The problem with dinosaur sizes

No, the book goes out of its way to specify the park's raptors are mongoliensis, Grant even goes "I just dug up antirhopus back in Montana" to differentiate. And even if they were Deinonychus, they're still freakishly oversized movie monsters and they were so already at the time.

Okay maybe I misremembered from the book. But regardless. Besides a number of deviations, because certain things or names are cooler, the point stands. While many things are incorrect, many things are correct as well and further science in popular culture. It's not black and white and saying they are just monsters is doing the artist a disservice who put them to the big screen.
Not counting the hybrids of course, as those are literal monsters.
 
You responded while I was editing, so for good measure:

"The 'dinosaurs in the original were accurate for its time' is hogwash. That line is only true comparative to contemporary dinosaur fiction. Yes, it was one of the first movies to follow the dinosaur rennaisance, but that still puts it decades behind."

Let's count judging only by stuff known at the time. Brachiosaurus, skull and size inaccurate, broke its own legs doing impossible stunts, S-neck. Triceratops suffering from dwarfism with a compressed skull. Raptors, oversized evil monsters with pronated limbs. T. Rex, worst skull reconstruction in the series, oversized, running 32 miles per hour and can't see you if you stand still but also can't smell you apparently. Dilophosaurus, let's not even start. Which of the supposedly accurate at the time dinos from the first film did I miss?

Jurassic Park tries to make the dinosaurs believable to make them more interesting monsters, it never made them accurate. Christ, Horner could *barely* stop them from giving the raptors flicking snake tongues. Don't take my word for it. In- universe:

"Genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more, nothing less."
 
Last edited:
You responded while I was editing, so for good measure:

"The 'dinosaurs in the original were accurate for its time' is hogwash. That line is only true comparative to contemporary dinosaur fiction. Yes, it was one of the first movies to follow the dinosaur rennaisance, but that still puts it decades behind."

Let's count judging only by stuff known at the time. Brachiosaurus, skull and size inaccurate, broke its own legs doing impossible stunts, S-neck. Triceratops suffering from dwarfism with a compressed skull. Raptors, oversized evil monsters with pronated limbs. T. Rex, worst skull reconstruction in the series, oversized, running 32 miles per hour and can't see you if you stand still but also can't smell you apparently. Dilophosaurus, let's not even start. Which of the supposedly accurate at the time dinos from the first film did I miss?

Jurassic Park tries to make the dinosaurs believable to make them more interesting monsters, it never made them accurate. Christ, Horner could *barely* stop them from giving the raptors flicking snake tongues. Don't take my word for it. In- universe:

"Genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more, nothing less."
You could look at it that way. But it's a very cynical and not very nuanced way of looking at it.

Some of your points, sure, but generally speaking many inaccuracies are to serve the story.
So yeah lets break it down.

- Brachiosaur
I don't see what you mean with the skull being inaccurate. The nostrils are in the wrong place and it could use some fattening up. But this type of shrink-wrapped reconstruction was common a the time. This was fixed with the Apatosaurus in JW. Fatter head and nostrils in the correct place. Changing the Brachiosaur after all those years would be a bit weird in terms of continuity. The brachiosaur even had lips, like the raptors, which was pretty new for it's time.
The scene of the brachiosaur raising up onto it's hind legs is very obviously to tell the story to make it more dramatic. The size is obviously also to make it more dramatic.

- Triceratops
Dwarfism? Not really. Sure it's not the biggest, but it could possibly be a subadult. It's about the size of the subadult trike fossils I deal with every other week, And considering what we now now about ontogeny we can say that the hornlets/episquamosals and epiparietals on the frill indicate a subadult as well since they are so pointy. The size is really fine all around.
It's probably still one of the most accurate dinosaurs in the first film. I don't see any thing big wrong with the skull as there's a LOT of variation in trike skulls. The only real issue with this reconstruction is the outer toes that have nails when they shouldn't. It's by no means perfect, but overall it's a pretty nice reconstruction.

- Raptors
Oversized, yes. about 3 meters long when they should be much smaller compared to the real Velociraptor. Even too large for the Deinonychus they were mostly based on, even though they kept the name of Velociraptor because they thought it was cooler. So yeah, the name and size is wrong. But we do have evidence of Dromaeosaurids of that size and even larger. So it's not completely fantasy. While a few liberties were taken, those were still based on real science.
The pronated hands, yeah they can be quite bad at times. And though I'm not sure, I think the understanding of how theropods held their wrists came later. At least I can't think of a single example of correct theropod wrists in reconstructions before JP. So this gets a pass as well for it for 1993. Though I have to be honest this is the one thing I had hoped they'd fix in JW since I don't think it's something the casual viewer would pick up on much while the viewer that's more informed would appreciate the fix.
The raptors haven't aged very well. Now they kinda do like naked monsters with broken wrists. But at the time, for the most part, they were pretty okay.
The tongue thing was bad indeed. But the thing is, it never made it into the movie because of just how inaccurate it was. It did not fit with one of the important ideas of the film that dinosaurs are related to birds.

- T.rex
The basics of the skull are fairly accurate. It's mainly the brows and cheeks that have been exaggerated for dramatic effect, again, for telling a story. Speed, yeah, wrong, but again, for telling a story. The vision thing, story, but based on other animals.

- Dilophosaurus
Yeah this is probably the worst offender. And probably the only one that really has big additions that aren't based on anything at all. All the changes were made to make it different from the raptors, again, for the story.

And if you think I'm saying the dinosaurs in JP are accurate, then you are missing the point. They are not. There are many inaccuracies. But my point is that there is good amongst the bad. What JP set out to do was tell a story with dinosaurs and science fiction. While many things are inaccurate they also went out of their way to present these as real animals, not just monsters. They also went out of their way to present a number of scientific ideas about dinosaurs that weren't well known among the public.

With that said. There is no reason we we shouldn't strive for some more accuracy here and there. To get back on topic, this game is of course based on Jurassic World first and Jurassic Park second. So any dinosaur that appears in the films will of course look similar to those and be sized similarly. But for the ones that don't appear in the films, I don't see a good reason why we shouldn't strive for more accuracy unless it harms the game in any way.

So yeah, where appropriate, I think it would be cool if some dinosaurs are more accurately sized.
 
[...]T. Rex, oversized

"Rexy" is a beast, but according to what her size estimates are (13.5 meters length), she's just 8% larger than the largest real life find. Comparatively, when put next to most of the dinos in JWE, that's nothing (compare that with Carcharodontosaurus and Carnotaurus at +15%). And her size for a tyrannosaur is exclusive to only her in the films.

Right now, the only dinos that have negligible differences in length compared to real life estimates in-game are:

Ankylosaurus
Apatosaurus
Allosaurus ( if based on Saurophaganax/A.maximus)
Archaeornithomimus
Baryonyx
Corythosaurus
Edmontosaurus (could even be bumped a bit, but seems they went with a compromise)
Iguanodon
Maiasaura
Mamenchisaurus
Nodosaurus
Pachycephalosaurus
Parasaurolophus
Spinosaurus
Struthiomimus
Suchomimus (just a bit more than estimates have it at, but is fine)
Stygimoloch (if looked at as its own species)


And then the dinos in-game that are relatively close to being in-line with all the studies are:

Diplodocus (-10%)
Triceratops (+10%)
Stegosaurus (+8.9%)
Muttaburrasaurus (+8.75%)
Tyrannosaurus rex (+8%)
Torosaurus (-7.5%)


When the game is pushing +/-12% (in-game models, which don't always equate to what they're listed as in the database), it's getting out of hand, imo. You can see what just +8% did to "Rexy" for being a Tyrannosaurus. And it's an issue with more than half of the species. The list of dinosaurs that I put up in a previous post are insanely oversized/undersized going by the calculations.
 
Last edited:
PCMR4Life replied:



Many are waaayyy off. The in-game Crichtonsaurus, for example, is TWICE the size of real life estimates.

If we look at percentages relative to actual length, it looks about like this:

Crichtonsaurus +102%
Huayangosaurus +89%
Gigantspinosaurus +83%
Chungkingosaurus +80%
Kentrosaurus +60%
Chasmosaurus +56%
Sauropelta +53%
Styracosaurus +45%
Polacanthus +42%
Metriancanthosaurus +33%
Pentaceratops +31%
Ceratosaurus (post-update) +28%
Olorotitan +26%
Troodon +25%
Tsintaosaurus +20%
Giganotosaurus (post-update) +19%

JWE Gallimimus is under-sized by about 30%. For perspective and comparison, the JP Velociraptor (based on Deinonychus from North America) is about +17%. So, the JP Velociraptor, as much as people like to point it out, is far from being the worst offender here in-game.





According to measurement numbers of the in-game models, the Brachiosaurus is 18.8 meters length. And according to century's long studies have estimated them to be around 21-26 meters length when fully mature. So yeah, the JWE Brachiosaurus is undersized by up to 38%. That's a lot.

The JWE Mamenchisaurus is actually about right in size with the estimates of its real-life counterpart at 26 meters length. However, the neutral posture in-game is way off, and it could use a bit more mass. There has been at least one even more massive finding that is estimated to be up to 35 meters length.

The recent DLC Dreadnoughtus shares a combination of problems with the two above. It's both way under-sized (by about 38% length), and has incorrect posture. Ideally, we'd like it to stand waaayyy less vertical and have a length of 26 meters (in-game is 18.6 meters) with lots of mass/girth.

Camarasaurus could use a bump up as well. In-game length is 18 meters, but could go as high as 21-23 meters length (almost +22%) if it's based on Camarasaurus supremus.

Diplodocus in-game is 29 meters length, but could be bumped up to 32 meters length (+10%) if based on D.hallorum.

Apatosaurus is ok as far as length goes. It's just that the other giant sauropods are under-sized. Maybe a separate Hammond Creation Lab needs to be designed and added for the game to support super-massive animals... ?

I am not talking about real life sizes I mean movie accurate sizes.
 
No, the book goes out of its way to specify the park's raptors are mongoliensis, Grant even goes "I just dug up antirhopus back in Montana" to differentiate. And even if they were Deinonychus, they're still freakishly oversized movie monsters and they were so already at the time.

The 'dinosaurs in the original were accurate for its time' is hogwash. That line is only true comparative to contemporary dinosaur fiction. Yes, it was one of the first movies to follow the dinosaur rennaisance, but that still puts it decades behind.

Nothing about the Dinosaurs in the novels or the movies is scientifically accurate and that shouldn't be expected. It's science fiction after all.
 
I hate to jump in on this but I was rather disappointed with the size of Dreadnoughtus. I would have figured with what they said about it in the species profile, it would be a massive giant. Disappointed that it wasn’t.
 
Seriously this is still going on. The last time I visited the forums was the day the game was released and lurked a bit after. People will never be happy honestly no matter what frontier does people wont be happy.
 
I am not talking about real life sizes I mean movie accurate sizes.

Most of the species in JWE have never been featured in any of the films. It's quite the liberty being taken when many dinosaurs in the game are 50%-100% larger than the references that were used when designing them. The films have never come anywhere close to going that crazy (it's never been confirmed that the Dilo from JP was a fully mature adult). It begs the question why Fdevs chose to make about 20/51 dinosaur species real-life accurate size, and then the rest not anywhere to being close.


Seriously this is still going on. The last time I visited the forums was the day the game was released and lurked a bit after. People will never be happy honestly no matter what frontier does people wont be happy.

To be fair, most of the species are just copy/paste of a specific type (Chasmosaurus is just an edited Triceratops in every way), and individual attention to each animal was discarded, so it leaves a lot to be desired there. I'm going to assume that the re-sizing requests will keep coming up as long as the game is actively being worked on, and even moreso once terrain tools and other highly requested things get added. This issue certainly isn't being helped since the addition of more species have been coming in that are inaccurately sized as well (as in +/- 20% difference). I really hope that it gets tended to one day.
 
Hello guys,

i feel not comfortable with most of the dinosaurs in the game not beeing at the correct sizes.

Affected dinosaurs with corrected size indication
Olorotitan 12 m
Chasmosaurus 5.5 m
Styracosaurus 5 m
Nodosaurus 4 - 6 m
Polacanthus 4 m
Crichtonsaurus 3 - 3.5 m
Huayangosaurus 4.5 m
Chunkingosaurus 4 - 5 m
Kentrosaurus 4.5 - 5.5 m

I think the only reason wyh they change sizes is to get dinosaurs prepared to battle each other. In fact the named dinosaurs are far too big or too small (Olorotitan)

Please Frontier. Change this like you did for the carnivores

Dinosaur sizes are fine. Stop complaining. None of the Dinosaurs in the game are scientifically accurate anyway.
 
The Stegosaurus in The Lost World were bigger than they should have been. Nothing about the movies or novels is scientifically accurate. I don't see what is so hard to understand about this. You are playing a game that is based on movies and novels that were all science fiction. It doesn't really matter if a Dinosaur is too big or too small.

None of the animatronics and CGI Dinosaurs in the movies were the right size either. The CGI Rex was much bigger than the animatronic.
 
......... hi


This was said around a year ago:

Dinosaur sizes are in line with the Jurassic World film franchise and based along guidelines from Universal Studios. Outside of the dinosaur size changes made back with the 1.4 update we have no plans for any further dinosaur size changes.


Players were told that existing dinosaur size changes were not going to be given the time of day. Since then, several more egregiously way over-sized dinosaurs have turned up in little Dinosaur Packs. So, Frontier have been well aware of this size inaccuracy issue since release, made changes to 4 of them, and left it at that. However, instead of learning from previous careless mistakes and making adjustments for future releases, more and more super-sized dinos keep being pumped out.

Let's have a quick look:

Acrocanthosaurus: +17.5%
Proceratosaurus: +25% (same as in-game Troodon)
Euoplocephalus: +27%
Nasutoceratops: +40%
Dryosaurus: up to +17%
Homalocephale: +22%
Nigersaurus: +33%


Once again, there's been selective reasoning for why some dinos are way off, and others are more in line with real life size estimates. Herrerasaurus, Albertosaurus (just a tad big, but I'd say it could be JP/JW size), and Ouranosaurus were spared the super-steroid boosters here for unknown reasons.


So, if it was too difficult and time consuming to go back and make the changes to the existing animals, what is the excuse now for why most of the newer dinosaurs are way over-sized too?

"Based along guidelines from Universal Studios" seems strange. I don't remember Universal Studios getting nearly as carried away with dinosaur sizes in the film series (and most of the dinosaurs in JWE have never appeared in the films or novels). This particular stipulation (30%-100% bigger dinos are totally the bestest), conveniently, seems to have appeared only with JWE. Ah, who cares about the details and more accurate sizes? Who cares about variety? Right... ?
 
Instead of making every species interesting and unique, they went the other way. Several species are essentialy the same, with just a different look. But no one is complaining anymore so we just have to deal with it. Hopefully Frontier will differentiate the dinosaurs further down the road with more animations and such.
 
Back
Top Bottom