Dinosaur DNA
JURASSIC PARK IN THE RESEARCH LAB
Following the publication of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park in 1990 and the first ancient DNA conference in 1991, a handful of scientists tried their luck at the recovery of DNA from insects in ancient amber. With the added advantage of PCR, David Grimaldi, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, teamed up with Rob DeSalle, a molecular biologist at the same institution, to test the idea. Not only was DeSalle an expert molecular biologist but he had also worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Allan Wilson nearly ten years earlier. Indeed, he was familiar with some of the earliest amber experiments performed at Berkeley on this very topic. According to one researcher’s memory of the collaboration, Jurassic Park was the impetus behind the study in the first place: “All I know is that [a colleague] walked into my office one day and said, ‘Have you read Jurassic Park? We should try it. Let’s crack open some insects and see if we can get DNA out of it’ ” (Interviewee 17).
Grimaldi and DeSalle’s study, however, was more than an attempt to test the Jurassic Park hypothesis. Researchers were interested in evolutionary questions. As with the quagga and the thylacine, the evolutionary history of mastotermes, a genus of termite, had puzzled researchers concerning their relatedness to other insects. “We wanted something of phylogenetic significance,” explained one of the researchers on the project, “not just [asking] ‘Is there DNA?’ ” (Interviewee 17). There was a clear biological question about this organism’s evolution and extinction that accompanied the technical task of extracting, sequencing, and amplifying the DNA.
Early in 1992, Grimaldi and DeSalle—along with colleagues John Gatesy and Ward Wheeler at the AMNH—extracted and sequenced DNA from an approximately 30-million-year-old termite, Mastotermes electrodominicus. Contamination was a known issue, and the team took prescribed precautions including negative controls, extraction blanks, and phylogenetic comparison to affirm DNA authenticity. Confident in the reliability of their results, they wrote up their research for publication. That autumn, Science published their paper as evidence of “the oldest DNA extracted from a fossil.”1
Not surprisingly, their research received widespread media coverage.2 According to one practitioner, there was “an enormous amount of media requests” for “writing” and “filming” on the topic of “ancient DNA.” The AMNH and its practitioners benefited from the attention. “The AMNH had built our first molecular lab. ‘Wow! See what our molecular lab has just done!’ It was maybe a few years old and these results were coming out of the molecular lab,” explained an interviewee. “So, the museum got a lot mileage out of it.” The AMNH also optimized the opportunity for publicity by commissioning a traveling exhibition titled “Amber: Window to the Past.”3 “There is no question that it rode on the heels of Jurassic Park,” said this same interviewee. “The museum played it up. Everyone did. There was a lot of promotion” (Interviewee 17). Individuals took part in the publicity too, such as Grimaldi publishing a book on the topic and writing a feature for Scientific American.4 Both scientists and scientific institutions alike were quick to capitalize on opportunities for publicity.
From New York to California, the search for DNA from insects in ancient amber continued. This time Poinar teamed up with his son, Hendrik N. Poinar, a student at California Polytechnic State University, and Raúl J. Cano, a microbial ecologist at the same university. As far as one interviewee was concerned, the collaboration was “serendipitous.” “Jurassic Park, the book, had just come out,” recalled this researcher. “And [a colleague] asked, ‘Would you be willing to help me test the Jurassic Park concept and extract DNA from amber?’ ” “I’m not really one to back out from a challenge,” explained this interviewee, “so I said, ‘Sure. Let’s do it’ ” (Interviewee 31).
The study was difficult but rewarding. “I think the first challenge was really getting the DNA out and without presumed environmental contamination,” said one of the scientists. “And the second and most important thing was trying to convince ourselves that what we were getting was actually real DNA.” In the end, Cano, George Poinar, and Hendrik Poinar were able to demonstrate evidence for the preservation and extraction of DNA from a 25–40-million-year-old bee, Apidae: Hymenoptera, preserved in amber. “The most exciting thing was seeing the first faint band in the gel after a PCR” (Interviewee 31). With these seemingly positive results, they wrote up their conclusions for publication in Medical Science Research.5 This study’s results at least equaled, if not surpassed, Grimaldi and DeSalle’s previous publication on the oldest DNA to date.
The media framed these near back-to-back publications in terms of a rivalry between two teams in what appeared to be a race for the oldest DNA. In a Science media news article, “30-Million-Year-Old DNA Boosts an Emerging Field,” Virginia Morell wrote, “In their effort to be the first to extract and amplify DNA from amber specimens, Grimaldi and his colleagues have arrived at the finish line in a virtual dead heat with George Poinar.”6 Boyce Rensberger wrote in the Washington Post, “Rival research teams have found that fossil insects embedded in amber for as long as 30 million years still contained DNA fragments. . . . The DNA samples, found in extinct species of termites and bees, are said to be the oldest yet discovered.”7 Along with establishing the search for multimillion-year-old DNA in terms of a race and rivalry, these media reports also made a clear connection between the emerging science of ancient DNA analysis and the science fiction of Jurassic Park.
Indeed, the close connection between both of these studies and the best-selling book and upcoming movie was far from lost on the media. The Washington Post issued the headline “Entombed in Amber: Ancient DNA Hints of ‘Jurassic Park’ ” and referred to both recent studies as “a case of science imitating art imitating science.”8 Even scientists recognized the interplay between science and science fiction in their own work. “We’re a long way from recreating a termite,” said DeSalle in an interview with Morell for Science. “At this stage we’ve extracted only a fraction of a gene.” As far as DeSalle was concerned, “It’s obviously science fiction.”9 Others, however, were not as quick to dismiss the possibility of resurrecting ancient and extinct species. Writing for the New York Times, Malcolm Browne raised the possibility of extracting DNA not just from insects in amber but from dinosaurs themselves: “Paleobiologists and science fiction buffs dream of obtaining DNA still older than that recovered from ancient termites and bees—perhaps even DNA from dinosaurs.” In this article, Browne quoted George Poinar, who was more than willing to entertain such an idea: “ ‘Sooner or later,’ Dr. Poinar said, ‘we’re going to find amber containing some biting insect that filled its stomach with blood from a dinosaur before getting trapped in the resin that eventually turned into amber. The blood may contain actual dinosaur DNA. That will be an exciting discovery.’ ”10
JURASSIC PARK ON THE MOVIE SCREEN
In 1993, Cano and colleagues, along with George and Hendrik Poinar, set out to beat their own record for the world’s most ancient DNA from amber insects. Their specimen of study was a 135-million-year-old amber-encased weevil, Nemonychidae coleoptera, dating back to the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. After cracking open the amber fossil and taking some tissue from the insect’s body, the scientists performed DNA extraction and amplification via PCR, then sequenced two short strands of DNA, one with 315 and the other with 226 base pairs. They used phylogenetic comparison with sequences from five different but closely related species to determine the authenticity of the DNA. In the end, they felt confident they had recovered authentic DNA from this ancient insect, and that they had successfully sequenced the oldest DNA to date, a point they made clear in the article they submitted to Nature. On June 10, 1993, Nature published their paper—exactly one day after the Jurassic Park movie premiere and one day before its public release in theaters across the United States.11
The media certainly recognized the timing between the scientific publication and the movie release. Browne, who often covered ancient DNA research for the New York Times, commented, “The report of the achievement is being published today in the British journal Nature, one day before the opening of ‘Jurassic Park,’ a much-publicized movie based on the notion of cloning extinct dinosaurs from their surviving DNA.”12 The timing of events resulted in widespread publicity. In a memoir, George Poinar and Roberta Hess Poinar also noted the media attention this paper produced, recalling how their research became instantly popular and that their findings were reported in over two hundred newspapers in the United States and four hundred newspapers globally. However, they also claimed this was all mere “coincidence.”13 Coincidence or not, the news hit the headlines and left the impression of intentionality.
A number of scientists, internal and external to the field of ancient DNA research, remarked on the timing too. Indeed, some saw it in a far from positive light. One practitioner and competitor in the field, for example, observed, “I thought it absolutely extraordinary that a scientific journal—there was no way it was a coincidence—that a prestigious scientific journal like Nature would hold on to an article to wait for the opening day of a movie. . . . Of course, that caused a huge media splash” (Interviewee 17). Given that Nature was, and is, a popular and commercial journal in addition to a scientific one, it was not entirely unreasonable, or unexpected, that the journal would take advantage of such an opportunity. However, this interviewee’s perception that the timing was surprising at best, and unwarranted at worst, reflected the feeling that some scientists viewed popular outward influences on science as potentially damaging to the integrity of the science.
At the same time, others viewed this interplay between science and media as a positive phenomenon. The late paleontologist and science writer Stephen Jay Gould, for example, offered his own observations about the timeliness of it all: “The nearly complete blurring of pop and professional domains represents one of the most interesting spinoffs—a basically positive one in my view—of the Jurassic Park phenomenon. . . . When a staid and distinguished British journal uses the premiere of an American blockbuster to set the sequencing of its own articles, then we have reached an ultimate integration.”14 Regardless of the positive, negative, or questionable consequences, press and public attention was a crucial component in the growth of ancient DNA research in terms of raising awareness of this novel and niche but increasingly high-profile activity.
If the book was an instant success, then the cinema production of it was a massive triumph. Even before the movie release, Jurassic Park was backed by a colossal marketing campaign. Companies cashed in on the movie’s anticipated success through the design and distribution of Jurassic Park–inspired toys and sleeping bags and a theme-park ride at Universal Studios in Florida. “If dinosaurs had been marketed half as well as they’re going to be in Steven Spielberg’s $60 million-plus Jurassic Park,” wrote Pat H. Broeke in Entertainment Weekly, “they would never have become extinct.”15 Indeed, $65 million was spent in marketing to match the cost of the film’s production. In the United States, the film generated more than $3 million from the June 10 midnight screening alone. After that night, the opening weekend generated another $47 million in sales. The film was also an international success, breaking opening records in the United Kingdom and several other countries from Japan to Taiwan. Overall, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park earned more than $914 million worldwide in its first run, making it the highest-grossing film of the year. It soon became the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing E.T.—another Spielberg-directed film—which had held the title for a decade.16 In addition to its record number of sales, Jurassic Park won three Academy Awards for Best Sound, Best Sound Effects, and Best Visual Effects, as well as over twenty other awards, including international ones.17
Jurassic Park’s success on screen was in part a product of its realism. Indeed, its success stemmed from its computer-generated images (CGI), which brought long-dead creatures like dinosaurs to the screen and rendered them lifelike and entirely convincing.18 With the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster in the 1980s and 1990s, filmmakers wanted to turn far-fetched ideas into realistic images on screen, to make the fantastical appear believable.19 As film studies scholar Michele Pierson wrote, “In the build-up to Jurassic Park’s release, speculation about the film’s computer-generated dinosaurs generated by far and away the most publicity for the film.” According to Pierson, Jurassic Park successfully achieved this when the first dinosaur, the giant, long-necked brachiosaur, appeared onscreen to the amazement of both the characters in the movie and the audience in theaters.20 The innovation of CGI and its incorporation into Jurassic Park was both a technical and an aesthetic achievement.
Vision, along with the ability to achieve it, was another essential component to the film’s overwhelming fame. Crichton, Spielberg, and the film production team, for example, made a scientific fantasy look like reality. “There was no one like Crichton, because he could both entertain and educate,” his agent Lynn Nesbit later said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “His brilliance was indisputable, and he had a grasp of so many subjects—from art to science to technology.” Spielberg said that Crichton’s “talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs,” and that “he was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth.”21 Spielberg himself had a similar reputation for delivering highly imaginative but borderline reality films as the director of the box-office hits Jaws and Indiana Jones.22 Together, Crichton’s and Spielberg’s delivery of great entertainment made Jurassic Park a global success.
There were other reasons behind the worldwide fame of Jurassic Park—namely timing and scientific plausibility. In a four-page Newsweek article—“Here Come the DNAsaurs”—Sharon Begley noted that the popularity of the book and movie depended on timing: “All great science fiction must be science first and fiction second. Even more, it must tap into the reigning scientific paradigm of its era. For Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’ that paradigm was electricity. . . . For Godzilla, it was radioactivity and the Bomb. For ‘Jurassic Park,’ it is biotechnology.” In this media report, Begley quoted Crichton: “ ‘Biotechnology and genetic engineering are very powerful,’ he says. ‘The film suggests that [science’s] control of nature is elusive. And just as war is too important to leave to the generals, science is too important to leave to scientists. Everyone needs to be attentive.’ ” In addition to timing, the film’s plausibility rested on the science behind it. “This movie depends on credibility, not just the special effects,” Spielberg told Newsweek. “The credibility of the premise—that dinosaurs could come back to life through cloning of the DNA found in prehistoric mosquitoes trapped in amber—is what allowed the movie to be made.”23 The fact that the book and film were based on the science of ancient DNA research made the idea of bringing dinosaurs back to life via DNA from insects in amber seem theoretically possible, if not imminently achievable.
This intimate connection between the science and science fiction of ancient DNA research offered scientists opportunities for publicity that many could, and in this case did, use to their advantage to promote their research and enhance their reputations.24 According to the Los Angeles Times, Hendrik Poinar set up shop in the movie theater lobby on the opening weekend of Jurassic Park, selling bits and pieces of amber in hopes of raising funding for future research: “ ‘Step right up,’ barked the stocky, fresh-faced young man in a polka-dot tie. ‘Step right up and see the real science.’ ” Meanwhile, Cano was bombarded by media reporters. “ ‘And what they all really want me to say,’ Cano said, ‘is that this is possible, that we can clone dinosaurs.’ ” The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Unfortunately, he explained, this cannot be done now, will not be done ever and, even if it could be done, probably should not be done—for a whole host of moral, ethical and practical reasons. But why spoil a good story?”25 In this case, these scientists saw Jurassic Park’s celebrity as a chance to promote their own image, as well as the overall image of ancient DNA research, by placing their work front and center with the movie’s release and all the publicity that came with it.26 However, they were not the only ones to do so.
As the Jurassic Park hype continued, other scientists and scientific institutions capitalized on the film’s fame to influence visibility and research funding. John R. Horner, a now famous paleontologist, started off studying geology and zoology at Montana State University in the late 1960s and early 1970s but ultimately never completed his degree. Throughout life, he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, hampering his educational experiences. Yet despite not having been awarded a formal university degree, Horner became a maverick fossil hunter, best known for his rare dinosaur fossil discoveries and controversial hypotheses regarding dinosaurian behavior. In the late 1980s, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania State University and later achieved worldwide fame for his role as a scientific adviser to Spielberg on the Jurassic Park movie.27
In 1993, Horner proposed a project to the NSF to search for DNA in dinosaur bone, chiefly inspired by an unexpected finding that Mary Schweitzer, then a graduate student working with Horner at Montana State University and the Museum of the Rockies, had made when analyzing a bone fragment in the lab. Under the microscope, Schweitzer observed several unusual structures in a thin section of fossil bone from Tyrannosaurus rex. Small and round in appearance, these structures looked like red blood cells. After millions of years, the soft tissue structures should have decayed and been replaced by minerals during the fossilization process. But this bone fragment did not appear to be fully mineralized. “I got goose bumps,” said Schweitzer in a media interview. “It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it.” In fact, the bone seemed to contain organic matter, like red blood cells, which led Schweitzer to wonder if perhaps proteins or DNA might be preserved too.28
Horner and colleagues quickly applied to the NSF for a small grant—requesting approximately $35,000 for a two-year research project titled “An Attempt to Extract DNA from a Cretaceous Dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.”29 NSF funded the grant the same summer the Jurassic Park movie was released. According to one of the practitioners involved, the correlation between the funds and the film was no coincidence. “It’s hard to get money. I think NSF gave us money at that time just because of the movie,” they explained. “It was the perfect time for it” (Interviewee 16). Not only did NSF fund Horner and Schweitzer’s research but they also scheduled a press release to coincide with Jurassic Park’s opening weekend.30 The New York Times covered the story, quoting a representative from the NSF who confirmed the deliberate timing of the press release with the movie premiere: “We thought it would be a good opportunity to get the word out on 4 of the 10 dinosaur research projects the N.S.F. is funding this year, including that of Mr. Horner.”31 In the end, Horner and Schweitzer obtained very tiny amounts of DNA from the bone, but they were unable to confirm the identity of the DNA as being of authentic dinosaurian origin. “It’s easy to extract DNA from a dinosaur bone,” Horner told a media reporter. “It’s trying to prove that it’s from the dinosaur—and not from some contaminant—that’s hard.”32
The search for the first and the oldest DNA, specifically dinosaur DNA, was drawing a crowd of interested practitioners. In a media news article for Science—“Dino DNA: The Hunt and Hype”—Virginia Morell noted that Horner and Schweitzer’s work had “set off a furious race with other labs to be the first to publish on dinosaur genes.” Cano, for example, had claimed to have extracted small quantities of DNA from dinosaur bone during an experiment earlier that year. However, he also noted they could not definitively determine whether this DNA was of dinosaurian origin or a contaminate from another organism.33 Meanwhile, other scientists were on the hunt for more stable molecules, such as proteins, that might be preserved in dinosaur fossil material. Gerard Muyzer, along with colleagues from Leiden University such as Matthew Collins and Peter Westbroek (early practitioners in the study of fossil molecules), reported the recovery of proteins from several dinosaur fossils, including hadrosaurs and ceratopsians.34 They claimed they could identify the exact protein, osteocalcin, but could not isolate it for further study. Around the same time, other scientists reported the identification of proteins from a sauropod vertebra believed to be approximately 150 million years old.35
Although the race for the first and most ancient DNA from the most iconic species, be it amber insects or dinosaur fossils, made for a good story, some scientists worried that the disproportionate attention the press and public gave to such studies would distort their view of the field. “Several groups are racing to get the first DNA out of dinosaur bones,” reported Morell, “but other researchers say their efforts are taking attention away from the real scientific value of ancient DNA.” Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist and current editor of the Ancient DNA Newsletter, feared that hype for multimillion-year-old DNA would overshadow the less sensational but more credible and scientifically significant ancient DNA analyses: “It’s the new Disco Science question: Who’s going to be the first to get dinosaur DNA?” According to Wayne, this new “Disco Science” was all about the first, the oldest, the most extraordinary, and the most unbelievable findings: “But the trouble is that these very topical questions tend to obscure other research on more recent materials—such as mammal pelts in museum collections—which are much more likely to contain real DNA from the original source.”36 The hunt for dinosaur DNA brought attention, as well as competition and tension, for a growing group of ancient DNA researchers.
The hype was not left unchecked. Above all, a number of ancient DNA researchers doubted that molecules, be it DNA or even proteins, could survive intact or unaltered for millions of years. Morell quoted Rebecca Cann, a former graduate student of Allan Wilson’s at Berkeley and now one of the foremost geneticists of human evolution, who spoke to the studies claiming to have recovered multimillion-year-old DNA: “It’s nasty, damaged stuff. We know from chemical experiments that it degrades and how fast it degrades. After 25 million years, there shouldn’t be any DNA left at all.”37 Exogenous DNA (that is, environmental, bacterial, or human DNA) could be easily introduced to a specimen over time or through human handling in a museum collection or lab. This DNA, much more recent in origin, was often more intact and easier for PCR to isolate and amplify, therefore generating erroneous results. Consequently, practitioners demanded convincing evidence of ancient DNA authenticity. In a different news article, Morell quoted Noreen Tuross, a well-known molecular biologist at the Smithsonian Institution, who echoed this concern: “Given what we know about the decay of the DNA molecule, the onus remains on those who are searching for dinosaur DNA to prove that they’ve found it.”38
In 1993, the Second International Ancient DNA Conference was held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.39 A Science article—“Going for the Old: Ancient DNA Draws a Crowd”—noted the disconnect between ancient DNA’s media coverage and what scientists were mostly concerned about in the lab: “While rejuvenated celluloid dinosaurs have grabbed headlines this year, these scientists were more concerned with topics such as tracing ancient human populations and understanding how DNA can survive the millennia.”40 Indeed, this meeting focused on a quite different side of ancient DNA research. Over the course of three days, the conference mainly featured technical talks on the biochemistry of DNA in terms of oxidation and radiation damage, chemical modifications, as well as sampling, extraction, and amplification techniques. Scientists were interested in theoretical explanations for why specific sources, like amber or dentin of teeth, appeared to be better storehouses for DNA. Meanwhile, others were focused on showing how ancient DNA research was relevant to evolutionary biology in terms of testing hypotheses about human evolution, migration, and colonization. In addition to all of this, there was a host of publications on DNA obtained from ancient plants, exotic and extinct species like the moa, early humans, and even fossil feces.41
Despite attempts to shift the focus to other areas and applications of this new line of research, the search for dinosaur DNA was far from a lost cause for some scientists. Up until this point, researchers had claimed the extraction of multimillion-year-old DNA from amber insects but actual evidence of DNA of dinosaurian origin had yet to be discovered. In 1994, Science published a study that seemed to change that. In this article, a U.S. research team reported the discovery of 80-million-year-old DNA from a bone fragment found in a coal mine in Utah. Although the scientists involved in the study were careful not to claim that the bone or DNA from it was dinosaurian in origin, their article did subtly suggest it: “On the basis of the circumstantial physical and geologic evidence, it is likely that the bone fragments belong to a Cretaceous period dinosaur or dinosaurs.”42 Further, the authors did not shy away from the suggestion when discussing their discovery with the media. “We called it a Cretaceous period bone. We never called it a dinosaur bone,” said one interviewee who worked on the project. “I mean, I didn’t necessarily stop anybody—[laughs]—from saying that or anything like that” (Interviewee 50). The Los Angeles Times, for example, reported, “Bone Yields Dinosaur DNA, Scientists Believe,” while a New York Times headline read, “A Scientist Says He Has Isolated Dinosaur DNA.”43 Science News covered the story too with the headline, “Dinosaur DNA: Is the Race Finally Over?” Indeed, it seemed these scientists had won the race, but as far as Scott R. Woodward—first author on the article—was concerned, the hunt was far from over. Woodward’s message was loud and clear: “Yes, you can get DNA from 80-million-year-old bones. This is just the beginning.”44
INTERPLAY BETWEEN SCIENCE AND MEDIA
In the early 1990s, the search for DNA from fossils evolved under the influence of intense press and public interest, especially as it coincided with, then was thrown into the media spotlight by, Jurassic Park. This interplay between science and science fiction ultimately influenced professional interest, research agendas, publication timing, grant funding, and media coverage. As an international best-seller and multimillion-dollar blockbuster movie, Jurassic Park introduced ancient DNA research into both the professional and popular consciousness, raising awareness, attention, and even expectations for the evolving discipline.
Although the book’s publication in 1990 garnered much notice, publicity peaked with the film release in 1993. For this already public-facing practice, the movie became the ultimate illustration in the minds of the media and the public of what science might one day accomplish. According to a younger but leading practitioner in the field, Jurassic Park became a “symbol” to help explain the science to the public and inspire scientists to become interested in it (Interviewee 12). The film, recalled another researcher, was “good press” for the field, ultimately inspiring a new and young generation of “geeky” but “glamorous” scientists (Interviewee 4). Another interviewee mentioned being inspired to get involved in ancient DNA research specifically because of the book and the movie. “I didn’t want to make a dinosaur, but labs looked cool,” said this scientist. “Ancient DNA sounds cool; sounds like it should be cool. Part of that really does stem back to Jurassic Park. It is still the legacy of that. That’s when it entered the popular consciousness” (Interviewee 2). In many ways, Jurassic Park was synonymous with ancient DNA research: “The media think about Jurassic Park when they think about ancient DNA” (Interviewee 23). As science studies scholar Amy Fletcher notes, the movie served as a “cross-cultural metaphor for public discussion of ancient DNA research.”45
The science studies scholar David A. Kirby echoed this point, explaining that although cinema often functions as an “alternative” and “informal” form of “science communication,” it should never be regarded as “insignificant.” In fact, film has had a significant effect on the public perception of science and technology. It can bring even the most fantastical sides of research to life. According to Kirby, “Film’s reality effect renders scientific representations plausible because it naturalizes images and events within the fictionalized world.” This realism can make the impossible seem possible, convincing viewers that what they see on screen is a real representation of the natural world: “Cinema is a powerful medium of communication because its reality effect provides it with a capacity to serve as a virtual witnessing technology. The more cinematic technologies advance, the better cinema becomes in serving as a virtual witnessing technology.” Movies serve not only to help the public visualize and understand a complex scientific or technological idea but to legitimize the science too. It is equally important to realize that the naturalization of science and technology can have wide-ranging effects because, Kirby notes, “cinema rarely exists as a solitary entity,” and “one need only look at Jurassic Park in its incarnations in novels, films, comic books, and computer games as well as its incorporation into television documentaries and news articles to see the high degree of intertextuality in science-based media.” Movie science can take on “a life of its own outside the confines of the screen.”46
Jurassic Park’s fame and its link to the real science and technology of ancient DNA research elicited press and public enthusiasm, but what was notable was how researchers responded to the growing celebrity of their science. It was more than the media that cultivated this connection; researchers and research institutions were active participants. Some scientists cultivated celebrity because it translated into publicity and, in some instances, publication in high-ranking journals and research funding. Grimaldi, DeSalle, and the AMNH in New York capitalized on the book and movie’s popularity to raise their public profile and bring awareness to the search for DNA from fossils; Raúl Cano and colleagues’ publication in Nature on the recovery of multimillion-year-old DNA from amber insects aligned with the movie’s release; Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner’s research proposal on the search for dinosaur DNA was funded by the NSF in the wake of the movie’s success. Such deliberate and strategic efforts were quite practical and even beneficial.
This type of science-media interchange was not a one-off occurrence. Indeed, Kirby—in his work on the relationship between science and cinema—notes that scientists and scientific institutions often take advantage of working with or alongside the production of major blockbuster movies.47 Specifically, he mentions that professional publications being “coincidental” with major movies is “common,” pointing to the publication of Cano and colleagues’ research along with other cases, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ publication of Mervin Herndon’s controversial nuclear planet theory, which corresponded with the opening weekend of The Core.48 More specifically, Kirby examines the ways scientists have served as “science consultants” on Hollywood movies. Kirby, for example, discusses Horner’s role as a science consultant for Jurassic Park, as well as its sequels, detailing how Horner used his position to both influence public perceptions of dinosaur behavior and receive a “consulting salary” and “generous research grants” to finance his paleontology research.49 There were obvious incentives for scientists to seek the spotlight and align their work with some of Hollywood’s most memorable movies.
Although there were incentives to working in the media spotlight, there were also—at least according to scientists—disadvantages. “In one day, we must have spoken with 200 different journalists. . . . It was just amazing!” recalled a researcher involved in one of the early amber studies. “The media ate it up big time because Jurassic Park was out and the movie was just coming out.” For this interviewee, there was a marked difference in the media’s interest in this work on amber fossils. Earlier, this researcher had minimal interaction with the press: “The work that I was doing was not particularly interesting to anybody. . . . I never did anything that was earth-shaking. . . . The work that I did was good work, but it was a non-issue from the point of the media.” As far as they were concerned, the difference between the former and the latter was a difference in news value: “That’s the difference—work that you do that sells newspapers or gets airtime.” At the same time, this researcher found the publicity “annoying” and even “troubling,” as the media attention was quickly followed by a “pall of negativity” from the scientific community and “critical comments about the inability of DNA to last that long.” The press and public eagerly accepted their research, but scientists were less receptive if not downright hostile. In the end, this researcher rather regretted the attention: “I had more than my fifteen minutes of fame” (Interviewee 31). Another scientist echoed a similar sentiment regarding heightened media attention, saying the publicity was overwhelming: “I was front page news everywhere. It was awful. Awful, awful, awful. Horrible!” For this researcher, the media attention and corresponding community competition, particularly in the early years, became reason enough for some scientists to opt out of the field: “I also learned that I don’t want to work with DNA. Ever. Ancient DNA? Not ever” (Interviewee 39).
Crucially, the individual actions of these researchers and research institutions had a collective effect on the overall development of ancient DNA research as a discipline. In its early years, the ancient DNA community quickly recognized its role as a science in the spotlight. In the second Ancient DNA Newsletter, circulated in 1992, Russell Higuchi addressed the increasing public interest around the idea of using DNA from insects in amber to bring dinosaurs back to life. For him, there was a time and a place for speculation, and as a scientist he believed that in certain contexts, too much unwarranted speculation did more harm than good: “When you get asked (and in the wake of Jurassic Park, the movie, it seems inevitable that some of you will) whether the resurrection of dinosaurs from ancient DNA is possible, I hope you will say it is not. Although it is fun to say, ‘in theory, it may be possible (nudge, nudge—wink, wink),’ let’s get real.” He admitted that this was easier said than done: “I myself have been guilty of allowing this romantic—if not gothic—notion, the resurrection of extinct species, to colour reports of our work (it is hard to keep the Media from focusing on that).” Nonetheless, Higuchi urged colleagues to find a balance between this close coupling of professional and popular expectations: “It now seems clear to me that the responsible thing to do is to try as much as possible not to overstate the power of new technology, in the field of ancient DNA or elsewhere.”50 Researchers were more than aware of the publicity their work garnered. They were also well aware of the need to balance the press’s and public’s expectations with the scientific and technological limitations.
THE ROLE OF CELEBRITY
Although the science and technology of ancient DNA research initially inspired Jurassic Park, the practice was in turn influenced by the celebrity that surrounded this blockbuster phenomenon. To some extent, Jurassic Park did actually drive and develop the hunt for DNA from fossils. In the early 1990s, the field emerged and evolved under the scrutiny of the press and the public gaze as a series of studies, published in respected journals such as Science and Nature, reported the recovery of multimillion-year-old DNA from amber insects and dinosaur bone. In the process, the press created opportunities for public exposure, but scientists fashioned their own occasions for attention too. The interplay between scientists and the media, specifically around the idea of discovering dinosaur DNA, influenced research agendas, publication decisions, grant funding, professional recruitment, visibility, and public perceptions of ancient DNA research. During this decade, some scientists were savvy in capitalizing on the celebrity of their rapidly evolving discipline in order to secure their success on both an individual and group level. They used celebrity to help shape ancient DNA activity in terms of influencing the questions they asked, the funding they received, and the ways they framed their research when communicating to wider popular and political audiences about its significance.
For the most part, the pursuit of ancient DNA was followed by intense publicity in the form of consistent media interviews, newspaper reporting, magazine articles, and more. By the mid-1990s, however, the discipline had appeared to achieve a level of celebrity, a status of being well-known for being well-known, thanks to the global success of Jurassic Park. Ancient DNA research had become much more than a public-facing science. It had become a celebrity science.
This transition from a public-facing science into a celebrity science was very much a difference in the degree and duration of media attention projected onto the field. For example, although most scientific research and technological innovations enjoy publicity from time to time via headlines and special article features, or through characterizations in science-fiction and nonfiction books and films, not all science falls subject to celebrity. In other words, all celebrity involves publicity but not all publicity leads to celebrity. Celebrity is much more than intermittent promotion and attention, and the field of ancient DNA research was both witness to and evidence of this.
Celebrity facilitated ancient DNA’s disciplinary formation in terms of community cohesion and identity. In this early and exploratory phase of research, there was not necessarily a unifying conceptual or theoretical framework for the study of DNA from ancient and extinct organisms. Yet speculation around the theoretical preservation and potential extraction of DNA from fossils, and even the hypothetical resurrection of extinct species, created interest in the practice. The media more generally, and Jurassic Park specifically, helped give definition and direction to this emerging but evolving discipline. In other words, media attention (much like the early conferences, scientific publications, and newsletters on ancient DNA research) was influential to the young field’s formation. Scientists were savvy in harnessing the press and public attention in their search for DNA from fossils to generate, then sustain, activity in the practice at one of its most speculative and vulnerable stages. Under the name of “ancient DNA research” and in the wave of hype around it, researchers were unified in their investigation of DNA from fossils even at a time when the practice lacked clear and consistent financial or institutional support.
Although much of the hype around the search for DNA from fossils was focused on Jurassic Park and its influence on the public’s perceptions of the science, researchers were not in fact trying to clone dinosaurs. Rather, the majority of the community was interested in using DNA for the primary purpose of studying the evolutionary history of extinct and extant organisms, and testing hypotheses about evolution, variation, selection, and migrations of past populations. Even practitioners in pursuit of DNA from the days of the dinosaurs claimed that cloning was not their goal. “Big game DNA hunters keep pushing forward, and not just for the glory of being first,” reported Virginia Morell. “Horner and Cano both say they want to use the genes to reconstruct dinosaur evolutionary history.”51 Nonetheless, the ability to recover DNA from fossils, and the possibility of discovering multimillion-year-old DNA, was nearly inseparable, certainly in the minds of the media and its public, from the idea of resurrecting extinct species. To be sure, the celebrity around the idea of extracting DNA from fossils and using that DNA to bring back extinct creatures played a key role in ancient DNA’s disciplinary development during this decade.