Introduction

We were once the Jurassic Park Legacy Jurassic Park Encyclopedia before reforming in early 2017 into the place you are browsing now. The encyclopedia project was essentially a “wiki” before a Wikimedia project was even thought of and created way back in the day. Originally the encyclopedia was started in the early part of the year 2000 and was just actually a list with descriptions of characters and dinosaurs before being expanded. As such it has had many homes since that time with all of them being mostly popular Jurassic Park fan sites like InGenNET, JPDatabase, and lastly on JPLegacy. The encyclopedia is known as a Jurassic Park & Jurassic World Encyclopedia, but it is simply now renamed to just Jurassic-Pedia for short.

Jurassic-Pedia aims to be a comprehensive resource and the organization of information of collected knowledge from the Jurassic media franchises spanning across the two Crichton novels, the many films, countless comics, and multiple games produced. We are committed to accuracy and empowering fans with knowledge regarding their favorite franchise. That said, we are a small team working and dedicated to cataloging our favorite piece of fiction down as meticulously as possible as well. We encourage people to engage with us if they have constructive criticisms, questions, comments, or even concerns. You can engage with us either on social media like Facebook Groups, our Facebook Page, Twitter, and/or Instagram. Alternatively, there is also the option of sending us an e-mail.

The original goal of this project was to determine the state(s) of the canon and resolve contradictions through empirical means by relying on multiple forms of evidence ranging from the traditional evidence stated by the powers that be (such as: Crichton, NBC Universal, Spielberg, Trevorrow, and so forth) from anything like production notes and interviews with the people behind the scenes. We have also included background evidence or what we called “hidden details” (read: Indirect evidence) that would and do connect to the source material. Basically, that are things we are shown via props and background pieces placed in the films instead of implicitly told through exposition. So we are also relying on the connections that were made to the original source material of the novels and transferred to the film universe as the science is mostly relatively the same minus some key differences. Everything else is segregated per Crichton’s vision of seeing them all as “separate media” in comparison to his books and we paid respect to that notion.

Before we realized Crichton made the case for everything being separate media we realized that many contradictory elements existed and even some major continuity issues were discovered that warranted there was a clear need for the separation of media into their respective canons. Those being book, film, comics, video games, and etc. Eventually the idea was cemented as we took the approach of more impartiality to the separation of media based on comments made by Michael Crichton himself in Beyond Jurassic Park bonus disc regarding the Jurassic Park Phenomenon and the impact on popular culture.

Another angle here is that we will also incorporate factual elements of paleontology or otherwise popular misconceptions found in the history of paleontology from the time InGen would theoretically be working on cloning their dinosaurs. Examples would be Spinosaurus not being accounted for on their produced animals list due to the fact it was regarded as having a carnosaur-type head and in relation to dinosaurs like Allosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus before a lot of Stromer’s notes and data was rediscovered. The focus will always be given priority to what the canons for the particular form of the media says first and foremost though if there is something to conflict it.

Jurassic series is sometimes viewed as creating “stupid science” to get young children interested in science through dinosaurs. Kids do love stating facts like Tyrannosaurus‘ vision being based on movement as a credit to the films if even its not necessarily true in our reality or even in the original novel(s) itself. What’s not known is that this movement based vision symptom for the Tyrannosaurs was more or less a symptom of the frog DNA used in the cloning process in the novels, come the second novel Crichton informs the reader they had been misinformed as the T. rex family in it wreaks havoc. That said, the translation comes played off without the genetic interference and modification quality it was originally given. Thus creating an element of popular culture with kids stating the dinosaur’s vision was based on movement when we simply don’t know. Not knowing is fine, so we need to focus on the aim of wanting to find out.

Our other aim is to provide technical commentary where applicable from bits of history from paleontology. We do this by pointing out historical evidence from paleontology and what we know from the field of study to help reconcile some of the perceived flubs within the franchise. A similar idea was also presented in the Jurassic Park Institute: Dinosaur Field Guide originally some time ago back in 2001 when the third film came out. The book highlighted these key differences between the factual animals from our world and the fictional animals from Jurassic Park. This information is noted where appropriated, and further reading on this subject can be found here and is ultimately why we created species names for a lot of the animals instead of calling them “brown Raptor”, “purple/blue Raptor”, “Version 1”, “Version 2”, or something equally goofy like that. Calling the animals “version 1” or “version 2” is problematic because we don’t exactly know how InGen’s numbering system actually worked when re-creating said animals in the film and thus any attempt to do something like this would be a contradiction to what we see in the films and know about the animals. The binomial names also serve as an small bit of the element of immersion in universe as well too for the fandom, which is something we like to promote.

That said, it helps to have a bit of background information on what canon means in this case. Broadly, “canon” is the basis for judgment for a standard or criterion; in this case, it applies to the various mediums which the Jurassic franchise has touched upon. It is true, in the initial stages of this project we looked at the idea of a layered canon with including everything while having the films take priority over contradictions, but this not only made matters heavily inconsistent with everything but it required the use of “fanon” reconcile the differences. Fanon is basically known as “fan wank” in various circles or head canons, which, broadly is: Unsupported facts and idle speculation that anyone can make up on the fly. The separation of media was fully supported by the father of the Jurassic Park franchise, Michael Crichton himself. You can read more about continuity separation here in terms of how we outlined things.

Occasionally the question arises; “Why not use a wiki for the purposes of this project?” The truth is that we simply prefer taking our own approach with different software which is easier to manipulate and better to secure from those that try to tout fanon as the end all and be all. The nature of a wiki means that almost anyone has the ability to change or alter facts on a whim. While not bad in theory if everyone follows a protocol, but vandalism does and can occur on the articles on wiki that result in corrupted restores of the original content of the article for those that were following protocol. Some people just opt to destroy nice things created for others and this system allows us to make sure it stays nice. We’d much prefer a secure control over who and what kind of stuff comes into the encyclopedia. We interview people and talk with them, make an effort to get to know them and see if they are a good fit for the project. So the use of the WordPress system allows us to more or less protect the entries from such issues and calamities. We acknowledge that objectivity is important in any research protocol, and that is no different here. This encyclopedia’s goal is to maintain, through controlled access, impartiality, empirical means, and objectivity, free of what individuals want the Jurassic franchise to be rather than what it actually is that we transcribe into the system here.

Encyclopedia Mission Statement

In the end our hope is that The Jurassic Encyclopedia serves as a large research tool for the curious soul, the aficionado’s obsessed with detail, the aspiring fan-fiction writer or fan-film director, and even for game modifiers looking to understand the franchise and the implications it has on our world to this day. We hope it serves as a testament to Michael Crichton, Steven Spielberg, and the various directors and producers that have touched the franchise and left an impact on it. We hope that Paleontologists and future paleontologists can look on and see a group of fans that understand the difference between these fictional dinosaurs and the real-world dinosaurs. Further, we wish to determine what the official canon is through research as prescribed by Universal and responsible, official parties. We dedicate this work to those who, much like we, are simply detail-obsessed with the Jurassic films, novels, comics, and more. We don’t write canon. We’re fans, and we respect that line between creator and consumer. We record what we see, we don’t create it.