Alternate Species List

Hey, all. Data vampires ate my original post of this so i re-typed this in Word instead and will be simplifying what I had intended.

Short version: I’ve got an alternate history project that I like writing “internal fiction” for (TV Tropes calls it “show within a show”) and I have an idea for an alternate version of the first novel, which I’ll use to extrapolate for the films and second novel. I’ll be addressing any changes to the plot and characters based on what could have been in real-life on my own, but I want to crowd-source the species list. I have two options, both of them based on vanilla JPOG, of all things.

1) it’s based on a slightly expanded version of Jurassic Classic, adding the Hell Creek sites, so the species list is Styracosaurus, Corythosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Homalocephale, Gallimimus, Velociraptor, Parasaurolophus, Torosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, Dilophosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Brachiosaurus

2) it’s an altered version of Jurassic Classic to deliberately diversify the species list and actually omit some of the iconic dinos from the real-world novel, with the fossil sites it’s drawn from being Judith River Group B, Morrison A, Hell Creek A, Tendaguru Formation, and one other that I’m still deciding on, so the species list is at least Styracosaurus, Corythosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Dryosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Stegosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Torosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Kentrosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Allosaurus at the very least; any suggestions for which other site to use for diversity (not Chenini, though ) would be appreciated

after figuring out the species list, though, I have one other objective: diversifying FURTHER by replacing a few species from either option with another so that something else is used in its place, particularly replacing one with Procompsognathus (or an expy of it—I’m open to suggestions). My goal is to make a facsimile of the original novel species list which still at least looks relatively unique—it’s part of why Acrocanthosaurus is on both of the possible lists

so what does everyone think? Film canon expys, or something a bit more unique, possibly even EXCLUDING the raptors!

without any posts in a week, i decided to go and devise an alternate list on my own. i'm actually glad i didn't get much input, because it prompted me to devise a much better criteria for an alternate species list. i decided to look at a book that Crichton himself probably used in researching Jurassic Park in real-life: Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies. using the rather unprofessional method of just looking at the index, i think i've determined most of a decent alternate species list:

• Allosaurus replaces Velociraptor, partly spurred by a brief discussion back on JPL that one of the smaller allo species could fill in for the raptors for size and possibly for intelligence, too
  
• Apatosaurus remains, and is still replaced by Camarasaurus in some versions of the novel
  
• Centrosaurus replaces Styracosaurus, and like the styrac doesn't actually appear in the story
  
• Corythosaurus replaces Hadrosaurus; maintaining a bit of a theme from real-world novel, in some versions it's Lambeosaurus
  
• Edmontosaurus replaces Maiasaura; again with the whole mix-up replacement theme, in some versions its listed as Edmontonia, but like how Callovosaurus was listed but Microceratops appears, the edmonto is what always appears in the story while Edmontonia does not
  
• Heterodontosaurus replaces Othnielia
  
• Iguanodon replaces Euoplocephalus, and like the euoplo, it doesn't actually appear; my assigning Iguanodon as the replacement here is because Edmontonia is intended more as the direct equivalent to Euoplocephalus so the bases are covered either way
  
• Psittacosaurus replaces Microceratops (the other choice was Leptoceratops)
  
• Santanadactylus replaces Cearadactylus; this is the only one that doesn't actually appear in The Dinosaur Heresies, but i just wanted to use a different pterosaur and ideally some kind of proxy of Pterodactylus--the santana just happened to fit the bill
  
• Stegosaurus remains
  
• Triceratops remains
  
• Troodon replaces Dilophosaurus; as a reference to JPTG, it might be venomous to still take in the idea of "you can't know everything from fossils" that the dilo embodies--it could even have poison-spitting and, in the film version, a frill just like the dilo, but i'd like some extra opinions on this; my other thought what that Troodon would have intelligence as its gimmick, like on the level of xenomorphs (and i just can't get the image of troodons hijacking the control room and messing with the computers out of my mind)
  
• Tyrannosaurus remains
  
• in addition to the main species list, Coelophysis is also specifically mentioned as being in the process of cloning as an equivalent to the ambiguous coelurosaur that Wu brings up
  

i'd still like some help with the last two species, though: i need an equivalent for Hypsilophodon (i'm fine with not using The Dinosaur Heresies to figure this one out), and i'm not totally sure if i want to use what i'd decided on for the compy replacement--Archaeopteryx. it just seems like archies would pose a little too much of a containment hazard since they can fly, while in the real-world novel the compys slip through mainly because of their size

EDIT: i decided to go and finish up the species list myself. i decided against having Archaeopteryx, switching it out for Compsognathus, and decided to put in Massospondylus in place of Hypsilophodon. next task: decide what to use for the five new dinosaurs that appear in the novel--one is already set, technically, since i'll be using whatever i decide is up instead of Parasaurolophus in the film adaptation for the one that appears in the TLW novel, but i still need to decide on ones for Pachycephalosaurus (which i'm actually inclined to keep), Carnotaurus, Ornitholestes as the aberrant form, and Mussaurus. meantime, i think i might go and try to determine what's in the film version

I owuld replace Velociraptors by Achillobator. It comes from Asia and has the right size.

while that is the obvious choice, and is what i'd use for anything else, there's a problem with using Achillobator here: this isn't so much an alternate JP where i'm taking updated information on the dinosaurs into account (and yes, i'm aware we ended up reasoning that the novel raptors are actually Achillobator in the Encyclopedia ) but more an alternate of JP as if it were still written in 1993 by Michael Crichton with an altered species list and some names to account for the butterfly effect, hence my using The Dinosaur Heresies for inspiration. for the same reason, when i get around to devising what the alternate JP films look like, i'll be examining not only what i, personally, would want in the altered films but also the realistic choices, what Spielberg and company would be more likely to come up with rather than just what i'd do. an unfortunately Achillobator was simply unknown to science in 1993.

good to see you found your way to the Portal, btw

Thanks.

I don't know if it would help, but if I would make a research to choose species for a Jurassic Park, I would look for the most common species. I mean, if I can find paleo-DNA in mosquitoes, the chances are the most common dinosaurs are more probable to be in there. So the question is: which ones had the larger herds?

that's definitely something i'll have to consider for any other given project, too  i'd think Tyrannosaurus would be one of them since, iirc, quite a few skeletons of them have been found. Allosaurus, too, since iirc alot of them got caught in death traps (for the same reason, a Pleistocene Park would work well with La Brea as a starting point)

* Tyrannosaurus rex -> Tyrannosaurus rex
* Velociraptor -> Dakotaraptor
* Dilophosaurus -> Ceratosaurus
* Apatosaurus/Camarasaurus -> Giraffatitan
* Hadrosaurus -> Camptosaurus
* Maiasaura -> Parasaurolophus
* Othnielia -> Psittacosaurus
* Hypsilophodon/Dryosaurus -> Dryosaurus
* Microceratus/Callovosaurus -> Koreaceratops
* Meganeura -> Archaeopteryx
* Styracosaurus -> Torosaurus
* Stegosaurus -> Stegosaurus
* Triceratops -> Triceratops
* Euoplocephalus -> Crichtonsaurus
* Coelurus -> Coelophysis
* Mussaurus -> Mussaurus
* Parasaurolophus -> Chronosaurus
* Pachycephalosaurus -> Stegoceras
* Ornitholestes -> Deinonychus
* Gallimimus -> Ornithomimus
* Carnotaurus -> Acrocanthosaurus

again, the animal has to have been known to science by 1990 for it to count--Crichton in-universe wouldn't have known about Dakotaraptor, Koreaceratops, Crichtonsaurus, or Charonosaurus. i like your suggestion about replacing the carnotaurs with acrocanthosaurs, though, and it actually fits well into the idea that Crichton readapts some elements of the alternate film into the alternate second novel (if you remember, TLW novel had some elements from the first film included in it). i think i'll go rewrite that one in

i think i'll repurpose my thread a bit since it asks another important question for the same setting

one thing i've batted around is possibly changing the setting from Central America to Asia-Pacific. i forget my reasoning for this, but i've already come up with an alternate island for it to be set on, called Zettai-jima (i adapted the name from an older idea where it was an Iranian-Arabic plateau or valley with a name taken from "absolute" since the idea then was more Pleistocene Park than Jurassic Park). it'd be located at the very end of the Ryukyu island chain, closer to Taiwan than Japan (which Hammond would be leasing it from in this timeline) and therefore the dinosaurs-on-the-mainland plot points take place mainly in Taiwan and, increasingly, in mainland China

so what does everyone think? keep it on Isla Nublar in this timeline's version of Costa Rica, or move it to Zettai-jima in Japan? i'm tempted to use the latter just to help demonstrate the alternate timeline

EDIT: oh, and if i end up deciding on Asia-Pacific instead of Central America, i'm thinking of placing the alternate Isla Sorna in the Spratly Islands