40 Fun Facts About Dilophosaurus

Which made-up ability did the novel Jurassic Park give Dilophosaurus to explain how it killed prey?

Spitting venom was pure invention: the real animal's jaws were once thought too weak to kill, so the story armed it with poison. No fossil shows any sign of it.

Which feature, unknown from any fossil, did designers of the film Jurassic Park add to Dilophosaurus?

A neck frill that expands and vibrates, like that of the living frill-necked lizard, was the filmmakers' idea. A real one would have left attachment marks on the bones.

Long but slender and lightly built, Dilophosaurus has been compared in size to which living animal?

A brown bear is the usual comparison: the largest known Dilophosaurus weighed about 400 kilograms, though it stretched some 7 metres from snout to tail.

How did Samuel Welles, who named Dilophosaurus, react to the dinosaur's fictionalised role in Jurassic Park?

He was thrilled, by his own account: Welles noted the inaccuracies but called them minor, enjoyed the movie and liked seeing his dinosaur become an international star.

The film Jurassic Park shrank its Dilophosaurus so audiences would not confuse it with which other dinosaur?

Velociraptor was the reason: to keep the animals apart on screen, the film's Dilophosaurus stands about 1.2 metres tall, less than half the height assumed for the real animal.

Which technique brought the Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus to life on film with no help from computers?

A physical puppet did all the work: a full body with three swappable heads, plus separate legs built for a shot where the animal hops past.

A resting trace left by a Dilophosaurus-like dinosaur may show impressions of which body covering?

Feathers, of a downy kind, are what some scientists see around the belly and feet of the trace. Others argue the marks were made by sediment as the animal moved.

Studies of how Dilophosaurus could move its short arms suggest which body part reached prey first?

The mouth led the attack: the long head and neck reached much further than the hands, which could only seize prey already pinned beneath the chest.

In which US state, near the town of Tuba City, were the first Dilophosaurus skeletons collected?

Arizona's north held three skeletons arranged in a triangle, first spotted in 1940. The best one took ten days to encase in plaster before it was trucked away.

Too weak for fighting, the thin head crests of Dilophosaurus are thought to have served what purpose?

Visual display is the leading idea: the crests could have helped the animals recognise their own kind or impress mates, perhaps with bright colours.

Which Jurassic Park character, fleeing with stolen embryos, is killed by a Dilophosaurus?

Dennis Nedry, the park's disgruntled programmer, had switched off the security system to steal the embryos, then got lost in the rain and crashed his jeep.

In the Greek-based name Dilophosaurus, 'lophos' means crest and 'sauros' means lizard; what does 'di' mean?

Two crests gave the animal its name, coined by Samuel Welles in 1970. Before that, the crushed crests on the first skull had been mistaken for a misplaced cheek bone.

Which novelist wrote Dilophosaurus into Jurassic Park in 1990, three years before the film version?

Michael Crichton gave the animal abilities no fossil supports. The book about the making of the film calls Dilophosaurus the movie's only serious departure from scientific accuracy.

Apart from Dilophosaurus, which is the only dinosaur in the film Jurassic Park that lived in the Jurassic?

Brachiosaurus shares the honour: despite the title, every other species in the film did not exist until the Cretaceous.

Jaw tips shaped like a rosette of interlocking teeth hint that Dilophosaurus, like the spinosaurs, ate what?

Fish may have been on the menu: the nostrils also sat far back on the snout, which could have kept water from splashing into them while the animal fished.

A man from which Native American nation found the first Dilophosaurus bones and led scientists to them?

Navajo man Jesse Williams found the bones in 1940 and showed them to a fossil-hunting expedition in 1942. Fossil footprints from the same area were later named in his honour.

Dilophosaurus, an active bipedal hunter of the Early Jurassic, belonged to which major group of dinosaurs?

Theropods count Dilophosaurus among their earliest large members: it lived about 186 million years ago in what is now North America.

Three Dilophosaurus skeletons lying close together led Samuel Welles to suggest the animals did what?

Moved in groups: that was his reading of the bones and of criss-crossing trackways nearby. A later researcher warned that a flash flood could have washed scattered bones together.

Gregory Paul once depicted Dilophosaurus lashing out at an enemy in the manner of which living animal?

A kangaroo was his model: in 2000 he showed Dilophosaurus bouncing on its tail while it lashed out. Another study put its top speed at 43 to 69 kilometres an hour.

Who proposed in 1998 that Dilophosaurus become the official dinosaur of the state where it was first found?

A nine-year-old boy made the pitch, but lawmakers preferred Sonorasaurus, and the bill died when it emerged that the Dilophosaurus fossils had been taken without permission.

Which US state named Dilophosaurus its state dinosaur because of fossil tracks found there in 1966?

Connecticut chose it in 2017 because the Rocky Hill tracks were probably made by a similar dinosaur. The site became a state park, home to the first life-sized Dilophosaurus sculpture.

A crested dinosaur from which country was named a new species of Dilophosaurus in 1993, then moved to another genus?

China's Yunnan Province produced the skeleton in 1987. Named Dilophosaurus sinensis in 1993, it was later shown to be Sinosaurus, a dinosaur from the same rocks named back in 1940.

Cryolophosaurus, a crested dinosaur once grouped with Dilophosaurus as a close relative, was found on which continent?

Antarctica yielded Cryolophosaurus, the first meat-eating dinosaur discovered there. A 2007 study grouped it with Dilophosaurus, though later work placed the animals further apart.

Bone-puncturing bite marks led researchers to call Dilophosaurus which kind of animal in its ecosystem?

An apex predator, they argued, not the weak-jawed scavenger of older accounts. The marks sit on bones of Sarahsaurus, a plant-eater found in the same quarry as a young Dilophosaurus.

During the Early Jurassic, Dilophosaurus held which distinction among the animals of North America?

Largest land animal known from that time and place, it was still only medium-sized next to the giant meat-eaters that evolved later.

Samuel Welles likened the head crests of Dilophosaurus to those of which living flightless bird?

Cassowary casques came to his mind. Only one skeleton preserves much of the crests, so their full shape, and whether it varied between animals, is unknown.

The gentle first calls of the Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus were built partly from which bird's voice?

A swan supplied the pleasant notes, mixed with a dog. When the animal turns nasty, the soundtrack adds a hawk, a howler monkey, an egret and a rattlesnake.

A rare crouching trace shows that early meat-eaters like Dilophosaurus held their hands in which position?

Palms facing inward, as if about to clap: the trace is the only one of its kind with clear hand prints, and it overturns the downward-facing hands seen in many reconstructions.

Eight damaged bones in the shoulders and arms of the first Dilophosaurus skeleton show the animal did what?

Survived and healed, probably for months or years. Its fractured shoulder blade, bony tumours and unbendable finger form the largest set of shoulder and arm ailments described in any meat-eating dinosaur.

What grew into the neck bones of Dilophosaurus, leaving them hollow and unusually light?

Air sacs from the breathing system hollowed out the bones, in places leaving walls as thin as paper, and made the skeleton both lighter and stronger.

As in helmeted guineafowl today, the bony crests of Dilophosaurus were probably enlarged by a covering of what?

Keratin, the stuff of horns and beaks, could have made the crests much larger in life than the surviving bone suggests.

Before the crests were recognised, Dilophosaurus was first named in 1954 as a species of which other dinosaur?

Megalosaurus was then a catch-all for meat-eating dinosaurs of almost any age or place. The crests were only recognised after a larger skeleton turned up in 1964.

A book about which effects company calls its Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus the film's most fictionalised dinosaur?

Stan Winston Studio also built the film's life-sized Tyrannosaurus, the largest sculpture the studio ever made.

Dilophosaurus arose in the wake of which mass extinction, which wiped out about three quarters of life?

End-Triassic losses left a biologically poorer world. Dilophosaurus appeared 5 to 15 million years later, one of the first large meat-eating dinosaurs.

A crouching trace matched to a Dilophosaurus-like dinosaur lies at St. George in which US state?

Utah's St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site preserves the trackway on an ancient lake beach, though no Dilophosaurus bones are known from those slightly older rocks.

Which feature of the real Dilophosaurus's upper jaw did Robert Bakker note was missing in the film Jurassic Park?

A prominent notch sits below the nostril of the real animal, where the largest tooth of the lower jaw seems to have slotted in.

Gregory Paul suggested in 1988 that Dilophosaurus was a direct descendant of which earlier dinosaur?

Coelophysis was his candidate. Researchers still disagree over where Dilophosaurus sits in the family tree of early meat-eating dinosaurs.

Which small armoured plant-eater lived alongside Dilophosaurus in Early Jurassic North America?

Scutellosaurus, named for its little shields of bone, grew to only about 1.3 metres long, a fraction of the size of the meat-eater it lived beside.

Dilophosaurus fossils come from which rock formation of the American Southwest, laid down mainly by rivers?

Kayenta Formation rocks have also yielded early turtles, crocodile relatives, a flying reptile and early relatives of mammals.

Dracovenator, a relative grouped with Dilophosaurus in the family Dilophosauridae, was found in which country?

South Africa's Dracovenator was described in 2005 and found to be closely related to Dilophosaurus, though not every later analysis supports the grouping.