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Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is a novel written by Michael Crichton and published in 1990, which was later adapted as a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Written as a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering (in much the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), it explores the consequences of an attempt to re-create certain species of dinosaur to serve as amusement park attractions.

Synopsis (novel)

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The novel, in an "introduction", is initially presented as a brief report on the consequences of "The InGen Incident", which occurred in August 1989. This "fiction as fact" presentation had been used by Crichton before, notably in Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain. Shortly after the story begins, a group of scientists (including paleontologist Alan Grant and chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm) are invited on an all-expense-paid preview visit to Jurassic Park, a zoo-like amusement park set up by billionaire John Hammond (founder of InGen) on the island of Isla Nublar (near Costa Rica). Hammond wishes to hear the opinions of the scientists and eventually win their approval of the park; Malcolm expresses misgivings from the beginning.

The park contains dinosaurs, who have been recreated from DNA found in mosquitos trapped in amber. Hammond (and his genetic engineers) take great delight in explaining the ways that they created the dinosaurs. The scientists grow apprehensive when they discover that the dinosaurs have been breeding, despite InGen's efforts to keep them sterile.

The action begins when Dennis Nedry, chief programmer of the Jurassic Park controlling software, tries to steal dinosaur embryos as per a deal with Lewis Dodgson, who works for one of John Hammond's competitors, Biosyn. In order to do this, he has to turn off the electricity to the park's many electric fences, and a number of dinosaurs – including a Tyrannosaurus rex and eight Velociraptor – escape from their enclosures, and have a number of encounters with the scientists, who remain inside the park.

Eventually several of the characters escape the island alive (although many, including Hammond himself, do not) and the island is razed by the Costa Rican Air Force, although there is disturbing evidence that several Raptors may have escaped. The book has one sequel, The Lost World.

One of the themes expressed throughout this story and its sequels is that of homeothermic (warm-blooded) dinosaurs; a recent theory popularized by paleontologist Bob Bakker.

The novel is considerably darker in tone and content than the movie, with graphic violence and a higher body count.

Movie

Dennis Nedry stealing the DNA sequences A mosquito in amber A Brachiosaurus seen by John Hammond, Alan Grant, & Ellie Sattler The Tyrannosaurus rex in the Jurassic visitor center with the overhead banner "When dinosaurs ruled the Earth" falling

Steven Spielberg later directed the Jurassic Park movie, filming at the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai in September 1992. Opening in 1993, it starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Many plot points from the novel were changed or dropped, and the cautionary aspect of the novel was reduced. The film was extremely popular though, grossing $919,700,000 worldwide, the highest ever at the time, and the sixth-highest worldwide box office take for a feature film as of 2004.

Largely credited for the movie's success were its special effects, created by Industrial Light and Magic. Through the use of CGI and conventional mechanical effects, the dinosaurs in the film appeared relatively lifelike, unlike previous effects films like Terminator 2. Jurassic Park marked the Hollywood effects industry's transition from conventional optical effects to digital techniques.

The movie won Academy Awards for Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound, and spawned two sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001). Jurassic Park IV (IMDb (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/)) is currently in production and planned for release in 2006.

Original ending

Originally, the movie was to end with the T. rex skeleton (in the Visitor Center) falling onto the raptors before they attack Alan Grant, Tim, Lex,and Ellie Sattler. Later that was replaced with a living T. rex that attacks the raptors, saving Grant and the others. Quickly they flee with Hammond in his jeep to the helicopter.

Dinosaurs featured in the movie

Brachiosaurus
Dilophosaurus
Gallimimus
Parasaurolophus
Triceratops
Tyrannosaurus rex
Velociraptor

Biological issues

During the movie's production, the effects supervisors acknowledged that the Velociraptors featured in the movie were sized more like the larger Deinonychus. However, during the filming of the movie, paleontologists came across a larger dromaeosaurid species named Utahraptor, and the larger raptors remained.

The Dilophosaurus in the movie is smaller than their 6m (20ft) real-life counterparts, and have a totally speculative frill like the Australian frill-necked lizard and the ability to spit venom.

Biotechnological background

The dinosaur DNA is extracted from fossilised mosquitos, and this small amount is then amplified by PCR. This has been done before, for example with a Cretaceous weevil in Cano et al. (1993) (no dinosaur DNA was found).

There are some problems with this approach:

The mosquito had to have had just one species of dinosaur as its prey to avoid a mix-up
It is unknown which dinosaur the sample contains. It would be impossible to tell which "species" it is, because the DNA sequences would fit somewhere between that of birds and crocodiles. The resolution is very bad.
The dinosaur DNA has to be correct (it has to contain every chromosome) and should contain no gaps
The DNA is mixed with mosquito DNA. PCR is extremely sensitive, and will amplify that too.
Present day PCR can't amplify large quantities of DNA (the entire dinosaur genome). Even if this was possible, it would take a very long time.
PCR needs parts of the DNA to start the reaction (the so-called primers). To get them, the genome needs to be mapped beforehand.
Because DNA is broken down by nucleases and proteolytic enzymes in the mosquito gut, the mosquito would have to be preserved immediately after feeding.

Furthermore, in the fossilisation process, molecules are altered. Nevertheless, amber is the best preservative, because organic material is preserved. But DNA cannot survive completely without gaps for tens or hundreds of millions of years.

In the book the gaps in the DNA are filled by hybridizing the DNA with frog DNA. This is extremely difficult, as one would need to know which dinosaur genes are homologous with frog genes. The use of frog genes is probably a plot device, to allow some females to change gender and breed nevertheless (although gender change is also possible in some more advanced vertebrates).

The next step would be bringing the DNA strands to expression. For that, one would need to inject the dinosaur DNA into the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell of a close relative of dinosaurs (birds or crocodiles (not frogs)). This technique is based on reproductive cloning, which was used to clone Dolly. In the movie, ostrich eggs are used for this purpose. However, the development of an embryo is regulated by hormones in the egg/uterus and the environment. These (bird or crocodylian) hormones need to have the same effect as their original dinosaurian counterparts. For that, they have to recognize particular pieces of dinosaur DNA, which they could hardly do.

References

Cano R.J., Poinar H.N., Pieniazek N.J., Acra A., Poinar G.O. Jr. (1993). Amplification and Sequencing of DNA from a 120–135-Million-Year-Old Weevil (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8505978&dopt=Abstract). Nature, 363:536–538
Weaver, R. F. (2002). Molecular Biology. McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 76. ISBN 0-07-234517-9

Video games

See Jurassic Park (video game).

Their has been a number of Jurrassic Park video games released to act as merchandise for the release of each film. The titles have appeared on a range of platforms including NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, PC:DOS/Windows, SNES, Sega CD, Sega Mega Drive, Playstation 2 and Xbox.

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The titles have appeared on a range of platforms including NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, PC:DOS/Windows, SNES, Sega CD, Sega Mega Drive, Playstation 2 and Xbox. The following is a list of song titles used through out the film. Their has been a number of Jurrassic Park video games released to act as merchandise for the release of each film. Joker is ignorant he has got guts. See Jurassic Park (video game).. Joker to squad leader reasoning that although Pvt. ISBN 0-465-07379-4. The senior drill instructor although offended promotes Pvt.

$18 or C$25.50. Joker whether he believes in the Virgin Mary, and Pvt Joker replies that he does not. xxix, 194 pp., illus. In one of the scenes the senior drill instructor asks Pvt. BasicBooks, New York, 1997. There are also several references to religion, the senior drill instructor is a Roman-Catholic. Rob DeSalle and David Lindley. The movie is full of satires about the war providing freedom for the Vietnamese people by taking away the freedom of the American people, and the fact that the Vietnamese don't seem to want their freedom (in a satirical scene).

Or How to Build a Dinosaur. The irony is that the product of the US marine recruit training, killers, are wiped out one by one by a small school girl who snipes from a damaged building. The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. In the second half of the movie, the protagonist wants to get in "the shit" but eventually at the end of the movie, is happy just to be alive. For that, they have to recognize particular pieces of dinosaur DNA, which they could hardly do. Drill instructor tells his recruits what a marine is capable of doing in his speech about famous assassins, thus giving Pyle his murderous idea. These (bird or crocodylian) hormones need to have the same effect as their original dinosaurian counterparts. Gomer Pyle murders; drills instructor's success results in his own death.

In the movie, ostrich eggs are used for this purpose. However, the development of an embryo is regulated by hormones in the egg/uterus and the environment. The irony is the murder of the senior drill instructor whom Pvt. This technique is based on reproductive cloning, which was used to clone Dolly. Gomer Pyle appeared to be an innocent character in the beginning of the movie and eventually ended up as a killer, exactly like the drill instructor wanted. For that, one would need to inject the dinosaur DNA into the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell of a close relative of dinosaurs (birds or crocodiles (not frogs)). Pvt. The next step would be bringing the DNA strands to expression. In the first half of the movie, the recruit training is supposed to train soldiers who protect the interests of the country and the military, but at the end the training results in the death of the senior drill instructor.

The use of frog genes is probably a plot device, to allow some females to change gender and breed nevertheless (although gender change is also possible in some more advanced vertebrates). In the next level, each dual part of the movie has its own ambiguity. This is extremely difficult, as one would need to know which dinosaur genes are homologous with frog genes. It is shown to be milder and even funny at times, while still showing the horrors present in war. In the book the gaps in the DNA are filled by hybridizing the DNA with frog DNA. The Vietnam war, which is the second part of the movie, is gruesome in the minds of people. But DNA cannot survive completely without gaps for tens or hundreds of millions of years. The first part, the training of new US Marine Corps recruits, accepted to be a positive thing by a wide range of American population, is depicted as very disturbing.

Nevertheless, amber is the best preservative, because organic material is preserved. In the most basic level, the movie itself is dual in nature, in that it is divided into two distinct parts. Furthermore, in the fossilisation process, molecules are altered. The confliciting duality is irony exhibited by the characters and the conflicting nature of the war. There are some problems with this approach:. The main theme of the movie is conflicting duality which the director has incorporated in several levels of the movie. This has been done before, for example with a Cretaceous weevil in Cano et al. (1993) (no dinosaur DNA was found). The movie is a satire on the Vietnam war and the soldiers involved in the war.

The dinosaur DNA is extracted from fossilised mosquitos, and this small amount is then amplified by PCR. Other songs used in the film are "Hello Vietnam" and "Patriotic Full Metal Jacket Military Cadence." The film's end credits are accompanied by The Rolling Stones "Paint It Black.". The Dilophosaurus in the movie is smaller than their 6m (20ft) real-life counterparts, and have a totally speculative frill like the Australian frill-necked lizard and the ability to spit venom. The film concludes with the soldiers' ironic rendition of the theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club. However, during the filming of the movie, paleontologists came across a larger dromaeosaurid species named Utahraptor, and the larger raptors remained. His helmet decoration – the slogan "Born to Kill" – and the Peace symbol pin on his uniform exemplify his moral ambiguity. During the movie's production, the effects supervisors acknowledged that the Velociraptors featured in the movie were sized more like the larger Deinonychus. The 'Joker' soon becomes familiar with both the horror and the absurdity of war.

Quickly they flee with Hammond in his jeep to the helicopter. 'Joker' Davis (Matthew Modine) now a Sergeant and a Stars and Stripes war correspondent, as he covers the Tet Offensive. rex that attacks the raptors, saving Grant and the others. The second part then takes place in Vietnam, mostly focusing on Marine recruit J.T. Later that was replaced with a living T. Lawrence then kills himself. rex skeleton (in the Visitor Center) falling onto the raptors before they attack Alan Grant, Tim, Lex,and Ellie Sattler. Lee Ermey, whose performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor). The drill is depicted as designed to wash away the recruits' personalities and turn them into killers, but the brutal treatment of Leonard 'Gomer Pyle' Lawrence, played by Vincent D'Onofrio results in his murder of the drill instructor.

Originally, the movie was to end with the T. The first part of the film follows the basic training of a group of Marine recruits during the Vietnam War era under the brutal command of drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (played by R. Jurassic Park IV (IMDb (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/)) is currently in production and planned for release in 2006. While this was reasonable for the urban nature of the Tet offensive, it can be attributed to Kubrick's aversion to travel, especially by plane: after receiving death threats during the filming of Barry Lyndon in Ireland, he had decided never again to leave Great Britain. The movie won Academy Awards for Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound, and spawned two sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001). The ravaged city scenes were shot in a disused gas works. Jurassic Park marked the Hollywood effects industry's transition from conventional optical effects to digital techniques. Palm trees were imported from Spain.

Through the use of CGI and conventional mechanical effects, the dinosaurs in the film appeared relatively lifelike, unlike previous effects films like Terminator 2. The movie was shot mainly on the Isle of Dogs, a peninsula in east London. Largely credited for the movie's success were its special effects, created by Industrial Light and Magic. All references to a recruit's family are absolutely forbidden, as is striking a recruit. The film was extremely popular though, grossing $919,700,000 worldwide, the highest ever at the time, and the sixth-highest worldwide box office take for a feature film as of 2004. In the aftermath of this film a series of policy changes came about in what was considered acceptable behavior by a drill instructor in the United States Armed Forces. Many plot points from the novel were changed or dropped, and the cautionary aspect of the novel was reduced. The miasma of confusion and angst of the new world begins in boot camp, and spirals down into bloodshed before even landing in Vietnam.

Opening in 1993, it starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Recurring themes are the contradictions of war, a constant feeling of being out of one's depth, and the idea of combat in Vietnam being part of a different world, with its own rules and customs. Steven Spielberg later directed the Jurassic Park movie, filming at the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai in September 1992. The film has been widely praised for accurately evoking the mood of the Vietnam War from the soldier's point of view. The novel is considerably darker in tone and content than the movie, with graphic violence and a higher body count. The film is named after the full metal jacket ammunition used in military weapons. One of the themes expressed throughout this story and its sequels is that of homeothermic (warm-blooded) dinosaurs; a recent theory popularized by paleontologist Bob Bakker. Full Metal Jacket (1987) is a film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford.

The book has one sequel, The Lost World. Kubrick provided the voice of Murphy, the soldier on the other end of the radio communication in the latter part of the film. Eventually several of the characters escape the island alive (although many, including Hammond himself, do not) and the island is razed by the Costa Rican Air Force, although there is disturbing evidence that several Raptors may have escaped. Mickey Mouse Club Television Theme. In order to do this, he has to turn off the electricity to the park's many electric fences, and a number of dinosaurs – including a Tyrannosaurus rex and eight Velociraptor – escape from their enclosures, and have a number of encounters with the scientists, who remain inside the park. Paint it Black - Performed by The Rolling Stones. The action begins when Dennis Nedry, chief programmer of the Jurassic Park controlling software, tries to steal dinosaur embryos as per a deal with Lewis Dodgson, who works for one of John Hammond's competitors, Biosyn. Chapel of Love - Performed by The Dixie Cups.

The scientists grow apprehensive when they discover that the dinosaurs have been breeding, despite InGen's efforts to keep them sterile. The Marine's Hymn - Performed by The Goldmen. Hammond (and his genetic engineers) take great delight in explaining the ways that they created the dinosaurs. Surfin' Bird - Performed by The Trashmen. The park contains dinosaurs, who have been recreated from DNA found in mosquitos trapped in amber. Wooly Bully - Performed by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. Hammond wishes to hear the opinions of the scientists and eventually win their approval of the park; Malcolm expresses misgivings from the beginning. These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Performed by Nancy Sinatra.

Shortly after the story begins, a group of scientists (including paleontologist Alan Grant and chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm) are invited on an all-expense-paid preview visit to Jurassic Park, a zoo-like amusement park set up by billionaire John Hammond (founder of InGen) on the island of Isla Nublar (near Costa Rica). Hello Vietnam - Performed by Johnny Wright. This "fiction as fact" presentation had been used by Crichton before, notably in Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain. The novel, in an "introduction", is initially presented as a brief report on the consequences of "The InGen Incident", which occurred in August 1989. Written as a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering (in much the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), it explores the consequences of an attempt to re-create certain species of dinosaur to serve as amusement park attractions.

Jurassic Park is a novel written by Michael Crichton and published in 1990, which was later adapted as a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. ISBN 0-07-234517-9. 76. McGraw-Hill, New York, p.

Molecular Biology. (2002). F. Weaver, R.

Amplification and Sequencing of DNA from a 120–135-Million-Year-Old Weevil (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8505978&dopt=Abstract). Nature, 363:536–538. (1993). Jr. Cano R.J., Poinar H.N., Pieniazek N.J., Acra A., Poinar G.O.

Because DNA is broken down by nucleases and proteolytic enzymes in the mosquito gut, the mosquito would have to be preserved immediately after feeding. To get them, the genome needs to be mapped beforehand. PCR needs parts of the DNA to start the reaction (the so-called primers). Present day PCR can't amplify large quantities of DNA (the entire dinosaur genome). Even if this was possible, it would take a very long time.

PCR is extremely sensitive, and will amplify that too. The DNA is mixed with mosquito DNA. The dinosaur DNA has to be correct (it has to contain every chromosome) and should contain no gaps. The resolution is very bad.

It would be impossible to tell which "species" it is, because the DNA sequences would fit somewhere between that of birds and crocodiles. It is unknown which dinosaur the sample contains. The mosquito had to have had just one species of dinosaur as its prey to avoid a mix-up. Velociraptor.

Tyrannosaurus rex. Triceratops. Parasaurolophus. Gallimimus.

Dilophosaurus. Brachiosaurus.