11 Sci-Fi Movies That Got Science Completely Wrong

While Jurassic Park is one of the most beloved films of the last few decades, its not without its plot holes, one of the largest of which is a huge scientific error.

The dinosaurs that fill Jurassic Park (and eventually start ripping people to shreds) are all cloned using DNA found inside mosquitoes preserved in amber.

While at the time this may have seemed like a fairly scientifically solid plot device, it has since been called out as absolute codswallop by scientists.

Research has shown that the half life of DNA is approximately 521 years, meaning that the 80 million year old dino DNA would have decayed beyond the point of usefulness millions of years before Hammond and co. ever extracted it from the mosquitoes.

When interviewed on the subject by the BBC, paleontologist Steve Brusatte described the process as "pretty difficult, if not impossible," explaining that "in order to clone a dinosaur you would need the whole genome, and nobody's ever even found a little bit of dinosaur DNA."

This one is easy to overlook given Jurassic Park's sheer entertainment value, but it's certainly comforting to know that we'll never be hunted down by a pack of velociraptors. Hopefully.