Dinosaurs of Star Wars:
Dinosaurs of Star Wars: Tiss’shar
(Image ID: a comic panel taken from Han Solo at Stars’ End, showing a green and scaled dinosaur-looking creature standing up. It is wearing purple suit with an orange collar. It has a human-style hand, with four fingers and a thumb, which is raised in front of it.)
The Tiss’shar first appear in Han Solo at Stars' End in 1979, though were only named in 1993's Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. They are classified as Theropods, which is a group of dinosaurs with hollow bones and three-toed limbs.
As a predator species, Tiss’shar are mainly depicted as assassins or business sharks, though some were involved in other corporate roles or piracy. Their social structure is based on business, with government run by the businessowners with greatest profits for the past five years. Their home world, Tiss’sharl, was caught up in the Mandalorian expansion, and many Tiss’shar became Mandalorian recruits. During the Clone Wars, Tiss’sharl was part of the Galactic Republic, and after was affiliated with the Empire. At one point, during a time where the Empire forced down prices of Tiss’sharl exports, the Rebellion offered an alliance, but the Tiss’sharl government refused. The Empire later allowed Tiss’sharl to increase their prices back to the original.
An overview of dinosaur accuracy:
Posture:
In the comic, the Tiss’shar are depicted as large, bipedal, and often with a mostly vertical posture. The belief that dinosaurs, particularly relatively large bipedal carnivores, stood with a mostly vertical posture has decreased in frequency over the years. This is because further analysis of fossils has led palaeontologists to believe that dinosaurs had a much more horizontal posture, with tails lifted off the ground to counterbalance the weight of the torso¹. In this way, perhaps the Tiss’shar are inaccurate; of course, this doesn’t really matter. They’re a made up alien race.
(Image ID: a photograph-like depiction of a tyrannosaurus standing tall and upright, almost perpendicular to the floor, with its tail trailing on the ground behind it. From what I can tell, this image is from an old Toyway postcard, made to be sold in museum gift shops)
(Image ID: a scientific tyrannosaurus drawing showing the expected bone structure against a black silhouette. Its body is horizontal, almost parallel to the ground, with its tail raised in the air. This image belongs to Scott Hartman, paleoartist and palaeontologist.)
Language:
The Tiss’shar language, simply named Tiss’shar, is based on a series of hisses, shrieks, and other similar vocalizations; notably, not the lion-style roar popular throughout dinosaur media. While complex language between dinosaurs is a fictional concept, it’s interesting to explore the ideas of dinosaur noises and communication. Paleoacoustics is a developing field working to understand the soundscape of a prehistoric earth, currently being pioneered by teams of researchers looking to uncover mysteries like what dinosaurs sounded like. Growing research indicates that the stereotypical ‘dinosaur roar’ is an inaccurate assumption². The traditional ‘roar’ was inspired by modern predators like lions, tigers, and bears; these animals make loud, open mouthed sounds. However, newer research has changed focus to animals more closely related to dinosaurs, like crocodilians and Aves (birds), as well as fossilized aspects of both dinosaurs and early birds. This opposing evidence indicates a much larger focus on closed-mouth sounds - like growling or cooing³. An example of this would be crocodile growls. To the extent that the Tiss’shar language doesn’t feature the booming roars of, for example, the Jurassic World movies, we could take this as an example of (likely coincidental) accuracy.
Appearance:
The Tiss’shar are depicted as green and scaled; often the traditional depiction in popular media. In reality, though, the number of dinosaur species, particularly theropods, depicted as feathered is ever increasing. Discoveries across the world, particularly the incredibly well preserved specimens from the Liaoning province in China, prove without much doubt at all that at least some dinosaurs had feathers. On top of this, the increasing number of feathered specimens shows a more concentrated array of feathered samples withing the Theropod group, particularly the dinosaurs most closely related to birds⁴. As a result, it is fair to say that there would be good reason to expect the Tiss’shar, which are theropod dinosaurs, to be feathered.
Different subspecies of Tiss’shar are described as having different markings, indicative of classification. While the Tiss’shar are unlikely to be exemplary of the true utility and uniformity of dinosaur colourings and markings throughout groups, the concept of dinosaurs with bright colours and patterns is becoming increasingly grounded in reality. By focusing on the extremely well preserved Chinese fossils, palaeontologists around the globe were able to uncover melanosomes, which hold pigment and create colour, in fossilized feathers⁵. These indicate that, in contrast to our initial assumptions, dinosaurs were a brightly coloured bunch, not limited to the greys and dull greens initially anticipated. Therefore, the idea of colour variation throughout a dinosaur group is not a baseless accusation.
(Image ID: still image of a small, bipedal dinosaur walking from the left to the right of the screen. It has yellow feathers, and its tail - which is tall and pointed upwards - has white rings. It is sinosauropteryx, the first dinosaur fossil to have its colour scientifically proven. It is an illustration by paleoartist James Robins.)
So, what does it mean:
Not much really. The Tiss’shar are a fictional species of space faring assassins and businessmen, which were created in 1979. Modern Earthly science has little bearing or significance in the stories and characters portrayed by this species, and to hold authors responsible for scientific inaccuracies not only in fiction, but also based on knowledge not known at the time, would be unfair. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to explore the misconceptions and scientific truths behind the media we consume, and dinosaur misrepresentation in media, while not a particularly large or pressing concern, is often ubiquitous and fun to break down. Basically, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)
References:
¹Newman, B.H., (1970). Stance and gait in the flesh eating dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. Biological journal of the Linnean society.
²Borish, N., Lee, C., (2021). ‘What did dinosaurs sound like?’. Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
³Weekend Edition Saturday, ‘New Research Debunks The Dinosaur’s Roar’ (2016) npr, 16 July
⁴Davis, J., (2020). The first dinosaurs probably didn’t have feathers. Natural History Museum.
⁵Sloan, C., (2010) Dinosaur true colours revealed for first time. National Geographic.
