"Jurassic Park" of an alternate timeline

hey, all. i got this idea just recently. if you've seen a few of my other threads that i've posted so far here on the Portal, you've got some idea of where i'm going with this already.

almost as much as i am a Jurassic Park fan, i've become an alternate history buff in recent years (it's actually part of why i all but disappeared from JPL for a while) and have been working on a very large-scale alternate timeline project. one thing i like to do is think about what real-world fiction would look like in this alternate timeline: an Animal Farm in a world without the Soviet Union, Jackie Chan's Nosebleed being made without the September 11 attacks taking place, an equivalent to Assassin's Creed which draws from the Apostles of Christ, an entire alternate Disney Animated Canon, and--indeed--a version of Jurassic Park.

so, just for my fellow Jurassic Park fans right here on the Portal, i'll be gradually coming up with some alternate versions of various JP media and posting summaries or excerpts of them. i'll be starting with this timeline's version of the Novel Canon since that's what i've developed the most for, and what better place to demonstrate that than an acknowledgement of all the dinosaurs in the park?  to be clear, this is Jurassic Park as internal fiction (what TV Tropes would call "Show Within A Show") within an alternate timeline rather than a real alternate interpretation of our Jurassic Park (but unfortunately this first post is hurt by the forum format--i can't put the population chart in a proper table and the compy height graphs had to be omitted entirely)



CONTROL
 
“Absolutely absurd,” Hammond said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. “It must be a bird egg. That’s all it can be.”
The radio crackled. He heard Malcolm’s voice. “Let’s do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Arnold to run one of his computer tallies.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the schirm in Dr. Harding’s car. Do that, too, will you?”
“No problem,” Arnold said. A moment later, the schirm in the control room prented out:

Total  Animals	238
Species	Expected	Found	Ver
Dryptosaurs	2	2	4.1
Eutrachodonts	21	21	3.3
Diracodonts	4	4	3.9
Agathaumas	8	8	3.1
Compsognathids	49	49	3.9
Psittacosaurs	16	16	3.1
Allosaurs	8	8	3.0
Atlantosaurs	17	17	3.1
Corythosaurs	11	11	3.1
Troodonts	7	7	4.3
Pterosaurs	6	6	4.3
Massospondylids	33	33	2.9
Iguanodonts	16	16	4.0
Centrosaurs	18	18	3.9
Heterodontosaurs	22	22	4.1
Total	238	238

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Hammond said. “Are you receiving it down there on your schirm?”
“We see it,” Malcolm said.
“Everything reported for, as always.” He couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice.
“Now, then,” Malcolm said. “Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?”
“Like what?” Arnold said.
“Try two hundred thirty-nine.”
“Just a minute,” Arnold said, frowning. A moment later, the schirm prented:

Total Animals	239
Species	Expected	Found	Ver
Dryptosaurs	2	2	4.1
Eutrachodonts	21	21	3.3
Diracodonts	4	4	3.9
Agathaumas	8	8	3.1
Compsognathids	49	50	??
Psittacosaurs	16	16	3.1
Allosaurs	8	8	3.0
Atlantosaurs	17	17	3.1
Corythosaurs	11	11	3.1
Troodonts	7	7	4.3
Pterosaurs	6	6	4.3
Massospondylids	33	33	2.9
Iguanodonts	16	16	4.0
Centrosaurs	18	18	3.9
Heterodontosaurs	22	22	4.1
Total	238	239

Hammond sat foreward. “What the hell is that?”
“We picked up another compy.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know!”
The radio crackled. “Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?”
“What is he talking about?” Hammond said, his voice rising. “Three hundred animals? What’s he talking about?”
“Just a minute,” Arnold said. “That’ll take a few minutes.” He punched buttons on the schirm. The first line of the totals appeared:
 
Total Animals: 239
 
“I don’t understand what he’s driving at,” Hammond said.
“I think I do,” Arnold said. He watched the schirm. The numbers on the first line were clicking:
 
Total Animals: 244
 
“Two hundred forty-four?” Hammond said. “What’s going on?”
“The computer is counting the animals in the park,” Wu said. “All the animals.”
“I thought that’s what it always did.” He soun. “Nedry! Have you screwed up again?”
“No,” Nedry said, looking up from his console. “Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process go faster. But it’s a convenience, not a flaw.”
“He’s right,” Arnold said. “We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn’t be more.”
 
Total Animals: 262
 
“Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “These animals can’t breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something.”
“I’m afeared I do,” Arnold said. “It’s almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we’ll know soon enough.”
Hammond turned to Wu. “They can’t breed, can they?”
“No,” Wu said.
 
Total Animals: 270
 
“Where are they coming from?” Arnold said.
“Damned if I know,” Wu said.
They watched the numbers climb.
 
Total Animals: 283
 
Over the radio, they heard Gennaro say, “Holy sh*t, how much more?”
And they heard the girl say, “I’m getting hungry. When are we going home?”
“Pretty soon, Lex.”
On the schirm, there was a flashing error missive:
 
ERROR: Search Params: 300 Animals Not Found
 
“An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error.”
But a moment later the schirm prented:

Total Animals	292
Species	Expected	Found	Ver
Dryptosaurs	2	2	4.1
Eutrachodonts	21	22	??
Diracodonts	4	4	3.9
Agathaumas	8	8	3.1
Compsognathids	49	65	??
Psittacosaurs	16	23	??
Allosaurs	8	37	??
Atlantosaurs	17	17	3.1
Corythosaurs	11	11	3.1
Troodonts	7	7	4.3
Pterosaurs	6	6	4.3
Massospondylids	33	34	??
Iguanodonts	16	16	4.0
Centrosaurs	18	18	3.9
Heterodontosaurs	22	22	4.1
Total	238	292

The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number.”
“Christ,” Arnold said.
“There can’t be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we’ve loosed. There can’t be more than that.”
“Afeared so, Henry,” Malcolm sad, “They’re breeding.”
“No.”
“Even if you don’t accept Grant’s eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Arnold will put it up for you. Notice anything about it?” Malcolm said.
“It’s a Poisson distribution,” Wu said. “Normal curve.”
“But didn’t you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six month intervals?”
“Yes…”
“Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,” Malcolm said, tapping the keyboard. “Like this. But you didn’t get this graph,” Malcolm said. “The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.”
“Wu shook his head. “I don’t see how.”
“They’re breeding, and so are the psittacosaus, the eutrachodons, the massos—and the allosaurs.”
“Christ,” Muldoon said. “There are allos free in the park.”
“Well, it’s not that bad,” Hammond said, looking at the schirm. “We have increases in just three categories—well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them…”
“What are you talking about?” Wu said, loudly. “Don’t you know what this means?”
“Of course I know what this means, Henry,” Hammond said. “It means you screwed up.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’ve got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry.”
“But they’re all female,” Wu said. “That’s impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the eutrachodons and massos. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn’t make sense. It must be a mistake.”
The radio clicked. “Actually not,” Grant said. “I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.”



any and all comments are much appreciated--i like answering questions, and remember, constructive criticism is best criticism

EDIT: i overlooked one detail from before and revised the population tables--i'd forgotten that i'd decided our Apatosaurus is called Atlantosaurus in this timeline

EDIT:: i went back and corrected a few parts of the species list to account for some other changes to the timeine that i decided on recently

EDIT::: in light of my recent re-evaluations of the whole project, i have to declare this excerpt invalid as far as character and species names are concerned. i'll try to remember to make a new version of it in the future.

I don't see too many Novel canon fanfics...so Ill be keeping a close eye on this one.

Also they are screwed if there are 37 allosaurs in the park...I would be worried. Heh.

oh don't worry about that too much (or is it worry even more?)--these are actually relatively small allos, not Epanterias-sized like i'd normally go for  it's also not so much just for the Novel Canon, i'll be doing as much JP media as i can. i just need to work out some other details first. i plan to eventually bring in at least one scene demonstrating a bit of this timeline's version of JPTG, for example

EDIT: and of course it turns out that proper tables are possible on this board, so i'll go and fix that  it also means i'll be able to do more than i expected later on

now, i'd meant to try and get another entry out before i left for the Anime Expo, but obviously that ended up not happening. while i do plan to get that post out eventually, at the moment i'd like to ask for some opinions as to what everyone would like to see. keep in mind that it doesn't necessarily have to be from the Novel Canon, it can be from just about anywhere in the JP franchise. if nothing else it might give me some ideas for where i can go with this project while i'm still developing what the alternate Film Canon looks like

I would like to see what an JPTG might look like.

i'm already considering that, recycling an old idea i had as a retcon of the official canon for a JPRPG, but to give full details i'd have to work out exactly what the first film looks like, and there are a lot of options for that. i will share exactly what species replace what in the event of JPTG being recognizably similar to the real-world game, though


as an inversion of what i've considered so far, Dromaeosaurus is used in place of Herrerasaurus and threatens the survivors on the roller coaster; so far, it's the only dromaeosaur in the franchise in this alternate timeline since Velociraptor is replaced by Allosaurus

the mosasaur is specifically Hainosaurus instead of Tylosaurus (honestly, i just wanted to mix things up a bit there )

perhaps a bit confusingly, Herrerasaurus is still present in this timeline's version of JPTG, but as the replacement for Troodon as the venomous nocturnal carnivore that even the allos are scared of


that's all i've got for specifics on alt!JPTG at the moment--i'm actually not even sure if the series takes place in Central America in this timeline (which, with the other changes to the setting from actual history, would mean that Hammond is leasing it from the government of a revived Aztec Empire rather than Costa Rica); the other possibility, for reasons i can no longer remember () is that it's set in some secluded part of the Asia-Pacific region, which also puts Hammond's leaser as being a different country, possibly even the United States itself

i'm sad to say that i've been at a loss for where to really go with this project. for the most part, i want to determine what the full species lists for TTL's Novel and Film Canon would be, and while i've got the first novel more or less down pat (unfortunately, it's mainly of the find-and-replace variety of alternate at the moment where it's virtually identical to the real-world except for some name changes and, in this case, certain dinosaurs taking on the roles of those from the real-world story--the allosaurs mentioned before being this timeline's raptors--something i prefer to avoid), i'm surprisingly stumped concerning the films for the most part. i figure that this timeline's version of JP1 would be recognizably similar, just possibly with some greater similarities to the novel and some other planned content from real-life which was dropped for one reason or another, but for TLW, JP///, and JW i have very few ideas except for maybe replacing TLW with a more direct adaptation of the novel it's named after while the alternate JP/// is based on the real-world TLW movie (as a big, organized expedition to *Sorna rather than two small groups, one of them being very spur-of-the-moment) and that, if JP/// is similar to the real movie, then the Ceratosaurus is replaced by a Carnotaurus, but that's about it. even with what i've decided so far i'm not entirely sure (namely, i'm rethinking whether Troodon is actually a good substitute for Dilophosaurus since it's even more of an expy than the others since it also has poison-spitting abilities here)

what does everyone think i should do as far as determining the alternate Film Canon, at least as far as basic plot points? i'll (hopefully) start us off with what i have so far for the species list--at the very least, i got all of them for the first film ITTL:

-- Acrocanthosaurus replaces Metriacanthosaurus as one of the species seen only on the brochure map and cold storage canisters; unlike the metri in real-life, the acro makes an appearance in this timeline's version of TLW novel as a replacement for the carnotaurs, complete with color-changing, and (as a result of that) features in TLW arcade game as a boss; if you're wondering about why they're in the novel, remember that in real-life Crichton readapted some parts of the first film into the second novel, so this is an in-universe example of that
-- Allosaurus replaces Velociraptor like in the alternate novel, and appears in every film adaptation as a result
-- Becklespinax replaces Baryonyx as one of the species mentioned only on the brochure map; i just wanted to diversify the species list a bit
-- Brachiosaurus still appears in its real-world capacity, replacing the apatosaurs from the novel
-- Coelophysis replaces Segisaurus as a quasi-adaptation of the novel in-universe (i decided that the unspecified Coelurosaurus that Wu is in the process of cloning during the novel is specifically Coelophysis in this timeline) but like the segi is only mentioned on the brochure map
-- Eoraptor replaces Compsognathus and, again, only shows up on the brochure map; unlike the compys in TLW, when that film is adapted, it's still compys and not eoraptors (i kinda wanted them to be a proxy for the herrerasaurs from the actual film, as well as taking off from a fan-theory i had years ago and quickly dropped that the compys in the novel might be eoraptors based on their five fingers)
-- Eustreptospondylus is another unseen replacement, this one of Proceratosaurus
-- for a bit of a real-world novel acknowledgment, Hypsilophodon replaces Gallimimus as the stampeding smaller herbivores that get ambushed by the tyrannosaur; they're recursively adapted into the TLW novel like the gallis were in real-life, and therefore doesn't physically appear in the novels (not in any meaningful capacity, anyway)
-- Iguanodon replaces Parasaurolophus, and like the paras has a different coloration in ever single one of its appearances, but they're featured most prominently in TLW
-- Stegosaurus remains, but only appears on the cold storage canisters in JP1 (unless the sick triceratops scene is more like the novel in this timeline) and instead properly appears in the following movies
-- Triceratops remains, and (this literally just occurred to me) could be the subject of an alternate "My Friend the Brachiosaur" scene based on the novel where the survivors of the tour car attack take refuge in a feeding station and interact with the trike from behind a set of bars, including with a little baby trike
-- Troodon replaces Dilophosaurus, but like i said i'm now considering a revision of that--it could even be that i just default back to the dilo
-- and, of course, Tyrannosaurus rex stays right where it belongs



hopefully this will help spur some discussion on this. and one final note: while i'm using the real-world names here, (and you probably guessed this from the first post i made in the thread) in the actual project-within-the-project, i'm using some alternate names drawn from either what each dinosaur could have actually been called (the key example in my mind is the rex being informally called a dryptosaur rather than a tyrannosaur and the official scientific name being Manospondylus gigas, which is actually the first specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex described by science and the only time an exception to scientific naming conventions towards animals has been made) or based on the altered history of this timeline in general--it's not brought up in the alternate JP thus far, but the simple fact that Crichton uses allosaurs instead of velociraptors in this timeline affects popular culture and paleontology itself by "raptor" not entering common language, meaning that most of the dinosaurs not really related to raptors which have been named after them in actual history are named differently--can you say Ostrommaysaurus kirklandi, Sinarchaeopteryx zhaoianus, and Allodryptus kriegsteini?

i think i've got a satisfactory summary for the alternate first novel. as much as i didn't really want it to, it ended up mostly being a find-replace version of the real-world novel. i hope to change that with other entries. i also came up with a much better name for the first island, being a bit more literal than i originally intended. you'll also notice right away that i've changed some of the names from that first entry of mine; consider this an official revision. i admit i decided to arbitrarily leave the names of (presumably) British characters lone--John Hammond and Robert Muldoon just sound so much better than possible alternates  most of the altered names are borrowed or slightly edited from a much, much earlier version of the alternate JP novel where it was called Pleistocene Park (some of you may have seen it on JPL a few years ago). anyway, here it is:



In August 1989, a series of strange animal attacks take place, first in Formosa and then in mainland China, apparently caused by unknown three-toed lizards. The body of one of the lizards is recovered and sent to Columbia University where a lab technician then calls renowned paleontologist Alain Legrand, believing the strange lizard might actually be a dinosaur. Legrand confirms that the animal is a Compsognathus, a dinosaur that has been extinct for 150 million years, but is called from his dig site at Como Bluff by billionaire John Hammond—founder of International Genetics Technologies, or InGen, and financier of Legrand’s fossil dig—before he can investigate further. Hammond invites him to visit a biological preserve he’s built on Kumo-jima in the Ryūkyū Islands as a third-party consultant, and brings paleobotanist graduate student Nina Sattler with him. Also visiting the island are mathematician John Columbus, who has previously been consulted by Hammond, and lawyer Donald Carpenter, who represents Hammond’s investors.


Once they arrive on Kumo-jima, the guests learn that the “biological preserve” is actually a theme park and zoo showcasing genetically-engineered dinosaurs called Jurassic Park. The animals have been cloned from DNA preserved in amber and stabilized with genes from modern reptiles, birds, and amphibians. To control the population, the dinosaurs are engineered to always be female to prevent breeding and lysine-deficient so that they will die without regular lysine supplements provided by park staff. Hammond proudly touts his park’s state-of-the-art automated security systems, which allow the whole park to run with minimal staff, and the genetics laboratory, but Carpenter is concerned about the park’s safety despite this—particularly because of the recent maiming of a worker by an escaped Allosaurus, which has spooked the investors—while Columbus is convinced that the park is doomed to failure. Based on chaos theory, he predicts that Jurassic Park will collapse as an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced on a complex system.


Hammond counters Columbus’ predictions with youthful enthusiasm as embodied by his grandchildren Alex and Honoria Strand to the park as well, partly to take the children’s minds of their parents’ pending divorce. He groups the kids with the consultants and sends them off on a tour of the park in automated electrical cars, accompanied by the park’s public relations manager Rich Rosso. The guests marvel at the park’s more peaceful species such as Massospondylus, Atlantosaurus, and Agathaumas, and are treated to an appearance by the park’s centerpiece attraction—the giant dryptosaur Manospondylus—as it eats a live goat. Soon after, they come to a sick Hypsirhophus and learn that the animals become sick at regular intervals due to ingesting poisonous plants while collecting gizzard stones. In the same area, the guests find an eggshell which Legrand identifies as belonging to an Allosaurus, seemingly confirming Columbus’ theory that the dinosaurs have somehow been breeding against the geneticists’ designs. Columbus suggests that there is a flaw in InGen’s method of analyzing the animal populations in that motion sensors were set to search for the expected number of creatures and no higher number, and a search for more animals reveals that, indeed, there are many more dinosaurs on Kumo-jima than the staff thought, including the extremely dangerous allosaurs. The park’s head programmer Arno Miles is reluctant to admit that Jurassic Park has been operating beyond its restraints for a long time now and there are numerous safety issues from glitches in the system to unexpected abilities in the animals. On top of all this, Honoria insists that she saw a dinosaur on a ship departing from the island, meaning that they might be using the park’s supply ships to escape to the mainland.


Unbeknownst to them, the park’s chief programmer, Vincent Nedry, has been bribed by Charles Carroll of Biology Synthetics Technologies, Inc., or Biosyn, to steal dinosaur embryos for his company. While the guests are on tour, Nedry sets his plan in motion by activating a backdoor he wrote into the computer system, shutting down security and allowing him to steal the frozen embryos virtually undetected and tries to smuggled them out to a contact at the dock. However, during a sudden storm, he loses his way and crashes his stolen jeep; while trying to fix the car, he is attacked and killed by a small group of Troodon.


Without Nedry to reactive the security, the electrified fences stay off and the dinosaurs begin to escape. The tour cars become stranded right next to the dryptosaur paddock and the carnivore destroys the vehicles, injuring Columbus and leaving Legrand and the children lost in the park. Carpenter, who returned to the visitor compound earlier with Sattler and the park’s veterinarian, Jerry Horton, accompanies the game warden Robert Muldoon to rescue the survivors. They arrive too late: Legrand and the children have already left, attempting to hike back to the visitor compound on their own, and find that Rosso has been killed by a younger dryptosaur. Columbus is found gravely injured, and they bring him back to the compound along with Rosso’s remains.


The park’s upper management—Miles, Hammond, Muldoon, and the head geneticist Harold Ng—struggle to return power to the park while Horton tries to help the injured Columbus, who is slowly dying from his injuries and, inbetween lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants—tries to help those in the main compound understand and survive their predicament. For a time, they manage to restore the system by shutting down and restarting the power, resetting what Nedry had done, but a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into even greater chaos: they had failed to realize that the systems had been running on auxiliary power since the restart, which quickly runs out and the park shuts down for a second time. Even worse, since the auxiliary generators didn’t create enough electricity to power the fences, they weren’t reactivated with the rest of the system, meaning all the fences—including those holding back the Allosaurus pack, which Nedry left on—were deactivated and even more of the dinosaurs have escaped. In their efforts to salvage the situation, Miles and Ng are killed by the allosaurs.


Meanwhile, Legrand and the children slowly make their way back to the visitor compound, narrowly avoiding a stampede by the Corythosaurus herd, surviving an attack by pterosaurs in the park’s aviary, and threatened by the adult dryptosaur as they raft down the jungle river. Their raft falls over a waterfall as the Manospondylus attacks them one last time, but are unknowingly saved by the timely arrival of Muldoon, who tranquilizes the theropod, and they escape into a service tunnel behind the waterfall where they find a young allosaur which clearly is not one of the pack contained near the visitor compound, undeniable proof that the dinosaurs have been breeding. After arriving back at the visitor compound, Carpenter and then Legrand finally restore power to the park and deal with the allosaurs threatening them. Carpenter tries to order the park’s destruction by the Japanese Air Service, but Legrand insists that they must first learn exactly why the park failed and how the dinosaurs have escaped, especially after they were able to confirm that allosaurs were on the supply ship. Carpenter, Legrand, Muldoon, and Sattler set out to find the wild allosaur nests to compare hatched eggs with the island’s revised population tally, and learn that, with all the animals out of their paddocks, Kumo-jima has reached a natural equilibrium. At the same time, Hammond takes a walk around the park while contemplating making a new one elsewhere in the world, but accidentally falls down a hill and breaks his leg, where he is attacked and eaten by a pack of Compsognathus.


It is eventually revealed that the DNA used to fill in the gaps in the dinosaur genomes—specifically, the frog DNA used in the allosaurs, eutrachodonts, compys, and some others—has allowed some of those species to spontaneously change sex into males in response to the all-female environment, and the animals that have escaped to the mainland have presumably been eating lysine-rich foods to survive outside the park. Columbus finally dies just as the Japanese Air service arrives to extract the survivors, also destroying the island with napalm. They are detained by the American and Japanese governments indefinitely in Okinawa, and Legrand is met by a representative of the National Diet of Japan, who informs him that nearly untraceable mysterious animals have been migrating through mainland China as far north as Shànghăi, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs him that none of the survivors, with the possible exception of the Strand children, are going to be leaving Okinawa anytime soon…



and the official altered species list is:
-- Agathaumas (Triceratops)
-- Allosaurus (replacing Velociraptor)
-- Atlantosaurus (Apatosaurus)
-- Centrosaurus (replacing Styracosaurus; like the styrac, it doesn't actually appear in the story)
-- Coelophysis (replacing the ambiguous coelurosaur; like in the real-world novel, it doesn't appear nor is it listed on the population chart, since it's still in the cloning process at the time the story takes place)
-- Compsognathus (replacing Procompsognathus)
-- Corythosaurus (replacing Hadrosaurus)
-- Eutrachodon (Edmontosaurus; replacing Maiasaura; paralleling Microceratops/Callovosaurus, in some versions Edmontonia is listed but Edmontosaurus is the one that appears in all versions)
-- Heterodontosaurus (replacing Microceratops)
-- Hypsirhophus (Stegosaurus)
-- Iguanodon (replacing Euoplocephalus; like the euplo, it doesn't actually appear in the story)
-- Manospondylus (Tyrannosaurus; it's commonly called just a dryptosaur in the story since, in this timeline, Dryptosaurus is discovered earlier and becomes the archetypal tyrannosaur instead)
-- Massospondylus (replacing Hypsilophodon)
-- Psittacosaurus (replacing Othnielia; you could also consider it a reference to the ride  )
-- Santanadactylus (replacing Cearadactylus; this is actually the only one i'm still unsure about, so if anyone thinks it should go back to being a cearadactyl, feel free to try to convince me)
-- Troodon (replacing Dilophosaurus; while i plan on keeping it as troodon, i'm still not sure exactly what its gimmick is as the parallel to the dilo--any ideas?)



next task: determining which character from the first novel returns to replace the Malcolm analogue since i've decided he dies in this one in no uncertain terms

just a small little update. i think i finally found a satisfactory replacement for Dilophosaurus in this alternate JP canon: Ornitholestes, mainly because it comes from roughly the same time and place, has an unassuming appearance but a fossil-based unique trait with its nose horn sorta paralleling the dilo's crests (before anyone says anything, remember: this is supposed to be an alternate JP written at the same time as in real-life, so the nose horn hadn't been disproven yet), and is similarly-sized to the film version and, in the novel, will re-implement the idea of it being a small pack rather than just one from when it was Troodon.

i'm also working on a general idea for what JPOG looks like in this timeline, mainly for completion--if possible, my hope is to actually defictionalize that particular part of it with a JPOG mod presenting it as if it were the game from this alternate timeline, with world-appropriate grammar and name changes and everything (it's not stated in what i've posted, but i'm taking linguistic changes into account for this where our English is called Anglish and some words are replaced--you may have noticed schirm instead of screen in the excerpt i posted before). i'm wrestling with ideas for it, part of the trouble being that it comes out at the same time as it did in our world and there were two more films that i haven't written anything for  if anyone has ideas as to what the alternate TLW and JP/// could look like, i'd like to hear them

I love what you're doing here man, keep it up!

Just read most of everything you've posted so far; have to say, I'm very impressed. The changes you made to the dinosaur species list are quite refreshing, yet are still appropriate. I can tell you obviously put a lot of research into this project. For now I don't have any suggestions for what you could try next. But this was excellent. I enjoyed reading the whole thing. Well done, and keep it up!

yeah, i decided to base the species list on those mentioned in The Dinosaur Heresies since that was probably one of the books Crichton himself used in researching for the real book, and cross-referenced it with a Dougal Dixon book on dinosaurs from 1993 to get ideas for the alternate film, using commonly-known ones from the period it would've been written in rather than just arbitrarily including whatever obscure species i wanted, especially if some species weren't known before it would've been written (no sense in including Giganotosaurus in the original alternate novel, for example, since it was discovered in 1995)

that said, i AM considering having Giganotosaurus in the alternate film canon as a replacement for the Spinosaurus, partly as an homage to Dino Crisis

took me another twenty days, but i think i've finally got an interesting change to the film in this timeline that could affect the rest of film series

based one of the earliest scripts for the first film, the character of John Columbus (the alternate Ian Malcolm) is omitted and his general role, mainly as a source of snark and philosophical discussions, is transferred to Alain Legrand (alternate Grant). in exchange, though, some of Malcolm's roles--namely as the guy who gets injured during the tour car attack--are transferred to Carpenter (Gennaro, whose first name i've decided to revert to Harold). this is where the interesting possibility comes up, and both options are compelling so i thought i'd put out some discussion for it--hopefully there'll be some input  

for the alternate The Lost World, both the novel and the film, should Malcolm's role be taken on by Legrand or Carpenter? the former could make more sense since he was always a major character, but the latter would be interesting because it's completely unexplored since Gennaro dies before TLW in both canons. though another alternative could be to bring back Muldoon as well, depending on if he survives the the alternate film as well

i've finally started working on a summary of the alternate TLW novel. like with the JP1 novel in thsi timeline, it'll mostly be a find-replace version of the original, but i've already decided on one big change for it

Spoiler:

that aside, i'd also like some peer input on some replacement names. like with the very first version of this when it was "Pleistocene Park", i want to come up with alternate names for characters that i'd left in before. part of this is because i kinda want to keep it open to actually publish this someday--explicitly as an homage to the original novels and marketed as such--possibly under the title Loiressique Park (alternate name for the Jurassic as a geological period in this timeline) and to that end want to at least consider original names for all the characters. i arbitrarily decided that Hammond and Muldoon would keep their names but am now looking into possibilities. i've only got one possible alternate name for Hammond so far--Jason Burnham (i don't want to reuse the original name from when it was Pleistocene Park, Jason Breitbarth, just to completely disassociate it with Breitbart the alt-right news group, though now that i think about it Hammond is a more villainous jerkass in the novel, so...) but i have alot more possibilities for alt!Muldoon, partly depending on what i decide for his ethnicity. if he's non-European, then could be ethnically Arabic with the name Tariq Zaman (from the original Pleistocene Park draft--the idea then was that the park was on a Middle Eastern plateau instead of an island) or could have one of many different names if he's ethnically European like the "real" Muldoon, but i can't decide on which  i've put the names in the following spoiler box:

Spoiler:

with all that said, i'm open to suggestions not just for character names but for anything else for this, too  to give some incentive, i've already decided that the alternate Jurassic Park /// is replaced by The Extinction: Jurassic Park 3 based on an earlier draft of the script, and i'll be basing the alternate first film on one of the earlier drafts of that one, too, omitting alt!Malcolm and having alt!Gennaro survive

i've hit writer's block with the summary of the alternate TLW novel, but decided to try determining the species list for the alternate TLW movie instead. instead of "just" using the same process as before, i decided to actually base it in part on the Lost World exercise from vanilla JPOG, partly since my initial idea for the alternate species list for JP1 had been to base it on Jurassic Classic (expanding it a bit to include both Hell Creek sites to give it an even 15 and add in the two on-screen dinos that were missing). i'd like some input for amending the species list, though, so that it meshes with both the alternate first film and the real-world second film. basically, what i have so far for the alive and on-screen species list is:

• Albertosaurus > i wasn't sure what to replace it with, but an idea came to me as i was typing: Cryolophosaurus!  though it doesn't make as much internal sense because, in-universe, InGen would've stopped cloning them by the time it was discovered/described, i think it fits pretty well as a big theropod, though not as big as Tyrannosaurus, and plays well into the joke from TLW of "The one with the big red horn! The pompadour! Elvis!"
  
• Ankylosaurus > might keep this one, but i dunno--i think Stegosaurus still makes more sense since it's so well-known and, potentially, wouldn't have been represented in alt!JP1 like in the real-world movie; it'd fill the same role as the stegos in the real movie in any case, which is another potential point against it. of course, a more obscure thyreophoran could be used instead--Gastonia or Polacanthus comes to mind
  
• Corythosaurus > Iguanodon, no question. while i've said before that i'm using Iguanodon in place of Parasaurolophus, if the cory were used in place of anything it would be the para, and i've decided that, no matter what, Iguanodon is present on-screen in every alternate JP film here
  
• Gallimimus > Hypsilophodon, in accordance with the decision that the gallis in the alt!JP1 are replaced with hypsys
  
• Homalocephale > i'm thinking this'll be an "extra" dino not really matching with one seen in teh film, unless you count the "unknown marginocephalian" from the roundup scene; i'm thinking it'll be replaced by either Leptoceratops or Protoceratops
  
• Pachycephalosaurus > retained
  
• Styracosaurus > Triceratops
  
• Tyrannosaurus > retained no matter what
  
• Velociraptor > Allosaurus, as will be the case in all other JP media here; remember, this isn't the allo at full size, it's just slightly taller than a human and 25ft long
  

with that list essentially established, Compsognathus and Pteranodon would still appear in this as well; alternatively, the compys could be replaced by Archaeopteryx, partly to recycle an earlier idea i had where the compys in the novels are replaced by archies to mix things up, but that actually depends on an out-of-universe factor: would fully-feathered and convincing Archaeopteryx as both a practical and CGI effect even be possible in 1997? because i remember reading that they'd intended for the baby rex to have a coat of feathers but left that out because they couldn't get it right

another bit of an update in terms of developing the setting and some worldbuilding and devising the species lists. jumping ahead a bit, i've decided what process i'll use determining the Jurassic World species list, using JPOG for inspiration again, but i'm still working on the list itself. 

i have a more significant development for the alternate JP///, though: i'd been considering replacing the spino with Giganotosaurus (partly based on Dino Crisis) but now i've all but decided on a different giant theropod--Deinocheirus. before anyone says anything, i know perfectly well that Deinocheirus was a giant ornithomimosaur and not a "traditional" theropod like a tyrannosaur, but remember: in-universe, the film would've been made in 2001, several years before it was determined what it really is. because of that, Deinocheirus is basically treated as a proto-Indominus and is visualized as essentially being a giant herrerasaur on steroids since, iirc, that was one of the only ideas as to what it looked like with only the arms to go on.

with that in mind, i'm not really satisfied with using Deinocheirus instead. Giganotosaurus is still tempting, though seems a bit cliche, but i also don't want to just reuse the spino. thoughts?

i unfortunately haven't made much progress in writing any more for the alternate TLW novel, but i did come up with one thing for it. see, i got Lego Jurassic World last week and have really taken a liking to replaying all the story mode missions with Muldoon. i've mentioned previously that, for this alternate TLW, Muldoon is the returning character from the first novel instead of Malcolm, who definitively dies in this timeline, and decided to use Lego Jurassic World for inspiration regarding that. after completing the game on the first save file and getting near to 100%, i decided to unlock every single character and use whichever ones were randomly assigned to me while playing as Muldoon for the TLW missions as a basis for alternate TLW novel characters (i made a second file for it because for some reason Mr. DNA was assigned to every single mission, which doesn't help me at all for this idea). one in particular kept getting assigned to these missions, mostly the later ones: Tim Murphy. so that led me to the idea that maybe an older Tim returns in TLW as well. remember that in the novel canon Tim is the older sibling so after the timeskip between the two novels he'd be in his late teens. thoughts?

with all that said, i think i'll go and do another run on game's story mode and this time not unlock every single character before deciding on who to use for inspiration since it might be easier to blend them together that way, also just to weigh my options.

Implying using Mr. DNA as a main character is a bad idea? I could totally see him fighting raptors