"Dr. Terrence."
Jack Terrence jumped, then tried to cover his surprise. He stood up, turning his back on the pad he had ostensibly been making notes on, but in fact sketching a series of cartoonish, outdated dinosaurs - tail-draggers and swamp-dwellers, nothing like what was coming out of the labs. "Dr. Wu. To what do I… is this about the last batch of Velociraptor?"
"They're still coming out with wings." Wu raised the sheaf of papers he was holding. "There are a lot of avian sources in their reconstruction."
"They're very birdlike. It makes sense-"
"Birdlike, but not birds. They're maniraptorans. Grasping hands. How can they manipulate objects with wings? We need to free up the wrists. And Mr. Hammond is getting quite impatient about the feathers. Even the Tyrannosaurs have some."
"Why not just add more frog material?" Terrence said bitterly.
"I hardly think amphibians are going to give us the right skin texture, Dr. Terrence."
"No, I didn't mean that. I…" Terrence suddenly felt ridiculous. "I wasn't being serious."
"This is a serious matter."
"I know. I'm sorry. But have you seen the latest drafts of the publicity material?"
Wu sighed, "I have, and I've offered my feedback. But they aren't going to care. Real science doesn't make good PR."
"We only used frog in a few places, why can't they at least say crocodile, if they have to simplify it that much?"
"If I was being charitable, I'd say they chose an animal the reconstructed dinosaurs are nothing like, to emphasise that we have real dinosaur DNA. But it's probably because one of them asked me what we used and I gave him a list, starting with the most important sources. His eyes had started to glaze over by the time I finished but the last one I mentioned was frog."
"They're downplaying everything we're doing."
"Of course they are. We're reconstructing these animals. Designing them. But Mr. Hammond doesn't want to believe that, and the marketing team don't want the public to believe it. It's not the right image. As far as the public - and our employer - are concerned, these are real dinosaurs, recovered not constructed. The computers reconstruct the DNA sequences, using a single complete genome as a kind of template, and out pop fully-formed dinosaurs. A pretty little fiction that relegates you and I to mere technicians.
"They don't care about science, Dr. Terrence. They don't care about you. And you shouldn't care about them. After the project goes public, once we can publish, you'll get your fair share of the credit where it matters. Forget the PR material."
Wu's eyes moved down to Terrence's desk and he frowned. The younger scientist swallowed nervously and tried to surreptitiously shift his position to better obscure the page of drawings. "I've been thinking, about the feathers. We've reviewed all the bird genetic sources already - several times. We should have figured it out by now. Unless it's actually in the recovered DNA, where we didn't think to look…"
"Are you suggesting, Dr. Terrence, that I report to Mr. Hammond that his dinosaurs look like gigantic, toothy birds because that's what they actually looked like?"
Terrence swallowed nervously. "No… not exactly. Although now you say it, I don't think we have any direct evidence of their actual integument. Not for these particular dinosaurs."
"There's absolutely no evidence for any kind of dinosaur having any integument other than scaly or pebbly skin." Wu snapped. "And even if there was, the public would never accept it. Mr. Hammond would never accept it."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Wu. What I meant was, all the dinosaurs are so much closer to birds than we ever expected, maybe there are some shared genes. That don't produce feathers on their own," he added hastily, "but perhaps most of the components of feathers are there, serving some other purposes, and the avian genetic sources we're using are modifying their activity."
"Instead of it being solely in the reconstructive sources," Wu nodded approvingly. "I like your thinking. I'm sure between us we can crack this."
Author's Note: the aim of this story was to address the inaccurate ways the dinosaurs are depicted, with a side foray in reconciling the different ways their reconstruction was depicted in the film and the novel, without changing anything. I always find the line in the novel, "dinosaurs aren't really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds" equal parts funny and tragic. It's just one letter off.