This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Indominus rex, imaginary genetic chimaera and star of the movie Jurassic World.
A little movie called Jurassic World has just hit cinemas, you might have heard of it. I've seen it, and - while I'm not about to discuss it at length - I mostly found it dumb, with ugly, old school CG animals that can't be considered an improvement on the animals originally outed for 1993's Jurassic Park. As you'll know if you've seen the film, the movie's main theme revolves around a genetic chimaera called Indominus rex. Oh, and children in peril.
Indominus is a giant, fat-headed, big-clawed behemoth. The premise behind its creation is that shareholders and Jurassic World owners have opted for a bigger, toothier, scarier new kind of dinosaur. The result is a creature that - despite a range of impressive special abilities - is fairly bland in overall appearance and really doesn't look all that different from the fat-headed, old school theropods of yore. Yawn. I really wish that something more interesting, more innovative had been invented for the movie. And I'm not alone.
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Thus was born Brian Engh's Build A Better Fake Theropod project, which you can peruse both on twitter (#BuildABetterFakeTheropod) and at Brian's website.
This is Brian Engh's rainforest-dwelling speculative theropod Cryptonychus arborealis.
As you'll see, some us have been having a lot of fun. There are some silly pictures of pretend theropods there, but there are also interesting speculative theropods, invented denizens of an alternative universe where new dinosaurs have been discovered via genetic recovery, and new and innovative chimaeras invented for entertainment and display.
Alex Lovegrove's 'quilled slasher'. Brilliant, dynamic sketch. The animal is, I think, a megaraptoran - a controversial group of tetanuran theropods that are most likely carcharodontosaurian allosauroids, but have been regarded as members of Tyrannosauroidea by some authors.
Come join the fun. There's no serious point to make here... other, perhaps, than that movie-makers are sometimes disappointingly lacklustre in the looks they choose for their creatures.
Hypothetical "pseudotoothed Kiwibeast of Doom", invented by Mark Witton.
Brilliant image by Gilles Roussel (aka Boulet) of The Bouletcorp.
And on that note, here's my CNN opinion piece on Jurassic World. Yeah yeah yeah, just a movie, just a movie, just a movie. But what a massively wasted chance to do something interesting.