The Jurassic Park Timeline Explained
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be explaining the Jurassic Park timeline.
For this video, we’re going to look at the franchise, including the main movies, tie-in shorts, and the canonical TV show. The events of the Michael Crichton novels and any video game, theme park ride, and other extra-canonical materials can be considered extinct. Be warned, as we'll be spoiling everything leading up to “Jurassic World Dominion.”
What’s your favorite “Jurassic Park” property? Let us know in the comments!
Our journey begins during the final days of the dinosaurs, about sixty-five million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. A prologue to “Jurassic World Dominion” was shown in theaters before IMAX showings of “F9.” It was originally intended to be included in the film, but has since been cut. The short featured a clash of titans with a Giganotosaurus coming into conflict with a Tyrannosaurus rex, leading to the latter’s demise. As it laid dead, a seemingly innocuous mosquito landed on the T.Rex and sucked a bit of its blood before flying off.
Let’s forward to the Holocene epoch, specifically 1993. Entrepreneur John Hammond and his company InGen had discovered a way to clone long extinct dinosaurs using DNA taken from fossilized mosquitoes. Hammond was attempting to open a destination on the island of Isla Nublar, near Costa Rica, where visitors would get to see real dinosaurs. These clones included Triceratops, Velociraptors, Dilophosaurus, and of course a T. Rex. After a worker was killed by a raptor, a group of experts including Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm were brought in to verify the safety of the park. Hammond also invited his young grandchildren. Unfortunately, corporate espionage, breeding dinosaurs, and a storm led to disaster. A number of the clones escaped, and killed multiple people. Any plans to open the park were abandoned.
Four years later, the events of “The Lost World'' took place. Things were kicked into motion when a young tourist was injured after her family landed their yacht on Isla Sorna. This second island was where the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar were bred. InGen ousted Hammond as CEO after the incident, replacing him with his nephew Peter Ludlow. A discredited Ian Malcolm, who told the truth about Nublar, was recruited by Hammond to lead a scientific expedition to Isla Sorna. He agreed after learning his girlfriend Dr. Sarah Harding was there. Malcolm’s team, which included his daughter and Nick Van Owen, attempted to study the dinosaurs in their “natural environment.” Meanwhile, the rival InGen team sought to capture them for financial gain. After more calamity and death, the teams had no choice but to rely on each other to escape the island. But InGen stole a T. Rex and brought it back to San Diego, where it caused chaos and destruction. The animal is eventually subdued safely, exposing the truth, but not before Ludlow’s death.
In 2001, “Jurassic Park III” began with the young Eric Kirby parasailing with his mom’s boyfriend Ben off of Isla Sorna, crash landing on the island. We later learned that Ben didn’t survive. Two months later Alan Grant, doing his best to move forward, was recruited by a well-off couple to fly over Isla Sorna as a guide. Needing the funding they promised, he agreed and took his sidekick Billy on the journey. However, the duo eventually told Grant they were actually Eric’s divorced parents, Paul and Amanda Kirby. They weren’t rich, and were leading a rescue mission for their son and Ben. It was too late to undo the damage by then, since their plane was destroyed by a Spinosaurus. Plus, the mercenaries and pilot who were with them were ultimately killed. The group was also chased across the island by the Spinosaurus, and a pack of Velociraptors, though Grant thankfully encountered Eric along the way. Alan and the Kirbys made it to the coast. The Marines and Navy, who were called by Ellie Sattler, were there to save them, just as they had already done for Billy.
Unbeknownst to those adventuring on Isla Sorna, there were things in motion on Isla Nublar. In the intervening decades, construction on a new theme park had begun. By 2015, when “Jurassic World'' was set, it had been open for a while. Claire Dearing, Jurassic World’s operation’s manager, welcomed her nephews Zach and Gray to the park. All the while, she readied a new exhibit, the genetically modified Indominus rex. Unsurprisingly, things quickly took a turn for the worse. The Indominus escaped while Zach and Gray were in the park. So Claire and Owen Grady, a raptor trainer with whom she shared a personal history, had to lead a rescue. Also in the mix was the militaristic Vic Hoskins, who wanted to use the dinosaurs’ violence for personal gain. In the end, people died and Hoskins was eaten. But before the park was closed, the Indominus was stopped by Owen’s Raptor Blue and the T. Rex from the first film in a memorable finale.
At the same time that the events of “Jurassic World” were taking place, the first season of “Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous'' played out. A group of dino-obsessed teenagers' dream vacation quickly turned into a nightmare. After winning a contest, they received a chance to stay at Camp Cretaceous on Isla Nublar. With the escaped Indomnius wreaking havoc, the teens had to make their way across an island in chaos and were ultimately stranded. The following seasons followed their attempts to escape and return to the outside world.
After the kids got off the island, Owen and Claire were recruited for a rescue mission in 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.” The reason was that a previously unmentioned volcano threatened to erupt and kill the dinosaur population of Isla Nublar, including Blue. However, Owen and Clair were betrayed by some of their team, who intended to sell the “saved” dinosaurs on the black market. The animals were transported to an estate where Hammond’s old colleague Benjamin Lockwood and his granddaughter Maisie lived. The film then became a bit of a slasher flick, with an even further engineered Indominus, named the Indoraptor, chasing our heroes. Blue saved Clair, Maisie, and Owen, and it was revealed that Maisie was actually a clone of the woman she believed to be her mother, Lockwood’s daughter. And with the dinosaurs trapped and about to die from poison gas, Maisie set her fellow clones free.
“Battle at Big Rock” was a short film that picked up a year after “Fallen Kingdom,” with the liberated dinosaurs in their new environment. Set in a fictitious National Park in Northern California, a family was enjoying a pleasant day in nature. That pleasantness was quickly interrupted as they were approached by a young Nasutoceratops and its mother. Things intensified further when an Allosaurus attacked the baby dinosaur, leading to a clash with the mom. The Allosaurus eventually tried to eat the human family, who were only saved by a well-placed crossbow bolt. The short concluded with other encounters between dinosaurs and humans, indicating that a new age had truly dawned.
This will all come to a head in “Jurassic World Dominion,” the grand conclusion to the franchise’s second trilogy. Ian Malcolm, Ellie Sattler, and Alan Grant return, joining Owen, Claire and, of course, the dinosaurs in what’s sure to be a grand spectacle.
