Rise of the 'Jurassic Park' generation
Like many children, Jordan Mallon had lots of ideas about what he wanted to be when he grew up. He harbored dreams of being a professional hockey player or perhaps an artist, and he was fascinated by dinosaurs.
Then, in the summer of 1993, Jordan’s father took him to see “Jurassic Park.” After the credits rolled and the lights came up in the movie theater, 11-year-old Jordan could see his future before him. That night, he said to his mother, “Mom, I want to be a paleontologist.”
“That was a turning point. That movie really struck a chord with me,” recalls Dr. Mallon, now a dinosaur paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. “I didn’t change my focus. Never did I ever waver.”
After “Jurassic Park” premièred June 11, 1993, tens of millions of people flocked to movie theaters to see the captivating creatures that once roamed the planet. The film ignited a firestorm of public interest in dinosaurs and, by extension, paleontology. This newfound popularity set off a sequence of events that would ultimately bring a flood of new scientists, kick off a golden age of dinosaur discoveries,
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