Ottawa native works on ‘Jurassic World’ movie, publishes next book on origin story of mammals

Steve Brusatte remembers watching “Jurassic Park” when he was 10 years old with his father and brothers at the Roxy Cinemas in Ottawa.

Fast forward to his adult years, he recently served as the advising paleontologist on the set of “Jurassic World: Dominion,” meeting Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Omar Sy, among other Hollywood stars.

Even as he continues to excel in his career in paleontology, the trajectory of events was surreal.

His 2018 book “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World,” a New York Times bestseller, made it happen.

His book was released about a month or so before “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.”

A few months later, Brusatte said he received a random email from someone purporting to be Colin Treverrow, a name Brusatte recognized as a Jurassic World franchise fan, as the director of the series.

“The subject of that email was ‘I read your book,’” Brusatte said with a laugh, pointing out the coincidence that in the first Jurassic Park movie a child who’s obsessed with dinosaurs approaches the paleontologist with the same line.

“He said ‘Hi my name is Colin, I make scientifically inaccurate dinosaur sequels. I’m going to be coming up to Edinburgh soon, you want to meet up and talk about dinosaurs.’ So I thought it was a hoax. I thought one of my students was having a go at me. But we confirmed it was him.”

Brusatte was delighted at the opportunity.

“I love the franchise, I love Jurassic Park,” Brusatte said. “It’s done such good for paleontology, it’s just led to so much more interest in dinosaurs. It’s brought a new concept of dinosaurs to the world. People all over the world see these films. But the one thing that’s always bothered me is dinosaurs haven’t had feathers and we know a lot of the dinosaurs did have feathers. What you’re seeing in Jurassic Park and the first few Jurassic Worlds isn’t really an accurate representation or realistic representation of dinosaurs.”

Brusatte said the inaccurate depiction was bad luck. The first fossil dinosaur skeleton with feathers was found in 1996, three years after Steven Spielberg released “Jurassic Park.”

“You’re not going to change well-known iconic movie characters,” Brusatte said. “So it made sense they kept the feathers off, but I was really hopeful that some point in the series they’d put feathers on some of the dinosaurs and Colin was devoted to doing that from the start this time.”

Brusatte said three new dinosaurs have feathers, different types of feathers. He said his Ph.D. work was on the origin of birds from dinosaurs.

“Being somebody who actually studies those fossils, it means even more to finally see them in a Jurassic Park film, and to play a small role trying to make them as accurate and realistic as possible,” he said.

Now, Brusatte has a new book released in June entitled “The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us.”

Brusatte said his research has turned increasingly toward mammal fossils, noting he was in New Mexico fossil hunting with students days before attending the “Jurassic World: Dominion” premiere in Los Angeles.

As much as Brusatte loves dinosaurs, he said there’s a connection to mammals, because it’s “our story.” The book tells the deep evolutionary origin story of mammals going back hundreds of millions of years, including the survival of three mass extinctions.

“Our family has been through a lot and I hope to convey in the book how remarkable and resilient we are,” Brusatte said of mammals.

Growing up in Illinois, Brusatte said he was disappointed when he was younger to learn nobody had ever found a dinosaur in Illinois. The kind of rocks dinosaur fossils are found are not present in Illinois.

To make up for it, Brusatte said he got his thrills standing under dinosaur skeletons at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford and the Field Museum in Chicago.

“Nothing compares to standing beneath the skeleton of a T-rex or wooly mammoth, except for finding your own fossils,” Brusatte said. “That’s the thing that’s even more intoxicating or enthralling.”

Brusatte said fossils can be found in La Salle County in gravel pits left behind by the glaciers, and sometimes farmers find fossils tilling their fields. Smaller fossils of clams, corals and ferns from the coal age, also known as the Pennsylvanian period of geological history, are plentiful. He said guide books are available, as well as online resources.

“You don’t need to have a Ph.D. to do it, you don’t have to be a professor,” he said. “Paleontology is a very accessible science. That’s one of the great things about it. For me, as a teenager, that really drew me to it, I could go out and find my own fossils. That still holds.”

Brusatte has taken his early inspirations from Ottawa and become one of the leading voices in paleontology today. After advising the latest Jurassic World and writing another pop science book, he’s speaking on the podcasts of actor Dax Shepard, politician Newt Gingrich and pro wrestler Chris Jericho, along with interviewing on NPR’s Science Friday, sharing his passion and knowledge of the field.

“There’s going to be hundreds and millions of people around the world that will see the film and they’ll see these dinosaurs with feathers and for so many people it will be something new, something unexpected, something that will get them asking questions, hopefully trying to learn more about dinosaurs,” Brusatte said, describing the experience for those seeing “Jurassic World: Dominion,” and describing a feeling all too similar to that 10-year old seeing the giant creatures on the big screen at the Roxy.

Except moving forward: “They’ll be seeing for the first time a much more realistic portrayal of what dinosaurs were really, really like.”

Want to buy Brusatte’s books?

Prairie Fox Books, 719 La Salle St., Ottawa, recently had copies available for sale of “The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us.” Call 815-433-7323 for more information.