After five Jurassic Park movies (and a sixth entry arriving next summer), you’d think scientists would have gotten the message that using genetic engineering to resurrect dinosaurs isn’t a great idea. But it seems that they’re willing to overlook the bits where people run, scream and get chomped in half in favor of imagining how cool it’d be to ride a Triceratops.
That future could be coming sooner than we think, too, as the co-founder of Elon Musk’s company Neuralink has claimed that they already have the technology to create their own Jurassic Park. Max Hodak (who has a great bad guy name) tweeted the following last week:
we could probably build jurassic park if we wanted to. wouldn’t be genetically authentic dinosaurs but 🤷♂️. maybe 15 years of breeding + engineering to get super exotic novel species
— Max Hodak (@maxhodak_) April 4, 2021
As a Jurassic Park nerd, I feel I should point out that not even the onscreen creatures are ‘genetically authentic dinosaurs’. The movies and books explain that Jurassic Park’s animals are specifically engineered to make entertaining theme park attractions and to live up to the popular perception of what dinos were like rather than the reality. This means Hodak’s plans for a zoo full of monstrous, deformed freaks who don’t know why they exist is actually extremely accurate to what author Michael Crichton first envisaged.
But I don’t want to get too down on this plan. Sure, on one hand, intentionally creating “super exotic novel species” is an ethical black hole, but on the other, I bet they’d look really cool. And if they break free from their enclosures and tear apart the billionaire investors? Well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Before then, we’ve got Jurassic World: Dominion to look forward to, which will show mankind and dinosaurs struggling to co-exist after the end of Fallen Kingdom. This will reunite most of the original cast, including the core trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, and hits theaters on June 10th, 2022.
