Jurassic Park Functions On One Principal - "Dinosaurs Are Totally Rad"

[Seil]

A big part of the movie is frogs. They made the dinosaurs all female, to stop them from breeding. In order to create the dinosaurs, they were spliced with frog DNA, which created a problem. Some species of frogs can switch their genders when they need to.

In Jurassic Park, located on Isla Nublar, an island approximately 120 miles west of Costa Rica, an employee for the genetic engineering company InGen is attacked and killed while placing a Velociraptor into a specially built enclosure, prompting a lawsuit from his family. CEO John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is pressured by his investors to allow a safety inspection by experts before opening the park. He invites paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), and his investors' attorney Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) to perform the inspection. The group meets a Brachiosaurus when they set off into the park. At the park, they learn that InGen created the dinosaurs by cloning genetic material found in mosquitoes that fed on dinosaur blood, preserved in Dominican amber. The DNA from these samples was spliced with DNA from frogs to fill in sequence gaps. Only female dinosaurs are created to prevent uncontrolled breeding within the park. The team is also shown the enclosure of the Velociraptor, dubbed "raptors", extremely intelligent, aggressive and ferocious predators.

A look at all the dinosaurs.

A look at all the deaths.

[Arhra]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

The latter. Although, I'm curious as to how we should have had more oxygen in the past. I've read many theories and debates in the past, but this really isn't the place for that subject.

There are things called plants that can make oxygen.

I'd been wondering if yet another sequel had been announced when I saw this thread.

First one's still the best as far as I'm concerned.

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Arhra

There are things called plants that can make oxygen.

I'd been wondering if yet another sequel had been announced when I saw this thread.

First one's still the best as far as I'm concerned.

Hey, here's a counter arguement and unsolvable questions!Problem: earth's gravitational pull isn't strong enough to maintain the presumed required level/desnity of oxygen. Our atmosphere isn't getting any thicker, you know! I understand the theory, I really do. In olden times, there were more plants, they make more oxygen, yay for plants, we don't use them anymore. Oddly, however, our atmosphere - held to the planet by gravity, like most things - isn't heavy enough to make that kind of density happen. We'd need something else to keep it here i.e. a planet with higher density or a "barrier" of some kind. Only the latter of the two holds any water, pardon the pun (how would our planet simply lose density?), but we don't have sufficient proof that a barrier like that ever existed. Further, if it did, we'd have a heavily different view of our planetary evolutionary history - it would change everything we think we know about how our planet formed. What would even cause that to go away? When? How would that have affected our mammalian evolution? I'm not saying "science sucks", unlike Smarty did recently - I'm saying we've got some unanswered and currently unanswerable questions. I'm also not claiming that T-Rex's never existed - that would be stupid. I'm just saying we don't know enough about the environment they lived in to presume what we think we know about them.

All that aside, I liked the Jurassic Park series. The first was the first time I'd ever seen a PG-13 movie. It was in Picadilly Square - the theater there - and I loved every moment of it. My parents were worried I'd have nightmares. Man, were they wrong! I started studying science shortly thereafter. The others just can't beat that experience. Also, they weren't quite as tightly written scripts. Still good, though.

[Viridis]

Problem: earth's gravitational pull isn't strong enough to maintain the presumed required level/desnity of oxygen. Our atmosphere isn't getting any thicker, you know! I understand the theory, I really do. In olden times, there were more plants, they make more oxygen, yay for plants, we don't use them anymore. Oddly, however, our atmosphere - held to the planet by gravity, like most things - isn't heavy enough to make that kind of density happen. We'd need something else to keep it here i.e. a planet with higher density or a "barrier" of some kind. Only the latter of the two holds any water, pardon the pun (how would our planet simply lose density?), but we don't have sufficient proof that a barrier like that ever existed. Further, if it did, we'd have a heavily different view of our planetary evolutionary history - it would change everything we think we know about how our planet formed. What would even cause that to go away? When? How would that have affected our mammalian evolution? I'm not saying "science sucks", unlike Smarty did recently - I'm saying we've got some unanswered and currently unanswerable questions. I'm also not claiming that T-Rex's never existed - that would be stupid. I'm just saying we don't know enough about the environment they lived in to presume what we think we know about them.

I don't believe that the theory is that the atmosphere was thicker, simply that there was more oxygen in it (with less of other gases) when compared to the present.

[Aerozord]

Amazing how talk got from, Dinosaurs are Rad, to this

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Viridis

I don't believe that the theory is that the atmosphere was thicker, simply that there was more oxygen in it (with less of other gases) when compared to the present.

First: I'm thinking this being abour Jurassic Park we should focus more on that, maybe move this to another thread if we continue. Second: yes but why are there more of the other gases now? At what point did they simply appear in greater quantity in our atmosphere? The largest amount of our atmosphere is a stable gas that doesn't interact with the plant/animal oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange. Was it simply underground (gasses do that, after all)? Well, that's a very large amount of it. Further, why would there be nearly so many plants in a super-heavy oxygen-rich environment? They'd starve. Only higher densities can explain both a heavier concentration of oxygen and carbon while allowing for argon and nitrogen to be in similar concentrations in the atmosphere. Again, I'm not making the argument "it had to be this way", I'm just saying that these are logical and logistical problems for the current models that we don't have proof or an answer for.

Edit: ninja'd by Aerozord