"A lot of paleontologists get very, very upset about Dilophosaurus," Persons said.
In the movie, the dog-sized dinosaur hunts down an unwitting computer programmer (played by Wayne Knight) by extending a circular neck frill and blinding him with poisonous spit.
The real Dilophosaurus was bigger than its on-screen depiction, Persons said — it grew up to 20 feet in length. And it probably didn't spit venom.
"Odds are you wouldn't have dinosaurs that do that," he said.
Persons thinks it's possible the dinosaur could have had a neck frill, but there's no evidence for that in the fossil record.
"If you look at the modern world, lots of animals have huge, flashy structures like lion manes, or the Frilled-neck lizard in Australia," he said. "I would say the odds are you are going to get some of that — there's going to be a dinosaur or that has some large flashy structure you didn't know about."