The Incredible Hoax Behind Jurassic Park You Always Thought Was True

What’s the first thing that jumps to mind after hearing the words Jurassic Park? The answer is dinosaurs (or possibly shirtless Jeff Goldblum, but after that it’s definitely Dinosaurs). The Jurassic Park franchise now spans five films, a few comic books and some disappointing theme park rides, and has drawn in over five billion dollars. The theme park we see in Jurassic World was also a capitalist's wet dream, meaning Jurassic Park rakes in the cold hard cash both on and off the screen.

Why? Because everyone loves dinosaurs.

But what if I told you that you’d fallen for one of the greatest advertising cons of all time? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Every person who visited Jurassic Park and Jurassic World in the films, all the mathematicians, scientists, lawyers, archeologists and tourists of the series have been duped as well. Because there are no dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Yes, it’s the truth. To borrow the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, all Jurassic Park claims to be is just ‘one big pile of sh*t’.

Let’s break down the evidence.

3. The Science Behind The Park Just Doesn't Hold Up

First of all, let’s accept that it is technically impossible to bring back Dinosaurs in the way the first Jurassic Park film claims it could. However, this is science fiction, so we’ll give Jurassic Park the benefit of the doubt and act like, for the purposes of storytelling, it would be possible for dinosaurs to be reconstituted from DNA inside a mosquito trapped in fossilised tree resin.

Even assuming that the scientists of International Genetics Incorporated found a way to potentially bring back dinos from fossilised blood in a mosquito, there are still a few holes in their explanation.

The biggest is that the type of mosquito they claim to have used doesn’t suck blood! Toxorhynchites rutilus, the species of the mosquito John Hammond proudly carries round as the progenitor of his beloved exhibits didn’t suck blood. In fact, it’s the only species of mosquito that doesn’t! The specimen we see also has a hairy antennae, meaning it is a male mosquito, which only supports the fact that it couldn’t have ingested dinosaur blood, as only female mosquitoes of blood-sucking species actually suck blood at all.

Also, the film states that the mosquito was found in the Dominican Republic, even though that region has never produced fossils going back that far.

Even accepting the hokey claims that dinosaurs could be cloned from a fossilised mosquito (which they couldn’t), the science just doesn’t add up. Whatever John Hammond said (or believed), the things walking around Jurassic Park aren’t dinosaurs at all.

And there is a whole lot more evidence supporting this fact too, because...

It’s a well known truth at this point, so we won’t dwell on it, but dinosaurs looked very little like their depictions in Jurassic Park. Raptors, far from the 4ft badasses of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, were about the size of a turkey. Most dinosaurs were also feathered, and considerably more ‘fabulous’ with bright colours and plumage.

Not only visually though, the dinosaurs of the Jurassic theme park are different in other ways as well. We see the ‘’T-Rex’’ comfortably reaching 30 mph while chasing the jeep in Jurassic World, when the true Tyrannosaurus wouldn't even be able to reach half that speed. There’s also the fact that, although the T-Rex did have poor eyesight, it had a phenomenal sense of smell, something the 'T-Rex' created by International Genetics Incorporated didn’t seem to share.

There is only one explanation. Rather than cloning extinct dinosaurs, International Genetics Incorporated created a fictional, idealised version of dinosaurs using advanced genetic manipulation and cloning techniques. But, why?