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Great article! This will be helpful in future Isla Sorna versions

(Apparently I posted this in the Hammond's Script topic...)

Thanks codemunk3y.

Yeah, considering the trailers also have a Jurassic Park banner, I'd say that's a sound theory.

New blog entry. Trying to expand the language a bit.

https://thetrespasserfrontier.tumblr.co ... tion-fleet

An interesting post there. I never really considered much about how the actual infrastructure of Isla Sorna was meant to work, but I guess now that I think about it the developers did a good job of imagining something fairly realistic, considering the shape of the island. One thing I want to note about this kind of post is that without having some kind of foreknowledge about the things you're discussing, I could see this post being rather confusing. You might try explaning things a bit better before getting into your more "story-like" discussion in order to establish a bit of background.

Thanks!

Hmmm, background build up. That sounds like a good idea. I'll see what I can do.

Nice recent post!

Brachiosaur – oldest of our re-creations by 50 million years. The only true Jurassic native.

I always found that line very strange. Brachiosaurus, stegosaurus, allosaurus, apatosaurus, and camarasaurus all lived at the same place and time; the Morrison formation. Of that list, only 2 are seen alive in the game, brac and steg, but we can also see the skulls of camarasaurus and allosaurus and there is an unused voice line where Hammond mentions apatosaurus. Plus that's not even including dilophosaurus and compsognathus which appear in the movies, but not Trespasser. Brachiosaurus isn't the oldest and it isn't the only Jurassic dinosaur they've re-created.

Oh, thanks for reminding me Nick. Here is the new blog entry, concerning Dinos in Tres -
https://thetrespasserfrontier.tumblr.co ... n-to-clone
I totally forgot about the Apatosaurus reference. Can you find the line which has it?

Hammond wrote:Waking to the smell of the jungle, the distant call of an Apatosaur.

I think it might be one of the lines for which we don't have a recording.

Yeah, unrecorded.

VH66 - As I write this, tiles are cracking, smeared with windblown dirt and animal tracks. Thick tree roots are pushing up through the asphalt. The island settles itself, beginning to erase all trace of us...

N/A - Waking to the smell of the jungle, the distant call of an Apatosaur.

VH67 - On the plain the heat was extraordinary, like a solid wall.

I always felt that the developers used the dino bones that they did because they looked cool more than they really considered the Hammond dialogue, but nonetheless I'm still intrigued as to what exactly happened to the allosaurs and brontosaurs that apparently once lived on the island.
One interesting thing to note is that Hammond (and most other people at the time) would probably have considered apatosaurus and brontosaurus the same species as this was the common belief until quite recently, however they are now considered two seperate species again. So the species which the skull belonged to was in fact brontosaurus, which would have been called apatosaurus at the time, hence the confusion.

I believe TI is right. I am at the moment, slowly reading the first Jurassic Park novel. I am just as they arrive to the park, and I will quote what the novel say:
"The animals in the mist were perfect apatosaurus, medium-size sauropods. His stunned mind made academic associations: North American herbivores, late Jurassic horizon. Commonly called brontosaurus."

Interestingly enough, it is possible to identify some of the other bones in Trespasser, thanks to the material names in the MAX file we have for some of the bones:
"Pdinodorsal00-00" -> Stego Plate
"Pdinotailbone00-00" - > Bronto Spine
"Pdinocervical00-00", "Pdinoriblarge00-00" - > Trike Bone Marrow (Not actually from the Trike, but it seems the dead trike model were made first and then re-used here)

however they are now considered two seperate species again.

Huh! Source?

This 2015 paper is the one that comes to the conclusion that brontosaurus is valid again:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4393826/

So I have a theory on brontosauruses...


And now for something completely different: a small theory as to what might have happened to the brontosaurus and allosaurus which once lived on Isla Sorna. There's a good chance that, considering the small size of the island, there isn't enough plant life or vegetation mass around to sustain multiple populations of large herbivores like brachiosaurus and brontosaurus together. Thus one of them out-did the other (brachiosaurus likely winning the survival battle by having a longer neck to reach the highest branches). As for allosaurus, there are already two larger carnivores on the island - so the more adapted (T. Rex, albertosaurus and velociraptor evolved after allosaurus, later down the line of theropods) carnivores ended up beating all of the allosaurs to the punch, and ultimately they were unable to survive. There is only so much prey for them, after all, although Trespasser shows a ridiculous carnivore-to-herbivore ratio which is completely unrealistic, of course - I believe that in reality the ratio is something like 10kg for every carnivore? This graph illustrates that somewhat:

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

So, in the end, it seems those two could very well have just lost in a game of evolution and survival. But that's only my theory.

Based on the carnivores-herbivores ratio, it seems like the entire island's dinosaur population is on the verge of collapse. There are practically no prey animals for the carnivores to eat. How many herbivores are left? 2-4 trikes, 2-4 paras, 0-3 stegos, and 4 brachs? I don't see how that would be enough to feed 4-7 tyrannosaurs for very long. Sure, they could eat the raptors, but Anne wiped most of them out.

I think the apatosaurus/brontosaurus/camarasaurus were hunted to extinction. They are smaller than brachiosaurus and had no natural armor or weapons to fight back against the tyrannosaurs.

It's also strange that compsognatus are alluded to with Cathy's beach, but none are seen. Perhaps they were hunted to extinction by the raptors, or maybe they are just really good at hiding.