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Exclusive: Jurassic Park's original trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum are major characters in Jurassic World 3, says to Colin Trevorrow.

The original Jurassic Park trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum will be in the entirety of Jurassic World: Dominion, according to director Colin Trevorrow. Goldblum reprised his beloved role as Ian Malcom in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and he’ll be joined by his former costars when Alan Grant (Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Dern) return in the upcoming sequel. When older characters are brought back in major franchises, it’s often in the form of small cameos, but according to Trevorrow, the original trio are major players in the events of Jurassic World 3.

Sattler, Malcom and Grant were all created by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton for his original novel, though they were all changed a bit in their transition from the page to the screen. They continued to be the lead protagonists through the original trilogy of films, with Malcom taking the starring role in The Lost World, and Grant returning as the main character of Jurassic Park III, which also featured a cameo by Dern’s Sattler. The series has always been mainly about dinosaurs and god-complex philosophy, but it's also about the characters, and all three initial protagonists have remained incredibly popular over the years.

The news that Goldblum, Neill and Dern will all be reuniting in Jurassic World 3 was incredibly exciting when it was first announced, and according to Trevorrow, their role in the film will be far more than a simple cameo. In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, the director revealed that the original trio will be in the whole movie, and that they are central to Dominion’s overarching story. Read Trevorrow’s quote below.

“I feel like we’ll want people to come see the movie to see the context of it, but they are in the whole movie. They are major characters and they go on an adventure together, and they collide with our modern characters. It is a celebration of everything that Michael Crichton created, and what Steven created, and what the other directors contributed to this over the years. I really felt like it was an opportunity to bring everything together and, hopefully, clarify why we’ve been telling this story for so long. That’s what it was really all about.”

For fans of the original Jurassic Park, a big role for the older characters is great news. As the end of a second trilogy, Jurassic World 3 will in many ways be a capstone to the entire franchise thus far. Looping back around to the story and themes of the early films wouldn’t work without the original trio returning in major roles, and it sounds like Trevorrow and the rest of the team are doing a good job of centering Malcom, Sattler and Grant.

So far, Dominion seems to be shaping up to be a proper finale to the whole Jurassic universe, which opens up some interesting questions as to how the story will actually end. The franchise has always dealt with the ethics of genetic modification and creating life, and Malcom, Sattler and Grant have been a big part of that narrative since Crichton’s original novel. Will the dinosaurs establish some sort of harmony with humanity? Or will they be wiped out once more? Those questions won't be properly answered until Jurassic World 3 finally arrives in theaters on June 10, 2022.

Source: https://screenrant.com/

It is time to meet Australotitan cooperensis, a new species of giant sauropod from Eromanga in southwest Queensland. Australotitan, the “Southern Titan of the Cooper,” named from where it was found, has been scientifically described by paleontologists and staff at Queensland Museum and the Eromanga Natural History Museum.

The fossilized skeleton was originally nicknamed ‘Cooper’ after the nearby Cooper Creek where it was first discovered by the Mackenzie property owners and excavated with Queensland Museum in 2007. Finding ‘Cooper’ has changed the lives of the Mackenzie family and has led to the establishment of the Eromanga Natural History Museum.

Australotitan belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as the titanosaurians, which were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods and the largest known land-dwelling animals to have ever existed. Australotitan is now the largest known dinosaur species from Australia, making it the largest land animal to have ever walked in outback Queensland and sits within the top 10 to 15 largest dinosaurs in the world. It is estimated to have reached a height of 5 to 6.5 meters at the hip and length of 25 to 30 meters – as long as a basketball court! It may have weighed anywhere between 23 and 74 tons, the equivalent of 1400 red kangaroos!

The study found that all four of the sauropod dinosaurs that lived in Australia around the same time (96 to 92 million years ago) were more closely related to one another than they were to other dinosaurs found elsewhere. To check Australotitan was a different species, its’ bones needed to be compared with the bones of other species in Queensland and globally. Not exactly an easy task when dealing with fragile and very heavy bones that are kept in museums 100s to 1000s of kilometers apart.

For the first time, the team used new digital technology to capture each bone in 3-D and compare them to the bones of its closest relatives. Many of these digital ‘cybertypes’ will form part of Queensland Museum’s digital collection powered by Project DIG, a partnership between Queensland Museum Network and BHP.

The digital capturing process has also led to some remarkable discoveries. It has been found that several of ‘Cooper’s’ bones were crushed by the footsteps of other sauropod dinosaurs. This can be seen in a sauropod trample zone found during the excavation of ‘Cooper’. The team found a rock-shelf, almost 100 meters long, representing a sauropod pathway. The footprints of sauropods have been preserved trampling through the mud and even the bones of another smaller sauropod in the soft ground. This work has been forming fascinating studies in dinosaur trace fossils around Queensland.

The scientific publication marks a seventeen-year long culmination of the joint effort between Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum paleontologists, geologists, fossil preparators, and most importantly volunteers. Australotitan adds to the growing list of uniquely Australian dinosaur species discovered in outback Queensland, and just as importantly showcases a totally new area for dinosaur discovery in Australia.

Stay tuned for more behind the scenes stories of Queensland dinosaur discoveries!

Project DIG is a partnership between Queensland Museum and BHP that will scan our collections and digitize our research for people worldwide.

Written by Rochelle Lawrence, Senior Research Assistant, and Scott Hocknull, Senior Curator, Geosciences, Queensland Museum.

Reference: “A new giant sauropod, Australotitan cooperensis gen. et sp. nov., from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia” by Scott A. Hocknull​, Melville Wilkinson, Rochelle A. Lawrence, Vladislav Konstantinov, Stuart Mackenzie and Robyn Mackenzie, 7 June 2021, PeerJ.
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.11317

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/

Paleoclimatologists have precisely reconstructed monthly sea surface temperatures at around 50 °N latitude from fossil shells of bivalve mollusks that lived during the Campanian (Late Cretaceous epoch) greenhouse period, about 78 million years ago.

“We used to think that when the climate warmed like it did in the Cretaceous period, the time of the dinosaurs, the difference between the seasons would decrease, much like the present-day tropics experience less temperature difference between summer and winter,” said lead author Dr. Niels de Winter, a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Utrecht University.

“However, our reconstructions now show that the average temperature did indeed rise, but that the temperature difference between summer and winter remained rather constant. This leads to hotter summers and warmer winters.”

To characterize the climate during the Campanian greenhouse period, Dr. de Winter and colleagues examined well-preserved oyster and rudist shells from the ancient coastal localities of the Kristianstad Basin in southern Sweden.

“Those shells grew in the warm, shallow seas that covered much of Europe at the time,” they explained.

“They recorded monthly variations in their environment and climate, like the rings in a tree.”

Using a ‘clumped isotope’ method, they found that water temperatures in what is now Sweden during the Campanian greenhouse period fluctuated between 15 and 27 degrees Celsius — over 10 degrees Celsius warmer than today.

“It was thought that during the age of the dinosaurs difference between the seasons was small,” Dr. de Winter said.

“We’ve now established that there were greater seasonal differences. With the same temperature average over a year, you end up with a much higher temperature in the summer.”

“Our results therefore suggest that in the mid latitudes, seasonal temperatures will likely rise along with climate warming, while seasonal difference is maintained. This leads to very high summer temperatures,” he added.

“The results bring new insight into the dynamics of a warm climate on a very fine scale, which can be used to improve both climate reconstructions and climate predictions. Moreover, they show that a warmer climate can also have extreme seasons.”

The findings appear in the journal Communications in Earth and Environment.

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de Winter et al. 2021. Absolute seasonal temperature estimates from clumped isotopes in bivalve shells suggest warm and variable greenhouse climate. Commun Earth Environ 2, 121; doi: 10.1038/s43247-021-00193-9

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's opening sequence connects to a horrific scene in the finale of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous' third season.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the third season of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, now streaming on Netflix.

One of the scariest aspects of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom came right out of the gates. A mercenary team sent by Dr. Henry Wu was attacked as they came to Isla Nublar to get the Indominus Rex DNA for Eli Mills' science team to use to create more experimental hybrids. It resulted in one operative, Jack, getting eaten as he fled from a T-Rex, not realizing that the Mosasaurus would be waiting to jump out of the water and chomp him to pieces. It was a pretty horrific scene that showed the new films were a bit more brutal. And now, with Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous' third season, we see how all this was set up.

This season adds more nuance to this exchange during a stormy night at Site A as Wu's come with another chopper to get his laptop back. It has InGen data he needs and this causes a chase where his chopper and goons track the kids down as they've stolen the machine to blackmail him.

As Darius and Co. run around the island, they encounter the T-Rex, who's quite hungry after the place has been left abandoned. This leads to a chase in the night that puts the T-Rex on a collision course with Jack. The kids flee and end up in a tower, trying to find resources to fight back, and there they watch the Fallen Kingdom opening scene unfold.

Ironically, the T-Rex they've evaded goes after Jack, and as he jumps onto the rope ladder hanging off this other chopper, he thinks he's escaped. Unfortunately, as he screams and laughs, the kids are totally terrified as they watch the Mosasaurus rise up and clamp down on him. It almost pulls the chopper down too but the guys escape with the genetic data, not caring for their fallen colleague.

In addition to the context given to that opening scene, Wu escapes with his own crew and insists that rather than chasing the kids down from the air, this helicopter needs to get to Eli as soon as possible. He doesn't want the boss knowing teens might have stolen his work and simply needs to start creating the new breed, the Indoraptor.

It's an intriguing sequence of events and shows how the kids influenced the films on the big screen, all while operating in the shadows. And to them, they realize that the humans and monsters we got in those films really are threats to their existence, which is why they're happy to steer clear of Wu and his squads of soldiers and get to Costa Rica.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous stars Paul-Mikél Williams as Darius, Jenna Ortega as Brooklynn, Ryan Potter as Kenji, Raini Rodriguez as Sammy, Sean Giambrone as Ben and Kausar Mohammed as Yaz. Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.

Source: www.cbr.com/

Exclusive: Jurassic World: Dominion takes place in 2022, four years after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, director Colin Trevorrow has confirmed.

Jurassic World: Dominion is set 4 years after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The final installment in the Jurassic World trilogy is being helmed by Colin Trevorrow, who previously directed the first Jurassic World in 205. The previous two installments,  which retooled Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures original franchise, proved to be massive hits at the box office. This thus encouraged the studio to continue the films and complete the trilogy. Plot details about Jurrasic World: Dominion are scant. Still, it is believed that the forthcoming movie will wind up everything in a big and fulfilling way once it arrives in 2022.

Although there is a full year before Jurassic World: Dominion premieres in cinemas, the movie has already created a lot of buzz. This hype can perhaps be best attributed to the fact that the primary cast consisting of Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and BD Wong are all coming back to reprise their roles in the sequel. And it's not just them who will reappear, but original Jurassic Park stars Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum have also been confirmed to return for the end of the trilogy. Despite the exciting cast announcements, it remained unclear when after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom would the new movie be set. But that conundrum has now been solved by Trevorrow, who has set straight the timeline of Jurassic World: Dominion. 

During his exclusive conversation with Screen Rant ahead of F9's IMAX preview, Trevorrow revealed that Jurassic World: Dominion takes place four years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. He said that everything within the Jurassic World universe is set in the present day. So by that principle, since the events in Fallen Kingdom occurred in 2018 and the Battle at the Big Rock happened in 2019 (as shown in the short film of the same name), Dominion must come about in 2022, which is four years after the second film.

Everything in my mind has always been pretty much present-day. So Big Rock took place a year or so after Fallen Kingdom in 2019, when it came out, and the T-Rex has just been out in the Sierra Nevada forest where they all escaped to. It’s absolutely massive; it’s a whole section of the state. And so she’s just been living in there; they’ve been struggling to catch her for a very long time. So this is about four years later - it’s when the movie comes out, so 2022.

While determining the timeline for Jurassic World: Dominion, Trevorrow cited the end of the previous film and its follow-up short film. This may possibly hint towards the premise of the new movie, which many believe will deal with dinosaurs co-existing with humans. Trevorrow has made it abundantly clear the Fallen Kingdom dinosaurs are still out there in the wild, as he said that by the time the new movie kicks off officers would still be looking to hunt down the T-Rex that had escaped into the Sierra Nevada forest. This means that Jurassic World: Dominion will depict a full-blown dinosaur infestation, and it will be up to the heroes to save the day. It's, however, not necessary that all dinosaurs would be a cause of nuisance. But is more likely that while some dinosaurs would like in harmony with humans, some others would wreak havoc, much like what was shown at the end of the Battle of Big Rock.

Trevorrow's comments intelligibly indicate what the new Jurrasic World: Dominion movie could look like. Fans already had an idea that the upcoming final film would leave the park behind and explore real-world locations, and now it's also known that the movie is set in the modern day. This information should suffice in appeasing viewers' curiosity until a trailer drops and actually offering a proper glance at the film's plot. That said, the idea of Jurassic World: Dominion taking place in 2022 gives rise to a logical question about the movie's storyline, that is if the COVID-19 pandemic would factor into the events as well. It's highly unlikely though, as the movie has its own epidemic to deal with, which involves menacing Cretaceous reptiles roaming the Earth.

Source: https://screenrant.com/

If you’ve ever wanted to grow your own herbs on a windowsill and use them in your daily cooking, these adorable dinosaur planters help take the effort out of keeping indoor plants alive. While the herbs inside of them still need access to sunlight (so you’ll want to place them near a window), these planters have a unique self-watering design that makes them not just cute but super-practical, as well.

Since it’s inevitable that someone will space on watering their herbs at some point (or will have to be away from home for a few days), these planters only require that the dish that the dinosaur “drinks” from is filled with water; the planter does the rest, allowing the roots to absorb the necessary amount of water through the dino’s tongue when they need it. This also prevents you from over-watering the herbs, too.

Choose your favorite dino or collect the entire set: The orange Triceratops comes with sweet basil seeds, the green Stegosaurus contains lucky clover, and the red T-Rex comes with wild strawberry seeds.

According to reviews, these Japanese-made planters make a fun and quirky gift for the dinosaur-loving people in your life, especially kids. And just imagine the batches of pesto you can make with your own basil plant growing in your kitchen.

This story originally appeared on Simplemost.

Jurassic World: Dominion director Colin Trevorrow confirms the movie will include more scientifically-accurate dinosaurs with feathers.

Jurassic World: Dominion director Colin Trevorrow confirmed the movie will include more scientifically-accurate dinosaurs with feathers.

"We have consultants. Steve Brusatte, who is an amazing paleontologist, started with us on this movie and then we have Jack Horner who’s been with us all the other movies," said Trevorrow, speaking to SlashFilm about Dominon's extended theatrical preview. "Steve specifically wrote a book that came out a couple years ago that’s become the new standard for paleontology. He knew we were going to do feathers in the movie -- we hadn’t done that before. And so I went up to Edinburgh where he is and sat with him and was like, 'Look man, we’re going to go for it.' There are dinosaurs with feathers, not just in the short but in the movie as well, and so we wanted to get it exactly right."

One of Dominion's feathered dinosaurs can be glimpsed in a photo that's seemingly taken from a sequence set 65 million years in the past, showing a world ruled by dinosaurs. Footage from that sequence will be featured in the movie's extended five-minute preview, which will screen with IMAX showings of F9: The Fast Saga.

In the first Jurassic World film, Dr. Henry Wu explained why the franchise's dinosaurs have always been scientifically inaccurate, noting they were created by filling in their genetic gaps with DNA from frogs. "We also don’t have the excuse of frog DNA being put into the genome that we have in all the movies to say, 'Well no here’s why they’re not paleontology accurate,'" said Trevorrow, explaining why the dinosaurs from Dominion's prehistorical sequence will finally buck that trend. "We had to get it right. And so we took the challenge and we ran with it."

Moreover, Trevorrow previously described Dominion as being a celebration of the whole franchise, including both the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films. "To me, [Dominion] is a culmination of one story that's been told," he said. "When you got to the end of the Jurassic Park trilogy, it may not have been as clear in what the complete story of those three movies was because they were a bit more episodic in the way that they were approached. But this trilogy is not that way. It's very much a serialized story."

Directed by Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World: Dominion stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Jake Johnson, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Omar Sy, Isabelle Sermon and B.D. Wong. The film arrives in theaters on June 10, 2022.

Source: SlashFilm / www.cbr.com/

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park didn't include John Hammond's death from the book, but Jurassic World brings it back as a conspiracy theory.

Jurassic World acknowledges John Hammond's death from the Jurassic Park book in a way that frames it as a conspiracy theory. Needless to say, there's a lot from Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park film that doesn't mesh with Michael Crichton's novel. It's a tale as old as time; movie and TV adaptations of famed books don't always follow the plot points to the letter, and instead either trim, omit, or rework details in order to fit within the scope of the film. Jurassic Park is no exception.

Various elements from the Jurassic Park book never made it onto the big screen, but many were retooled into later films. For example, the opening sequence with the Bowman family being attacked instead opened up Jurassic Park's movie sequel, The Lost World; even Dr. Ian Malcolm is presumed dead in the original book, but thanks to Crichton choosing to write a sequel, Malcolm returned to the fold alive and (mostly) well. While Malcolm certainly came back for The Lost World, so did Hammond - despite him being killed off in the Jurassic Park book.

In the novel, John Hammond dies after falling down a hill, breaking his ankle, and being eaten alive by a pack of Compies. This, of course, never happened in the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World film canon; Hammond instead went on to live out his life in comfort, dying of natural causes sometime after the events of The Lost World. The thing is, some people in Jurassic World's universe still believe Hammond died on Isla Nublar. In Camp Cretaceous season 3, Yaz tells Darius that Jurassic Park is haunted and legend says "the original park owner broke his ankle and then was eaten alive by Compies."

All one needs to do is watch the end of Jurassic Park to see that Hammond did indeed survived the Isla Nublar incident in 1993. And although The Lost World may not be official canon in Jurassic World's timeline, various sources of information - tie-in and marketing material, as well as dialogue from the Jurassic World film itself - all suggest Hammond still survived, if the final scenes of Jurassic Park weren't enough. But a kid like Yaz may not be familiar with the intricacies of what happened all those years before - although a "dino-nerd" like Darius does, and he knows Hammond died naturally years later.

Sadly, Hammond actor Richard Attenborough died at age 90 in 2014, but that doesn't mean Hammond's won't come up again in the forthcoming Jurassic World: Dominion. As the final installment in the Jurassic World trilogy and presumably the Jurassic Park franchise as a whole, which is also bringing back Malcolm, Dr. Alan Grant. and Dr. Ellie Sattler, there's plenty of opportunity to discuss the past and what happened with Hammond and the original park. Perhaps the final years of his life will be brought up as well.

Source: https://screenrant.com/

The newly-discovered species of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur, named Australotitan cooperensis, is the largest species of dinosaur ever found in Australia.

Australotitan cooperensis lived during the Cretaceous period, approximately 92-96 million years ago.

The ancient giant belongs to Titanosauria, a diverse group of sauropod (long-necked plant-eating) dinosaurs.

The group includes species ranging from the largest known terrestrial vertebrates to ‘dwarfs’ no bigger than elephants.

Australotitan cooperensis was between 25-30 m (82-98 feet) long, 5 and 6.5 m (16.4-21.3 feet) high, and had a mass between 23 and 74 tons.

“Australotitan cooperensis adds to the growing list of uniquely Australian dinosaur species discovered in Outback Queensland, and just as importantly showcases a totally new area for dinosaur discovery in Australia,” said Dr. Scott Hocknull, a researcher at the Queensland Museum and the University of Melbourne.

The fossilized skeleton of the new dinosaur was discovered in 2005 in the southern-central Winton Formation of the Eromanga Basin, Australia.

“In the early 2000s, Australia was at the beginning of a dinosaur-rush, with a number of significant new species of dinosaurs and megafauna being discovered in the past 20 years,” said Dr. Jim Thompson, CEO of Queensland Museum Network.

“Australia is one of the last frontiers for dinosaur discovery and Queensland is quickly cementing itself as the paleo-capital of the nation — there is still plenty more to discover.”

The paleontologists found that Australotitan cooperensis was closely related to three other Australian sauropods that lived during the Cretaceous period.

“We compared the three species found to the north, near Winton, to our new Eromanga giant and it looks like Australia’s largest dinosaurs were all part of one big happy family,” Dr. Hocknull said.

“We found that Australotitan cooperensis was the largest in the family, followed by Wintonotitan wattsi with big hips and long legs, whilst the two smaller sauropods, Diamantinasaurus matildae and Savannasaurus elliottorum were shorter in stature and heavily-set.”

The discovery is reported in a paper in the journal Peer J.

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S.A. Hocknull et al. 2021. A new giant sauropod, Australotitan cooperensis gen. et sp. nov., from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia. PeerJ 9: e11317; doi: 10.7717/peerj.11317

Source: www.sci-news.com/

A recent poll has found that a lot of Americans need to do some reading up on their knowledge of dinosaurs.

The poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 adult respondents, found that 46% said they believed that dinosaurs still existed in remote areas of the world.

A further 22% said that they thought this could be a possibility, while only 33% correctly answered that dinosaurs do not exist in modern day at all, as they have been extinct for millions of years. Worryingly, only 33% said there was no chance of dinosaurs currently existing.

People weren’t great with their timelines, either. 23% of respondents thought dinosaurs went extinct 2,000 years ago, while 21% thought it was 100 years ago. I mean, if that were the case, dinosaurs would have definitely been used in the First World War.

A further 18% responded that they went extinct 10,000 years ago, and 13% said three million years ago. 15% thought it was none of the answers provided.

The icing on the unknowledgeable cake was that 1,200 people genuinely thought there was a dinosaur named ‘doyouthinktheysarus’.

The survey was conducted by Boat Rocker Studios as promotion for its animated series about dinosaurs, Dino Ranch. It released the findings on June 1, which just so happened to be International Dinosaur Day.

Apparently the survey was actually created for preschool children, Fox News reports, but the studio company thought adults could benefit from taking part too.

While it’s evident that American adults need to sharpen up on their dinosaur facts, only 41% admitted that they thought their child knew more about dinosaurs than they did.

Speaking of children’s enhanced knowledge of dinosaurs, Matt Fernandes, creator of Dino Ranch, said, as per StudyFinds, ‘It’s brilliant to see that shows like Dino Ranch are helping to drive a strong love of dinosaurs in kids’ today, and these magnificent creatures still have an audience.’

Maybe they should make an adult-friendly version of the animated show too…

Source: www.unilad.co.uk/