The opening scene of the film tells us that Isla Sorna is located 87 miles west of Isla Nublar.

Sorna is Spanish for "sarcasm", so Isla Sorna is, apparently, Sarcasm Island!

The scene of the family on the beach that encounters the little compys originally appeared in the Jurassic Park novel. It does not appear in the Lost World novel.

The wealthy father and mother on the beach of Isla Sorna are enjoying a bottle of Perrier-Joulet French champagne, an expensive brand. I can't make out the date on the bottle, but I'm sure it was a good year.

The father is reading a copy of the Financial Times newspaper. This is a real world business newspaper based out of London, England. However, the paper is printed on salmon colored paper, not white as shown here. The back page of the issue he is reading has the headline "Ghana's Kofi Annan to become UN chief"; this would seem to indicate that the current day is probably December 18, 1996 since Annan was confirmed as UN Secretary-General on December 17 (he assumed the office on January 1, 1997).

Malcolm mentions the Washington Post and the Skeptical Inquirer. The Washington Post is the largest and oldest newspaper in Washington, D.C. The Skeptical Inquirer is a magazine dedicated to the critical investigation of claims of the paranormal or fringe science. From Malcolm's comments, the publication denounced his claims of cloned dinosaurs in a failed theme park when he went public with his story; this is basically the magazine's modus operandi towards fringe claims.

Malcolm accuses Hammond's nephew, Peter Ludlow, of having twisted the facts concerning the deaths of three people. He must be referring to the deaths of Dennis Nedry, Donald Gennaro, and Robert Muldoon (although the Topps JP comic books tell us that Muldoon survived his seeming death at the raptors' claws in Jurassic Park; we could perhaps imagine that he died in the unpublished conclusion of the "green flame" story some time after "No-Man's Land").

Hammond says that after the accident in Jurassic Park, Hurricane Clarissa wiped out InGen's facility on Isla Sorna. This is a fictional hurricane, as Clarissa is not a name that has ever been used by the National Hurricane Center.

Hammond quotes Malcolm has having said, "Life will find a way." Malcolm's exact words (in Jurassic Park) were "Life finds a way."

When Hammond tells him about Site B, Malcolm wants to know how the dinosaurs were able to survive since they were lysine deficient and Hammond responds that's one of the questions he wants the his team to answer. As previously discussed in the Jurassic Park study, all members of the animal kingdom are naturally incapable of producing lysine in the first place! All animals must obtain it from food sources, just as the team discovers is the case with the dinosaurs later on in the film.

At 10:12 on the DVD, on Hammond's desk in his bedroom, there is a photograph of Tim and Lex.

At 10:38 on the DVD, a map of Isla Sorna appears on Hammond's computer screen. It appears quite different from the map seen in the novel.
Isla Sorna map in movie	Isla Sorna map in novel

The dinosaur drawings that appear on Hammond's computer to show each species' habitat on the island appear to be the ones done by the production's concept artist Crash McCreery.

When Hammond mentions wanting to send a team to study the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna, Malcolm suddenly jumps to the conclusion that he wants four people. Maybe a line of dialog was cut from the film in which Hammond mentions the number first?

At 12:12 on the DVD, the blue-jeaned legs of one of the film crew can be seen in the reflection of the mirror on Hammond's bedside end table.

The dialog between Hammond and Malcolm seems to indicate that it has been four years since the accident at Jurassic Park (Sarah also confirms this later in the film). In the novel, it is six years.

Notice throughout the scene with Hammond that there are several plants and bunches of flowers with cards in his bedroom, obviously "get well" gifts from people regarding whatever it is that has him mostly bedridden at this time.

Hammond mentions that Sarah thinks she's Dian Fossey. Fossey was an American zoologist who studied gorilla populations in the wild for 18 years.

Here in the movie, the expedition's middle-aged field equipment expert, Eddie Carr, is a combination of two characters in the novel: Eddie Carr, a younger man with a natural adeptness with technology, and Dr. Jack Thorne, a former professor of applied engineering at Stanford University and current owner of Thorne Mobile Field Systems. Thorne does not appear in the movie. (Carr is also depicted as a young man in the comic book adaptation.)

At 15:47 on the DVD, Nick Van Owen says he worked on Nightline and does volunteer work for Greenpeace. Nightline is a nightly, late-night news program on the ABC television network. Greenpeace is a worldwide civilian organization funded by donations that works on and supports environmental causes.

When Nick calls the upcoming expedition to Isla Sorna a wild goose chase, Malcolm tells him, "Where you're going is the only place in the world where the geese chase you!" Besides being a humorous way of turning the old cliché around on itself, it may also be a subtle reminder that modern birds are now largely believed to have evolved from dinosaurs.

Malcolm's daughter Kelly complains that the woman he wants to leave her with while he's away on the rescue operation is a "troglodyte" who doesn't even have Sega. "Troglodyte" is a popular generic term for a caveman or -woman. As for Sega, given the shooting and release dates of the film, she is probably referring to the Sega Saturn game console, released in 1995. 

The backlit wall map that Kelly looks at in the trailer at 19:31 on the DVD shows the coastline of Costa Rica. The islands in the bottom left corner are Las Cinco Muertes (the Five Deaths) mentioned later in the film as the expedition approaches Isla Sorna by boat.

The five islands of Las Cinco Muertes are Isla Matanceros (roughly Slaughter Island), Isla Muerta (Death Island), Isla Sorna (Sarcasm Island), Isla Tacano (Mean Island), and Isla Pena (Pain Island). Ironically, the most dangerous island, due to the presence of dinosaurs, Isla Sorna, has the least menacing name!

Eddie says the tranquilizer darts are loaded with the enhanced venom of Conus purpurascens, the South Sea cone shell. This is a sea snail which is venomous.

At 20:42 on the DVD, Eddie has unpacked a Lindstradt air rifle for delivering the tranquilizer darts to dinosaur specimens. Lindstradt is a fictional company invented by Crichton for the Lost World novel. In "Jurassic Time" it is revealed that Lindstradt is a Swedish company.

At 20:59 on the DVD, we can see that the expedition's mobile lab vehicle was manufactured by Fleetwood, which is known as a maker of motor homes.

At 21:54 on the DVD, Eddie is using a Marksman GPS to track Sarah's satellite phone. Marksman appears to be a fictional company.

Sarah tells the others they are there to observe and document, not interact. Oh, yeah? Then why did she pet the baby Stegosaurus? (The comic book adaptation wisely omits this questionable scene.)

Malcolm calls Sarah out on the very notion of not interacting with the dinosaurs. He cites the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, saying, "That which you study, you also change." More specifically, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that in quantum mechanics certain pairs of properties can not be known simultaneously with precision. For example, with an electron you could measure it's precise velocity or position but not both at the same time. It is part of the nature of quantum mechanics. Malcolm's statement actually sounds closer to the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment which demonstrates, in a large scale manner, the indefinite state of two subatomic particles that can be in one of two states, but which are in neither state until it is measured (observed).

At 35:35 on the DVD, during the opening of Roland's safari, he is holding a pamphlet about the island's dinosaurs. The cover image is a Tyrannosaurus rex drawing by the production's concept artist Crash McCreery. A few seconds later, he is flipping through the pages looking for "Friar Tuck" (a Pachycephalosaurus) and we see the page for Pteranodon.

During Roland's safari stampede of dinosaurs are seen Parasaurolophus, Pachycephalosaurus, Gallimimus, and Mamenchisaurus. 

Also during the safari, we are introduced to paleontologist Robert Burke, who is loosely based on real world paleontologist Robert Bakker. (Strangely, in IDW's JP comic book mini-series Redemption, another Robert Bakker simulacrum is introduced in the character of Dr. Backer!)
Robert Burke	Robert Bakker

At 36:34 on the DVD, a Pachycephalosaurus rams a Jeep door and the impact knocks the occupant out the opposite door!

Roland refers to the Parasaurolophus as "Elvis", describing the creature's horn as a "pompadour".

The animal-capture safari scene is very similar to a scene in the 1962 film Hatari!, starring John Wayne as a big game hunter who captures African animals alive for shipping back to zoos in America. In fact, in the book The Making of Jurassic Park (the first film in the series) Spielberg comments, "What I was after was kind of like Nova meets Explorer, with a little bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws mixed in. But if I had to aspire to a particular movie, it would be Hatari. To me, that was the high-water mark of man versus the natural in a feature film."

Burke incorrectly identifies the compys as Compsognathus triassicus. The actual genus/species name is Compsognathus longipes. The triassicus species name belongs to Procompsognathus triassicus. He also incorrectly indentifies the person and year (Fraas, 1913) for Compsognathus (Fraas discovered Procompsognathus that year), though he got the location right (Bavaria, Germany). Compsognathus was discovered by Joseph Orbendorfer in the 1850s. (In the novel, it is Procompsognathus triassicus which inhabit the island).

During his video presentation to the InGen board of directors at 45:00 on the DVD, Ludlow shows some concept paintings of the San Diego Jurassic Park.

While trying to call the boat back to pick them up, Ian says its name is Mar del Plata. This translates as Silver Sea. (It is also the name of a city in Argentina.)

At 50:52 on the DVD, while they are setting the fractured bone on the baby T. rex's leg, Nick refers to Sarah as Dr. Quinn. This is a reference to the 1993-1998 CBS TV series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Sarah gives the baby rex an injection of amoxicillin. This is a real world antibiotic.

During the attack by the tyrannosaurs against the trailer when they knock it off the cliff, we never actually see the beasts doing it! The closest we get is a shot of their heads outside the windows as they break the glass. It would have been neat to see some CGI of the two dinosaurs knocking the trailer around.

When the two parent tyrannosaurs get their child back from the humans, they seem to go back into the jungle to hide the youngster somewhere and then return for revenge against the humans, knocking the trailer halfway off the cliff. But then they disappear again for some reason, allowing Eddie to attempt a rescue of his friends in the trailer. Then the two dinosaurs come back again to finish the job! But why did they leave it half-finished in the first place? (The novelization sort of gives an explanation, saying that the mother picked the baby up in her mouth and placed it in a tree while she and papa went back to kick to the shit out of the trailer; the comic book adaptation suggests that the two tyrannosaurs were probably brought back by the engine roar of Eddie's AAV.)

At 1:04:21 on the DVD, a box of some kind seems to fly out of nowhere to land behind Eddie's vehicle as he's trying to tow the trailer back from the cliff's edge.

In my study of "Heirs to the Thunder" Part 2, I commented that the issue's scene of Dr. Gustavus' Quonset hut sliding off the muddy cliffside in the rain down into the ocean below is very similar to the scene in the The Lost World film in which the high-tech "motor home" meets its end in nearly the same manner. This issue was released in 1995, while the film was in 1997. Was Spielberg inspired by this scene in the comic?

Malcolm wisecracks to Ludlow, "If five years of work and 100 miles of electrified fence couldn't prepare the other island, did you think that, what, a couple dozen Marlboro Men were going to make a difference here?" "Marlboro Men" is a reference to the Marlboro Man of the world-famous advertising campaign for Marlboro cigarettes used from 1954-1999, in which tough, rugged men contended with the outdoors with a cigarette in hand or mouth.

Roland recognizes Nick Van Owen and says, "You're that Earth First! bastard, aren't you?" Earth First! is a worldwide environmental advocacy group (some would say radical in their agenda).

At 1:08:10 on the DVD, Ludlow briefly informs us that the InGen facility on the island still has power because it runs on geothermal energy (heat from within the Earth).

Roland points out that predators don't hunt when they're not hungry, so the tyrannosaurs won't be hunting them immediately for food, because they just ate Eddie. But it seems to me that half a human each would not be much meat to a T. rex! They may still be hungry.

When Nick asks him why he wants to kill a tyrannosaur, Roland replies, "Remember that chap about 20 years ago? I forget his name. Climbed Everest without any oxygen. Came down nearly dead. When they asked him, they said, 'Why did you go up there to die?' He said, 'I didn't. I went up there to live.'" Roland is probably referring to Reinhold Messner, who climbed Everest solo without supplemental oxygen in 1980.

At 1:12:46 on the DVD, Nick refers to Roland as Ahab. This is a reference to Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's classic 1851 novel Moby Dick, who was obsessed with killing the white whale Moby Dick, as Roland is focused on bringing down a T. rex.

At 1:20:40 on the DVD, Sarah and Kelly are sleeping in a tent with some left over graham crackers and Krackel candy bars sitting between them. But at 1:21:26, the food is suddenly sitting off on Kelly's side, not in the middle! Krackel is a candy brand manufactured by Hershey. It contains chocolate and crisped rice and is currently available only as a miniature.

From 1:23:24-1:23:27 is a scene depicting Malcolm hiding under a fallen tree as Ludlow's men run and jump over it to escape from the T. rex. The scene looks very similar to the one in Jurassic Park of Grant, Tim, and Lex hiding under a fallen tree as a herd of Gallimimus run and jump over it to escape from a T. rex!

   After finding that Nick has sabotaged the bullets in his elephant gun, Roland breaks out the Lindstradt air rifle and tranquilizer darts. The warning on the tranq box reads:

WARNING

VETERINARY TRANQUILZERS CONTAIN

CONCENTRATED NERVE AGENTS

USE EXTREME CAUTION!

IF INGESTED CONSULT POISON CONTROL CENTER IMMEDIATELY.

DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING. NO KNOWN ANTIDOTE.

   It is true that their is no specific antidote known for the toxin of Conus purpurascens, though there is treatment in the form of respiratory support through the insertion of a breathing tube into the larynx.

The scene of the T. rex attempting to lick the humans out of the waterfall cave with its tongue is borrowed from the first Jurassic Park novel by Crichton (pages 294-298).

At 1:25:41 on the DVD, a snake crawls down the collar of Burke's shirt and he panics. The snake looks similar to the venomous coral snake, but from the coloration of the banding on it, it is most likely a harmless milk snake. Additionally, coral snakes are indigenous only to North America, while milk snakes are found in North, Central, and South Americas.

The graveyard of gigantic dinosaur bones that the team passes through near the InGen facility is presumably the "dinosaur graveyard" depicted as the raptor habitat in the novel (Sixth Configuration).

The door of the main InGen facility on Isla Sorna is similar to the "egg" design of the one at the visitors center on Isla Nublar.
InGen facility on Isla Sorna	Visitors center on Isla Nublar

When he arrives at the InGen facility and radios to be pulled out, Nick says they are located at 9.58 N, 85 S. So, this is where Isla Sorna is located. On Google Maps, we can see that this is in the Golfo de Nicoya of Costa Rica, roughly ten miles from the Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve. Of course, there is no real world island (or island chain) there. It also does not seem to jive with the statement at the beginning of the film that Isla Sorna is 87 miles west of Isla Nublar.

After walking through the skeletal ribcage of a gigantic sauropod at 1:31:50 on the DVD, Malcolm, Sarah, and Kelly walk under a constructed pipeline of some kind that looks ironically similar to the giant ribcage.

As Ludlow is delivering his speech about the revival of InGen and the momentary arrival by ship of the T. rex at the port of San Diego, at the right-hand side of the screen, at 1:41:41 on the DVD, we can see a large flatbed trailer that is still in the finishing stage of welding huge, thick bars over it; this must be the trailer on which Ludlow is planning to transport the adult rex through San Diego to InGen's Jurassic Park facility in the city. At 1:44:12, we get a full shot of the truck and trailer, just before the ship strikes the harbor at high speed.

At 1:42:57 on the DVD, we hear the ship carrying the T. rex being called the S.S. Venture. The name is a reference to the ship in the 1933 classic film King Kong, also called the S.S. Venture.

The slaughter of the crewmembers of the Venture has never made much sense to me. Presumably, it was the adult T. rex who caused all the carnage. But how did he escape from confinement? The novel offers no answers because the San Diego scenes do not appear there at all, nor even in the screenplay; this part of the film was a concoction by Steven Spielberg at the last minute, during shooting of the film. Looking closely at the scenes of Ludlow, Malcolm, and Sarah as they board the Venture to investigate the crash, it appears that there is some twisted wreckage and debris on the deck of the ship, possibly caused by the rex during a rampage (1:44:51 on the DVD). Then we see human remains in the wheelhouse (1:45:21), but how did it get there...how could an adult T. rex get inside the still intact wheelhouse to kill someone? And the baby rex does not yet seem to know how to hunt. We then see the adult rex's containment cage on the deck of the ship (1:45:23), looking as if it might be slightly damaged, so it seems that the rex woke up from its tranquilization and somehow tore free of its confinement (though the cage does not really appear damaged enough to allow escape). Then we see a dead man's hand clutching the control mechanism for the huge doors of the ship's cargo hold (1:45:44) and the doors are mostly closed but cycling slightly up and down; presumably the crewman, after the rex's escape and rampage, managed to trap it in the hold before dying. So, from the visual cues, we can sort of piece together what happened, but the scenario does not really hold together well; too many discrepancies remain.

At 1:46:08 on the DVD, the InGen security guard leaves bloody footprints as we walks the deck, having tracked through the carnage.

As the InGen personnel flee off the Venture from the T. rex at 1:46:39 on the DVD, many of them jump off the dock into the water to escape. The rex takes a midair snap at the last one as he jumps, but misses!

Also during the above mentioned scene, notice that one man trips and falls as he flees. He remains hunkered down as the rex passes overhead and he just misses getting stepped on at 1:46:42! 

At 1:46:58 on the DVD, it's ironic that the port sign says no animals beyond this point as the rex crashes through it, into San Diego.

The cityscape seen in the background at 1:47:18 on the DVD suggests that the InGen port is located roughly across the harbor from the San Diego Convention Center; the building with the strip of green neon light is the Westin Hotel--where I've stayed a number of times for the San Diego Comic-Con, held yearly at the convention center--and the tall building with the pyramidal top is the U.S. Bank building. But the graphic outline of the InGen dock (seen earlier at 1:42:51) does not conform to the harbor outline of that area in the real world.

At 1:47:26 on the DVD, Sarah is informed by an InGen man that Roland had shot the rex twice with carfentanil to tranquilize it and then it was given naltrexone on the ship when it stopped breathing. Both are real world drugs. Carfentanil is an opioid intended only for use in tranquilizing large animals. Naltrexone is an opioid receptor antagonist, which would halt the effect of the carfentanil on the tyrannosaur. This is what made the tyrannosaur wake up and, according to Sarah's comments, even put it in a narcoleptic state, making it a locomotive (which might explain how it was able to break free from the cage on deck).

The sign at 1:51:12 on the DVD appears to say "Jurassic Park San Diego".

At 1:51:16 on the DVD, a cord can be seen pulling down a container and a light stand as Sarah's car zooms into the Jurassic Park San Diego complex. But at 1:52:03, the light stand is back up again and the fallen container is missing!

The escaped tyrannosaur is seen rampaging down a street that crosses Cedar. There is an actual Cedar St. in San Diego, but the on-location filming of the scene actually took place in Burbank according to the "World of Jurassic Park" DVD extra.

The interior of a Blockbuster Video store is seen at 1:52:49 on the DVD. Blockbuster Video was, at the time, a chain of video rental stores in the U.S. and abroad, now out of business except for a handful of privately-owned franchised stores. The two movie standees seen here for King Lear starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack and the Beanstalks starring Robin Williams (it appears that Williams plays the giant) are not real films featuring these actors. King Lear is originally a play by William Shakespeare. Jack and the Beanstalk is an English fairy tale which has been printed in numerous versions by numerous authors; I'm not sure why the movie advertised in the standee should be titled in the plural.

As the camera pulls back in the scene above, many other movie posters and standees are seen. One is a poster for Creature from the Black Lagoon and another is a fake movie standee for Tsunami Sunrise starring Tom Hanks.

The license plate of the bus changes from when the T. rex slams into it to when it crashes through the video store door.

The crowd of people fleeing from the tyrannosaur at 1:53:00 on the DVD runs past a Fuddruckers. Fuddruckers is an American restaurant chain specializing in hamburgers.

The swarm of Asian men fleeing the tyrannosaur at 1:53:01 on the DVD is Spielberg's homage to the Japanese Godzilla films.

As the tyrannosaur munches on a pedestrian (actually screenwriter David Koepp!) at 1:53:19 on the DVD, we see a Starbucks Coffee and a Pacific Bell pay phone. World Gym is seen around the corner, up the next block.

At 1:53:40 on the DVD, the tyrannosaur trashes part of a Unocal 76 gas station. Unocal is now part of the Chevron Corporation.

Talk about rising gas prices! When Malcolm and Sarah pull into the Unocal 76 station, the price for regular unleaded gas is $1.09 per gallon. A few seconds later, as the tyrannosaur roars at them, the sign behind the beast says $1.15!

At 1:56:20 on the DVD, a warehouse on the waterfront says Southwest Marine. There are a number of businesses with that name, including in San Diego.

At 1:59:59 on the DVD, Malcolm, Sarah, and Kelly watch the CNN coverage of the Venture's return trip to Isla Sorna to take the papa and child tyrannosaurs back to their home. CNN (Cable News Network) is a worldwide cable news network. The anchorman, Bernard Shaw, was an actual CNN anchorperson at the time the film was shot.

Malcolm, Sarah, and Kelly are watching the coverage in what must be either Malcolm's or Sarah's apartment. We don't see much of it, but it seems to have a somewhat more masculine look than feminine, so I would guess it is Malcolm's pad.

At 2:01:33 on the DVD, CNN plays part of an interview with John Hammond. His name on the TV screen refers to him as Dr. John Hammond, so he presumably has a doctorate in some area of science (unless the "Dr." is an honorary title given to him for his accomplishments by an educational institution).

In his TV interview, Hammond mentions working with the Costa Rican Department of Biological Preserves to protect Isla Sorna and its animals. As far as I can tell, this department is fictional.

In the last shot of the movie, pterosaurs are seen flying free over Isla Sorna. What keeps them from just flying away to terrorize the mainland? In Jurassic Park III, it is implied that the pterosaurs are still trapped within the aviary (although in the book Survivor, Eric Kirby does encounter a loose pterodactyl on the island).

Notes from "The Making of The Lost World" (DVD extra)

In an early draft of the Lost World script, there was a scene in which our heroes are running from the raptors and they jump off a cliff to escape, activating a parachute-like pack from which springs hang glider wings. They escape the raptors only to be menaced by pterosaurs in the sky! It seems this idea was reworked for the aviary scene in Jurassic Park III.

Notes from the "World of Jurassic Park" (DVD extra)

I always wondered what species the saurpods in the round-up sequence of the film were supposed to be. They weren't brachiosaurs, but their necks seemed to be too long to be apatosaurs or similar sauropods. This DVD extra informs us that the beasts are a species of Mamenchisuaurus, which are known for their incredibly long necks.

Notes from The Lost World novel by Michael Crichton (The page numbers come from the 25th printing of the U.S. Ballantine Books paperback edition)

This novel seems to be a sort of "hybrid sequel" of both the Jurassic Park movie and novel. That is, the references in it seem to be a mix of events from both the JP novel and film.

The novel has an introduction called "Extinction at the K-T Boundary" on pages xi-xiv.

Much like the first novel was broken down into "iterations" instead of chapters, this one is broken down into "configurations". Each of these pseudo-chapters are accompanied by a graphical representation of Malcolm's narrative of the evolutionary "edge of chaos".

Page 1 describes Dr. Malcolm as being 40 years old at the time the book opens (about 6 years after the events in the first novel, Jurassic Park).

Also on page 1, Malcolm comments on the premature reports of his death. "I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country, but it turned out I was only slightly dead. The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you. So now I am back--in my next iteration, you might say." His first sentence here reminds me a bit of Mark Twain's famous quote, "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Malcolm's comment about his next iteration is a reference back to the 7 iterations (instead of chapters) of the original Jurassic Park novel.

Unlike in the movie, Malcolm uses a cane during much of the novel due to the serious injuries he suffered in Jurassic Park.

Page 2 states that chaos theory is now known as complexity theory. Doing some reading on complexity theory, it seems that it grew out of chaos theory but chaos theory still exists on its own. Complexity theory seems to be what Malcolm really believes in rather than that of chaos, particularly in regard to his discussions in this novel. Here, Malcolm, and complexity theory, tell us that complex systems, such as evolving ecologies, exist on the edge of chaos; this life on the edge of chaos is what forces life-forms to continuously adapt to their surroundings, to evolve.

On page 3, Malcolm mentions Avogadro's number and Planck's constant. Avogadro's number, named for Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro, is 6.02214179(30)×10²³ mol^-1, a way of defining the ratio of the number of atoms or molecules in a mole of a substance. Planck's constant is the physical constant of the sizes of quanta (a physical entity in an interaction) in quantum physics.

Page 5 mentions six shorthand names given to common evolutionary scenarios by the staff of SFI. Field of Bullets, Gambler's Ruin, Game of Life, Red Queen, and Black Noise are all real world evolutionary or mathematical hypotheses; several of these have subchapters named after them in the novel. "Lost World" is the only one that seems to have been made up by Crichton (inspired, I'm sure, by Arthur Conan Doyle's original Lost World novel).

Page 6 describes Sarah as having black hair, unlike in the film where she is a redhead. It also tells us that Sarah had helped nurse Malcolm back to health for a year after his adventure on Isla Nublar (though she is not aware of the true nature of the adventure). Although a romantic relationship had briefly developed, the two are now just friends.

Unlike the oft-married Malcolm of the movies, page 6 describes him as a confirmed bachelor, though Sarah came close to making an honest man out of him.

On page 8, Levine mentions a cryptid animal similar in description to a sauropod in the Congo forests near Bokambu. Although I can find no reference to a real place called Bokambu, there have been reports of a sauropod-like creature in the Congo called Mokele-mbembe for centuries; several expeditions have failed to find the creature.

Also on page 8, Levine mentions possible ceratopsian sightings in the high jungles of Irian Jaya (now known as West Papua in Indonesia).

On page 9, Levine mentions examining the remains of a frozen baby mammoth in Siberia. Siberia, a region of Russia, is known for its millions of mammoth remains.

On page 10, Malcolm, Sarah, and Levine have lunch at the Guadalupe Cafe in Santa Fe "on the other side of the river". The Guadalupe Cafe is a real restaurant. "The other side of the river" is a reference to the Santa Fe River, which is mostly dry most of year. Here at the cafe, Sarah drinks a Corona, an imported beer from Mexico.

Page 10 also reveals that Levine asked Alan Grant about the rumors that he had been involved in an incident with genetically engineered dinosaurs on an island in Costa Rica; Grant replied that that was absurd. Levine knows that Malcolm is also implicated in these rumors.

Also on page 10, Malcolm mentions the concept of the techno-myth, developed by Geller at Princeton. Although Princeton is a real university, the rest was invented by Crichton for the novel. It may not be far from the truth, however. The premise is that modern civilization has replaced classical myths with modern, post-scientific ones such as alien visitations, ESP, CIA conspiracies...and living dinosaurs in remote parts of the world.

Although it's never explicitly stated in the films or novels, the veterinarian of Jurassic Park in the original novel, Dr. Gerry Harding, has been stated by Crichton to be the father of Dr. Sarah Harding. If so, he apparently never told her about his work on Isla Nublar since she does not know about InGen's genetically engineered dinosaurs as the book introduces her. This would put Sarah's younger half-sister, Jessica (from Jurassic Park: The Game), ahead of her in this knowledge. (See page 281 of this book for Sarah's statement that he was a vet and bird specialist at the San Diego Zoo.)

Although it hasn't quite happened yet in the film, in the novel InGen is bankrupt.

Page 17 mentions the Reserva Biológica de Carara. This is a real biological reserve in Costa Rica.

Page 18 refers to a region of Costa Rica called Rojas and page 20 to Juan Fernandez Bay, where the dinosaur carcass investigated by Levine has been found. I am unable to confirm the existence of a region and bay by those names in Costa Rica. Crichton may have borrowed the Juan Fernandez name from the Juan Fernandez Islands, about 414 miles off the coast of Chile.

Page 18 reveals that Levine and Gutierrez had both attended Yale University. Yale is an Ivy League university in New Haven, Connecticut.

On page 19, Levine says he was recently at the Flaming Cliffs in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, 3 hours out of Ulan Bator. The Flaming Cliffs are known for its findings of dinosaur eggs and Velociraptor remains. Ulan Bator is the capital of Mongolia.

Also on page 19, Levine says he was at the Flaming Cliffs advising paleontologist John Roxton on a find he'd made there. The name John Roxton is borrowed by Crichton from the original Lost World novel by Arthur Conan Doyle; in it, Roxton was an explorer and hunter.

On page 20, Levine mentions the Troodon, a small carnivore of the Cretaceous period. This is an accurate description of the dinosaur. Troodons appear in a couple chapters of Jurassic Park: The Game.

The description of Komodo dragons given on page 22 is accurate.

Page 24 mentions the Galapagos Islands. This is the Pacific island chain 525 nautical miles off the coast of Ecuador that helped Charles Darwin come to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Page 26 mentions a backpack made of Gore-Tex. Gore-Tex is a waterproof/breathable fabric.

Page 29 mentions several islands off the coast of Costa Rica: Talamanca, Sorna, and Morazan. These are all fictional islands.

Page 31 mentions that George Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. Presumably, Crichton is referring to Baselton being a Professor of Biology at Regis University in Denver, CO.

Page 33 mentions LACSA. LACSA is the national airline of Costa Rica.

On page 34, Levine speculates that the carcass discovered on the beach of Juan Fernandez Bay is a Ornitholestes. This was a theropod carnivore of the late Jurassic period.

On page 35, Dodgson meets with some of his spies at a Marie Callender's restaurant. Marie Callender's is a restaurant chain in the western U.S. established in 1948.

Page 35 also describes Dodgson as driving a BMW automobile. BMW is a German motor company known for its luxury and performance automobiles. Dodgson's spy, Ed James, is depicted driving a Ford Taurus on page 53.

Page 36 mentions the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary. This was a period boundary within the late Cretaceous epoch.

On page 36, Dodgson's spy, Ed James, gives him information on Ellie Sattler, describing her as formerly involved with Dr. Alan Grant and now married to a Berkeley physicist with whom she has a young son and daughter. This goes against the Jurassic Park novel, in which Grant explicitly states that Ellie is merely his student, not a romantic involvement, and that she was engaged to a doctor in Chicago. This lends support to my earlier remark that this novel seems to be a "hybrid-sequel" of the Jurassic Park novel and movie.

Page 37 reveals that, after Hammond's death, InGen filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 allows a business to continue operating under government jurisdiction for restructuring, while selling off many of its assets to pay off its creditors.

Page 37 also reveals that Thorne's company, Mobile Field Systems, is located in Woodside (presumably the town in California, located near the San Francisco Bay area, near BioSyn corporate headquarters).

Page 38 mentions that Kelly and Arby attend Woodside Junior High. This appears to be a fictional school in Woodside.

Page 38 also suggests that Levine drives a Ferrari. Ferrari is an Italian sports car manufacturer.

On page 39, Malcolm receives a delivery via DHL. DHL is an express mail service.

Page 47 mentions fossilized dinosaur footprints in the Purgatoire River in Colorado. This is an actual natural historical site, the Picketwire Dinosaur Tracksite.

On page 48, Levine sees a Mussaurus on Isla Sorna. The Mussaurus was a real dinosaur, so-named for its mouse-like size. However, the only fossils discovered of the species are of infants and juveniles; the adults may have reached as much as 10 feet in length.

Page 50 mentions the Manson, Iowa impact crater. This crater exists in the real world, caused by a meteorite impact 74 million years ago. Also mentioned here is the Yucatan crater "near Merida"; Merida actually exists in the Chicxulub crater diameter, the crater created by the meteor now believed to have caused the mass extinction event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs on Earth.

Page 51 mentions Kmart. Kmart is a chain of discount department stores throughout the U.S. and Australia.

Page 51 also mentions Reebok, a brand of athletic footwear.

Page 59 suggests that the animal tags used on the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna are made of Duralon plastic, "the stuff they use to make football helmets". I've not found any direct evidence of such a plastic used in football helmets. There is a Duralon rubber used in many types of footwear.

Page 61 tells us the main vehicles of the Isla Sorna expedition are modified Ford Explorers.

Page 61 also mentions the Explorers' being fitted with Hughes converters. Hughes is a real world company that makes high-performance products for automobiles, including torque converters (which I presume is what Crichton is referring to here).

The "super-RV" travelling lab depicted in the movie and novel is said to be called Challenger on page 61. Possibly this is intended by Crichton as an homage to the character of Professor George Challenger from the original The Lost World novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.

On page 62, Thorne reveals the Internal Ursine Deterrent (IUD), so named, jokingly, by Levine. The IUD is the rigging of a thousand volts of electricity across the outer skin of the Challenger to deter animals from taking too keen an interest. Ursine is a reference to bears but, obviously, the deterrent was meant to be towards dinosaurs in this case. The abbreviation IUD may also be a joking reference to the IUD (Intrauterine Device), a birth control device used by women.

Page 65 mentions Hoover Tower. This is a structure on the Stanford University campus.

Page 65 also mentions assignments from Professor Thorne in which his engineering students are tasked with inventing structurally sound solutions out of simple materials such as Q-tips, paper, and thread. Q-tips are the best-selling brand of cotton swabs.

Page 66 mentions that Professor Thorne liked to pepper his lectures with quotes from Plato, Chaka-Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu. These are all historical figures. Plato was a philosopher in ancient Greece and founded the first institution of higher learning in the Western world in Athens, the Academy. Chaka-Zulu was a powerful and influential tribal leader in southern Africa in the early 1800s and he united many of the Nguni tribes of the area into the Zulu nation. Emerson probably refers to Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet and essayist during the 1800s. Chang-tzu was a Chinese writer in the first half of the 20th century; he was known for writing both science books and romance novels--perhaps Crichton felt a bit of kinship with him, being involved in both science (as an M.D.) and fiction writing.

On page 68, Arby refers to VLSI. This stands for Very-Large-Scale Integration, the term used for integrated circuits that combine many transistors onto one chip. Arby also mentions scavenging Motorola BSN-23 chip arrays which he says is "restricted technology developed for the CIA"; although Motorola is an actual telecommunications technology company in the U.S., the BSN-23 chip appears to be Crichton's fabrication for the novel. The CIA is the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the major intelligence agencies of the United States government.

Page 69 reveals that Sarah had been a scholarship student at the University of Chicago before becoming an assistant professor at Princeton. Both are real world universities known for their scientific research programs.

Page 69 also mentions an incident when Sarah had to walk alone through 20 miles of African savannah when her Land Rover broke down. Land Rover is a British maker of 4-wheel drive vehicles.

Page 75 mentions several books found in Levine's apartment: Catastrophe Theory and Emergent Structures; Inductive Processes in Molecular Evolution; Cellular Automata; Methodology of Non-Linear Adaptation; Phase Transition in Evolutionary Systems. As far as I can tell, these are all titles made up by Crichton for the novel.

On page 76, Kelly finds a fax for Levine from the Peabody Museum at Yale University in New Haven, CT. This is a reference to the Peabody Natural History Museum, well-known for its paleontology collection.

Page 76 also mentions a German document sent to Levine by the Peabody Museum called Geschictliche Forschungsarbeiten iiber de Geologie Zentralamerikas, 1922-1929. The title translates as Historical Researches on the Geology of Central America, 1922-1929. As far as I can tell, this is a fictional academic document.

On page 77, a small German book is found featuring illustrations of Aztecs in colorful costumes called Die Funf Todesarten. This translates as The Five Deaths. The Aztecs were an ethinc group of Mexico in the 14th-16th Centuries, known for the Aztec Empire of the time.

There are also several books/articles from the Santa Fe Institute mentioned on page 77: Genetic Algorithms and Heuristic Networks; Geology of Central America; Tesselation Automata of Arbitrary Dimension. As far as I can tell, these are all fictional titles used by Crichton for the novel.

Page 78 includes some notes from the InGen Annual Report, including the line, "A geological lab in South Africa, where amber and other biological specimens are acquired." This is a reference to InGen's large-scale attempts to mine amber for the prehistoric blood-sucking insects sometimes trapped inside, with the blood/DNA of dinosaurs in their bodies.

On page 80, Levine has an old CAD-CAM computer recovered from InGen and made by Design Associates, Inc. As far as I can tell, this is a fictional PC company. CAD-CAM means Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing.

Page 83 describes Richard Owen has having coined the term Dinosauria (terrible lizard) in the 1840s. This is true. Owen was a British biologist.

Page 83 also mentions John Ostrom (1928-2005) as one of the lead proponents of dinosaurs being warm-blooded. This is true.

On page 84, Malcolm's assistant, Beverly, mentions visitors from the magazine Chaos Quarterly. This appears to be a fictional magazine about chaos theory invented by Crichton for the novel.

On page 85, Malcolm has a large map of the world, with pins marking a dozen places where dinosaur-like creatures have been sighted in the last several years. These places include Rangiroa, Baja California, and Ecuador. These are all real places: Rangiroa is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti; Baja California is a state in Mexico; Ecuador is a country in South America.

On page 87, Malcolm says the islands of the Five Deaths are strung out about 10 miles off the bay of Puerto Cortes. Puerto Cortes is in Honduras, on the Caribbean side. Oddly, this places the Five Deaths on the opposite side of Central America from where they are described in the film version. Page 113 also informs us that Isla Sorna is located in a different position relative to the other Five Deaths; here, it is described as being the one farthest north whereas, in the film, it is shown as being in the middle of the island chain. (However, page 301 describes dinosaur carcasses washing up on the beaches of Pacific islands; how could the carcasses get into the Pacific unless Isla Sorna was in the Pacific??)

On page 90, Ed James has the wrappers from two Big Macs sitting in his car. The Big Mac, of course, is the best-selling hamburger of the McDonald's fast food chain.

In the movie version, Kelly is Malcolm's daughter and, seemingly half African-American. In the novel, she is not related to any of the other protagonists and page 91 reveals her to be white, while her friend Arby (who does not appear in the film at all) is black. Page 250 tells us Kelly's last name is Curtis.

On page 95, Kelly sees a row of books in one of the expedition trailers: Modeling Adaptive Biological Systems; Vertebrate Behavioral Dynamics; Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems; Dinosaurs of North America; Preadaptation and Evolution. As far as I can tell, half of these titles were made up by Crichton for the novel, but Modeling Adaptive Biological Systems may be referring to a 1989 article of that name by R.J. Bagley, J.D. Farmer, S.A. Kauffman, N.H. Packard, A.S. Perelson, and I.M. Stadnyk. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems is a 1992 book by John Holland about complex systems. Dinosaurs of North America is a fairly generic title, but may be referring to the original 1896 book by pre-eminent paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh.

Page 97 reveals that Kelly's mom is a waitress at Denny's. Denny's, of course, is a diner chain with locations all around the world.

Page 98 mentions Sarah seeing a kopje through her night vision goggles. A kopje is a rock knob rising above its environmental surroundings. She also sees the reflections of small eyes in the distance, probably hyraxes. Hyraxes are small herbivorous mammals seen in Africa and the Middle East.

Page 99 describes a hyena attack witnessed by Sarah in the African savannah. The pack's attack is very similar to attack patterns of the Velociraptor pack depicted in both this novel and the film. Page 101 draws a parallel with the raptors in the description of their social hierarchy (matriarchal) and their sophisticated communication with each other.

Sarah mentions catching a flight to Nairobi from Seranera on page 102. Seronera is a small settlement in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Africa. Nairobi is the capitol of Kenya.

Pages 104-108 introduce us to the head of Biosyn, Jeff Rossiter. In "Civilization", the BioSyn head was said to be Bill Steingarten. Rossiter's comments here seem to indicate that he has been in charge throughout Dodgson's attempts to steal the genetic cloning technology from InGen since Jurassic Park, so it seems unlikely that he has just recently come into the job. The discrepancy in names could just be a difference between the novel universe and the film universe.

Page 108 reveals that one of Dodgson's ideas for Biosyn's dinosaurs is to open a hunting preserve in Asia or somewhere where hunters could hunt a T. rex or other dinosaurs.

On page 111, Thorne uses a couple of Huey helicopters to transport the cargo containers of equipment from Puerto Cortes to Isla Sorna. Hueys are a family of helicopters built by the Bell Helicopter company.

Page 113 says that some of the local people refer to Isla Sorna as Isla Gemido for the sounds of the ocean waves in the coastal caves. Gemido is Spanish for groan.

On page 114, the pilot who transports Thorne to Isla Sorna says he has a job in Golfo Juan that afternoon, so he will not be back to pick them up until the morning. I have been unable to find a place called Golfo Juan in Central America (there is a Golfe Juan in France).

Page 115 reveals that Eddie Carr was raised in Daly City. This is a city in California, near San Francisco. Here in the novel he is depicted as younger (24 years old) than his appearance in the movie. His middle-aged depiction in the movie is probably due to his role being an amalgamation of the Eddie Carr and Dr. Thorne characters from the novel.

Page 116 mentions that Thorne is using the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan in the expedition vehicles. Nissan is known in the real world for its research and production of lithium-ion batteries.

On page 117, Eddie laments not having a Pizza Hut nearby. Pizza Hut is a pizza restaurant with franchises around the world.

Page 132 mentions Larson's Deli, presumably in Woodside, CA since it is Arby who is thinking of the place. As far as I can tell, there is no such deli in Woodside.

Page 132 also describes Arby as being too interested in his studies to learn much about pop culture like Melrose Place, the San Francisco 49ers, or Shaq. Melrose Place was a prime time soap opera television series on the Fox network from 1992-1999 (a new version aired on the CW network during the 2009-2010 season). The San Francisco 49ers are the NFL football team of San Francisco. "Shaq" refers to Shaquille O'Neal, an American professional basketball player for the NBA.

Page 135 makes a reference to FSH. FSH stands for follicle-stimulating hormone.

On page 138, Thorne notices the footprints of someone wearing Asolo boots. Asolo is a boot company in Italy. Some Evian bottles are also found in an abandoned InGen building; Evian is a French brand of mineral water.

On page 141, Thorne mentions the quagga, a subspecies of the zebra that was driven to extinction by human hunting by the early 1880s. This is true. Thorne goes on to talk about how quagga DNA was recovered in the 1980s, opening the possibility of bringing the quagga back. This is essentially true as well, though the implied cloning technique from recovered DNA of the novel does not exist in the real world; instead, the Quagga Project is currently attempting to rebreed the animal from plain zebra stock.

On page 147, Malcolm points out a row of stainless steel boxes and identifies them as Nishihara gene sequencers. As far as I can tell, these are a fictional invention for the novel.

On page 150, Malcolm reads a leftover InGen printout that says, "Live births will be fitted with the new Grumbach field tags at the earliest viable interval." I can find no evidence of field tags associated with the name Grumbach, but there is a German company called Grumbach which manufactures incubators for bird and reptile eggs, so Crichton may be implying an association.

On page 152, Malcolm sees a notice posted in an old locker that says, in part, "Halt the Spread of DX Now!" He guesses that DX must be an abbreviated name for the mysterious disease that lab notes found seem to suggest was afflicting some of the hatched dinosaurs. Could DX also be what was causing the cold-like symptoms suffered by the Brachiosaur in Jurassic Park? We never learn the full name of DX in the novel, though the term may be related to the real world abbreviation of either "diagnosis" which is DX or the "double-crossover" (DX) motif used in DNA nanotechnology (though this motif may not yet have existed when this book was being written).

Malcolm mentions sexual dimorphism in tyrannosaurs, with the females being larger than the males, on page 162. This was believed to be true at the time the novel was written, but research in recent years has cast some doubt on that depiction.

Arby makes reference to a radio LAN on page 163. LAN stands for Local Area Network.

In the movie, there is only one T. rex baby in the rex nest. In the novel there are two babies and 4 more eggs. The babies are described as having a fluffy red down on their bodies and a ring of pale white down around the neck.

On page 173, Levine speculates that adult tyrannosaurs may teach their young to hunt by bringing small, wounded animals to the nest for the young to finish off. This bit of conversation may have been the inspiration for the scene at the end of the movie in which the injured Ludlow is presented by the father T. rex to his young one.

On page 177, Levine explains that a new form of encephalitis has cropped up in Honduras and the government believes it may be related to the dinosaur carcasses that have occasionally washed up on the coast.

On page 179, Dodgson and Baselton have huevos rancheros and beer at Chesperito Cantina in Puerto Cortes. This appears to be a fictional establishment.

On page 180, the Elvis Presley song "Falling in Love in With You" plays over the cantina's speakers. Elvis (1935-1977) was known as the King of Rock and Roll during his life and after. He never had a song called "Falling in Love in With You". Probably Crichton is referring to "Can't Help Falling in Love" which contains the lyrics "I can't help falling in love with you".

Also on page 180, Baselton mentions Henri Poincare. Poincare (1854-1912) was a French mathematician and science philosopher. He produced some early work on the theory of special relativity, though Einstein gets most of the credit.

On pages 180-181, the journals Nature, American Scholar, and Natural History are mentioned by Baselton as places to publish Biosyn's "discoveries" once they have recovered the bankrupt InGen's work from Isla Sorna. These are all real world publications.

On page 182, Dodgson's assistant, Howard King, pays a fishing boat captain to take them to Isla Sorna with five thousand colon notes. A colon is a monetary unit used in both Costa Rica and El Salvador.

On page 188, Levine points out a fern on the island called Dicranopterus cyatheoides. I cannot find validation of a plant with this actual nomenclature. The genus name appears to be misspelled and should be Dicranopteris with an "i" instead of "u". Even with that correction, there does not appear to be a Dicranopteris with the species name cyatheoides, though there are other genuses of fern with the cyatheoides name.

On page 189, Levine uses the phrase "nature red in tooth and claw". This is a line from the poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Malcolm quotes this same line in "Civilization".

On page 194, a Costa Rican official tells Sarah that the helicopter has gone to San Cristobal for the next day or two. There is no San Cristobal in Costa Rica, but he may be referring to any of a number of cities by that name in other Central and South American countries.

Dodgson mentions Sarah Bernhardt on page 195. Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French actress who was known throughout the world in her time, referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known".

Page 199 reveals that Dodgson is known among his fellow researchers as "The Undertaker".

On page 202, Sarah reflects on Malcolm's strange friends she'd met in the past, including an Indonesian gamelan troupe. Gamelan is a Javanese word for a set of musical instruments that are meant to be played as an ensemble.

Sarah describes herself to Dodgson as an etholgist on page 203. An ethologist is a scientist who studies animal behavior.

Dodgson is not only unethical in his work, he may even be in the habit of murdering people to get what he wants. He attempts to murder Sarah by shoving her off Gandoca's boat on the approach to Isla Sorna on page 206.

On page 211, while discussing dinosaur extinction theories with Thorne and the kids, Malcolm and Levine mention that the historical record seems to show that mass extinctions take place thousands or millions of years after a major environmental change, not immediately after. The animals are weakened by the change, but it's only after the change begins to recede, "go back to normal", that the mass extinctions take place. Levine says it's called "Softening Up the Beachhead". Although I've found a few references to this term in a biological context on the web, they all seem to refer back to this novel in one way or another, so I think it's a concept originally coined by Crichton himself.

On page 222, Levine reminisces on his past with Malcolm at the Santa Fe Institute and their scientific arguments over lunch at a restaurant on Guadalupe Street. The restaurant goes unnamed, but is, presumably, the Guadalupe Cafe mentioned earlier on page 10, though the real restaurant is located on Old Santa Fe Trail, not Guadalupe Street.

Also on page 222, Levine reflects back on the animal that attacked him and killed Diego shortly after they arrived on the island and is reminded of the Carnotaurus sastrei fossil found at the Gorro Frigo formation in Argentina. "Gorro Frigo" means "Cold Skull" in Spanish. As far as I know though, there is no such formation in Argentina. Carnotaurus sastrei was a real dinosaur, however; it is also the carnosaur seen in the Redemption storyline of IDW's first JP mini-series.

On page 225-226, Malcolm mentions several scientists of historical note:

On page 227, Malcolm mentions a 747. This is a reference to the Boeing 747, a commercial jet airliner.

Malcolm mentions hemoglobin on page 228. Hemoglobin is the iron-carrying protein found in the red blood cells of animals.

Pages 237-238 describe the violent (even against each other) feeding frenzy of raptors, which Sarah notes is very different from the behavior of most modern carnivores. The depicted behavior is more like the primitive shark than pack predators.

Pages 242-243 describe parasaur behavior that includes a sort of dino-latrine, a specific area in which the parasaur herd goes to relieve themselves in order to mark territory. Afterwards, the parasaurs also begin to lap at the new puddles of urine, as some animals do to recover lost nutrients. After the parasaurs have left, the compys arrive on page 244 and commence to eat the fresh dung and drink the urine, just as the original Jurassic Park novel mentions they were allowed to roam free on Isla Nublar to act as waste disposal machines.

On page 245, Dodgson mentions cone magnets in the sound box he had brought to keep the dinosaurs at bay. Cone magnets are the magnets attached to the current-carrying coils wrapped around the speaker cones of sound emitting devices.

Sarah is in the trailer's shower singing "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair" on page 251. This song originated in the musical play South Pacific.

On page 253, Sarah mentions George Schaller. Dr. Schaller (1933-) is one of the world's preeminent field biologists, known for his research in the wilds of Africa, Asia, and South America.

Crichton may be poking fun at himself on page 266 when Levine comments on John Roxton's "idiotic" theory that tyrannosaurs had a visual system like that of amphibians due to similarities in the braincases. An amphibian system would mean that tyrannosaurs could not see things that didn't move. This limitation of T. rex was used in both the Jurassic Park novel and film (and confirmed, about the dinosaurs in general, by Dr. Gerry Harding in the novel and by Grant in the film). Here, Levine states "...it is quite impossible that a predator such as a tyrannosaur would have a visual system that worked that way...the most common defense of prey animals is to freeze...it senses danger and it freezes...a predator has to be able to see them anyway." Possibly, Crichton got an earful about this from paleontologists and other scientists when the first JP novel was released and he decided to correct it in The Lost World.

On page 267, Sarah reminisces about her old professor, who was a hard-drinking Hemingway type. This is a reference to Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), a hard-drinking adventurer who is also considered to have been one of America's best writers of novels, short stories, and non-fiction.

On page 269, Thorne compares the size of the baby rexes to that of a small cassowary bird. Cassowaries are large, omnivorous, modern-day birds from New Guinea.

Page 271 mentions Galileo as the start of scientists who thought of themselves as objective observers of the natural world. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) is often considered the father of the Scientific Revolution and contributed to astronomy, physics, mathematics, and philosophy.

On page 281, Eddie tells Sarah he brought along some diesterase which they could possibly use to make a cast for the baby T. rex's broken leg, saying it is a polymer resin used like glue which solidifies hard as steel. In this context, diesterase appears to be a fictional compound invented by Crichton for the novel, though in biology there are enzymes called diesterase which break down the linkages between nucleotides in nucleic acids.

On page 290, Howard King encounters a herd of dinosaurs with which he is not familiar, described as "...about four feet tall, with big domed heads and a bunch of little horns". This seems to describe Pachycephalosaurus.

On page 302 Sarah mentions scrapie and mad-cow disease. These are real diseases caused by prions. Scrapies affects only sheep and goats.

Also on page 302, Sarah comments that the baby dinosaurs were probably fed goat's milk by the InGen scientists since it's so hypoallergenic. This is basically true, due to goat milk's low concentration of lactose.

For most of the last fifth of the book, Malcolm is under the influence of morphine to control the pain of his current injuries. It makes him a bit goofy-headed and he starts babbling songs, song titles, and complexity theories of biological evolution. Perhaps Crichton was inspired by the fever-induced babbling of Malcolm in "Fever", published about a year before this novel.

On page 336, Malcolm mentions several concepts within the study of evolutionary biology: 

Malcolm mentions the clothing stores Benetton and Gap on page 339. Benetton is a worldwide chain of fashion outlets based out of Italy. Gap is a worldwide chain based out of San Francisco, CA.

On page 353, Sarah and Kelly are chasing a raptor via motorcycle. The raptor runs through an area of Benettitalean cycads. Bennettitales are an extinct order of cycadeoids from the Triassic-Cretaceous periods. This implies that, as depicted on Isla Nublar in the Jurassic Park novel, InGen also bred and grew extinct plants (and possibly insects) on Isla Sorna. This does not seem wise, since plant seeds could, conceivably, be carried by wind or birds to the mainland to sprout, especially considering that the novel places Isla Sorna only 10 miles off the bay of Puerto Cortes, Honduras.

Page 357 mentions several drugs carried by Malcolm's team for temporarily paralyzing animals: metacholine, mivacurium, and cholinesterase. These are all real drugs.

Page 361 mentions Stu Kauffman as one of the biologists who have argued that the origin and evolution of life is based on complex systems and self-organization as much as Darwin's theory of natural selection. This is true.

Malcolm mentions "Alexander's ragtime band" on page 372. "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is the name of a 1911 song by Irving Berlin.

On page 374, Malcolm begins singing the lyrics of "Dixie", a song of the U.S. south that originated in the mid-1800s.

Page 384 describes the color-changing skin of the carnotaurs, comparing their pigmentation abilities to the chromatophore arrangement of some marine invertebrates. Chromatophores are the pigment-containing cells of animals capable of spontaneously changing color, such as chameleons. There is no real world evidence that Carnotaurus sastrei was capable of changing skin color.

On page 391, Sarah, Thorne, and Levine observe some maiasaurs tearing apart a couple of Styrofoam cases. At first, Levine wonders if the maiasaurs have found some kind of "dinosaur nip". This is a reference to catnip, the plant Nepeta cataria, whose oil has a mildly "recreational effect" on some felines. In the Land of the Lost episode "Follow That Dinosaur", Holly Marshall discovers a plant that grows in the Land that has a similar effect as catnip on dinosaurs! (In this scene from the book, it turns out that the Styrofoam cases contained maiasaur eggs that had been taken from a nest by Dodgson, King, and Baselton.)

In a rage over the man who tried to murder her, Sarah shoves Dodgson into the clutches of the T. rex, leading to his death.

Instead of Ludlow as in the movie, it is Dodgson who becomes live food for the baby tyrannosaurs on pages 422-423.

On page 428, Sarah mentions kuru, a brain disease in humans caused by prions. This is true.

On page 429, Malcolm says there have been five major extinction events in the known history of Earth. This is true. Over 50% of the animal species alive at the time went extinct during each of these events.

Also on page 429, Thorne comments on the human species' tendency to believe in one thing for a while and then discard it and believe something else. As examples he mentions phlogiston and the four humors. These were actual beliefs/theories in our past. The phlogiston theory was postulated by Johann Joachim Becher in 1667 and stated that a fire-like element called phlogiston existed inside combustible substances and was released upon combustion. The four humors were believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the four basic substances of which humans were composed and an imbalance of them caused diseases and behavioral changes in people; the four humors were identified as black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.

Notes from The Lost World comic book

Written by: Don McGregor

Pencils by: Jeff Butler and Claude St. Aubin

Inks by: Armando Gil, Steve Montano, and Claude St. Aubin

Covers by: Walter Simonson and Richard Ory

Topps Comics published a 4-issue mini-series adapting the movie in comic book format.

Throughout the first two issues of the mini-series, Malcolm is depicted sporting a mustache! In issues 3 and 4 he's not!

Issue #1: Page 1 reveals that the father of the girl who encounters the compys on the beach is named Paul Bowman. In the novel Jurassic Park (from which this scene was taken), the character is named Mike Bowman.

Issue #1: Page 3 describes the compys that attack the girl as Compsognathus, whereas the similar scene in the Jurassic Park novel identifies them as the related species Procompsognathus.

Issue #1: The movie depicts an amusing "smash-cut" from Mrs. Bowman's scream to Dr. Malcolm's yawn at the subway station. Page 4 of issue #1 gives the yawn to Peter Ludlow at an InGen board meeting instead.

Issue #1: Also on page 4, Ludlow runs down the dollar totals of media pay-offs and wrongful death settlements from the incident on Isla Nublar. Included is the settlement to the family of Robert Muldoon, but if the Topps Comics stories depicted as taking place shortly after Jurassic Park are to be believed, Muldoon actually survived the raptor attack seen in the movie. Possibly he was killed in the unpublished wrap-up of the "green flame" storyline and InGen still had to settle with his family.

Issue #1: Page 4 of issue #1 also has Ludlow mention the cost to InGen of "demolition, deconstruction, and disposal of Isla Nublar facilities, organic and inorganic". Again, if the Topps Comics stories depicted as taking place shortly after Jurassic Park are to be believed, it seems InGen was left with the clean-up bill instead of the U.S. Army or government after the military takeover of the island and its dinosaurs for the green flame project.

Issue #1: On page 4, panel 5, there appears to be a portrait of John Hammond in the InGen board room.

Issue #1: Page 5 reveals that John Hammond's middle name is Parker. This name also appears in the The Lost World movie script.

Issue #1: Page 7 depicts Malcolm's meeting with Hammond taking place in Hammond's lavish Park Avenue apartment, whereas it appears to be in a mansion in the movie.

Issue #1: Pages 12-14 depict a scene cut from the final film in which Ajay brings Roland Tembo InGen's offer of an expedition to Isla Sorna.

Issue #1: On page 17, panel 4, as the group approaches Isla Sorna on the ship, Eddie is puking over the side of the boat!

Issue #2: On page 2, Sarah comments that the dinosaurs on the island are obtaining lysine by eating lysine-rich plants such as soy and agama beans. This is borrowed from the original JP novel. In the novel portion of my study of Jurassic Park, I point out there does not appear to be such a thing as agama beans!

Issue #2: This issue has several mentions of Sarah's fear of heights. This does not appear in the either the movie or novel.

Issue #2: On page 12, Roland refers to what appears to be a Parasaurolophus instead as a carnithosaur. There is no such dinosaur by that name and the only reference I can find to it is in David Koepp's film script of The Lost World (and this issue of the comic). Why the dinosaur's name was changed, I have no idea.

Issue #2: Page 15 tells us that Roland carries an antique double barreled elephant gun almost 100 years old. It uses .600 Nitro Express metal jacket cartridges. These are all real world terms; the Nitro Express rounds are made by the Jeffery company in Great Britain.

Issue #2: Page 16 reveals that Ludlow's InGen camp on the island is using blue laser fences encircling the perimeter to keep out dinosaurs. These are not seen in the movie. (The blue laser fence sounds like the ones used by the Visitors around their human prison camps in the original V TV series!)

Issue #2: Page 18 reveals how the baby T. rex got a broken leg...Ludlow accidentally steps on it while Roland is setting his trap for the adults. In the novel, it is Howard King who does so, again accidentally. But in the movie, we never see how it happened; the baby is healthy and walking in one scene and then when we see the trap set with the baby as bait for the parents, the little tyke's leg is already broken without explanation! It gives the impression Roland cruelly did it himself to make the baby bleat for its parents.

Issue #2: Also on page 18, Roland makes the comment, "Orwell had a point didn't he? 'Four legs good, two legs bad.'" This is a reference to George Orwell's 1945 novel Animal Farm.

Issue #2: Page 19 describes Ludlow's preparation to go before a Vivex camera to deliver a live presentation to InGen's board of directors. As far as I can determine, this Vivex video camera is fictional, though there was an early color photography process called Vivex from 1928-1939.

Issue #2: On page 21, Ludlow mentions Sea World in San Diego. The San Diego Sea World was the first of several Sea World parks opened in the latter half of the 20th century. The parks are a combination animal theme park and oceanarium.

Issue #3: On page 6, Sarah sings, "Born free, as free as the wind blows." These are lyrics from the song "Born Free", written by John Barry and Don Black for the 1966 film of that name.

Issue #3: On the top of page 14, a pterodactyl soars through the sky. In the movie, we do not see a pterodactyl until the very last scene of dinosaurs on the island. No pterodactyls appear in the novel at all.

Issue #3: Instead of a snake crawling down his shirt as in the movie, Burke is assaulted by giant centipedes in the cave.

Issue #4: Page 2 mentions the InGen party walking through the tall elephant grass and being attacked by raptors. Unfortunately, elephant grass is not known to grow in the wild outside of Africa.

Issue #4: As Sarah hangs from the roof of the InGen complex and begins to slip on page 6, with raptors waiting below, she imagines if she were a warrior princess she might be able to hold on forever or flip over the raptors' heads, but she is just a paleontologist and you don't need Herculean arms for that. This may be a reference to the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess, which was a spin-off from another TV series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, both of which Topps Comics had the comic book licenses for at the time The Lost World comic was published.

Issue #4: On page 12, "carfentanil" (the drug used to tranq the rex) is misspelled "carfentanig".

Issue #4: On page 19, Ludlow has realized he's to become a Gerber's Baby Food dinosaur special. Gerber produces over 100 baby food products sold around the world, but only for human babies, not dinosaurs. 

Memorable Dialog

more than your education.wav

Site B.wav 

life will find a way.wav

I'm not making the same mistakes again.wav

other peoples headstones.wav

rescue operation.wav

I'll love it when it works.wav

Greenpeace.wav

wild goose chase.wav

that hurts my feelings.wav

don't listen to me.wav

high hide.wav

how many Sarahs.wav

that's how it always starts.wav

I'd like to thank everybody who lost.wav

I've worked around predators since I was 20 years old.wav

the best kind of girlfriend there is.wav

it is so important to your future that you not finish that sentence.wav

five or six pieces.wav

base camp or a buffet.wav

one of the tyrannosaurs.wav 

Friar Tuck.wav

Elvis.wav

reason to fear man.wav

you're much happier not knowing.wav

completely different situation.wav

they came for their infant.wav

three double cheeseburgers.wav

a couple dozen Marlboro men.wav

only humans do.wav

the only way you can express yourself.wav

talent skips a generation.wav

the worst idea.wav

send rescue immediately.wav

the company of death.wav

now you're John Hammond.wav

you.wav

follow the screams.wav

slow down a little.wav

life will find a way_2.wav