- "Sam Neill plays Alan Grant, and Alan Grant is supposed to be... me."
- —Jack Horner(src)
John "Jack" R. Horner is an American paleontologist who worked on the production staff for the Jurassic Park Series as a paleontology consultant.
Horner is widely known for his discovery of Maiasaura, a dinosaur that backed up the idea that dinosaurs were parents.
He is known for his belief that Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict scavenger, rather a predator. Horner backs this up by saying T. rex's sense of smell could be of great help finding carcasses, bone-crushing jaws were better for scavengers, and if T. rex ran at full speed and fell, it could die. However, this is not universally accepted with most paleontologist's accepting that Tyrannosaurus was an opportunist. Eventually, Horner conceded in peer review that Tyrannosaurus rex was both a predator and a scavenger.
Horner also made the theory that Triceratops just a juvanile Torosaurus and Pachycephalosaurus, Stygimoloch, and Dracorex are the same, just in different growth stages.
Horner is also famous because he led the team that discovered the soft tissue and proteins in dinosaur bones. He also leads a project to retro-evolve a chicken into a Chickenosaurus.
For more real-life information: John R. Horner.
Jurassic Park Franchise[]
Jack Horner was the inspiration source for the character of Alan Grant (see Beyond Jurassic Park interview). Horner worked on the production staff for all Jurassic Park movies as a paleontology consultant.
Novels[]
Michael Crichton wrote in the acknowledgments sections of both Jurassic Park and The Lost World that he had "drawn on the work of many eminent paleontologists", one of which was John Horner.
Crichton revealed multiple times that his character of Alan Grant was based on Jack Horner.[1][2] There are many allusions to Horner in the novels.
In real life John Horner was the first to describe the Maiasaura. In the novel John Horner and Alan Grant did this together.[3]
Grants appearance is described as a "bearded man of forty"[4] and black haired. This correlates with Horner's appearance.
Films[]
Jack Horner was a paleontology consultant for five films.
In Jurassic World, Jack Horner can be seen in the Velociraptor Paddock as one of the paddock workers.
Documentary film[]
Jack Horner is interviewed in every documentary film about Jurassic Park. He played a major role in the NOVA's documentary film The Real Jurassic Park, History Channel's Jurassic Park: The True Story and Discovery's Dinosaurs Return To Life. He and Robert Bakker reveal the scientific likelyness of a real dinosaur park.
Selected filmography[]
- Jurassic Park (film) (1993)
- Paleoworld (1994)
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (film) (1997)
- Jurassic Park III (2001)
- America When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001)
- Valley of the T-Rex (2001) (TV)
- Terra Nova (TV series) (2011)
- Jurassic World (film) (2015)
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)