In Popular Culture
Spinosaurus appeared prominently in the 2001 film Jurassic Park III. The film's consulting paleontologist John R. Horner was quoted as saying: "If we base the ferocious factor on the length of the animal, there was nothing that ever lived on this planet that could match this creature . Also my hypothesis is that T-rex was actually a scavenger rather than a killer. Spinosaurus was really the predatory animal." In the film, Spinosaurus was portrayed as larger and more powerful than Tyrannosaurus: in a scene depicting a battle between the two resurrected predators, Spinosaurus emerges victorious by snapping the tyrannosaur's neck.
Spinosaurus has long been depicted in popular books about dinosaurs, although only recently has there been enough information about spinosaurids for an accurate depiction. After an influential 1955 skeletal reconstruction by Lapparent and Lavocat based on a 1936 diagram by Stromer, it has been treated as a generalized upright theropod, with a skull similar to that of other large theropods and a sail on its back, even having four-fingered hands.
In addition to films, action figures, video games, and books, Spinosaurus has been depicted on postage stamps such as ones from Angola, The Gambia, and Tanzania.
The creature has also appeared in documentaries such as Bizarre Dinosaurs, Monsters Resurrected and Planet Dinosaur.
Read more about this topic: Spinosaurus
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)