General Nerdery: Jurassic World Wish List

Although this blog is primarily about writing and the business of writing, it also belongs to a giant nerd, and giant nerds like nothing more than to pontificate about their favorite nerdy subjects. So, from time to time, expect to see me blathering on, very specifically, about things like medieval weapons, martial arts, and, sigh, dinosaurs.

Yep, one of my particular areas of nerd expertise is paleontology. I’ve been fascinated with dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters since I was wee tyke. So, as you might guess, the most recent entry into the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World, sent me into paroxysms of nerd rage. Don’t worry; I’m not gonna bore the shit out of you with a tedious rant about dinosaurs with feathers. Instead, I’m going to be positive and talk about a few prehistoric monsters I’d like to see in a JP movie.

The five critters I’m going to talk about don’t get a lot of press, and you’ve probably never heard of most of them. The other thing to keep in mind is that none of the animals I’m going to talk about are dinosaurs. I feel justified in that decision based on the fact the JP franchise has recently introduced prehistoric critters that aren’t dinos, specifically, pterosaurs and mosasaurs. That said, the following five prehistoric animals check all the usual boxes for inclusion in a JP movie. They’re all predators, they’re all the biggest in their particular group, and they’re all really cool.

So let’s get started:

1) Sarcosuchus imperator

This one is a no-brainer for me, and it’s the only one on the list I think might have an actual shot at making it into a JP movie. Sarcosuchus is the largest crocodilian that ever lived. It’s a 40-foot, 8-ton crocodile that, no shit, probably ate dinosaurs. Let me repeat that. It fucking ate dinosaurs. Pretty cool, huh?

The other thing Sarcosuchus has going for it is it lived 112 million years ago, right in the Cretaceous period, and since the Jurassic Park franchise has a serious hard-on for the Cretaceous (not the Jurassic, oddly), ol’ Sarchy should fit right in. In all seriousness, though, crocs make for great drama. They’re some of the best ambush predators around, and, well, you can probably imagine a scene in the next JP movie (Jurassic Galaxy: The Feathering). A lone Velociraptor (Can I just call it a Utahraptor? Please?) comes to a tropical lake, bends down for a quick drink, and BAM! Eight tons of scales and teeth explode from the water, and not even the nimble raptor can avoid the jaws of death. The Sarcosuchus clamps down, pulls the raptor  into the water, and both disappear, leaving only a crimson stain on the lake’s surface. Later in the movie, Chris Pratt can saddle up and ride the giant croc into battle against the evil geneticist Dr. Henry Wu and his army of cloned flying raptor piranhas.

2) Andrewsarchus mongoliensis

As I said earlier, a running theme in the JP franchise is new critters need to be the biggest and the baddest. Well, Andrewsarchus is both. The largest mammalian carnivore in the books, Andrewsarchus is big, mean, and really, really weird. Some estimates put this vaguely wolf-shaped critter at 15 feet long and nearly 2 tons. That’s like twice the size of the largest grizzly bear. On top of that, Andrewsarchus had a massive skull with jaws that could produce some of the greatest bite force of any mammal, so it could crack bone with the best of them.

Andrewsarchus hails from the Eocene period, about 40 million years ago. It was one of those times when evolution took a couple of strange turns. For example, Andrewsarchus is a contender for the largest mammalian predator of all time, but here’s the weird part, it’s only living relatives are ungulates. In fact, it’s thought Andrewsarchus had hooves. That’s right, the largest mammalian predator of all time had hooves and is related to fucking sheep. Cool, huh?

I think a giant wolf monster with hooves is just too cool to pass up, and I can easily see them in a JP movie as part of the petting zoo or something.

3) Phorusrhacos longissimus

Yeah, I know that’s a mouthful, so let me simplify it for you. You can just call this critter and its relatives by the totally metal moniker “terror birds.” What’s a terror bird? Well, take an ostrich, cross it with a giant eagle, sprinkle in a liberal dash of baddassitude, and then crank that fucker up to eleven. That’s a terror bird, and Phorusrhacos was one of the biggest. I’m talking about an 8-foot-tall, 300-pound flightless bird armed with a beak sharper than a goddamn samurai sword and talons that’d put holes in Kevlar.

One of the other things that makes terror birds really cool is how long they were around. They showed up in the early Paleocene, like 62 million years ago, right after the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. In fact, they were likely some of the first large predators to evolve after the dinosaurs (although, to be technical, terror birds are dinosaurs). They stuck around until as recently as a couple million years ago, which means actual human beings just missed being bird food by a few hundred thousand years.

Phorusrhacos is great for the JP franchise because it’s an actual bird, not one of those silly non-avian dinosaurs, so, you know, you could put feathers on it and not have to worry about the public actually learning something.

4) Dunkleosteus terrelli

What do you get when you cross a giant shark, a tank, and a jumbo–sized staple remover together? You get one of the most badass monsters ever to swim the oceans. Now, I know I could have hit the easy button and chosen Carcharodon megalodon, the massive 50-foot shark you’ve all likely heard about, but I’m gonna get all hipster and shit and talk about a monster that was awesome way before giant sharks were cool.

Dunkleosteus lived a long, long time ago, in the Devonian period. We’re talking like 400 million years ago, in a time where most critters lived in the sea and animals had just begun to colonize the land. Dunkloesteus was the largest member of a group of weird armored fish called placoderms, and it was designed to be a cannibal. Its massive jaws were like a pair of industrial shears, designed to cut through the armored plates of its fellows.

In my opinion, Dunkleosteus is perfect for the JP franchise. It’s huge (30 feet long and 4 tons), looks like a nightmare concocted by a coke-addled Pokémon designer, and they could make up all kinds of shit about the strength of its jaws. I mean, by the time JP is done with it, the government will be cloning them to chew through enemy submarines to get at the tasty meat filling inside.

5) Jaekelopterus rhenania

For my final choice, I’m gonna stay with aquatic horrors and go with a creature that is the largest member of a group of terrifying monsters called sea scorpions. These arthropod nightmares swam the oceans, lakes, and rivers of the world as early as the Ordovician period (460 million years ago) and as late as the Permian period (250 million years ago). That’s a span of some 200 million years, which means sea scorpions are one of the most successful organisms in the history of organisms. I mean, shit, humans have only been around for like 200 thousand years. We’re barely a blip on the geological time scale.

Sea scorpions generally look like someone crossed a lobster with a crab during a really bad acid trip. The biggest, Jaekelopterus, was over 8 feet long with pincers that extended another 3 feet or so. I’d rather face down an entire school of sharks than deal with just one of these things. A shark would at least give you a nice, clean death. One chomp, and you’re done. A sea scorpion would tear you into bite-sized nuggets, giving you the distinct pleasure of drowning and getting eaten alive.

Jaekelopterus and the rest of the sea scorpions would fit right into JP. They could serve the little ones up like lobsters in the overpriced park restaurants, and then feed irritating secondary characters to the big ones to up the stakes and let all the moviegoers know shit just got real.

Anyway, thanks for taking a trip with me down Nerdery Lane. If you share my enthusiasm for weird prehistoric critters, tell me about one of your favorites in the comments.