Jurassic Park: Why we’re still struggling to realise it 30 years on

Better lab protocols and fossilisation experiments are helping palaeontologists to make more accurate interpretations of fossils

Chloe Mai Napier puts finishing touches to a Spinosaurus at the Jurassic Kingdom exhibition in Leazes Park, Newcastle.

Jurassic Park is arguably the ultimate Hollywood blockbuster. Aside from the appeal of human-chomping dinosaurs, tense action sequences and ground-breaking cinematography, its release in 1993 was a movies-meet-science milestone.

As global audiences were soaking up the gory action, the premise of the movie — extracting DNA from fossil insects preserved in amber to resurrect dinosaurs — was given the credibility of publication by several high-profile studies on fossil amber. The authors recovered ancient DNA from amber, and even revived amber-hosted bacteria. The world seemed primed for a real-life Jurassic Park.