WesternU professor helped name dinosaur featured in Jurassic World Rebirth
Aquilops is ready for its closeup.
Western University of Health Sciences Professor of Anatomy Mathew Wedel, PhD, and his colleagues identified and named the cat-sized dinosaur Aquilops americanus in a paper published in 2014 (Farke AA, Maxwell WD, Cifelli RL, Wedel MJ (2014) A Ceratopsian Dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the Biogeography of Neoceratopsia. PLoS ONE 9(12): e112055. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112055).
Aquilops, a small, early relative of Triceratops, is prominently featured in Jurassic World Rebirth, starring Scarlett Johansson and premiering in theaters on July 2, 2025. In addition, Aquilops is featured on Dr. Pepper cans and in Funko, Mattel, and LEGO toy lines.
“Aquilops is scientifically interesting because it’s the earliest horned dinosaur in North America,” said Dr. Wedel, who is a faculty member in WesternU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific and College of Podiatric Medicine. “For the past 10 years, though, I’ve been wondering, ‘Where are the Aquilops toys?’ It’s a cute little ‘cat-ceratops,’ there should be toys! And now thanks to the movie, Aquilops is going from being a scientifically important but fairly obscure dinosaur to the pop culture stratosphere.”
At the Jurassic World attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando, there are greeters with life-size and life-like Aquilops puppets: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7BgmykDXboA
The original fossils of Aquilops are on display at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma. The City of Norman passed a resolution declaring next week to be Natural History Week in honor of the museum and Aquilops.
“It’s wild seeing pictures of Aquilops on boxes of soda and potato chips, and even crazier to see YouTube clips of Scarlett Johansson making eyes at ‘my’ dinosaur,” Wedel said. “I started out as a dinosaur-obsessed little kid, and I was lucky to pursue a career in paleontology. Now Aquilops is going to be a lot of kids’ favorite dinosaur, and maybe it will help inspire the next generation to explore and discover.”
