Book Review: Jurassic Park et les Sciences (Jurassic Park and the Sciences); Steyer, J.-S., Allard, N., Eds.; Illustrations by Alain Bénéteau; Belin: Paris, France, 2024; ISBN: 978-2410028764

Michel Laurin

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Michel Laurin. Book Review: Jurassic Park et les Sciences (Jurassic Park and the Sciences); Steyer, J.-S., Allard, N., Eds.; Illustrations by Alain Bénéteau; Belin: Paris, France, 2024; ISBN: 978-2410028764. Fossil Studies, 2026, 4 (3), pp.1-8. 10.3390/fossils4010003. hal-05489658

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Book Review

# Book Review: *Jurassic Park et les Sciences (Jurassic Park and the Sciences)*; Steyer, J.-S., Allard, N., Eds.; Illustrations by Alain Bénéteau; Belin: Paris, France, 2024; ISBN: 978-2410028768

Michel Laurin

CR2P, Centre de Recherches en Paléontologie—Paris, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CNRS/MNHN/Sorbonne Université, 75 005 Paris, France; michel.laurin@mnhn.fr

**Keywords:** book review; dinosaurs; Mesozoic reptiles; cinema; literature; genetic engineering

This book (Figure 1) covers the main facets of the *Jurassic Park* saga, including paleontological (Steyer), literary, cinematographic and commercial (Allard), mythical and psychological (Jandrok), mathematical/stochastic (Uzan) and genetic (Lebreton) aspects. It is richly illustrated with beautiful reconstructions (in black and white or color, using various techniques) by Alain Bénéteau (recently deceased), often showing extinct taxa in their presumed environment. This analysis will, of course, focus on the scientific aspects, with an emphasis on paleontology, both to respect the readership of this journal and to remain within the limits of my expertise. The length of the sections in this review therefore reflects the number of scientific topics covered in the various chapters rather than their length.

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Cover page of the book *Jurassic Park and the sciences*.</figcaption></figure>

The brief preface by Steyer and Allard explains the importance of the works of Richard Owen, who established the taxon Dinosauria in 1842, and Michael Crichton, who published the novel *Jurassic Park*, on which the film series of the same name is based.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

Academic Editor: Christophe Lécuyer

Received: 31 December 2025

Accepted: 24 January 2026

Published: 28 January 2026

**Copyright:** © 2026 by the author.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the [Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license.
The first chapter, by Allard and Steyer, is entitled *Les dinosaures dans les arts: redonner vie aux mondes perdus (Dinosaurs in the Arts: Bringing Lost Worlds Back to Life)*. This chapter traces the history of novels, comic books, and films featuring dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals (Figure 2), like Jules Verne's *Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth)*. However, the chapter opens (p. 10) with an unfortunate quote from paleontologist Alan Grant in the movie *Jurassic Park*: "Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?" Although this sentence (not found in the book *Jurassic Park* from 1990) attracts attention, it also shows the screenwriters' misunderstanding of the concept of species, since the taxon Dinosauria (which is not extinct) contains more than 1000 named species in the Mesozoic alone (rather than a single species, as implied by the quote), and undoubtedly this represents only a small part of the biodiversity of dinosaurs that existed from the Triassic to the late Cretaceous. Of course, their current biodiversity is even greater because dinosaurs include about 11,000 species of extant birds. Referring to dinosaurs as a species therefore makes no sense. This type of nomenclatural problem is repeated on the following page (p. 11), where Allard and Steyer wrote "a host of extinct species such as *Deinotherium*" (this name refers to a genus, a higher-ranking taxon that includes a variable number of species), and in other chapters (e.g., on page 193, *Tyrannosaurus* and *Brachiosaurus*, which are genera, are referred to as species). These quotes reflect the common misconception that species are the fundamental units of biodiversity, just like atoms were once conceptualized as elementary units of matter. Actually, there is no consensus on what species are, nor on how to define them; the species level in rank-based nomenclature is an arbitrary construct [1–6].

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Mesozoic marine reptiles fighting. Drawing by Penelope Laurin inspired by Édouard Riou's reconstruction (now in the public domain), which illustrated the original 1864 edition of Jules Verne's *Journey to the Center of the Earth*. To preserve the old-fashioned charm of Riou's illustration, the scales have been retained, even though we now know that these marine reptiles did not have scales of this type. However, the scales have been oriented correctly, with the free margin towards the caudal end, which reflects the orientation of these structures in taxa that possess them, such as many osteichthyans.</figcaption></figure>
Also in this first chapter, the authors explain the scientific errors found in various works of science-fiction. For example, the film *Dinosaurs* (1960) depicts a geologist drilling through an ice sheet and discovering a *Brontosaurus*, a *Tyrannosaurus*, and a prehistoric man—three creatures that lived in three different periods (the Late Jurassic, Late Cretaceous, and Neogene periods, respectively), which is anachronistic. The fact that these three organisms wake up is even more surprising! Furthermore, as the authors explain, the oldest ice today dates back only 2.5 million years at most, and only a tiny minority of it is that old; the rest is even more recent. This problem also affects the TV movie *Bloody Waters* (2010), which shows the awakening of a plesiosaur trapped in an Arctic glacier.

The second chapter, *Une œuvre littéraire (A Literary Work)* by Allard, focuses on the book *Jurassic Park*, published in 1990, on Michael Crichton's previous works, and on the series of works that constitute a sequel to *Jurassic Park*. We learn that in writing *Jurassic Park*, which was his seventeenth novel (p. 45), Crichton drew inspiration from the work of various paleontologists, including Robert Bakker, John (better known as "Jack") Horner, and John Ostrom, as well as from the work of various illustrators, including Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas and Douglas Henderson (p. 41).

The third chapter, *La paléontologie dans Jurassic Park, entre fantasme et réalité (Paleontology in Jurassic Park: Between Fantasy and Reality)*, by Jean-Sébastien Steyer, addresses more specific, paleontological issues in this work. The author rightly highlights a major problem that shocked me when I first saw the film: to fill in the gaps between the sequenced DNA strands of a given dinosaur, researchers used DNA sequences from frogs! This could not work, because dinosaurs, as amniotes, are separated from frogs by more than 330 million years of evolution [7]! And this choice is absurd because there are live dinosaurs today (birds), some of which, especially chickens (*Gallus gallus*), are very well known! No doubt, the choice to use frog sequences was justified by the need in the plot to ensure that certain “resurrected” dinosaurs changed sex spontaneously, which resulted in unplanned reproduction.

Steyer takes this opportunity to discuss the ethical issues raised by the exploitation of Burmese amber (p. 68), whose deposits (approximately 99 million years old, dating back to the middle of the Cretaceous period) are contemporary with some of the fauna featured in *Jurassic Park*. Unfortunately, trade in this amber appears to have financed the armed conflict in Burma between the government army and the Kachin independence movement.

This third chapter also highlights inaccuracies in the *Jurassic Park* movie concerning field paleontology (p. 74). In fact, most sediments containing Mesozoic dinosaurs are quite hard, so brushes alone are not sufficient to uncover them; hammers and chisels are also necessary. Even more problematic is the scene in the film showing a screen image of a dinosaur skeleton still buried underground, reconstructed using seismography, which is ridiculously naive! This type of technique, used in geology, can only provide information on very large structures, to track the strata of various formations at depths of hundreds of meters or even kilometers; it cannot reconstruct a skeleton whose bones measure from a few centimeters to about two meters in length.

The same chapter mentions that many Mesozoic dinosaurs were covered in feathers (pp. 75–76, 90–92). This is now well established in paleontology, as many fossils of feathered dinosaurs have been discovered in recent decades [8–10]. It is now clear that the initial function of feathers was not to generate lift for flight; it was more likely related to thermoregulation (thermal insulation to conserve body heat), and possibly other functions, such as visual signaling, camouflage [11], etc. As the authors lament (p. 92), in the *Jurassic Park* films, starting with the second installment, more dinosaurs, including young *Tyrannosaurus rex* and *Velociraptor*, should have been shown with feathers, rather than the much simpler “porcupine quill”-like structures shown in some episodes.
The topic of feathered dinosaurs provides a good opportunity to explain the di-
nosaurian origin of birds (pp. 78–79). However, the author has not clarified the nomen-
clatural consequences of this origin. Steyer concludes that the widely accepted idea in
paleontology of a “close relationship between dinosaurs and birds is not new.” This is true,
but we can go further; since Willi Hennig’s seminal work in cladistics [12–14], systematists
have gradually accepted his idea (revolutionary at the time) that an ancestor should not be
separated from its descendants. The conclusion is that birds are not only close relatives
of dinosaurs; they are dinosaurs! Unfortunately, the book does not explain this clearly,
as can be seen in the following sentence (p. 79): ‘This idea of close kinship between the
two groups [dinosaurs and birds] is confirmed by the analysis of kinship relationships,
i.e., phylogeny.’ This quote clearly suggests that birds are a group related to dinosaurs.
However, modern classifications consider birds to be a subgroup of dinosaurs, which is not
the same thing. The taxon Aves is deeply rooted within dinosaurs, since the taxa to which
it belongs include, among others, Saurischia, Theropoda, Coelurosauria, Maniraptora, and
Avialae [15,16]. This conclusion is enshrined in the now widely used expression in English-
language literature, “non-avian dinosaurs,” which, according to Google Scholar (accessed
17 November 2025), is mentioned in approximately 5750 scientific articles! But clearly,
other authors of the book have not fully assimilated this, because in Chapter 6, Jandrok
writes (p. 191) that “humans never interacted with dinosaurs.” However, during my brief
post-doc at Berkeley (California), I attended a talk for children in which a doctoral student
(Anne Weil, now a paleomammalogist at Oklahoma State University) explained to the
children the various similarities between birds and certain Mesozoic dinosaurs, especially
theropods. The obvious conclusion was that birds are dinosaurs, and after listening to
this presentation, the children were treated to a meal specially prepared for the occasion,
featuring dinosaur meat (chicken)! It is surprising and disappointing that relatively few
popular science books mention this conclusion; if children could understand it in the 1990s,
is the general public still not ready? But this simply reflects the most common presentation
in popular science books; it is not a problem specific to the book *Jurassic Park and the sciences*.

The book mentions (p. 80) a blunder in *Jurassic Park 3* (2001); Grant (the paleontologist) believes that the “extremely sophisticated resonance chamber” was “the key to their social intelligence.” In fact, this resonance chamber is very useful for social interactions because it confers certain vocalization abilities, but in itself, the chamber does not confer any intelligence, as it is not filled or lined with neurons. Indirect clues about intelligence can be obtained by studying the neurocranium (skull), even though the brain does not necessarily fill entirely this structure, and even though brain size does not allow for a direct or accurate estimate of intelligence. For *T. rex*, such a study was performed as early as 2000 [17]. The authors also mention that parental care was quite widespread among Mesozoic dinosaurs; this is not surprising, as crocodilians and birds do the same. The presence of parental care therefore probably appeared in an ancestor of archosaurs, the smallest clade that includes crocodilians and birds.

The book presents *Spinosaurus* as a semi-aquatic theropod (pp. 82, 86–87), based on various studies. From the first discovery of this taxon in 1915, its elongated snout suggested that it had a piscivorous diet and therefore must have lived near the shore (Figure 3). However, studies in which Simone Maganuco participated, including the one referenced in the bibliography [18] and a more recent one [19], go further and suggest that *Spinosaurus* swam. This latter suggestion (about swimming) sparked a controversy that is not mentioned in the book. Recent studies contest *Spinosaurus*' ability to swim, based on arguments that appear solid [20–22]. Furthermore, two of these articles [21,22] share two authors (Paul Sereno and Nathan Myhrvold) with one of Maganuco's studies [18], which suggests that these two authors have changed their minds in the meantime. As all studies
agree on a piscivorous diet, we can imagine that *Spinosaurus* hunted much like herons, with its feet in the water, but did not necessarily swim. In fact, *Spinosaurus* sometimes lived quite far from the coast, so it must have hunted (among other places) in lakes and rivers, not necessarily in salt water [21].

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3.** Restoration of a *Spinosaurus* attempting to catch an *Onchopristis*. Illustration by Nobu Tamura published on 13 October 2014 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Image available at http://spinops.blogspot.com/2014/10/spinosaurus-aegyptiacus.html?q=spinosaurus (accessed on 19 December 2025).</figcaption></figure>

Chapter 4, *La saga au cinéma (The Saga in cinema)*, by Nicolas Allard, analyzes the two trilogies and even mentions (p. 122) plans that were never realized, such as the idea of showing “half-human” dinosaurs. Allard does not elaborate on this subject, but it recalls the idea of Canadian paleontologist Dale Russell, who speculated that if large dinosaurs (especially the close relatives of the troodontid *Stenonychosaurus inequalis*, which he described in detail) had not become extinct 66 million years ago, they could, over time, have evolved into humanoid forms [23].

The chapter highlights (p. 134) the parallel between the volcanic eruption that threatens to wipe out the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar and the intense volcanic episode evidenced by the Deccan Traps (Figure 4). This is correct, but the great crisis at the end of the Cretaceous period was probably also caused by the Chicxulub meteorite impact [24]; in fact, one study has suggested that the fall of a large meteorite during a phase of intense volcanism has a particularly devastating effect on the biosphere and explains many mass extinction events [25]. In short, although this chapter is devoted to cinema, it also touches on scientific aspects.

Allard also wrote Chapter 5, *Une franchise de pop culture en pleine expansion (A Booming Pop Culture Franchise)*, which does not need to be discussed in greater detail here, even though it also touches on some scientific aspects.

Thierry Jandrok wrote Chapter 6, *Jurassic Park ou le retour de l'enfance (Jurassic Park or the Return of Childhood)*. Although this chapter deals mainly with psychological aspects, it does not neglect interesting evolutionary aspects. For example, the author points out (p. 172) that towards the end of the Mesozoic era, the ancestors of primates (if they already existed; no uncontroversial primate fossils have yet been found prior to the Cenozoic era) must have been small, about the size of a mouse. This simply reflects the small size of most Mesozoic mammals known to date, although a few larger Cretaceous mammals have been found in recent decades [26].
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 4.** SkySat satellite image of Deccan Traps, Maharashtra, India. Picture published by Planet Labs, Inc. on 22 March 2018 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Image available at https://medium.com/planet-stories/earths-wonders-like-you-ve-never-seen-them-before-ac9e2f39aa56 (accessed on 22 December 2025).</figcaption></figure>

Chapter 7, *La vie trouve toujours un chemin (Life Always Finds a Way)*, by Jean-Philippe Uzan, deals with stochastic aspects and chaos theory in *Jurassic Park* through the character of Ian Malcolm. The "rape of nature" evoked by Uzan through Malcolm's words is not really the work of scientists (as Malcolm implies), whose direct impact is very modest. What has caused a true anthropogenic mass extinction, often referred to as the "biodiversity crisis," is the exploitation of nature by humanity as a whole. The burden of this exploitation on nature is growing rapidly, along with the size of the human population and, to a lesser extent, our standard of living. Science is not the problem! It could be part of the solution, but scientists only discover; entire societies, through their leaders, make choices that have recently been quite catastrophic for the biosphere. The "rape of nature" by humans began a long time ago, because the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna (Figure 5) is probably a consequence of our ancestors' excessive hunting of large mammals and birds [27].

The chapter ends with two paragraphs on Malcolm and the use of mathematics and models. Although not mentioned in the chapter, paleontologists have been using mathematical models for several years to study the evolution of biodiversity [28], including major mass extinctions [25,29], such as the most publicized and most recent (but not the most severe) one that wiped out most of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Chapter 8, *Peut-on faire revivre les dinosaures? (Can Dinosaurs Be Brought Back to Life?)*, by Alice Lebreton, explains the enormous technical difficulties that prevent us from cloning taxa that have been extinct for several million years. Lebreton finally explains (p. 235) that no Mesozoic dinosaur DNA has been sequenced to date, as this molecule degrades over time. Shortly after the release of the film *Jurassic Park*, a study claimed to have sequenced dinosaur bones from the Cretaceous period [30], but these sequences turned out to be nothing more than contamination, probably human [31]. For now, the oldest proven DNA sequence dates back about 500,000 years [32], and even if older DNA were preserved, verifying the authenticity of the sequences would be very difficult because the tests are based partly on comparisons with sequences of close relatives [33].
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

**Figure 5.** Rancho la Brea Tar Pool. Restoration by Charles. R. Knight in 1921 for the American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.) mural decorations (about 2.7 m by 3.66 m) in hall of the Age of Man. A giant ground sloth (*Paramylodon*) is trapped; two others are guarding against a Sabre Tooth cat (*Smilodon fatalis*). Condors (probably *Teratornis*) are perched on McNabb's cypress. In the rear, a pool that has yielded much elephant (Columbian mammoth) material is shown. San Gabriel range with Mt. Lowe is in the center and Mt. Wilson at right of erect ground sloth. Mt. Old Baldy is shown at right. Public domain image downloaded from https://digitalcollections.amnh.org/archive/Rancho-La-Brea-Tar-Pit-2URM1THMF3S.html (accessed on 22 December 2025).

The bibliography contains many useful references, but it is regrettable that only chap-
ters 1, 3, 6, and 8 are represented. The format of these references is somewhat inconsistent:
those in chapters 1, 3, and 6 are listed alphabetically by the first author's surname, but
those in chapter 8 are listed by the numbers cited in the text, as in certain journals with a
compact bibliographic format.

The book is written in an accessible language and will therefore appeal to a wide readership; in addition to those interested in paleontology, evolution, and genetic engineering, science-fiction aficionados or simply viewers who enjoyed the *Jurassic Park* and *Jurassic World* films will be able to expand their knowledge in an enjoyable way. The book highlights the interaction between science, literature, and cinema, and, in particular, the significant societal impact of paleontology. Many people ask me, when learning that I am a paleontologist: how is paleontology useful? The book gives part of the answer to this question: by feeding the imagination of writers and movie producers, thereby enriching our culture.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the recurring grant to the CR2P.

**Acknowledgments:** This review is to a large extent a translation of a paper in French currently in press [34], even though it also includes some new text. I thank my daughter Pénélope for having produced Figure 2 at my request and my student Jérémy Petex for comments on the draft that contributed to clarifying it.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflicts of interest.

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