Two paleontologists react to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, 1993

Who knows dinosaurs best? Paleontologists. CBC's Midday recruited two of them -- Dr. Dale Russell and Dr. Hans-Dieter Sues -- to review Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park when it came out in 1993. Watch them get into everything -- including whether raptors could open doors, if they were around today.

Note: This interview aired on CBC's Midday on June 14, 1993.

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Two paleontologists react to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, 1993

[HardcoreGator]

This guy says Ellie Sadler's character was wimpy? She voluntarily went with Muldoon into territory where it was assumed the velociraptors were. I'd like to know where exactly he thought she displayed a wimpy mannerism. I'm pretty sure the toughest dude out there would be pissing himself in that scenario.

[williv]

Laura Dern's character was more courageous than I would've been. Volunteering to go into raptor country to turn the power back on? She's a badass.

[catdude]

Dr. Sues, what did you think of the dinosaurs?
Dr Sues: I watch the dinosaurs fly through the air. I watch the dinosaurs from my chair. The dinosaurs walk down the street. They walk around on four

[moabman]

Dr. Seus is still alive. The other Doctor passed away in 2019 unfortunately.

[SwrveYT]

Nearly 30 years ago and it feels like another era

[simonriddick]

I remember seeing Jurassic Park. I had to sit in the very front row to see it but it was totally worth it. I'll never forget it. Dr Seus lol.

[kaitlynwatts]

All these complaints about the velociraptor size and not one about the fact that there was a velociraptor fossil in snakewater montana instead of Mongolia.

[dancutd]

I feel like a lot of experts missed the point with this film. Ingen created their version of dinosaurs. They were never meant to be exact according to the fossil record. The dinosaurs in the book even had versions, if the scientists weren’t happy with how they turned out they would just breed another versions until they got the type of dinosaur they wanted.

[marinomele]

This is only 1993, and it feels like a whole another era - paleo-wise.
Paleontologists from today would have been *screaming* after the question "was JP realistic" XD

[GREYFLWRMUSIC]

So fun to see Hans Dieter Sues as he was younger. He did a Wired Autofill (Or any of those copycat formats) about dinosaurs a while ago.

[floppychzcake]

i like how they say we won't have cloning technology for another hundred years. Then just 3 years later they get Dolley the Sheep

[NBC.SATURDAY.NIGHT.LIVE.]

Laura Dern wimpy ?! He didn’t watch the same fartin movie as me ! She went to go turn on the power She knew how dangerous it was out there

[jfhm]

Dr Suess (lol) has virtually the same regional German accent as the director Werner Herzog

[UlricGrim]

The dinosaurs in the movie would of course not mimic their real life counterparts, they were genetically modified, sometimes having multiple versions. The Dilophosaurus of course did not spit venom in real life, but in the movie it could. In the novel, key proteins and enzymes found in cobra venom was also found in the saliva of Procompsognathus, making their saliva highly toxic. And we know that cobras also spit their venom at their prey, so Jurassic Park geneticist most likely used cobra DNA to fill in damaged gaps in the DNA strands of the Dilophosaurus. When the DNA was extracted from insects fossilized in amber, the DNA was damaged, so they spliced out the damaged sequences and replaced it with reptile and amphibian DNA. This is how the Dilophosaurus was able to produce and spit venom. Also, the Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park had neck frills that expanded, whereas the real life counterparts did not. This was possibly yet another genetic modification in which most likely basilisk lizard DNA was used in their genome as these lizards do indeed have expandable neck frills.

[JurassicToys]

Ellie Sattler? Wimpy? You are kidding.

[raymonko]

I watched it in the movie theater at the time

[lancebuttercream]

They're not gonna bring up Jack Horner, the paleontologist on set? Huh...

[Spiqaro]

He talks about his female colleagues like they'd be totally okay and up to the challenge of venturing into dino infested territory.

[lelouchstrife]

i wonder if people look back at this but they know dinosaurs are alot smarter then people thought in 1993

[malice]

1: they're genetically modified
2: Velociraptors were called something different back then, Velociraptor Mongolia im pretty sure
3: it's a movie