Dilophosoaurus: What Science Can Tell Us About The Real Dinosaur Vs. Jurassic Park

Undoubtedly, it’s a moment in cinematic history that took a few liberties, but Dilophosaurus wetherilli was a very real dinosaur. Considered to be the largest animal known to have lived on land in North America during the Early Jurassic, humans have retrieved some remarkable fossil specimens over the years. So, what does the science tell us about Dilophosaurus versus Jurassic Park?

How big was Dilophosaurus?

“They were much larger than the one in Jurassic Park,” Dr Susannah Maidment, senior researcher in the division of Vertebrates, Anthropology, and Palaeobiology at the Natural History Museum, London, told IFLScience. “[In the movie] it’s maybe a Shetland pony-size animal, but actually, they were 7 meters [23 feet] long and weighed around 400 kilograms [63 stone].”

A hefty hunter indeed, but even with all that predatory power, would we expect it to be out wandering alone? Or is it more likely they’d be hunting in a pack? Turns out, we really don’t know.

“We hardly know that for any dinosaurs,” said Maidment. “In fact, there are no dinosaurs in which we know whether they were solo or pack hunters. There’s this popular idea that velociraptors hunted in packs, but it’s completely made up. There is no actual evidence for this, so we don’t have any idea [for Dilophosaurus] at all.”

What did Dilophosaurus eat?

The rocks in which Dilophosaurus fossils have been found so far haven’t turned up a massive diversity of dinosaurs. There was a small armored dinosaur called Scutellosaurus, and an early sauropodomorph, so Maidment says it’s possible it was eating those things, but we can’t know for certain. However, given Nedry stood in his branded yellow mac at a modest 1.7 meters (5.6 feet), it seems his demise may have been inevitable (unless he could run as fast as Usain Bolt).

“Dilophosaurus were quite big dinosaurs, and they have quite big pointy teeth. So, they were probably capable of taking down quite big prey,” explained Maidment. “As with all meat-eating animals, they’re not going to pass the opportunity of a nice, fresh carcass. If they pass one, they’re probably going to have a go at that.”

As for how Dilophosaurus might have murdered him, however? I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but the flaps were not flapping.

Did Dilophosaurus have a frill?

Who could forget the sight and sound of that screeching Dilophosaurus as Nedry was fussing with his Barbasol can-cum-embryo carrier? When it had no interest in playing stick (stoopid), it delivered a searing splat of something black as its frill blazed wildly. The truth?

“They didn’t have a frill and didn’t spit venom,” said Maidment. 

It’s a statement we can make with confidence because there were plenty of dinosaurs with absurdly ornate stuff going on atop their noggins, and we see evidence of it in the fossil record. There’s no sign of the kind of headgear Jurassic Park’s Dilophosaurus is fashioning, and with good reason.

“For something like triceratops, which has these big frills and horns, they’re bony structures,” said Maidment. “That wasn’t something that could sort of pop up. It was a solid structure on the skull. This thing for Dilophosaurus [in the movie] looks like soft tissue. It pops up, sort of in the way that some lizards’ do. That wouldn’t preserve in the fossil record, because it’s soft tissue.”

“It’s possible that if we went and looked at some lizards alive today that have that kind of structure, that there might be some sort of bony protuberances on the back of the skull to suggest that they correlate with the presence of the frill, but there’s absolutely no evidence of that for Dilophosaurus.”

Did Dilophosaurus have venom?

Dilophosaurus wetherilli received an extensive redescription from Adam Marsh and Tim Rowe in the Journal of Paleontology in 2020 that came with some fantastic photos of fossils, including new specimens from northern Arizona. They revealed that its skull served as scaffolding for powerful jaw muscles that were nothing like the delicate snoot seen on Spielberg’s iteration.

It was also the foundation of a distinctive crest and lots of sharp teeth, and its jaw tells us everything we need to know when deciding if these dinosaurs had any kind of venom.

“With venom, you can actually see, often in the in the teeth and jaws, that there are pits and grooves that are bony correlates for the ability to bite venom, like a snake,” said Maidment. “They’re venom ducts, effectively. Channels through which venom can travel down.”

“We don’t have any dinosaur in which there is any venom. In fact, there are no archosaurs that are alive today with venom. So, archosaurs are the broader group that dinosaurs were part of. Today, they’re represented by the crocodiles and the birds. Dinosaurs fit in that group, and we don’t know that any of those were venomous at all. So, it’s very, very unlikely that Dilophosaurus was venomous. It doesn’t have any indication in its mouth, and neither do its relatives.”

Does it matter?

Media depictions of extinct animals can, evidently, have a lasting impact on how we view them. Just look at the latest trailer for Jurassic World: Rebirth, in which Dilophosaurus is back in all its frill-flapping glory.

Science, of course, is always evolving and can help us close the gaps in what we see on the big screen and what we know to be true. At the time, Marsh described Dilophosaurus in a statement as “pretty much the best, worst-known dinosaur. Until this study, nobody knew what Dilophosaurus looked like or how it evolved,” and off the back of their research, we have some remarkable palaeoart that depicts a better likeness of their badass headgear.

As for Spielberg? He happily admits that, much as he loves the real Dilophosaurus, he just wanted to plus it up a bit.

Can’t argue with that.