Asset 87 is a male Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, the first and so far only confirmed specimen of his kind bred through de-extinction. He was cloned and grown on Isla Sorna by International Genetic Technologies in either late 1998 or early 1999, and was abandoned by his creators after a period of nine months. Much of his life is unknown due to corporate secrecy surrounding both his creation and later containment. This animal was heavily involved with the 2001 Isla Sorna incident, and is mostly known from his association with that event. In more recent years, there is significant evidence that he was appropriated by Mantah Corp for experimentation purposes. This is where the name “Asset 87” comes from; some believe that the Isla Sorna spinosaur died in 2004 and that Asset 87 is a different animal, but until clearer evidence comes forward, we cannot say for certain. It was the intent of the writers of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous to imply that the two were one and the same, but some interns and consultants (and more notably, director Colin Trevorrow) wished for a variety of reasons that there were two different animals. For the sake of simplicity we will use this article to refer to both the Isla Sorna animal and the Mantah Corp Island animal, since their stories are non-overlapping even if they turn out to be two different specimens.
The sex of this dinosaur has been given as both male and female in various supplementary materials, but in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is referred to as a male. Since this is the only time the spinosaur’s sex has been implied onscreen, we will follow this convention. Should there turn out to be two different spinosaurs then it is possible the Isla Sorna animal is female.
Name
If this animal was given a name by his original creators, that name has never been disclosed. He was later named Asset 87 while in custody of Mantah Corp. The asset number most likely refers to the order in which he was appropriated with respect to other assets, but the history of Mantah Corp’s illicit activities in the Gulf of Fernandez is still largely kept under wraps.
Behind the scenes of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, some interns apparently referred to him as “Snock,” but this name has not been used in canon.
Biography
Early life
The Spinosaurus was cloned during a nine-month period in late 1998 or early 1999 on Isla Sorna, a 44-square-mile volcanic island located west of Costa Rica. Over the previous decade and a half, it had been utilized by International Genetic Technologies as a testing ground for de-extinction research. Following the failure of InGen’s Jurassic Park project in 1993, the island was abandoned. Events in 1997 resulted in InGen having been bought out by Masrani Global Corporation the following year, and within one hundred days of the buyout, InGen had returned to Isla Sorna to perform more research. The results were filed under “Early R&D for Jurassic Park’s second incarnation” and also “Amalgam Testing.” The new animals, including the Spinosaurus, were most likely bred in the Embryonics, Administration, and Laboratories Compound where InGen had done its earlier work. During this time, InGen operations were infiltrated by corporate spies from its rival Biosyn Genetics, who may have influenced results and stolen data for Biosyn’s own Project Regenesis.
At the time, heavy restrictions on genetic engineering were in place through the Gene Guard Act of 1997, which sought to prevent further de-extinction from taking place as well as protect the surviving de-extinct organisms. Thus, the creation of this Spinosaurus, as well as at least three other dinosaur species, was in violation of U.S. law. It was performed in secret because of this, and it is highly suspected that the animals created during this period of time were subject to maltreatment. It is at least confirmed that they were given potent growth-accelerating substances. According to some concept art, the Spinosaurus was aggressive toward his handlers during infancy and had to be kept in a specialized incubator to prevent him snapping and clawing at them. Even so, he sometimes attempted to escape by clawing at the sides of his incubator.
By mid-1999, the Spinosaurus and the other new dinosaurs were abandoned on Isla Sorna due to InGen’s fears that their illegal activity would be discovered.
Life in the wild
Growing to his adult size with incredible speed, the Spinosaurus established dominance over the island’s central waterways where he could hunt local fish such as bonitos. He was far from alone in this area; some medium-sized carnivores such as Baryonyx and Ceratosaurus also hunted fish on the island, while on land he faced competition from several Tyrannosaurus.
Most of his life in the wild is unknown. He appeared to be in good health when he was encountered on July 18, 2001, between two and three years after he was bred.
2001 incident
During the summer of 2001, an illegal tourism accident caused two American civilians to become stranded on Isla Sorna. Website engineering entrepreneur Ben Hildebrand died due to his injuries shortly after crashing on the island via parasail, leaving eleven-year-old Eric Kirby alone in Isla Sorna’s western rainforest. Eric’s presence on the island and the ensuing incidents would cause the Spinosaurus a very difficult time.
By mid-June or early July, Eric obtained a sample of Tyrannosaurus rex urine, the smell of which frightened away smaller carnivores such as Velociraptor. However, when the Spinosaurus caught wind of this smell, he recognized a threat to his territory rather than a superior predator. Eric discovered that the tyrannosaur urine scent aggravated the Spinosaurus, but opted not to get rid of the urine sample because of how it frightened away raptors. He most likely hid in small spaces when the Spinosaurus came near. It is unlikely that the Spinosaurus realized that Eric was the source of the smell, and so was frustrated for at least a month by the scent of an intruder that he simply could not find.
On July 18, he was drawn to the island’s airfield by the appearance of an airplane, an entity that he probably would never have seen up close before. There, he found a group of humans, including mercenaries M. B. Nash, Udesky, and Cooper. Upon hearing a human voice calling through a megaphone, he responded with a territorial roar and was shot at by Cooper; the others fled. He managed to wound Cooper during their fight, but the man escaped and followed his fellows back to the airfield. The Spinosaurus followed him into the open, grabbing him in his jaws; as he did, he was hit by the airplane as it began to lift off. Though he sustained only a grazing blow, he was still injured and followed the damaged airplane to its crash site in the jungle to eliminate this new threat.
He tore the plane apart and pulled out Nash, eating him. The airplane’s remains fell from the trees during the fight, and the surviving humans fled the scene; the Spinosaurus attempted to follow them, but they escaped through the thicker trees. The dinosaur continued to stalk the area, eventually finding a more open route through the forest.
No sooner had he found this small clearing than the humans came running back toward him, this time with a male Tyrannosaurus in pursuit. Now confronted with an actual tyrannosaur instead of just its scent, the Spinosaurus aggressively challenged the invader. A pitched battle between the two ended with the Spinosaurus killing his rival by twisting his skull until the spinal cord snapped. While he was busy fighting the tyrannosaur, his human targets escaped a second time.
Unbeknownst to the Spinosaurus, when he consumed Nash he also swallowed a surprisingly durable satellite phone that had been on the man’s person. Sometime between July 18 and July 19, the phone began ringing from inside its crop; this would likely have caused more distress and irritation to the Spinosaurus. On the morning of July 19, the ringing of this phone attracted two of the human survivors, Eric Kirby and Dr. Alan Grant, to the spinosaur’s location; in turn, their shouting drew the remaining survivors, Eric’s parents Paul and Amanda and Grant’s coworker Billy Brennan. All members of this party converged on a security fence near the aviary, and the noise made by the group alerted the Spinosaurus to their location. He emerged into the open, though he did not attack until his prey were fleeing. According to some sources, the reason he waited to chase them down was because adrenaline-filled prey have a more preferable taste; alternatively, their sudden movement may have provoked his attack.
In any case, he pursued them into the aviary’s observation deck, where they shut themselves inside. The Spinosaurus gave up the chase after losing sight of them, despite attempts to pound the door in; he left the area after this. He appeared to suffer indigestion at the time, since the phone was found that night in a fresh dung pile without any signs of being damaged by the dinosaur’s gastrointestinal tract.
In the very early morning of July 20, the Spinosaurus kept to his home in the deep channel near the center of Isla Sorna while a fierce thunderstorm pummeled the island. While hunting a shoal of bonitos near the marina construction site, he encountered an unfamiliar object, a river barge, on the surface. He charged and rammed the boat, emerging from the water to further confront it. Upon surfacing, he spotted the same group of humans that had caused him so much consternation over the past two days, this time invading his home. Using his snout and claws, he tore apart the barge’s wheelhouse and motor; the humans hid in the cage on deck, which the Spinosaurus dragged off into the river. He used his snout to locate them and pulled the cage into shallower water, reaching inside to try and extract them. While he struggled with his prey, Paul Kirby managed to climb a nearby construction crane and got his attention by shouting. He turned his ire toward him, shaking the crane to try and dislodge the man; in the meantime, the others escaped the cage and Grant fired a flare gun on the dinosaur. The flare ignited gasoline that had spilled from the barge’s engine, suddenly surrounding the Spinosaurus with a blazing inferno. Not wanting to suffer serious burns on top of all the other hardships he had endured, the dinosaur fled the scene, knocking over the crane on his way out in a vain attempt to kill at least one of the humans. However, all of his intended victims survived.
Ecological collapse on Isla Sorna
Between 1999 and 2004, Isla Sorna’s ecosystem became imperiled by the many new dinosaurs that were introduced by InGen under Masrani Global. The Spinosaurus, while just one animal, was a large enough predator to have a significant influence on the populations of other species. According to the junior novel Flyers, this dinosaur had caused the localized extinctions of other animals in his region of Isla Sorna, necessitating his relocation in early 2002 to a different part of the island.
His influence on the population of Isla Sorna was not limited to his direct predation of other animals. In territorial conflict, he had killed a Tyrannosaurus, which was the island’s terrestrial apex predator. The Spinosaurus was an apex predator himself, but hunted primarily in the water. As a result, the tyrannosaur’s prey would have bred without the natural controls an apex predator provides.
By 2004, the ecological damage Isla Sorna had sustained was deemed beyond repair. Masrani Global Corporation took the initiative to relocate the surviving animals to Isla Nublar. Beginning early in 2004 and continuing until Jurassic World opened at the end of May 2005, many of Isla Sorna’s animals were relocated to Isla Nublar. Allegedly, none remained any longer after May 2005, but there is good evidence to suggest otherwise.
Possible captivity by Mantah Corp
After 2001, the fate of the Spinosaurus becomes murky. Official Masrani Global records state that he died, with the game Jurassic World: Evolution 2 suggesting that he perished as a result of injuries sustained in combat in late 2004 or early 2005. A skeleton cast was even erected on Isla Nublar, which was said to be from this animal. However, the skeleton did not resemble the InGen spinosaur, leading to suspicion that it was not genuinely based on him.
A Spinosaurus strongly resembling this one, believed to be the same animal, was seen in 2016; this suggests an entirely different story to the one InGen has claimed. Instead, it seems that he was captured by Mantah Corporation, a rival company to InGen, sometime before InGen returned to Isla Sorna in force. He was brought across the ocean, introduced to a new facility where unfamiliar humans controlled his movements.
Over time, his new home’s technology was upgraded until its four artificial environments were so lifelike as to be mistaken for the real thing. His main habitat was as unfamiliar as the people: a hot desert, consisting of scraggly plant life among sand wastes and riddled with deep, rocky canyons. Searing temperatures and occasional sandstorms were hazards he faced, brought upon him intentionally by Mantah Corp attempting to test his mettle. He was also studied by paleontologist Dr. Mae Turner, whose prized specimen (a Kentrosaurus named Pierce) also inhabited the desert. The Spinosaurus, now named Asset 87, does not seem to have lived in the same areas as Pierce and they did not interact. Despite the desert’s lack of large bodies of water, he became acclimated to it, enjoying its heat and the lack of competing large carnivores. His main irritation was the staff: eventually, the island facility came to run on a skeleton crew as the job of handling the dinosaurs was largely automated. Bio-Robotic Assistance Droids would often come into the desert to administer medicine or perform habitat maintenance, and Asset 87 hated this. He destroyed a large number of BRADs over the years. His location and biometrics were monitored remotely via a tracking implant in his body, which was also how he was made to move around; drones sent to fly about the facility could create invisible barriers by having his implant shock him until he went in the direction his overseers wanted. Procedures were sometimes performed on him in the medical bay, such as DNA sampling. His genes were used, in conjunction with DNA from a female Sinoceratops, to created a new genus of dinosaur.
In June 2016, Asset 87 was temporarily out of the desert, possibly for medical purposes. He was returned to his home to find that five young humans (Sammy Gutierrez, Kenji Kon, Yasmina Fadoula, Brooklynn, and Ben Pincus) had appeared there. He chased the trespassers as aggressively as ever, uncaring that these were the first new humans he had seen in probably months. They managed to escape through a narrow part of the canyon, and he searched for a way around. When he found it, another of his habitat neighbors had gotten there first: a Smilodon, a carnivorous mammal. The Smilodon was distracted, and Asset 87 was able to ram through the debris stuck in the canyon slot in order to grab the cat and kill it before it could react. The humans, on the other hand, were able to escape.
Not long after, the facility’s administrator Kash Langford made plans to implant Asset 87 with a modified V-55 chip, which would forcibly alter his behavior using direct brain stimulation. Asset 87 awoke to this plan partly underway, but it was not Langford himself who came to administer the chip; he had conscripted a sixth young human, Darius Bowman, to do it. A modified version of the BRAD, called BRAD-X, was compelling Darius to implant the chip. Asset 87 snapped awake at the intrusion and gave chase into the canyon again. During the chase, he was accidentally struck with an electrified projectile from the BRAD-X, which aggravated him into attacking the machine. He failed to destroy it, since it had been engineered specifically to withstand this punishment, but he brutalized it nonetheless and then resumed chasing Darius. As he moved in to make the kill, he was suddenly assaulted with a Mantah Corp sleep agent; he struggled to stay awake and continue his attack, but the gas dose hit him at its most heavily concentrated and it overcame him. He passed out, but was spared from chip implantation by Darius, who found the practice morally reprehensible.
Another minor intrusion came shortly after this, in which a couple of the young humans brought a pair of juvenile dinosaurs into his habitat. These were hybrids of Sinoceratops and Spinosaurus; they had been made with his own DNA, and so in a sense were his children. Unaware of their relation, he chased the intruders out once more and went back to his quiet daily life.
Skills
Physical strength and durability
While some of his immense strength may be the result of genetic engineering (whether an intended or accidental effect), the huge size of the Spinosaurus lends him power. Many aspects of his anatomy help, such as his muscular arms ending in massively clawed hands. Surviving in visibly good health during the most tumultuous period of Isla Sorna’s history proved this dinosaur’s mettle as a fighter, capable of holding his own and keeping himself alive even when presented with major threats. While in Mantah Corp possession, he also proved himself in combat not just against animals such as a Smilodon but also the company’s advanced security technology, and even showed some slight resistance to sleep agents. He destroyed possibly more BRAD units than any other known dinosaur in Mantah Corp possession and came closer to destroying a BRAD-X model robot than other dinosaurs as well.
Swimming
Spending much of his time in water, Asset 87 is an excellent swimmer and gained much of his food from hunting in Isla Sorna’s rivers. When in bodies of water, this animal is truly in his element; he can swim better than nearly any other dinosaur, and with no marine predators large enough to challenge him near Isla Sorna, he was truly the master of that environment. Since then, he has been moved to various other biomes, sometimes depriving him of deep water. His current habitat is a desert with only small oases, so he has not had practice swimming in some time.
Sensory capabilities
The physiology of the Spinosaurus gives him a reasonably good sense of smell, able to distinguish the unique scents of other animals’ leavings. He can, for example, identify a Tyrannosaurus based on the smell of its urine, even if he cannot see the source of the smell. He also has the ability to detect objects moving in even rough water using sensory pits on his snout; by waving his snout back and forth through water, he can locate nearby prey and then snatch it using his hands. He is a light sleeper, and unfamiliar smells will rapidly wake him up. This likely protected him from sneaky rivals while on Isla Sorna.
Views
On other animals
Hatched into an environment with far too many animals in it, every minute of Asset 87’s life on Isla Sorna was a fight to survive. Competition for food and territory forced him to view his neighbors as either potential meals or potential enemies. Even his fellow apex predator, Tyrannosaurus, was perceived as a territorial threat; he would react aggressively to the scent of a tyrannosaur, and when directly confronted with one, he showed no signs of fear and charged into combat with every intention to kill. Humans and their vehicles are no exception to the way he perceives other animals, and whenever he encounters them he responds by attacking. According to Mantah Corp administrator Kash Langford, he seems to have a particular dislike for humans.
Relationships
Dr. Henry Wu and InGen
The InGen scientists and other officials who worked on Isla Sorna between 1998 and 1999 have not been named directly, and then-CEO Simon Masrani may not even have been aware that the project was taking place (he did visit Isla Sorna at some point in 1999, but this was sanctioned by the United Nations and was likely unrelated). An archived log retrieved from the Masrani Global website backdoor dated 2/20/2003 has been cited as evidence that renowned geneticist Dr. Henry Wu may have been involved with the operation; he refers in this log to “that accident we left on Sorna,” which has been interpreted as referring to the Spinosaurus. In this log, Wu discusses the potential future uses of gene splicing, and the 1998-1999 research was filed under “Amalgam Testing” by Masrani Global personnel involved with it. Both of these suggest that the Spinosaurus may have been genetically altered by his gene donors, and while Dr. Wu considered him a failure, he likely influenced Wu’s later work on the more successful Indominus rex.
After he was created, the Spinosaurus was used by InGen for research over a period of, at most, nine months before being abandoned. During that time, he was administered substances (presumably hormone cocktails) to dramatically accelerate his growth; he reached near adult size by July 2001, less than three years after his hatch date in late 1998 or early-to-mid-1999. This suggests a strong negative relationship with the InGen personnel who created him, as his rapid growth and use in unregulated experimentation would have caused him distress.
While InGen founder Dr. John P. A. Hammond died in 1997, a year before the InGen buyout, he did assist with the creation of the Gene Guard Act. This means that he effectively opposed the creation of this animal despite the two never living at the same time.
Isla Sorna dinosaurs
Asset 87 was one of a new generation of dinosaurs hatched on Isla Sorna, marking the start of a time when the island’s ecosystem became overloaded with more animals than it could handle. From that point onward, the island was incredibly hostile to life; the herbivore biomass far exceeded the amount of plant life Isla Sorna’s forty-four square miles could provide, and the number of carnivores per square mile made territory a hard commodity to access. This Spinosaurus fought tooth and claw for years to keep his territory in the central channel and nearby forest; other dinosaurs, such as the Ceratosaurus, knew to fear him.
The many large herbivores in this animal’s territory attracted carnivorous rivals. Smaller Velociraptors would be minor threats, chiefly dangerous in groups, but the huge Tyrannosaurus was a more dangerous foe. The Spinosaurus constantly defended his territory against threats like these, up to the point of finally killing one of the Tyrannosaurus. The death of this terrestrial apex predator would have had a domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem; for example, the Triceratops are prey items of the Tyrannosaurus, and its death would have removed one obstacle to their survival. They are highly efficient competitors for food, and are known to bully animals smaller than themselves to the point of death. This includes hatchlings and juveniles of other species; the now-unregulated Triceratops population would effectively reduce the survival rate of other herbivores by harassing their juveniles until they starved or died of combat injuries. Asset 87 did not always hunt on land, chiefly eating bonitos and other aquatic creatures in the river. Still, his large size could threaten smaller dinosaurs, such as Compsognathus which could be seen fleeing from him during a territorial conflict.
According to the junior novel Flyers, by 2002 the Spinosaurus‘s activities had contributed to the extinction of more than one species on the island. These may have included Iguanodon and Diplodocus, which never reached Isla Nublar. The Spinosaurus was relocated elsewhere on the island according to this junior novel, which was supposed to help alleviate pressure on the ecosystem; he would be relocated in 2004 or 2005 by Mantah Corporation, ending his role on Isla Sorna permanently.
Individuals in the 2001 incident
Two humans would arrive on Isla Sorna on May 23, 2001, though one (Ben Hildebrand) would die of his injuries shortly after crash-landing in the western forest. The survivor, a young boy named Eric Kirby, would cause the Spinosaurus intermittent frustration through his use of a Tyrannosaurus urine sample to frighten away smaller predators such as raptors. When Eric opened the flask containing the sample, the lingering smell would aggravate the Spinosaurus and cause him to vigorously search the area for the intruding tyrannosaur. This unintended psychological warfare went on for as long as a month.
The situation was escalated on July 18, when an airplane landed at the island’s airfield delivering a group of seven more humans who proceeded to make the spinosaur’s life very difficult for several days. Three of these were highly armed; mercenary Cooper became involved in a brief shootout with the animal shortly after landing. The dinosaur had been drawn to the airfield by Amanda Kirby‘s use of a megaphone to try and contact Hildebrand and her son; Asset 87 responded to her artificially loud voice by roaring back at her, which provoked Cooper to shoot. Asset 87 wounded Cooper, pursuing him to the runway. He grabbed Cooper in his jaws, but was then struck a glancing blow from the airplane as it lifted off. Having now been shot at and hit with a plane, he followed the crashed aircraft into the forest to tear it apart and eat its inhabitants. He succeeded in eating pilot M. B. Nash, but the others escaped; the satellite phone on Nash’s person at the time he was swallowed ended up in the Spinosaurus‘s crop where it would ring every time a call came in. The others escaped by first running through dense forest, and then by accidentally luring a young male Tyrannosaurus into the spinosaur’s path. The spinosaur, finally having an actual tyrannosaur to confront instead of just its urine scent, let the humans escape while he dealt with the bigger threat.
The ringing phone would draw the survivors to him; initially Dr. Alan Grant and Eric had assumed that the phone was on Paul Kirby‘s person and ran to rejoin him, while Eric shouting for his father drew the other survivors (now minus booking agent Udesky) to the same location. All together, the noise they made got the attention of the Spinosaurus again, but this time his intended victims all escaped safely. This left the frustrated animal alone, having failed in his hunt and still with a noisy device irritating his digestive tract. He would finally expel the satellite phone late that night in what appears to be a bout of indigestion, as the phone was found in a dung pile undamaged. Nash’s remains were fully digested, suggesting that he finished digesting the man before the phone passed from his crop through his gizzard and intestines fairly quickly to join Nash’s remains.
In the early morning of the following day, the remaining humans (now minus paleontology student Billy Brennan) directly, though unintentionally, invaded the Spinosaurus‘s home and hunting ground on a river barge. Finally having the home turf advantage, he tore apart the barge and attempted to extract the humans from the barge’s cage. He was distracted by Paul Kirby shouting from atop a crane, and while he attempted to knock him off of it, a flare shot by Dr. Grant struck Asset 87 on the side and then ignited the spilled gasoline from the barge. Having been psychologically tormented for a month, shot at, hit with a plane, suckered into fighting an apex predator, given indigestion, and now having his home broken into and lit on fire, the Spinosaurus gave up and fled.
According to the junior novel Flyers, he would later encounter Dr. Grant again during a minor incident associated with his relocation to another part of Isla Sorna. In this instance, Dr. Grant was working with an organization sanctioned by the United Nations to research and care for Isla Sorna’s ecosystem. Asset 87 did not appear to recognize him.
Mantah Corp
After (most likely) being illegally captured from Isla Sorna by Mantah Corporation operatives sometime in the early 2000s, this Spinosaurus was given the designation Asset 87 and introduced to a testing facility on a new island. He was acclimated to a hot desert environment, wholly unlike anything he was used to on Isla Sorna. There were no large bodies of water, and no fish to eat. Instead, he was given prepared food delivered from an underground tunnel. Although his habitat was not what he preferred in terms of terrain, he enjoyed the heat. Occasional sandstorms threatened him, engineered by Mantah Corp to test his abilities; he probably sheltered from these in the habitat’s canyon. His movements were restricted and controlled via drones, which projected invisible barriers utilizing the implant in Asset 87’s body.
Over time, the number of staff on the island decreased as the facility administrator Kash D. Langford developed automation to replace personnel. Langford held no particular love for dinosaurs, seeing them as no more alive than the machines he invented. They were simply products meant for his convenience and entertainment. Asset 87’s high aggression was of interest to Langford, since he (and his boss, the company president Daniel Kon) believed that the true potential of dinosaurs was combat for the entertainment of the wealthy. Meanwhile, just one human staff member other than Langford remained on-site; as of June 2016 this was zoologist Dr. Mae Turner, who specialized in theropod neurology and behavior. She, unlike Langford, cared deeply for the dinosaurs’ well-being and would have tried her best to keep Asset 87 healthy and comfortable. It was not uncommon for Dr. Turner to be in the desert habitat, since her pet project, a male Kentrosaurus named Pierce, lived there too. Asset 87 and Pierce do not appear to have interacted, despite being neighbors. Over the years, Dr. Turner’s research led to a better understanding of Spinosaurus biology. His DNA was used in 2015 as a source for a new hybrid species, which used Sinoceratops as a base. Although Asset 87 and the unnamed female Sinoceratops donor never met, they became parents, in a way, to two hybrid creatures which were later named Angel and Rebel.
The Mantah Corp facility was, by 2016, almost completely automated. Langford relied on an army of bionic dogs, called Bio-Robotic Assistance Droids, to patrol the facility, perform maintenance tasks, and monitor the dinosaurs. Asset 87 hated these, and often destroyed them when they entered the desert. Among other reasons, this led to Langford developing an improved version called the BRAD-X which was more or less impervious to dinosaur damage. Langford, under Kon’s orders, started prepping the facility to perform entertainment shows for very wealthy clients in 2016, and this meant change for Asset 87’s life. His habitat was disturbed more regularly as he and other assets were shipped in and out, with Pierce being removed and an unnamed Smilodon being introduced. The island was also stumbled upon by castaways, a group of six youths (Darius Bowman, Brooklynn, Ben Pincus, Sammy Gutierrez, Kenji Kon, and Yasmina Fadoula), around the same time. They contributed to the disruption of Asset 87’s life by intruding upon his habitat. Darius was conscripted by Langford to test out a modified V-55 chip which would control Asset 87’s behavior via direct brain stimulation, but Darius quietly avoided attempting this; meanwhile Dr. Turner was fired. Asset 87 was later disturbed again by some of the other castaways, who brought Angel and Rebel briefly into his habitat. Since the hybrids did not resemble him very much, there would have been no way for him to know they were his “children.”
Portrayal
The Spinosaurus was portrayed using a combination of state-of-the-art animatronics and computer-generated imagery. In earlier versions of the film, its role would have been filled by a Baryonyx. Its skeleton in Jurassic World was not based on its prior film appearance, but rather on a closer approximation of what a Spinosaurus skeleton would properly look like. Interestingly, the prop was built before the 2014 announcement of new Spinosaurus findings that changed what we believe the animal looked like, yet the prop bears striking resemblance to some of the then-current reconstructions. Its appearance in Camp Cretaceous looks slightly different from its film appearance, but some of the showrunners intended for it to be interpreted as the same dinosaur.
Like most of the new characters and dinosaurs introduced in Jurassic Park ///, it was not based on any particular part of Michael Crichton‘s novels and was an original creation. Its ferocious behavior and exaggerated physical strength was suggested by paleontological consultant Jack Horner, who believed it to be the most physically powerful theropod in existence and capable of causing localized extinction events. Horner’s beliefs in this respect are widely considered to be exaggerations, and the spinosaur’s skeleton in Jurassic World was altered to conform more to paleontological knowledge.
The fate of the Spinosaurus has been hotly contested since Jurassic World was released in 2015. In the film, a spinosaur skeleton is visible, and is destroyed by the Tyrannosaurus in what was meant to be a favor to fans who prefer the latter dinosaur over the former. While most fans were upset that the fight scene of Jurassic Park /// was so short, others were angrier over the mere fact that a Tyrannosaurus died at all, and wanted vengeance for their favorite dinosaur. The destruction of the skeleton in Jurassic World was a nod to this. However, a social media post by the official Jurassic World Twitter account claimed that this was actually the same Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park ///. Fans were quick to point out the glaring anatomical differences between the skeleton and the film’s animal. It is unknown who at Universal approved this social media post. The Spinosaurus was presumed dead by the fandom and filmmakers alike, though storyboards for 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom show two different Spinosaurus scenes which were cut from the film. Finally, in 2021, a poster and trailer for the fourth season of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous brought the Spinosaurus back to the screen, with writer Scott Kreamer suggesting that it might be the same animal from Jurassic Park ///. Colin Trevorrow, however, subscribes to the idea that they are different animals, citing the differences between the appearance and sound design of the animated series versus live-action film as evidence. More likely, this is Trevorrow’s preferred interpretation as he scripted the scene in Jurassic World where a spinosaur skeleton (claimed to be this specific individual’s) is destroyed by a tyrannosaur.
The game Jurassic World: Evolution 2, which released shortly after the Camp Cretaceous Season 4 trailer, depicts the Spinosaurus dying and its body being shipped away from Isla Sorna in the Jurassic Park /// Chaos Theory Mode game, which shows an alternate timeline version of 2004. The implication is that Simon Masrani decided upon witnessing the spinosaur’s death to use it to make the mounted display seen in Jurassic World. It is unknown if the game’s creators were aware of the upcoming Camp Cretaceous season showing the spinosaur alive, but the game’s use of alternate timelines means that it is not film-canon anyway.
The spinosaur’s sex has also been described differently by a variety of sources. Since it was bred by InGen, it was assumed by some content writers from 2001 onward to be female like most of the captive-bred dinosaurs, but some writers and actors (including William H. Macy, who described it in an interview) assumed the animal to be male instead. Fans popularly thought it to be male because of its highly aggressive behavior. Official sources continue to vary; the only time the spinosaur’s sex has been mentioned onscreen is the animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, in which it is referred to using male pronouns.