Charles Austin Miller

27th Aug 2001

Jurassic Park (1993)

Corrected entry: When the doctor is showing off the piece of amber that they have gotten the DNA from, there is a problem. The mosquito in the amber is a male, as one can tell by the antennae. Because it is only the female mosquito that feeds on blood, the male should only have nectar in its stomach. To make it worse, in that species of mosquito, Toxirhynchites, both the males AND females are flower feeders, and would therefore have no blood, or dinosaur DNA in their stomachs. (00:25:00)

Correction: Can we not just assume that the mosquito in Amber in the cane is just symbolic and doesn't necessarily have to be the exact species and gender of the mosquitoes that yielded the dino blood and DNA?

applejackson

Using the actual mosquito will have more meaning to Hammond than a random one. John is also shown to want only the best.

Ssiscool

I don't know. I would think that a mosquito preserved in Amber containing dinosaur blood would be exceptionally rare and probably not the kind of thing you'd waste on a cane.

applejackson

Correction: Hammond's company, InGen, did not deal exclusively with dinosaurs. Dr. Ellie Sattler, the paleo-botanist, observed and mentioned that Jurassic Park was also full of ancient and extinct plant life. InGen used the same process to procure vegetable DNA from ancient insects (such as the Toxirhynchites mosquitoes) that fed on vegetable matter. It's the same process.

Charles Austin Miller

Plant sap is composed mostly of water and dissolved sugars, hormones and carbohydrates. It does not contain any DNA.

Incorrect. Plant genomics research shows that plant fluids do, indeed, contain plant DNA. Moreover, a single mosquito could yield the DNA of several different plants, as well as the mosquito's own DNA and the DNA of microbes consumed along with the plant fluids.

Charles Austin Miller

Correction: The mosquito in the amber is not one that supplied the DNA for the dinosaurs. We know this because there is no drill hole for the extraction. When the extraction process is shown, a hole several millimetres across is drilled into the amber.

Correction: Plant sap consists of water, some simple sugars, more complex carbohydrates and plant hormones. It does not contain any DNA at all.

It's about the mosquito inside the amber, not the amber itself. Anyway, plant sap most definitely contains DNA, just plant DNA. All living organisms have DNA.

lionhead

Plant sap does not contain DNA. Phloem sap consists primarily of sugars, hormones, and mineral elements dissolved in water. DNA is polar due to its highly charged phosphate groups and dissolves easily in water. Transporting dissolved DNA would be utterly pointless.

Fine, the amber doesn't contain DNA (it's fossilized anyway). It's still a bad correction.

lionhead

22nd Mar 2018

Jurassic Park (1993)

Corrected entry: Why aren't there subwayesque service tunnels all round the island to permit the staff to travel hidden from the dinosaurs/sundry other emergencies/all the other incidental occurrences that make every other undertaking on our planet use similar tunnels? Expensive and laborious, but if you have the resources to make dinosaurs, everything else is a breeze.

dizzyd

Correction: Despite Hammond's catchphrase of "We spared no expense", that would have been a huge expense, as underground tunnels suitable for travel are extremely costly. Also remember that Isla Nublar is a volcanic island. The ground may simply not be suitable for that kind of construction.

Greg Dwyer

Correction: Given that "Jurassic Park" was author Michael Crichton's re-imagining of his own film "Westworld" (in which a high-tech amusement park goes haywire and the guests must run for their lives), the whole point of the movie was to place humans and dinosaurs on the same deadly-dangerous playing field. Like "Westworld," this movie was a purely visual film (a graphic novel, basically) that smoothed-over lapses of logic in favor of frantic spectacle. If John Hammond had the foresight to make his Jurassic Park a hermetically-sealed, perfectly-safe environment for humans to observe and maintain dinosaurs, it would have eliminated the thrill of the movie, turning it into a National Geographic documentary.

Charles Austin Miller

But the point is the park was safe, without Nedry's sabotage things would have worked perfectly. Hammond spared no expense and it shows with the fancy security. Because of this Nedry's sabotage was put in.

lionhead

The fact that Jurassic Park could be sabotaged by a computer geek is proof that it was not perfectly safe. A perfectly-safe facility would be foolproof and sabotage-proof.

Charles Austin Miller

Any place can be sabotaged, the point is that it was safe enough to receive visitors, without the sabotage the inspection would have gone smoothly. Adding tunnels or even more security wouldn't change a thing. You are just making stuff up.

lionhead

Correction: They didn't think about it. They didn't need to because they felt they had the place pretty well secured. Besides it wouldn't have helped them much anyway, once the fences were down the predators could get anywhere and a lot of the predators are small enough to get inside the tunnels, the velociraptors could even open doors. Most personnel was already gone so there is no lacking in their infrastructure that would require tunnels. This could have helped Dennis Nedry escape as well. He shut the park down to create chaos and move unseen.

lionhead

6th Jul 2018

Jurassic Park (1993)

Corrected entry: When Tim is holding onto the fence, when the power came on, it would cause his hand muscles to clench the cable.

Correction: You haven't been electrocuted before. Otherwise, you would know that a powerful electric shock will knock you backwards by several feet.

Charles Austin Miller

Depends on whether it's Alternating Current, which would do as the original mistake says, or Direct Current, which would do the second option, like the correction. Insufficient information is given to say solidly which the fence uses.

dizzyd

We can reasonably assume that Jurassic Park was using Direct Current, wisely intended to repel the dinosaurs away from the fence line. If it was Alternating Current, then the multi-billion-dollar menagerie of ultra-rare specimens would be fried to a crisp (or at least seriously injured) on a daily basis, as they would be unable to release the charged fences. Therefore, Direct Current is the only fiscally-logical choice (and it explains Tim being repelled from the fence).

Charles Austin Miller

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