Jurassic Park and Jurassic World scientific name thoughts

[spoilers for JP/JW movies out so far, as well as for Camp Cretaceous, and a tiny bit for the novels]

Most of the animals in JP/W movies are only ever referred to by their genus name in canon, with a couple of exceptions.

Dr. Burke identifies the Compies in The Lost World movie as "Compsognathus triassicus". The name is a combination of two different dinosaurs: Compsognathus longipes, which lived in the Late Jurassic, and Procompsognathus triassicus, which as the species name implies lived in the Triassic. The Compies are anatomically more based on the former, as its anatomy is better understood, with more fossil material having been found. The latter is what the Compies in the Jurassic Park novels are supposed to be, though, and that's the Compy Eberhard Fraas (not sure if the different spelling is just my subtitles) named in 1913, so they seem to have been combined into one animal in the fictional universe the Jurassic Park/World movies take place in (which differs enough from the novels they started out as based on, that those are probably two distinct fictional universes. Unless otherwise specified I'll mean just the movieverse in this post from now on when referring to "JP/W universe").

 Dr. Robert Burke: Compsognathus triassicus, found by Frass in Bavaria in 1913.

Other exceptions include Tyrannosaurus rex, more often shortened to T. rex, and its rexness referenced even if its full scientific name isn't used. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is also called by its full name once, when Dr. Grant and Billy are figuring out what the creature that attacked them was.

For the most part I can assume that the Mesozoic animals the JP/W animals are cloned from are called the same things in the JP/W universe as they are in real life. Another exception to that, besides the Compies, would have to be Velociraptor.

Dr. Ellie Sattler: My favorite.

Ah, JP/W Velociraptor, what even are you? The creature was originally based on Deinonychus, which at the time of the Jurassic Park novel's writing was by some considered a species of Velociraptor and referred to as Velociraptor antirrhopus rather than Deinonychus antirrhopus, and Crichton and later Spielberg kept this genus name because it sounded cooler. Though Deinonychus wasn't exactly minuscule, the animal's size was exaggerated first for the novel, then a bit more for the movie, and even more for the JW movies. Behavioral theories regarding Deinonychus have taken on a life of their own by now and become fact about the fictional animal, while they may not hold for the real life one anymore. This dinosaur stopped being a Deinonychus quite some time ago and never really was a Velociraptor.

In the JP/W universe, this animal was apparently discovered and named "Velociraptor" well before the 1990's, it was an extremely social and intelligent pack hunter, at least the height of an average adult human at its adult size, and lived somewhere around today's Montana, USA. Matching it to any real life (at least currently known) dromaeosaurid is not going to be an exact fit. Dakotaraptor, for example, was both about the right size and lived in about the right area, but was discovered in 2015, and JP/W Velociraptors' behavior probably differs quite a bit from any real life dromaeosaurid no matter how much they have in common with them otherwise, so I think it can just be considered to be a completely fictional dromaeosaurid inspired by some real ones. Maybe in the JP/W universe, it takes the place of one or all of its somewhat-counterparts in at least some ways (maybe in that universe our Velociraptor mongoliensis is known as Ovoraptor djadochtari, maybe in that universe it was this animal that played Deinonychus' role in the dinosaur renaissance, maybe in that universe it was this animal that shared habitat with T. rex, giving some fun extra context for present-day raptor-rex interactions).

Vic Hoskins: How fast can they run?
Barry Sembène: 40 [mph]. 50 when they're hungry.

The in-universe reasoning for the dromaeosaurid seen in the movies having been named "Velociraptor" could be that it actually is a fast runner capable of pursuit hunting, while despite "dromaeosaurid" meaning "running reptile", dromaeosaurids were actually not too great at running, it turns out. Maybe it's an exception in-universe, too.

Dr. Alan Grant: What species is this?

Dr. Henry Wu: It's a Velociraptor.

But "Velociraptor" is a genus. What's their species name?

I've seen fans call them "nublarensis" or "sornaensis" a lot, for the islands they were cloned on, with -ensis in a scientific name indicating the organism is named after a location. The Mesozoic Velociraptor can't have been called that, though, and for its species name, I propose just keeping "antirrhopus". It translates to counterbalancing, and refers to how Deinonychus brought into the "tail-dragging lizards vs. active, warm-blooded birdies" debate a dinosaur that apparently used its tail as counterweight, tipping the scales (hah) in favor of the birdier side. If in this universe it was the animal referred to as Velociraptor that had this honor, it should get the name, too. Deinonychus does exist as its own animal in the JP/W universe, and animals from different genera can share a species name (for example: Velociraptor mongoliensis and Psittacosaurus mongoliensis, both from Mongolia), but this one's kind of special, so maybe it should go to just one of the two. Perhaps JP/W universe's Deinonychus can be Deinonychus agilis - that does still evoke the idea of an active hunter, and yes it's kind of a consolation prize, but better than nothing. Feels unfair, but I didn't make the JP/W canon, I only try to make sense of it.

So are the clones seen in the movies Velociraptor nublarensis or V. sornaensis, then (probably nublarensis out of the two of them, since that's the island they were meant to be showcased on, and Site B was secret)? Since Rexy isn't a Tyrannosaurus nublarensis, I don't think so, though maybe they could all be new subspecies instead of new species: Velociraptor antirrhopus nublarensis, and Tyrannosaurus rex nublarensis. Maybe if Dr. Wu or whoever is the most responsible for dinosaurs still being cloned on Isla Sorna after the events of JP1 wanted to consider the JP3 raptors enough of a new and improved version to be distinct from the JP1-2 raptors, he could have named them Velociraptor antirrhopus sornaensis, but the different raptor versions on Sorna could still have mingled quite a bit on their own, so considering there aren't all that many of them all together to begin with, not sure there's much point to naming multiple subspecies among them.

That the I.B.R.I.S. raptors seem to have a mix of appearance traits from the two earlier versions could be because they're cloned from raptors found on Isla Sorna, and by 2012 those populations had interbred enough that there were no two distinct versions anymore?

Claire Dearing: We needed something scary and easy to pronounce.

There's also the matter of the hybrids. Indominus rex should really be called Indomitus rex if the meaning they were going for was indeed "indomitable king" and not "Indian minor king", but it's a name made up by marketing teams in-universe, so I could see it being an in-universe mistake, too, as which it's a pretty funny one. On that note, "Indoraptor" means "Indian thief", which is even funnier to me, because what did they even think they were naming the poor creature? Even if the previous hybrid was called Indomitus, you can't just take a part of a word and expect it to automatically carry the meaning of the whole word without checking if that particular part out of context has some unrelated meaning of its own, like, Mills and Wu, you've both graduated from more schools than I have you should know this. Tell you what, I'm going to become a dairy farmer and name my organic butter product "Organ Butt", and I'm sure there will be no confusion about what aisle it belongs in.

Ahem. Anyway.

Dr. Henry Wu: Oh, Indominus wasn't bred. She was designed.

I'm not sure "Indominus rex", "Indoraptor [species name?]", and "Scorpios rex" are names for scientific classification of animal species so much as they're commercial trademarks of new products. Many hybrids in the real world that are more naturally occurring only get a common name, and their scientific classification is listing their parent species - a mule's species is defined as being an Equus africanus asinus x Equus ferus caballus hybrid, a wolfdog is a hybrid of Canis familiaris and either Canis lupus, Canis lycaon, Canis rufus, or Canis simensis. Barred owls and Spotted owls sometimes hybridize in the wild and produce fertile offspring, and yet these "sparred owls" are still only Strix varia x Strix occidentalis caurina hybrids without their own unique scientific name. Sometimes hybridization does produce a self-sustaining species, but the process is a little longer than humans frankensteining together a few individuals in a lab. For what it's worth, Scorpios rex has at least proved capable of reproducing, but if there only ever were those two Scorpios rexes, then I guess even if it could be considered a species, it's extinct now.

And as I've understood, an Indoraptor is a hybrid of Indominus rex and Velociraptor, while Indominus rex is already a Velociraptor hybrid. Wouldn't that mean Indoraptors can be considered to just be Indominus rexes with higher Velociraptor content?

 

Eli Mills: Our geneticists have created a direct descendant of Henry Wu's masterpiece, the animal that took down Jurassic World.

There is, of course, also the fact that all of the JP/W animals are hybrids, not just the ones advertized as such. Maybe instead of as new subspecies, they would be classified that way: instead of a Velociraptor antirrhopus nublarensis, Blue is a Velociraptor antirrhopus x Varanus albigularis microstictus. The motivation for all of these animals' creation was commercial, so it's good to remember canon sources are always going to be tinted with in-universe marketing. "We have a T. rex" packs a lot more punch than listing the species of frogs that were used to make that kind-of-sort-of T. rex, and the information about their creation is in the first movie given through an amusement park ride meant for dazzling guests.

So, what do they have?

Dr. Alan Grant: What John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme-park monsters.

While I disagree with Dr. Grant's attitude at the beginning of the third movie about how there's nothing useful to be learned about Mesozoic dinosaurs by studying the clones (also he forgot about birds in that speech - real dinosaurs are not all extinct, come on now, you knew that in the first movie!), he is correct in that the animals InGen created are not just Mesozoic dinosaurs brought to the modern world exactly as they were (which if you look at the raptors should be pretty obvious these days: at least as far as I'm concerned, the Mesozoic Velociraptor was fully feathered in the JP/W universe, too, like dromaeosaurids were in real life). All of the JP/W dinos and other prehistoric animals are lab-made hybrids with modern animals, and don't represent prehistoric life completely accurately even in-universe.

But they exist now, in that universe, and they're something. I'd love to see more of in-universe scientists arguing about wtf that is.