The Current - Late Jurassic Park actor inspired a generation of paleontologists

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Do you remember when you first saw Jurassic Park? Actor Sam Neill played the role of paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant – and inspired a generation of dinosaur lovers. Guest host Piya Chattopadhyay talks to François Therrien, a paleontologist and curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, about the legacy of Sam Neill, who died this week.

Uncover from CBC Podcasts is your source for exceptional storytelling and groundbreaking journalism. Unveil the shocking secrets of one of Canada's most prolific fashion moguls. He far exceeds Jeffrey Epstein. He far exceeds Bill Cosby. And dive into the unsolved murders of two Canadian billionaires. This is a perfect storm of conspiracy theory. It's got all the ingredients, none of the answers. With new episodes released weekly, you'll hear the very best in award-weigh. Winning True Crime. Listen to Uncover wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Now, here's a little something to take you back in time. How fast are they? Well, we clock the T-Rex of 32 miles an hour. T-Rex? Mm-hmm. You said you've got a T-Rex?

Uh-huh. Say you again. We have a T-Rex. Put your head between your knees. Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Sartler, welcome to Jurassic Park. It was quite the moment when paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant sees a living dinosaur for the very first time. You'll remember, Dr. Grant is brought to an island where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. It is, of course, a work of fiction.

But in real life, the 1993 film Jurassic Park inspired a whole new generation of dinosaur enthusiasts. The actor who played Dr. Grant, Sam Neill, died yesterday at the age of 78. Francois Terienne is a real-life paleontologist. He's the curator of dinosaur paleoecology at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. Good morning. Good morning. It's so nice to have you with this. Yesterday, when you had heard the news that actor Sam Neal had died,

what crossed your mind? Well, it was a very sad news because Sam Neal's portrayal of paleontologist Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park movies has been instrumental in setting the image of the Stetson-wearing paleontologist in the public's imagination. Prior to that, I think most people thought paleontologists as old. old men with beards hiding in the dusty basements of museums surrounded by bones. But really, with the Jurassic Park movie and the San Neil's portrayal, it brought out a different image of what paleontologists were.

They showed that paleontologists were both highly knowledgeable scientists, but were also field explorers. They were going out in the field. They were doing research. They were going on digs. And also, they did not all wear. beard. So I think, yeah, it was really, really monumental event in Vesriere bringing out paleontologists, but also dinosaurs out of the quote-unquote nerdy realm where it was mostly a kin thing. And now it was exposed to basically generations of people from young to old.

Okay, Francois, so I'm assuming you don't have a beard in that you're not the quote-unquote nerd. But tell me, because as you say, it changed our views of dinosaurs but also of paleontologists. What is day-to-day life like as a paleontologist at the wonderful museum in Drumheller? Well, most of our summers are spent out in the field going out in the bad lands for those who are familiar with southern Alberta. All along the rivers in Alberta, there's lots of erosion in it. develops what we call the bad lands topography, which is a rugged landscape of deep canyons and rounded hill where there's no vegetation. So it looks like a desert. And out of the rocks come dinosaur bones, just being eroded out. So most of the summer, yeah, that's what we do. We spend our time,

what we call prospecting for fossils, hiking in the lands. Because unlike what we saw in the first Jurassic Park movie, where they use a dynamite to create. a virtual image on a computer of a skeleton in the ground. Unfortunately, that's not reality. That's not how we find dinosaurs. We have to basically walk miles and miles in the badlands and steep bones eroding out of the hill to say, okay, this one has potential.

So let's dig out a hole here and see if there are fossils. And then for the rest of the year, we usually, some paleontologists work at universities, so they have to teach courses and supervise students. But me at the museum, I'm mostly at doing research, documenting all the discoveries I've made, writing scientific papers to communicate our discoveries to the scientific community, but also to the general public. And then, yeah, eventually those discoveries make it out into displays in the public galleries of the museum.

It's a remarkable place, the Badlands and the museum itself. I want you to tell us about an excavation. I know you've done several, but the one back in 2012, super cool. It led to a really important discovery, so tell me about that. Yeah, that was a find that was made initially by a resident of Drumheller. He was hiking in the badlands with his dog and then came upon a chunk of hill, a hoodoo, which is kind of a pillar of rock that was freestanding from which dinosaur bones were eroding. And we were able to identify based on the bones that were coming out,

that it belonged to a ostrich mimic dinosaur. So we decided to do the excavation. I was there with my crew. And then we started breaking off chips of rocks. And I could see that there were strange filament, strange lines in the rock. And then I asked my colleagues, they were with me. I said, have you ever seen that in the dinosaur dig? And they all said no.

So I joked at the time that, oh, well, you know, if we were in China, we'd call those dinosaur feathers. Because at the same time, in China, feathered dinosaurs had been discovered, and they were all preserved with those filamentous feathers, those striped hair-like or down-like feathers covering their bodies. But that had never been discovered here in North America. And then we kept on digging, and I flipped up a big chunk of rock, and then I could see all the feather impressions preserved.

on the block. So we said, okay, we got to take it slow because we're dealing with something that has never been seen before in the world. So that led to our description of the first feathered dinosaurs from North America and the first feathered ostrich dinosaurs ever discovered in the world. So it was a really exciting discovery. That is amazing. I love that story. So I know you became a paleontologist, you know, not inspired by the Jurassic movies. I don't want to date you there, but I'm just pointing that out. But Sam Neal's Dr. Grant has inspired so many to pursue the field. You work with younger paleontologists.

What influence do they say the movie had on them in making their decision to study this? Yeah, for me, I'm a little bit too old to be part of what I call the Jurassic Park generation. I was already starting my undergraduate studies to become a paleontologist when the first movie came out in 1993. But now after that, yeah, all the killer. that came afterwards, they all grew up with the Jurassic Park movies. And for many of them, it was an inspiration to drive them to pursue further education in pediontology and to become pedantologists.

So, yes, I'd say starting around probably the early 2000s, the students that were coming to grad school to do a master's or PhDs in pediontology all have a Jurassic Park. as their main focus or their main simulation to become penitologists such that now, we see that the number of students going to university to become penitologists to study, take penitology-related courses, is at an all-time high. So we all have to thank the Jurassic Parkes for that renewed interest in the future. I have to let you go, but do you have a favorite Jurassic part in one of the movies? Oh, undoubtedly the first one and the scene that you played at the beginning when Dr. Grant just saw the big sauropod, the big giraffe-like dinosaur eating from the top of a tree, and then he turns and he looks at the lake, and then there's herds of dinosaurs walking out of the lake and some drinking by the lake's edge.

I think that's the most beautiful scene of all the movies, all seven movies that they made. It just looks so natural. It shows dinosaurs really as living, breathing animals, not as monsters, chasing humans, but really just as natural animals. The same way that if you were to go into Serengeti and go to a watering hole, you'd see all those animals coming to the water to drink. So that was my favorite scene of the movies. Love it. You know, Francois, I often say I've got the coolest job in the world, but listening to you, I think you might rival that. Thanks so much. It's been lovely to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Francois Terrian is a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology. He's in Drumheller, Alberta.

This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash