with another theropod, Compsognathus (‘elegant jaw’), to fill the niche for a small carnivore. We also have medium-sized ones from the original Jurassic Park trilogy, Ceratosaurus (‘horned lizard’) and Dilophosaurus (‘two-crested lizard’).
But if we really want to draw crowds, we would create a ‘Cretaceous Park’. That’s because the period featured some of the most famous species of all, such as the herbivore Triceratops (‘three-horned face’), the turkey-sized carnivore Velociraptor (‘quick thief’) and the star of the show, the undisputed king of the Cretaceous, T. rex.
We have flowering plants for vegetation, including palm trees to help feed our massive sauropods – titanosaurs like Dreadnoughtus (‘fears nothing’) and Argentinosaurus. At low levels we have famously tough herbivore dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus (‘fused lizard’) and Pachycephalosaurus (‘thick-headed lizard’).
Dinosaurs need to drink, so our park has rivers and lakes. On the shore are duck-billed hadrosaurs such as Parasaurolophus (‘like ridged-lizard’) with its noisy head crest, and the fearsome fish-eater Spinosaurus (‘spine lizard’). Flying reptiles – pterosaurs – probably had essential functions in prehistoric ecosystems, so we might also consider adding species such as Pteranodon (‘toothless wing’).
Finally, our park needs an isolated location, to reduce the risk of dinosaurs and pterosaurs escaping from the site. It would also have to be warm and wet – a tropical climate preferred by palm trees and reptiles. We would build a place that’s not just a tourist attraction, but a nature reserve.
Could there ever be a real Jurassic Park?
Science can’t bring non-avian dinosaurs back from the dead, unfortunately. In Jurassic Park, extinct reptiles are cloned from DNA preserved in amber – which is impossible because genetic material is rapidly broken-down by environmental factors such as heat, light, moisture and microbes. ‘De-extinction’ via cloning requires a complete set of genes.
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Nonetheless, future scientists may one day be able to create artificial animals based on knowledge that palaeontologists continue to collect.
These synthetic species might only look and act like dinosaurs, but they may be convincing enough to make people believe they’re real when the tour guide says, “We have a T. rex.”