RE: So I was watching Jurassic Park III last night... (SPOILER ALERT!)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> MKIRKALDY@aol.com
>
>
> I saw JP3 at the first showing today, with only about a dozen
> other people in
> the theater!  (PS to Dan Varner--it was dark in there.)
>
> **Spoiler space**
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Did anyone else think that "Billy" looked a lot like a much younger Paul
> Sereno?

Now that you mention it...  Of course, as Ralph Chapman pointed out some
years ago, Paul Reiser and Paul Sereno in the 1980s (c. whenever "Aliens"
came out) REALLY looked a lot like each other

> Considering how fast governments work, how was Ellie able to get
> the military
> to the island within a day or so?  Who foots the bill for that--grant
> (Grant?) money?

It was almost certainly Ellie's husband.  Living in the D.C. area, I know
enough of people who claim to work for the State Department or international
relations who are REALLY working for... other governmental agencies.

> The courtesy of always calling Dr. Grant "Dr. Grant" might have been
> suspended by those on an island trying to save themselves from creatures
> without formal degrees.

Hey, he worked hard for that degree!! :-)

> In the  _T. rex_ vs. _Spinosaurus_ fight, the tyrannosaur did
> have a clamp on
> the spinosaur's neck and was shaking him.  I wondered too why
> these "super
> predators" hadn't killed each other previously or come to an
> uneasy truce,
> since they must have grown up in the same territory.  (There's enough
> hadrosaur for everyone.)

And WHY didn't the Spinosaurus eat the T. rex?  If it had, endotherm or not,
it would have been stuffed for days or weeks, long enough for the humans to
make it off the island.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796