Dominion’s Feathered Raptors Still Don’t Fix Jurassic Park’s Dino Mistake

Although Jurassic World: Dominion will fix one aspect of the raptors’ design in the Jurassic Park film series, the new movie will continue one major mistake. Opening on June 10, 2022, Jurassic World Dominion will conclude all six Jurassic Park films. The final Jurassic World movie will take place four years after the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and the release of dinosaurs into the “real world”. However, while it looks set to change some issues with the creatures’ appearance, one major problem remains unaddressed.

The first Jurassic World Dominion trailer gave viewers their first look at several new dinosaur species, including the Pyroraptor. During its brief appearance, the Pyroraptor prepared to attack Jurassic World’s protagonist, Owen Grady, and a pilot named Kayla. This new raptor species gives Jurassic World: Dominion the opportunity to improve raptors’ designs to make them more accurate. In real-life, Pyroraptors lived during the late Cretaceous period in northern Spain and southern France. They had large, curved claws for both combat and climbing and were covered in feathers. Based on the trailer though, Jurassic World Dominion will only fix one of the raptors’ design mistakes.

Since the first Jurassic Park movie in 1993, the dinosaurs, especially the Velociraptors, have intentionally had inaccurate designs, especially around their lack of feathers. In-universe, Jurassic World scientists explained that the new dinosaurs were featherless because geneticists filled in their DNA gaps with frog DNA. However, while the lack of feathers irked paleontologists, perhaps the most egregious issue was that real Velociraptors were much smaller than those depicted in Jurassic Park. Since the dinosaurs’ lack of feathers and greater size made them more intimidating, subsequent Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies maintained these designs. Unfortunately, although feathers are now an established part of the Jurassic World canon thanks to the new Pyroraptor, the size issue is yet to be resolved.

In the Jurassic World: Dominion trailer, the Pyroraptor appeared to be about the same size as the Velociraptors. In real life though, Pyroraptors would have been significantly smaller than the movies’ souped-up Velociraptors. Although Pyroraptors were eight feet long from their head to the tip of their tail, they were only about knee-height compared to humans. While Pyroraptors would still be dangerous at this size, given their claws and speed, Jurassic World: Dominion’s creators may have chosen to make them more threatening by enlarging them. In this way, Jurassic World: Dominion fixed Jurassic Park’s first design mistake by adding feathers to the Pyroraptor but still did not make the raptor fully accurate by decreasing its size.

The Jurassic World: Dominion trailer revealed that the Pyroraptor will finally fix Jurassic Park’s issue with depicting featherless dinosaurs. However, the Pyroraptor still will not resolve Jurassic Park’s other dinosaur design mistake. Velociraptors have always been much bigger in Jurassic Park than in real life (instead resembling larger species such as Deinonychus and Utahraptor), and the Pyroraptor seems to be following this pattern. Given previous criticisms of the series’ lack of realism, Jurassic World: Dominion‘s continued flawed depiction will undoubtedly disappoint many dinosaur fans.

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