With Dominion aiming for a greater degree of accuracy compared to previous installments in the Jurassic franchise, some extinct animals in the prologue and film feature updated models.
Prologue:
- Several dinosaurs in the prologue have feathers:
- Moros with a body coat similar to known close relatives.
- A Mesozoic Tyrannosaurus has a cape of feathers across its dorsum, as it's a location where scales are not known from in the fossil record.
- Oviraptor is fairly accurately feathered across its body, even though it lacks pennaceous feathers on the arms and tail.
- The Quetzalcoatlus seen in the prologue is a quadrupedal terrestrial predator with pycnofibers. Their hands also face backward, allowing their wings to be folded in the back.
- The Giganotosaurus is portrayed with keratinous crests on the skull and a raised dorsum, something most restorations leave out despite being true to the real-life animal. The employment of its large skull as a battering weapon is also accurate as closely related genera have been found to have reinforced skulls for just such a potential purpose.
- Most of the carnivorous dinosaurs shown in the prologue section do not have pronated hands, which also implies that the trait's presence in the cloned dinosaurs is a result of gene splicing. Rexy, and other theropods in the present are also shown to have non-pronated hands though, implying that this was an intentional change to reflect modern science.
- A Pteranodon is briefly seen diving in the background of the prologue, which is thought to be possible considering it ate fish. It was also possibly capable of swimming, though not very well. Also, if you look closely, they start their take-off by vaulting with their wings.
- Even though all animals featured in the prologue lived in different time periods and places, at least all of them come from the Cretaceous period.
Film:
- The film, for the first time ever, features feathered dinosaurs in the modern era. Particularly the Moros, Pyroraptor and Therizinosaurus, which have varying amounts of feathers that are fairly plausible to what they're like in real life (Moros has a body covering of fuzz, Pyroraptor is mostly cloaked in plumage including wings and a tail fan, and Therizinosaurus has wings and dorsal feathers due to its size.note ). It is even pointed out by one BioSyn employee that birds are dinosaurs themselves.
- Parasaurolophus and Apatosaurus have been given bulkier bodies and thicker necks, both of which have been true for hadrosaurs and sauropods. The Dreadnoughtus and Iguanodon are also depicted as bulky.
- Parasaurolophus also has fleshy hooves like it and other hadrosaurs are thought to have had, as opposed to being shown with grasping fingers in prior movies. And while they are still mostly shown as bipedal, a few shots show them as quadrupedal like the Iguanodon.
- Dinosaurs being warm-blooded is something that was established ever since the first film, and this film is once again demonstrating it by showing dinosaurs (along with pterosaurs and the Mosasaurus) being very much active in cold climates, contrary to how most people expect of reptiles.
- Unlike in the last two Jurassic World films, the Stegosaurus finally has its tail elevated off the ground horizontally and a proper beak just like in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and in real life. Dominion's tie-in viral marketing Hand Wave the inconsistent droopy tail and lack of beak as symptoms of malnutrition, taking cues from droopy fins of orcas in captivity and the malformation of beaks that occasionally occurs in birds.
- Dr. Grant mentions how scientists, including himself, used to think that Velociraptor kill their prey by using their sickle-claw on their middle toe to disembowel the belly. Now, thanks to new research (and likely witnessing how the cloned raptors kill their prey), Grant states the theory is disproven and that raptors actually go for the neck first with their jaws. This is no doubt referring to the real-life scientific studies that show that the sickle-claw is not designed for disemboweling, but rather for pinning down the victim like modern birds of prey. It helps that the previous films only showed Velociraptor using its claw to kill once, in which it used the claw to paralyze a man. Every other time, it either doesn't show how the raptor kills, or it explicitly shows it using its teeth.
- Lystrosaurus is depicted with naked skin and sparse hair, as part of its close relationship with mammals.
- Dimetrodon is depicted living in caves, likely based on new studies that it was nocturnal. It is also capable of swimming, which would be logical given it lived in wetlands and preyed on amphibians.
- The roars that Dimetrodon makes sounds like very distorted human screams, being just barely discernable enough to trigger our Uncanny Valley reaction. This is likely a nod to how humanity's Permian ancestors were part of a group of creatures called pelycosaurs which also included Dimetrodon.
- Therizinosaurus's claws are shown to be effective for stabbing as well as slashing, which holds up well to recent studies. Also, after it kills a deer, it goes straight for a bush and starts feeding from it, demonstrating its herbivorous diet unusual among theropods.
- Long-crested variants of the Jurassic World Pteranodon appear in the film, with the Dinotracker site also stating that the males are distinguished by having more ornate crests, confirming that the short-crested individuals are females.
- Large and giant theropods are shown using head-butting and face biting to settle disputes with one another. The latter tactic is apparently based on fossil material (mostly of T. rex, but other tyrannosaurs and carnosaurs like Allosaurus demonstrate this as well) that show healed bite-marks around the facial and jaw regions.
- The Oviraptor in a Deleted Scene averts Animals Not to Scale as it is about three feet high (the same size as a real Velociraptor), rather than being man-sized as in most depictions which is actually based on its larger relative Citipati.
