![]() ![]() ![]() People were naturally attracted to beasts that were both large and exotic, and dinosaur exhibits ticked off both of those boxes better than most extant terrestrial animals. The reason has to do with marketing: in the 19th century, museums were competitive business, and they needed to provide big attractions. Paleontology has been around in one form or another since 1822, but the vast majority of that time was spent not looking for baby dinosaur bones. Specifically, he was asking a rhetorical question: “Where are the baby dinosaurs?” Jack Horner, paleontologist and curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, gave a TED Talk about baby dinosaurs. Why? Well, the short answer is: we have big egos. For almost as long as humans have been digging up dinosaur bones, we’ve faced a dearth of baby dinosaurs. The Triceratops is just one famous example. But did you know that, prior to 2000, nobody had even seen a sub-adult Triceratops? The species was discovered in 1887, yet nobody had seen a juvenile-that they knew of. They gotta come from somewhere.” Indeed they do. Now, if you’re like me and you cut your dinosaur teeth on Jurassic Park, you’re probably thinking: “Yeah, no sh*t. But the original film was fairly cutting edge in one way you probably haven’t realized: it showed that baby dinosaurs were a thing. The Jurassic Park franchise has, meanwhile, veered away from modern science (where the feathers at?). Now a 33-year-old man, I’ve matured-I’ll only play with feathered dinosaur toys. Mind you, our understanding of dinosaurs has come a long way since 1993, and so have I. I swapped out my old Tyrannosaurus rex toys-the hapless taildraggers that looked like Godzilla-for the birdier predators I saw in the movies. My understanding of dinosaurs was shaped by the film. Shortly after, it was explained to me that this was an article about a movie that used something called “CGI” to make dinosaurs that weren’t puppets. Also, I thought it was an article about a real dinosaur park, because I was seven years old. At the time, I wanted to be a paleontologist, so I was fascinated by this new, more accurate look at dinosaurs. It was about how a guy named Steven Spielberg was making something called Jurassic Park, a theme park filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs that would be opening next year. Again all it missed was a sandbox mode with mating mechanics, which was why this was on my wishlist for so many years.Back in 1992, my mom gave me a magazine article to read. Sort of like Site B in JPOG or even the demo of this game had a nice combat system and running away etc and defending themselves. I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Dino game that has mating mechanics and building an ecosystem and have carnivores hunt and herbivores run away (not just randomly mortal kombat sequence like in JWE). Then again, Planet Zoo has it (not a dino game unfortunately) so the option exists in modern games just not popular enough to implement I guess. Possibly due to a whole process that needs coding can be a bit of a pain, having them be children and grow etc. I get the canon reason for JW/JP (if you ignore that the original JP franchise had "life finds a way") but I'm surprised other games didn't include it as a feature. So the idea is more popular than I originally thought it used to be. Actually JPOG had a mod where dinosaurs just spawned (I believe the original JWE did as well). Quite true, and yes in fact I remember packs and even older lol. To conclude, I definitely appreciate Nano's comment that it is planned for future. All-in-all, even I could tell that mechanic was relatively non-invasive and simple to produce. The mechanic was no more controversial than the simple notifications regarding the fact. That aside, I recall a childhood favorite, Zoo Tycoon, specifically the addition of the Dinosaur Digs Pack ("packs" lol, before we had DLCs ammiright?). Even Jurassic Park/World games have a canonical reason, that reason is also canonically contradicted. Oddly Fox:As a potential customer, I absolutely agree that the exclusion of mating mechanics from recent titles has been disappointing.
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