Timothy “Tim” Murphy (S/F)

Tim Murphy, age 9 (1993)

Timothy “Tim” Murphy is an American dinosaur enthusiast and grandson of the late Scottish entrepreneur Dr. John Hammond. He is best known for his involvement with the 1993 Isla Nublar incident, of which he was one of the survivors. In addition, he and his older sister Alexis were among the first people outside of the biotechnology business to learn that de-extinction had been successfully performed.

Name

Timothy is a name most commonly used in English-speaking cultures, though it has variations in many related languages, and derives from the masculine given name Timόtheos (the Latinized version of a Greek name). It translates to mean “in God’s honor,” or “honored by God.” He does not use his full name and exclusively goes by the nicknames Tim or Timmy.

The surname Murphy, which comes from his father’s side of the family, has Irish origins and is related to the personal name Murchadh. This name translates to “sea-warrior” and is associated with a legendary warrior of Irish history who fought against the Danish invasion. Murphy is the most common surname in modern Ireland, and is also very common in the United States due to Irish immigration. While Tim Murphy’s paternal heritage appears to be European-American, his surname clearly demonstrates an ancestral link to the British Isles on both sides of his family.

Biography
Early life

Though Tim’s exact date of birth is not disclosed, he was said to be nine years old as of June 1993 (specifically June 11-12). Neither of these dates appears to have been his birthday. This places his date of birth between June 13, 1983 and June 10, 1984. His maternal grandfather John Hammond (and probably his mother) was a Scottish immigrant to the United States, and his family appears to have settled near New York City; it is not known exactly where Tim was born. Tim grew up wholly within the United States and does not have any trace of his grandfather’s accent.

When Tim was born, he already had a sibling, a sister named Alexis who was three years older than him. They grew up together in the mid-to-late 1980s, and as he grew up, Tim became fascinated with Earth’s prehistoric past. By the early 1990s, he had begun subscribing to Omni, from which he learned about paleontology and other sciences. His interest made him into an avid reader and he delved into literature at an early age, reading nonfiction books by doctored vertebrate paleontologists such as Dr. Alan Grant. In school, one of his teachers recommended that he read Dr. Robert Bakker‘s works as well. Along with Dr. Grant’s Dinosaur Detectives, Tim appears to have read Bakker’s The Dinosaur Heresies, which came out in 1986. Tim enjoyed both, but preferred Bakker’s book for its larger size and explanations of what caused the Cretaceous extinction event. Some of the theories proposed at the time were a massive impact event (which Tim first read about in Omni) and disease pandemics (as proposed by Bakker). Although many paleontologists at that time were beginning to accept that birds were surviving theropod dinosaurs, Tim doubted this theory during his childhood.

Tim had little in common with Lex, whose interest lay more in the realm of computers and other technology. This was another scientific field that was growing rapidly at the time, but not one that Tim was particularly engaged with. He remained far more enamored with the idea of long-gone worlds and incredible creatures of the past. While Tim pored over dinosaur books, Lex remained in her room on her computer; Tim came to refer to her as a “computer nerd” (though she preferred to be called a hacker). Tim and Lex found common ground with their maternal grandfather, Dr. John Hammond, who shared with Tim a love for dinosaurs and with Lex an interest in new automated technologies. Before Tim was born, Hammond had founded a company in San Diego, California called International Genetic Technologies, a biotechnology firm devoted to scientific breakthroughs. It is not known when Tim learned the truth about his grandfather’s research, which was focused on restoring extinct prehistoric species to life. In 1986, though, InGen had succeeded.

Life was not easy for the Murphy family in the 1990s, and Tim’s parents began divorce proceedings sometime in 1993. This was a rough time for the children, and Hammond pitied their situation. His work kept him away from his family for long stretches of time, but he was always ready to help in whatever way he could, whether this was visiting his daughter or sending his grandchildren gifts. In the summer of 1993, Hammond’s grand plan was taking shape; he was constructing a theme park on the island of Isla Nublar, called Jurassic Park (he had begun a similar park in San Diego but abandoned it in favor of the offshore locale). The children learned about this, and since an inspection was taking place that June, Hammond invited his grandchildren to participate. It would get them away from the divorce, and their presence might help demonstrate to the hired experts the potential that the Park had to entertain and astound.

1993 incident

Tim and Lex were flown from the United States to Costa Rica, and from there took a helicopter westward across the Pacific Ocean to the tiny, remote island of Isla Nublar. They arrived on June 11. By now, they had learned the basics of Jurassic Park: scientists had acquired amber, a form of fossilized tree resin known for organic inclusions, and extracted ancient DNA from blood-sucking creatures such as mosquitoes that were trapped inside. This was used to clone the extinct animals. In order to ensure that the dinosaurs did not breed out of control, Hammond’s scientists ensured that all of the animals were bred to be females.

Upon arrival to the island, Park staff chauffeured the Murphy children in Jeeps to the Visitors’ Centre, the Park’s central building where tourists would be educated about the science behind de-extinction. Even the wonder of de-extinction temporarily took second place to Tim as he reunited with his grandfather, thanking him for the recent gifts and recounting their helicopter ride. He also met the four adults who would be touring the Park, hopefully endorsing it by the end of the weekend. These included a mathematician named Dr. Ian Malcolm, a paleobotanist named Dr. Ellie Sattler, and one of Tim’s favorite paleontologists Dr. Alan Grant himself. The fourth was a lawyer named Donald Gennaro.

Hammond led them all out the front of the Visitors’ Centre where they were greeted by a pair of electric-powered Ford Explorers that would serve as their tour vehicles in the Park. Lex pointed out that the vehicles had no drivers, and Hammond confirmed they were automated, programmed to follow a track on the ground. Tim worked up the courage to talk to Dr. Grant, mentioning that he had read Dinosaur Detectives. Once he began, talking to Grant suddenly came easily to him. Grant turned out to be deeply uncomfortable around children, though, and tried to escape. Tim was persistent, trying to join Grant in whichever car he was going to ride in; Grant managed to get away, shutting Tim in the fore vehicle as soon as Tim mentioned Dr. Bakker’s name.

The scientists took the rear vehicle (EXP 05), Grant having managed to evade Lex as well; this left Tim in the fore vehicle (EXP 04) with his sister and the lawyer. While this was not the company he had hoped for, they were still about to see dinosaurs brought back to life, and that was exciting enough on its own. Jurassic Park, it seemed, had something for everyone; Lex was enthralled by the Park’s automated computer systems, and even the lawyer was eager to see what InGen had to offer to visitors. Unfortunately, the dinosaurs themselves were not as cooperative. They passed by a Dilophosaurus exhibit, but the theropods did not make an appearance. Similarly, the Park’s star attraction Tyrannosaurus rex did not emerge from the forest, even when the Park’s chief engineer had a goat delivered to lure the creature out. Tim did take the opportunity to tease Lex for worrying about the goat, which was clearly intended as live food. He hoped to see the tyrannosaur eating, but they moved on uneventfully after waiting for several minutes.

A little while later along the tour, the three of them suddenly saw Dr. Grant depart the rear vehicle and head into a paddock area nearby. The tour was halted remotely from the control room as the other scientists began to follow, and despite Gennaro’s protests, the Murphy children joined in this impromptu expedition. Tim took the opportunity to resume his conversation with Grant where he had left it off, happily ignoring Grant’s discomfort. Lex also stuck as close to Grant as she could, having developed a precocious crush on the scientist. As they approached the area Grant had originally headed for, he stopped them, scouting ahead to see whether it was safe. Tim followed, though the others tried to hold him back, and saw what had gotten Grant’s attention: a huge Triceratops, one of the most famous of the dinosaurs, lying in the middle of a small clearing. It was being tended to by the Park’s chief veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding, who explained that this particular animal had been chronically sick. With the dinosaur tranquilized and semi-conscious, it was safe to approach. Tim encountered his first dinosaur up close and personal.

Dr. Grant remarked that this had been his favorite dinosaur as a child, and the encounter evoked a sense of nostalgia for him. As he and the other scientists tried to help Dr. Harding investigate what was making the dinosaur sick, Grant began to reconnect with his inner child. Nearby, Dr. Sattler identified a plant called the West Indian lilac, which she said was poisonous. She searched through the dinosaur’s droppings, but found no evidence that it had eaten the plant. Tim, however, found something nearby that he recognized from his books: smooth stones, laying in a pile. He realized that these were gastroliths, stones that certain herbivorous animals had used to digest their food. Since most dinosaurs could not chew, they swallowed small rocks to store in their gizzards and pulverize the plants they ate. Over time, these rocks would become smooth, and no longer effective. The dinosaur would then spit the gastroliths out and find new ones. With this clue, Drs. Grant and Sattler were able to piece together what had happened: the West Indian lilac grew in well-drained soils such as this, where the rocks were found, and so the poisonous berries dropped off among the rocks. When the Triceratops foraged for stones, it accidentally ingested the berries along with them. Because of this, it would periodically become sick.

The encounter with the Triceratops had helped Dr. Grant warm up to Tim by reconnecting with his own childhood passion. However, their budding friendship was cut short by a crack of thunder; a tropical storm had approached the island and now the field was unsafe. The group returned to the vehicles, though Dr. Sattler stayed in the paddock to try and help Dr. Harding finish up with the Triceratops, and the tour was turned around. They were sent back along the path they had come, the remainder rescheduled for tomorrow when conditions would hopefully return to normal.

Along the way back, they were passing the tyrannosaur paddock again when the tour cars suddenly stopped. The radios shut off as well, making it impossible to call for help; Grant confirmed that the radios in the rear car were not working either. With the storm passing over in full force, the best they could do was sit and wait for either the power to come back on, or for someone to come get them. Tim and Lex grew bored, as Gennaro was a poor conversationalist; Tim searched through the car for a means to entertain himself. Soon, he discovered a set of heavy goggles that he used to scare Lex; Gennaro chided Tim for handling the goggles, since they were probably expensive. Ignoring the lawyer, Tim continued to use the goggles, discovering that they were equipped with night vision. These were likely meant to allow visitors to see the dinosaurs during nighttime tours, but they worked just as well for cutting through the dark of the storm. Tim used them to observe the rear car and their surroundings, including the despondent goat still tethered to the tyrannosaur feeder.

After a few minutes, Tim felt an unusual tremor in the ground, and moments later everyone else felt it too. The vibration was rhythmic, and though Gennaro hoped that it was the power beginning to restart, there was nothing technological about this phenomenon. It was clearly an organic, living thing. Tim used the night vision goggles to investigate, and as he scanned the tyrannosaur paddock, he saw that the goat’s tether was snapped and the fodder animal was gone. Moments later, its dismembered leg landed on the roof of the car, and their eyes were drawn upward.

Tim finally had his wish: he got to see the tyrannosaur in all its glory, gulping down what was left of the hapless goat. As it ate, its arm brushed against the electric fence. No shock was delivered; the power was still off. Tim and the other tourists had known this, but now the forty-foot-long carnivore knew as well. Gennaro, realizing that there was next to nothing keeping them safe, flew into a panic and ran to hide in a nearby restroom. His sudden movement got the dinosaur’s attention, and it wasted no time in pushing through the useless fence. With Gennaro gone, Tim and Lex were alone, with nothing but the hull of the Explorer separating them from forty feet of apex predator. The tyrannosaur emanated a deafening territorial roar and began to explore the new area.

With their lives on the line, Tim and Lex desperately searched for something that would help them. They found a powerful flashlight, strong enough to cut through the dark effectively, but activating it caught the tyrannosaur’s attention and it approached their car. Tim hastily shut the door that Gennaro had left open, helping to hide their scent, but the animal had already caught sight of them. It pushed the vehicle around, and the children attempted to turn off the flashlight; they struggled due to their panic, and were unable to shut it off before the tyrannosaur plunged its snout into the car’s sun roof. A thin piece of Plexiglass was all that stood between them and its jaws.

Fortunately, the detached piece of sun roof held firm and was large enough that the dinosaur could not wrap its jaws around. Instead, it backed off and flipped the vehicle over, trapping the children inside as mud from the rainstorm flooded the interior. Now, Grant came to the rescue, using a road flare to get the tyrannosaur’s attention and luring it away. While the dinosaur was distracted with its new toy, Grant helped Lex out from the vehicle, but Tim’s legs were trapped by the seat pinning him against the crushed car roof. Outside, Malcolm also tried to help keep the tyrannosaur at bay using another flare, but failed; he was injured in the attack, but Gennaro fared far worse, being killed. Tim was unable to see this happen, but heard Grant and Malcolm’s panicked shouts, Gennaro’s cries of anguish, and Lex’s horrified scream.

Before Grant could manage to get Tim unstuck, the tyrannosaur returned, having bored of the flares and Gennaro’s carcass. From inside, Tim could only see a little of what was going on: Grant and Lex stayed as still as possible to avoid notice, but were forced toward the concrete moat on the paddock border when the tyrannosaur shoved the vehicle. As the others began rappelling down the side of the wall using a broken fence cable, Tim was pushed ever closer to the edge. The Explorer began to tip, and seconds later, plunged over forty feet down. It became entangled in the canopy of a tree, suspended precariously by the thick branches. Tim admitted to vomiting from stress and fear during this incident. He also sustained numerous injuries including a large gash on his right brow.

Outside, Grant and Lex managed to reach the ground safely, and Grant planned to rescue Tim. He ascended the tree, entering the hanging vehicle and comforting the terrified boy. He helped Tim down, suggesting that this was just like climbing down from a treehouse (however, Tim never had a treehouse, and neither did Grant). As they descended, the branches snapped under the car’s weight, and it began to fall through the canopy; they managed to barely reach the ground ahead of the vehicle. It landed on its nose atop the tree’s buttress roots, which Grant and Tim sheltered between. The vehicle tipped over, and they could not escape in time; fortunately the missing Plexiglass sunroof created a hole that Grant and Tim ducked to fit within, and they were spared further harm.

Although the tyrannosaur was above the cliffs and no longer pursuing them, there was no telling what other dangers might be roaming the island at night, so as the sun set the three survivors sought shelter. Grant was using a Park brochure to navigate, but the stylized, cartoonish map of the island did not provide very specific directions. Since they would not be able to reach the Visitors’ Centre before nightfall, they decided to await the dawn and try again then. By now the storm had passed and the sky was clearing. Some distance west of the attack site, no longer within the tyrannosaur paddock, they located a large Moreton Bay fig tree that would serve as a decent shelter for the night. Tim was reluctant about getting into another tree, and was encouraged by Grant to climb to a safe height.

Here, they would be able to sleep, with the sturdy branches providing support and the tree’s immense size keeping them out of reach of the tyrannosaur. In fact, there was only one dinosaur on the island that was tall enough to reach them now, and it was nearby: the herbivorous Brachiosaurus, a long-necked sauropod. A herd of these immense browsers was socializing in the surrounding forest. Tim identified their genus (his second attempt, mistakenly referring to them as Brontosaurus before correcting himself). Grant noticed the dinosaurs’ vocalizations, imitating them and getting a response from the dinosaurs. Lex was frightened at first, but Tim was not, instead being awed by the animals. Since the humans were so small, they would not be seen as a threat by the brachiosaurs. Instead, the dinosaurs were curious about them. Tim did tease Lex that a brachiosaur might make an exception to its herbivorous diet, just for her.

Grant discovered a fossilized dinosaur claw that he had forgotten was in his pocket, having brought it from a dig site. This prompted a bittersweet discussion about the future of Dr. Grant’s career; with de-extinction now a reality, people might eventually lose interest in paleontology. Eventually, Grant surmised, he and his colleagues would have to adapt to a changing world. For now, though, getting through the night would be enough. As the children settled in, Grant promised to stay awake in case something more dangerous did appear. Tim entertained them with dinosaur jokes until he and his sister drifted off to sleep.

The following morning, he was awakened by Lex suddenly panicking, but as he started awake he realized that she had only been startled by the unexpected appearance of one of the brachiosaurs. It was feeding on the nearby branches, and Tim and Grant reassured Lex that it was a herbivore and not interested in eating humans. Grant helped Tim hand-feed the dinosaur, and as they did, Tim noticed that its nostrils were leaky somewhat like a person with a cold. Lex attempted to pet the dinosaur like Tim had done, but she was interrupted as it sneezed on her. Tim, not to miss an opportunity, gave the dinosaur a blessing for its sneeze.

Leaving the brachiosaurs behind, the three trekked westward again. Along the way, Tim continued to tease Lex about her reaction to becoming coated in brachiosaur mucus, joking that she would never leave her room or her computer for an outdoor adventure again. As they passed through a grove of slightly smaller Moreton Bay figs, Dr. Grant suddenly stopped, having made a surprising discovery. Tim and Lex joined him, witnessing a dinosaur nest. All the eggs had hatched recently, with fresh two-toed footprints on the ground. With tracks like that, they could only be Velociraptor. Tim was confused, having learned about all the dinosaurs being female. Grant was able to propose an explanation. He had read about a discovery regarding frogs found in western Africa which were capable of changing sex, with female frogs becoming male. InGen had reconstructed the ancient, decayed DNA strands of the dinosaurs using genes from modern animals, largely amphibians, and Grant reasoned that a frog capable of this hermaphroditic change must have been one of the donors. The dinosaurs were breeding, as Dr. Malcolm had suggested might happen despite InGen’s best efforts.

Most of the journey to the Visitors’ Centre was uneventful, but exhausting. The heat of the day was now upon them, and the full brunt of the tropical sun beat down. To reach the Visitors’ Centre and hopefully safety, they would need to cross the open grassland between the mountains. This was a hot, tiresome walk over many miles, crossing flat plains and clambering across steep hills. Partway across one of the paddocks, they spotted a flock of fleet-footed dinosaurs that Tim identified as Gallimimus. The speedy omnivores were on the move, crossing the grassland at high speed. Grant marveled at their agility and birdlike coordination, likening their movements to a flock of birds evading a predator. Tim, whose ability to gape in awe and wonder at the dinosaurs was starting to wear thin, was the first to notice that they were standing in the direct path of the stampede. The three of them ran, the dinosaurs speeding past on all sides, and sheltered behind a fallen log.

As the tail end of the flock passed by, the reason for their stampede became evident; the Tyrannosaurus had been hunting them and ambushed from the treeline. It managed to capture and eat one of the Gallimimus that had stumbled. Grant and Tim were captivated, and Tim was downright hypnotized by the sheer violence of the tyrannosaur’s meal. It would be unwise to disturb a feeding tyrannosaur, and Lex was growing anxious that this fresh-from-the-hunt carnivore might still be itching to make a kill, so Grant led the children safely to the trees. He had to go back for Tim, who was still enthralled by the gory spectacle and had not noticed the others making a hasty retreat from the open.

Shortly after, they reached the perimeter fence, which appeared inactive. Grant tossed a stick at it to see if there was a reaction, but no sparks flew. To test whether it was truly off, he placed his hands around it, then screamed and writhed in apparent agony—but when Tim dared to look, Grant was giving a wry grin. While Lex was not amused, this kind of humor was exactly Tim’s style, and he complimented Grant’s prank. Unfortunately, the sound of Grant’s fake screaming got a response from the tyrannosaur as well; its roar was not close, but not far away either, and this motivated them to take a direct route over the fence rather than seek a way through. They began to climb.

Tim and Lex raced each other to the top, while Grant reminded them that getting to the other side safely was what really mattered. Tim made good time to the highest rung of the fence, but upon switching to the downward side, Lex overtook him as he slowed up. It suddenly looked much farther down than he had noticed, and in such an exhausted state he was not sure he could make it. Grant and Lex reached the ground while Tim was still only halfway down. Suddenly alarms blared and lights began flashing, indicating the power was coming back on. Grant and Lex warned Tim to jump, since he could not climb down fast enough, but he was hesitant to leap from such a height; Grant promised to catch him, and Tim eventually agreed. He summed up his courage and prepared to drop, but he had hesitated too long. The fence began to power up, and a powerful jolt of electricity threw him backwards off the fence and to the ground. He was unconscious for around a minute, his pulse briefly stopping; Grant attempted CPR, though he did not administer it correctly. Tim’s vital signs soon returned and his consciousness did as well.

Over the past day, Tim had been nearly crushed, thrown off a cliff, climbed up and down trees, walked for miles in sweltering heat and humidity, almost gotten trampled, and now had been near-fatally electrocuted and flung dozens of feet onto hard dirt. This was about as much as his nine-year-old body could take, and Dr. Grant carried him for much of the journey’s remainder. Finally, after what felt like an eternity in the wilderness, they reached civilization. The Visitor’s Centre greeted them from out of the jungle, although no one was there. The staff had mostly taken shore leave, with a skeleton crew left to maintain the Park’s essential functions; Hammond was nowhere to be found, nor was Sattler. They had no way of knowing who else was left. Grant ensured that the children would be safe and stay put at the Centre while he sought out anyone else in the compound. Fortune finally smiled upon the Murphy siblings as they discovered the immense dessert buffet which had been set out for them yesterday, and they ate for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.

This respite was short-lived. As they ate to their hearts’ content, Lex suddenly showed telltale signs of fear, and Tim followed her gaze. On a mural behind the restaurant, a shadow was moving, and it was shaped very much like one of the Velociraptors painted on the wall. This dinosaur possessed a dangerous combination of an athletic body and problem-solving intelligence, and if it was hunting them, the Murphy siblings were truly in peril now. Lex led Tim into the nearest safe hiding place, the restaurant’s kitchen, and shut the door behind them. The raptor followed their smell, reaching the door and being stalled; it knew they were inside, though, and was not about to give up. To the children’s horror, the dinosaur fidgeted with the door’s handle until it figured out how to manipulate it, pushing the door open triumphantly. It summoned a second raptor, and the two predators began stalking the Murphys.

Tim and Lex tried to quietly evade the raptors, but the tangle of kitchen implements and dishes presented plenty of opportunity to make noise. As he hid behind one of the counters, Tim accidentally knocked into a set of hanging utensils, causing a clattering sound that gave his position away. The raptors closed in, and Lex urged her brother to follow her to a new hiding place; unfortunately Tim was exhausted, terrified, and now almost hopeless. Lex used a soup ladle to tap on the floor and draw the raptors’ attention, trying to hide in a cabinet. The door jammed, but the less dominant raptor pounced into Lex’s reflection by mistake, knocking itself unconscious. Seeing that the raptors were just as vulnerable as any animal, Tim had a little bit of hope. He spotted the open door of a walk-in freezer, someplace that would be impenetrable with the door shut, and summoned the last strength his body had to offer. Tim sprinted for the freezer, the more dominant raptor in pursuit. Inside, he slipped on the melting ice, but used a support pole to swing himself around and aim for the exit as the raptor tumbled to the floor as well. The dinosaur was now inside the freezer as Tim managed to get out, fighting to get the door closed. Lex came to his aid, and together, they trapped the hunter within. This time, they bolted the door shut, making it impossible to escape from the inside.

The other raptor was recovering from being stunned, so the Murphys fled the kitchen. In the Centre’s main rotunda, they ran into Dr. Grant, who had found Dr. Sattler and armed himself. Hammond and Dr. Malcolm were also still alive, having sheltered in the emergency bunker nearby, but no other staff members were left. They made for the control room, from which point they could get the Park’s security systems working. The raptor followed. Keeping it out was a challenge, since the door locks were electronic and would not function with the physical security inactive. Grant and Sattler used all their strength to keep the raptor at bay, but this left them unable to use the gun. Meanwhile, Lex recognized the operating system on the Park computers as one she was familiar with. Tim, staying well away from the struggle at the door, could only offer his sister moral support as she navigated the Park’s computer network in search of the security file.

Tim during the incident (6/12/1993)

Lex succeeded, activating the physical security systems of the Visitors’ Centre. Everything in the Park was now functional again, including the electronic door locks and telephones. The raptor was locked out of the room, and Grant was able to call Hammond in the emergency bunker and have him send for rescue. Outside, the raptor was still persistent, preparing to shatter the window of the control room to get inside. Grant and Sattler led the Murphys into the crawlspace above the room when their gun jammed, and from here they made their way to the ventilation ducts. The raptor made efforts to get in from below, threatening Lex, but was fought off by Grant. Finally they reached the main rotunda through the ventilation. In the center of the rotunda was a set of dinosaur fossils and construction scaffolding. They made to use the scaffolding to get to the ground floor, but the raptor had gotten to the scaffolding ahead of them. Instead, they used a large sauropod fossil as a makeshift escape route. The raptor followed suit, leaping onto the fossil. All this added weight and jostling broke the fossil apart, and its tethers could no longer support it. The fossil display collapsed. Everyone was deposited onto the floor and once again Tim was brought precariously close to being crushed, this time by a sauropod rib cage.

On the floor, they regrouped to find that the situation had somehow actually gotten worse: the alpha raptor, the most aggressive and powerful of the three, had joined the hunt. Grant and Sattler did their best to protect Tim and Lex, but the raptors knew that their prey was unarmed and vulnerable. The alpha raptor pounced. What it had not seen, though, was that it had been followed into the Centre. As it leapt into the air, it was caught mid-jump by the enormous jaws of the tyrannosaur, which had pushed through the tarp over an unfinished wall after the raptor had entered. The alpha raptor was quickly crushed to death, and its subordinate flew into a rage and attacked. While the dinosaurs clashed with one another, Tim was escorted out of the Centre by the adults, Lex running along with them.

Outside, Hammond had arrived in Jeep 10 with Dr. Malcolm, and they all piled into it. They headed for the helipad, the InGen Construction helicopter N293G waiting for them already. All six survivors boarded the helicopter, though Hammond lingered outside, listening to the sounds of the distant brachiosaurs. Leaving the island now would mean abandoning his lifelong dream. Grant, understanding Hammond’s pain, comforted the old man and helped him into the helicopter where Tim and Lex waited, exhausted but very much alive. His beloved grandchildren were what really mattered now, and at last Hammond turned his back on Jurassic Park.

Tim and Lex slept well on the helicopter, resting alongside Dr. Grant on the flight back to Costa Rica. They had not only grown closer together during the incident; they had also been instrumental in helping Dr. Grant grow as a person. Tim in particular had reminded Grant of the childhood love of dinosaurs that originally drove him to become a paleontologist. Because of their experience together, Grant learned to empathize with children, and although he never had any of his own, he was from then on devoted to sparking a love of science in the young generation.

Aftermath of the incident

Upon arrival to the mainland, Tim and Lex were probably instructed to tell no one what had happened on Isla Nublar, while all of the adults signed nondisclosure agreements. They returned home to their parents; the divorce probably proceeded as planned. None of Tim’s visible injuries were permanent, though he suffered a severe electric shock that may have caused internal nerve damage. More than that, though, would be the psychological trauma. Tim had endured far more than most people had at his age, and to make matters worse, he had few confidants. Grant and Lex were the only people who truly understood the ordeals he had gone through, but with Grant’s career suffering, Tim would have mainly relied on Lex for emotional support. Hammond surely helped as well, and Tim kept in touch with Dr. Malcolm and most likely Dr. Sattler in the ensuing years. Unfortunately, with the secrecy surrounding Jurassic Park and InGen’s desire to keep it that way, therapy would not have been an option for the Murphys.

Not all of Tim’s family members were understanding. His first cousin once removed, Peter Ludlow, had been appointed Chairman of the Board at InGen some time before the incident took place and believed that the company should try and salvage the Park. Ludlow had not seen the things that the survivors did, so he had no way of understanding how bad the situation had been. Hammond firmly opposed any further progress on Jurassic Park, but InGen was already suffering from lawsuits and production losses related to the incident and would go bankrupt if it did nothing. In the years following the incident, a rift grew in their family, with Hammond on one side and Ludlow on the other. This only worsened when InGen discovered a year after the incident that the dinosaurs had not died out, and that they were flourishing in their isolated environment. Ludlow wanted to mount an expedition to Isla Sorna, where the Park’s production facility had been located, and collect dinosaurs to rebuild the Park. Hammond, who had been changed by the disaster in 1993, believed that the dinosaurs should instead be left in peace with the islands being set aside as a sanctuary.

InGen looked for ways to depose Hammond, and at the same time, his health fell into decline. Tim and Lex sometimes visited Hammond as he became bedridden at his estate in New York City. In late 1996, an incident occurred on Isla Sorna in which a young girl was injured by dinosaurs; this was the final crisis that InGen needed to take Hammond out. Led by Ludlow, they moved to fire their founding CEO, and on May 26, 1997, Hammond was formally removed. Ludlow visited Hammond’s estate to finish wrapping up affairs as he took the position. Tim and Lex were at the home that day as well, and while they were wary of Ludlow and his assistants, they had a brief but happy reunion with Dr. Malcolm, who had been summoned to the estate by Hammond.

Turn of the millennium

A few days later, headlines broke across the country revealing InGen’s de-extinction project. Ludlow had put into action his plan to retrieve dinosaurs from Isla Sorna, having intended to populate the abandoned San Diego park, but Hammond had sent his own team (including Malcolm) to sabotage this. The result was a bull Tyrannosaurus rex being accidentally released into the streets of San Diego early in the morning. Malcolm had aided in recapturing it and sending the animal and its offspring back home to Isla Sorna, but the damage was done. The world knew about the dinosaurs, and Ludlow was missing, presumed dead.

It was a chaotic time for InGen and the world at large as everyone struggled to cope with the enormity of what had been revealed. Hammond helped the United States government write into law the Gene Guard Act, a piece of legislature intended to protect the dinosaurs’ welfare, and then passed away at the end of the year. Tim lost one of his closest family members and one of the very few people he could have trusted as a confidant, with Lex being all he had left for helping with his trauma. With a tyrannosaur attack in San Diego and dinosaurs all over the news, his frightful memories would have been reawakened, but fortunately with Jurassic Park public knowledge he could speak openly about his experiences. As for InGen, it was once more without a CEO and was soon up for grabs to the highest bidder. The winner of this bidding war ended up being Masrani Global Corporation, a massive conglomerate run by Simon Masrani (the son of Hammond’s late friend, Sanjay Masrani). Before Hammond had died, he had entrusted Masrani with accomplishing just this, in the hopes that someone he knew to be trustworthy was left in charge of the dinosaurs’ safety and health.

Masrani wasted no time in piecing the broken InGen back together, restructuring and refurbishing its institutions. The biggest change came in 2003, when Masrani announced after a complicated viral marketing campaign that he would be opening a new version of Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar in 2005. It was now rechristened Jurassic World. Construction was already underway. Transport of animals from Isla Sorna commenced in 2004, by which time the island’s overpopulation had caused a trophic cascade threatening the lives of the animals. Nearly all the survivors were supposedly transported to Isla Nublar for Jurassic World. On May 30, 2005, the new park opened its gates to visitors. By this time, Tim was twenty-one years old.

Into the modern age

Jurassic World was surely a complicated subject for Tim, who had already experienced the full range of wonder and terror that these animals could bring. It is unknown if he ever visited it; since Simon Masrani was a family friend, Tim and his relatives would probably have been welcome there. On the other hand, his personal account of the 1993 incident made him a publicity risk to InGen should he ever speak about what had happened behind closed doors. The public knew little about Jurassic Park’s past, knowing only that a failed attempt to open the Park in the 1990s had resulted in a secretive and fatal disaster. To those not in the know, the 1993 incident was a mysterious and semi-legendary event and not the tragedy it was to those who lived it.

The park was a massive success as far as the public was concerned, but behind the scenes it faced financial trouble. Raising and maintaining so many dinosaurs, as well as operating all the attractions on the island, placed strain on the company and used up a large portion of Masrani Global resources. In late 2014, Masrani began hinting that something new was coming to the Park, eventually revealing that it would be a new theropod; ticket sales to the park skyrocketed. This unknown attraction was slated for a public reveal in 2016. For the moment, only a select few knew what it was.

At the end of 2015, the world learned about this new theropod ahead of schedule when it was mistakenly released from captivity. Tim, by this time entering his thirties, would probably have learned from the news what had happened. First, all the northern attractions in Jurassic World were closed for unknown reasons on December 22, leaving thousands of tourists milling about in the southern and central parts of the park. Then, in the mid-afternoon, a flock of pterosaurs descended upon the tourists, having apparently escaped the Jurassic World Aviary. It was learned later that the escape was due to a helicopter crash into the Aviary, and that the fatal crash had taken the life of Simon Masrani himself. The helicopter, with Masrani at the helm, had been pursuing another escaped animal: the park’s upcoming new attraction, a genetically-engineered creature called Indominus rex. This species had been built from the genomic level up by InGen’s longtime employee, the world-renowned geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, but its purpose as a park attraction had been corrupted by InGen Security. The hybrid animal was killed the night after its escape, but not before a combination of lawsuits and bad publicity were inevitable. Jurassic World was doomed to indefinite closure.

Mere hours after the evacuation of Isla Nublar began, it was completed, and the island was abandoned by Masrani Global Corporation. Henry Wu was stripped of his credentials and went on the run, wanted by the U.S. government for bioethical misconduct. InGen’s future was once more up in the air, and the dinosaurs’ fate was in question. Many people opted to let them live out their lives on Isla Nublar and die out, while others argued that the animals’ creators had an obligation to provide for them (as Hammond had once insisted). Foremost in advocating for the dinosaurs was the aptly-named Dinosaur Protection Group, founded in 2017 by Jurassic World’s former administrator Claire Dearing. The issue grew hotly debated as volcanic activity on Isla Nublar made the situation more urgent. At the time, the United States was becoming increasingly politically polarized under an extremist reactionary presidential administration, making it ever more difficult to take any action.

This, much like Jurassic World, would have been a challenging issue for Tim. His love of dinosaurs, and the memory of his grandfather, would have urged him to advocate for the dinosaurs. But his childhood trauma would present an alternative, coming into conflict with his moral beliefs by reminding him that these animals could be dangerous. As long as people could be kept safely away from the animals, they could live in peace, but people tended not to leave well enough alone. Tim is not known to have made any statement about the issue.

Regardless of his beliefs, the matter was settled for him in June 2018; the volcanic Mount Sibo erupted on Isla Nublar on June 23 and destroyed the island’s ecosystem. The following day, it was discovered that animals had been illegally removed from the island to be sold on the black market. A large number of animals escaped from the crime scene, the estate of Hammond’s former business partner Benjamin Lockwood, and scattered into the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Governmental and corporate entities struggled to control the animals which, as had long been predicted, refused to submit. After all these years, Jurassic World had now come to Tim.

Views
On de-extinction

When he first learned about de-extinction, Tim was thrilled at the chance to see living dinosaurs and other prehistoric life forms. Having always enjoyed reading about paleontology, the opportunity to see these creatures in person was irresistible. He was brought to Isla Nublar to be a part of the first-ever tour of Jurassic Park; while there, he witnessed long-extinct animals and plants brought back to life through genetic engineering. Tim learned the basics of how this had come to pass, as well as the methods InGen’s scientists used to try and keep the animals contained. These methods included population control, which he does not seem to have objected to.

While on the tour, Tim was accompanied by scientists including Dr. Alan Grant, who eventually led to Tim realizing that de-extinction could end the careers of traditional paleontologists. This was a sobering realization, especially for this young boy who had idolized paleontologists for most of his life. He and Grant both came to the conclusion that people would have to adapt to this technological change, just as animals had always adapted to changes in their world.

Tim was present for the 1993 Isla Nublar incident, which resulted in the premature closure of Jurassic Park. During the incident, he suffered a near-fatal animal attack and was imperiled on a few other occasions. This may have affected his opinions on de-extinction, but despite these traumatizing events, Tim remained enamored by the less aggressive dinosaurs he witnessed. He was also present for the discovery of protogyny among the dinosaur populations, one of the major examples of genetic engineering causing unintended biological consequences. Protogyny allowed the dinosaurs to breed despite InGen’s population control efforts. As a result, Tim was one of the first people to realize how little control InGen had actually managed to exert, and that achieving control over such a complex system was perhaps impossible.

Despite being a witness to these early controversial topics in de-extinction, Tim has remained mostly quiet on the matter during recent debates. His present opinions are undisclosed.

Paleontological theories

Tim has been well-read on paleontology since his early years and learned about many contemporary theories. During his childhood, he was particularly interested in causes of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event (at the time in the 1990s it was still called the “Cretaceous-Tertiary” extinction). Two suggestions stood out to him. One was that widespread disease had infected numerous populations of animals, spreading throughout the food webs and causing ecosystems to collapse. The other was the Alvarez hypothesis, which suggested that a massive object such as an asteroid or comet had collided with Earth near where the Yucatán Peninsula is now located, causing ecological devastation. This second hypothesis is now considered a valid theory and is supported by a large body of evidence.

Although Tim’s books were fairly up-to-date in his childhood, he did not agree with all current theories presented by professional paleontologists. For example, he doubted the link between extinct theropods and modern birds. Paleontologists have long believed that birds are members of the coelurosaurian theropods, with this classification being supported by an enormous amount of fossil evidence and almost universally endorsed today. In the 1990s, there was not quite as much evidence, but the theory was also gaining traction among the public for the first time. Despite some of Tim’s idols such as Dr. Alan Grant strongly supporting the classification of birds within Coelurosauria, Tim did not see the similarity. He also incorrectly believed (albeit at the age of nine) that the suggestion meant that all dinosaurs had evolved into birds, and that this was where they had gone, rather than birds being the last surviving dinosaur lineage while others had been driven extinct. Presumably, as Tim has grown into an adult, his knowledge has become more complete in addition to remaining current.

Skills
Knowledge of paleontology

Tim Murphy has read up on paleontological science since a very early age, subscribing to Omni Magazine and reading the works of scientists such as Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Robert Bakker. This placed his reading comprehension at the age of nine well above average. Much of his thoughts on paleontology came from magazine articles and books, namely Dr. Grant’s Dinosaur Detectives, though during his early childhood Tim was not yet convinced that birds should truly be classified as theropod dinosaurs.

He was up to date on theories about the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event, having read about the Alvarez hypothesis regarding a massive asteroid impact in what is now Mexico. As of 1993, the hypothesis was only thirteen years old and was not widely accepted, but it had become a tried-and-true theory ten years later with the bulk of evidence supporting it. Tim also entertained the idea that pandemics had caused the extinction event, though most scientists now consider this hypothesis unlikely.

Having seen countless skeletal diagrams and paleoart reconstructions of dinosaurs, Tim was able to readily identify many species at a glance and give basic information on their biology. He correctly identified de-extinct Gallimimus, Velociraptor, and Brachiosaurus (though he initially mistook the brachiosaurs for Brontosaurus, which as of 1993 was not considered a valid genus and was instead a junior synonym of Apatosaurus). During the 1993 incident, he positively identified gastroliths, stones that had been worn smooth in a herbivorous animal’s crop. Gastroliths are used to crush plant matter in the digestive systems of animals that cannot chew. Tim’s identification of the gastroliths was key to diagnosing health issues in a Triceratops, making Tim a participant in one of the world’s first cases of paleoveterinary science.

Physical ability

Though he is not especially athletic, Tim was very agile as a child owing to his small size and also had decent strength. This was all put to the test during the 1993 incident, which saw him climb up and down several tall trees, evade animals, and walk for hours at a time under the Central American sun. During the incident he sustained and recovered from numerous injuries, including a severe electrocution. By the end of the incident he had to be carried for part of the way due to exhaustion. Despite all of the hardships he endured, Tim appears to still be in good physical health. If he has any scars or disabilities as a result of his injuries, they are not visible.

Skill with animals

Tim’s area of expertise is dinosaurs, and until 1993 he had only read about his favorite animals in books and seen fossils in museums. However, he applied his knowledge to de-extinct dinosaurs while visiting Jurassic Park. Although most of the animal handling was done by the adults, Tim’s input was helpful in some cases, such as using gastroliths to discern the cause of health issues in a Triceratops. He also fed and pet a Brachiosaurus, identifying possible health issues in this animal as well; he noticed that its nose was showing signs of a cold. During a Velociraptor attack, Tim predicted the predators’ behaviors well enough to trap one in a freezer.

Humor

From an early age Tim has been a prankster and loves to tell a joke. Much of this comes from teasing his elder sister, Lex, either through practical jokes or playful mockery. He has a wry sense of humor, likes a harmless jumpscare, and enjoys surprisingly dark comedy; during the 1993 incident he joked about Lex being eaten by dinosaurs and relished in her fear for a fodder goat’s safety. He also greatly enjoyed Dr. Grant pranking him and Lex with a fake electrocution gag, though Lex was far less appreciative.

Naturally, Tim’s favorite jokes are related to dinosaurs. A standard example is: “What do you call a blind dinosaur? Do-you-think-he-saurus.” It comes with a follow-up: “What do you call a blind dinosaur’s dog? Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex.”

Relationships
Family

Tim Murphy is the grandson of Scottish entrepreneur Dr. John Parker Alfred Hammond, but his mother’s name is not known; his father’s side of the family is assumed to be from the United States since he has an American rather than Scottish accent. For all of his life, Tim has lived alongside his older sister Alexis, who was about three years old when he was born. Their interests differed from a fairly early age; Lex was fascinated by technology, but did appreciate animals, and Tim was much more interested in the science of paleontology. Despite their differences, Tim and Lex got along fairly well with little more than the usual amount of teasing between siblings.

Their maternal grandfather was always a place in which their interests converged, since he was interested in biotechnology. His company, International Genetic Technologies, used cutting-edge scientific techniques to perform genetic engineering; its ultimate goal was to perform de-extinction. By the mid-1980s, InGen had succeeded. At some point by the early 1990s, Tim learned about what his grandfather had accomplished. Hammond was not the only family member at InGen; Tim’s first cousin once removed, Peter Ludlow, also worked there. Ludlow’s mother was Tim’s maternal great-aunt.

In the early 1990s, the Murphy parents began to divorce. Hammond did his best to comfort his family during such a difficult time, including bringing the children to Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar. The Park was already seeing its first visitors for an onsite inspection, and having Tim and Lex along would help Hammond convince the experts to endorse the Park. The children represented the Park’s real target audience. While this could help the Park to open without further delays, it would also bring the children away from the divorce for the weekend. Hammond had always been a doting grandfather and wanted to help keep them happy and entertained. He and the children were excited to see one another again, and he saw them off for what was intended to be an exciting tour of the Park’s animal exhibits.

The Park was sabotaged by a disgruntled employee during the tour, plunging everyone into chaos. Tim and Hammond did not see each other again until after the Park had suffered so much damage as to be unrecoverable, and his life had been put in peril during two different animal attacks. Hammond was shaken not only by the suffering that had come from his life’s work, but by nearly losing his beloved grandchildren; from that day on, he became a changed man. Tim would have had few confidants to help him cope with the trauma inflicted on him, but the best ones he had were family.

On the other hand, Ludlow had not witnessed firsthand the disaster at Jurassic Park and pushed to continue the project. He blamed Hammond’s failure as a leader for everything that had happened, causing a rift in the family which was never resolved. Tim, as well as Lex, was visibly uncomfortable around Ludlow as he took Hammond’s side in the schism. This ended with Ludlow’s attempt to save Jurassic Park and InGen, which was sabotaged by a team sent by Hammond; this resulted in de-extinction being revealed to the public in another incident that ended Ludlow’s life. Hammond also passed away at the end of that year.

Jurassic Park endorsement team

When Tim and Lex toured Jurassic Park, they were accompanied by a team of experts from outside InGen whose job was to observe the Park and, if they were satisfied of its integrity, give their endorsement. Then the Board would allow Hammond to resume construction. The first member of this team was Donald Gennaro, a lawyer representing InGen’s investors; an accident at the Park had caused the insurance underwriters to express doubts about the Park’s safety and the investors were considering pulling out of the project. Gennaro’s job was to give or withhold his endorsement based on whether he believed it to be in the best interest of the investors. Three scientists were also members of the team: mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. Tim and Lex met all of them upon their arrival to the Visitors’ Centre. Hammond not only wanted to get Tim and Lex away from their parents’ divorce; he also hoped that their presence would help the adult guests experience the true wonder of Jurassic Park through awestruck children’s eyes.

While Lex quickly became friends with Dr. Sattler, Tim instead was thrilled to meet Dr. Grant, one of his longtime idols. He had read Grant’s book Dinosaur Detectives and was full of questions about Grant’s theories, including expressing his doubts about the classification of birds as dinosaurs. Unfortunately, Grant was deeply uncomfortable around children and dodged Tim’s conversation attempts. Tim was not deterred, though, and continued talking to Grant until he was physically unable to do so (Grant shut him in one of the tour vehicles to avoid talking about his colleague Dr. Robert Bakker). The children were left to ride with Gennaro while the scientists took the other car.

Gennaro was not a particularly exciting traveling companion and he seems to have had fairly few interactions with the children during the tour. At one point he teased Lex about being uncomfortable with one of the animals eating a live goat; Tim appreciated this instance of dark humor. Tim, along with Lex, took the first opportunity to resume accompanying Grant when the tour was unexpectedly brought to a stop by Grant leaving the vehicles. While in the field, they encountered a sick dinosaur, Grant’s childhood favorite Triceratops, and he was able to reconnect with his own inner child. Tim even helped them diagnose the dinosaur’s health issues. From here on, Grant was less uncomfortable with the children, though he still did not ride with them. Sattler remained in the field while everyone else returned to the tour. Inclement weather led to the control room staff cancelling the rest of the tour and planning to show the remainder of the Park tomorrow.

Along the way back to the starting point, the power was cut and the vehicles stalled next to the tyrannosaur paddock. It was here that the goat finally lured the predator out of hiding, but with the electricity shut down, the dinosaur quickly learned that it could escape its paddock and wasted no time in doing so. Gennaro abandoned the Murphys in a panic, leaving a horrified Tim and Lex to try and save themselves. The scientists came to their rescue, Grant managing to get Lex out of the damaged car while Malcolm nearly sacrificed himself distracting the tyrannosaur. Gennaro, despite his attempts to save himself, was dismembered and killed during the attack. As far as any of them knew, Malcolm might have died too. Tim was trapped in the car as it was pushed over a cliff into a moat, but after rappelling down the wall with Lex, Grant managed to save Tim from the wreck. He brought the children to a safe place for the night.

Over the course of the next day, they trekked westward across Isla Nublar, encountering escaped dinosaurs along the way. Grant’s expertise kept them safe until they finally reached the Visitors’ Centre. Grant assuming the role of protector led to him devoting himself to the children’s safety, discarding any remaining discomforts that he had about them. Velociraptors assaulted the Visitors’ Centre later in the morning, but Sattler also rejoined the group and she aided Grant in protecting the children from danger. By now, Tim’s ordeal left him totally exhausted and he had to be helped along by the others. As they evacuated the island, the children were happy to see that Malcolm had survived his ordeal despite the severity of his injuries. Tim, Lex, Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and Hammond all left the island together.

Over the course of the next few years (and presumably beyond), Tim and Lex did keep in touch with their fellow survivors. Out of all of them, Malcolm was the only one to break his nondisclosure agreement, speaking openly about the incident and sacrificing his career for his troubles. Ludlow, who sought to wrest control of InGen from Hammond due to the latter’s failure of leadership, was largely responsible for ruining Malcolm’s reputation and portraying him as a fraud in the public eye. Tim and Lex seem to have sympathized with Malcolm, and to some degree, so did Hammond himself. This eventually led to Malcolm’s vindication when the public was presented with evidence he had not been lying.

While Tim and Lex have stayed out of the spotlight in later events related to de-extinction, there is no reason to believe that they have not remained friends with Grant, Malcolm, and Sattler as time has gone on. In fact, as the situation grows ever more complicated, it seems likely that these five survivors of 1993 would continue to be supportive of one another.

InGen employees

Although his grandfather was a founding member of InGen, Tim did not know many of the employees himself. He may have known Hammond’s partner in business, Sir Benjamin Lockwood, who helped found the company; however these two men parted ways on bitter terms in the early 1990s. While visiting Isla Nublar in 1993, he was brought in by helicopter, most likely one of the InGen Construction helicopters commonly used to ferry VIPs from the mainland. Once onsite, he was probably driven via Jeep to the Visitors’ Centre, where he and Lex were left in the care of Hammond and his guests.

He did not meet with many staff members after this since the Park ran on a skeleton crew for the weekend. The two most important employees on his journey, though he never met them, were chief engineer Ray Arnold and chief programmer Dennis Nedry. These were the two men who had designed the tour program he used to see the Park; Arnold was observing them the entire time for any issues in the program. He initiated the tour and attempted to lure out the tyrannosaur by delivering a goat to its paddock, explaining this over the PA system. Nedry, on the other hand, was distracted during the tour; he had been bribed by a rival corporation to steal InGen trade secrets while everyone else was occupied with the visitors. Tim briefly met the chief veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding, who ended up going on to have his own experience during the next two days, but he would not interact with Tim again. However, Tim had helped him diagnose a sick dinosaur, aiding his job.

Nedry sabotaged Jurassic Park, intending to return and resolve the situation before anyone realized the power fluctuations were deliberate, but he never made it back. Instead, deactivating the security systems and other programs caused Tim and the other visitors to become stranded in the Park. Neither Arnold nor Nedry survived the ensuing events, dying separately for unrelated reasons. Aside from the helicopter pilot who carried them off the island, Hammond was the only remaining InGen staff to leave Isla Nublar on June 12.

During Hammond’s final months of life, the Murphy siblings were often at his bedside, as was the family friend Simon Masrani. It is likely that Tim and Masrani met at some point. Before the incident in 1993, Masrani’s father (who had been a close friend of Hammond’s as well) passed away, and Hammond took on a father-figure role in his stead. After Hammond’s own passing, Masrani bought InGen, allegedly with Hammond’s blessing. Masrani went on to rebuild Jurassic Park with a new look and new name, Jurassic World, bringing InGen back from the brink. At this time, it is not known whether Tim visited Jurassic World, or what his relationship with InGen has been going forward.

InGen animals

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, John Hammond and InGen performed de-extinction research with the intent to bring back Mesozoic life forms through genetic engineering. They succeeded, though the fruits of their labors remained under wraps until 1997. Tim was privy to this knowledge well before the rest of the world, and along with Lex, he was among the only guests ever to visit Jurassic Park. Their route from the helipad to the Visitors’ Centre may have taken them through paddock areas; if this is the case, they may have witnessed their first dinosaurs here. Species found in those areas included large herbivores, chiefly Brachiosaurus and Parasaurolophus.

On their tour through the Park, two of the carnivorous dinosaurs did not make appearances. These were Dilophosaurus and Tyrannosaurus; for the latter, Park staff even tried to lure it out with a live goat, but the dinosaur still remained hidden in the jungle. Finally, while continuing along, Grant took an unscheduled jaunt into the field, where Tim saw his first up-close dinosaur in person: the famous three-horned Triceratops. Tim, Grant, and Sattler investigated the animal’s health alongside a Park veterinarian, with Tim playing a crucial role in diagnosing its illness. He identified gastroliths near a plant which the scientists said was poisonous, leading to the conclusion that the dinosaur had accidentally ingested poisonous berries while foraging for stones.

A far less wondrous encounter awaited her on the way back to the Visitors’ Centre. Along the way, power was lost and the tour program was halted. While they waited for power to be restored or for someone to come get them, the tyrannosaur finally emerged, but with the fences deactivated there were no barriers keeping it contained. The apex predator made its escape and claimed the main road as territory, investigating the vehicles and people there. Tim’s life was put in peril as the theropod made his vehicle its plaything, causing irreparable damage to the car and wounding Tim. Grant’s quick thinking saved them both. This attack left him battered both inside and out, though he calmed down sooner than Lex.

They bedded down in a large tree far above where the tyrannosaur could reach. During the evening and the following morning, they were visited by the only dinosaurs tall enough to reach them, the Brachiosaurus. These animals were so huge that humans would not present any threat, so the brachiosaurs remained peaceful and even curious. In the morning, Tim fed and pet a brachiosaur that was eating from their tree, recognizing cold symptoms in it. The dinosaur sneezed copiously on Lex, much to Tim’s amusement.

Isla Nublar did not take much time to go feral once the fences were shut down. Along the way back to the Visitors’ Centre, he witnessed a kind of artificial ecosystem take shape on the island; a flock of Gallimimus encountered them on the grassy plains, being chased by the tyrannosaur. While the stampede was threatening and the tyrannosaur as intimidating as ever, Tim avoided harm; the Gallimimus swerved to avoid the humans and also held the tyrannosaur’s attention. This time, they were not the target. The tyrannosaur selected a larger, meatier food source, and Tim escaped safely with Grant and Lex.

This encounter had presented more of an indirect danger, not an active threat to them. They were not so lucky at the Visitors’ Centre, where they were accosted by a new species: the highly intelligent Velociraptor, a dinosaur that had exhibited behavioral problems at the Park and were difficult to keep contained. In the jungle, Grant had discovered eggs belonging to this species, and now Tim and Lex encountered adults. Two raptors stalked them into the Visitor Centre’s kitchen and hunted them down among the counters and cabinets. Tim was particularly vulnerable, exhausted from his many ordeals and freezing up in fear; Lex put herself at risk to save her brother’s life by distracting the raptors so that he could crawl to safety. Tim witnessed one of the raptors collide with a cabinet and stun itself while chasing Lex, and recognizing that these were only animals, he made a run for a walk-in freezer and ended up locking the predator inside (with help from Lex). They escaped before the stunned raptor could recover enough to attack.

With Sattler and Grant’s help, Lex restored power to the security systems, and they fled toward the Centre’s exit through crawlspaces and ventilation ducts in the ceiling. In the Centre’s main rotunda, the alpha raptor joined the hunt, and for a moment their situation appeared hopeless as they were cornered. Luck was on their side one last time, though: the alpha raptor was being hunted by the tyrannosaur, which appeared to ambush the alpha raptor through the Visqueen tarpaulin hanging over an unfinished wall. The alpha raptor was crushed to death in the larger predator’s jaws, and the subordinate became enraged enough to attack the tyrannosaur. Tim and Lex were herded out of the Visitors’ Centre to safety while the tyrannosaur fought for its breakfast.

No further trouble slowed their escape from Isla Nublar. The last dinosaurs they encountered were the far-off brachiosaurs, whose voices could be heard singing before Tim and the others boarded the helicopter.

While there is no direct evidence of Tim encountering any more de-extinct creatures, they would have continued to affect his life. The incident at Jurassic Park left him with traumatizing memories. These should have faded as the dinosaurs died out naturally, but Hammond discovered that the dinosaurs had not died at all and were instead flourishing. In 1997, shortly before Hammond passed away, a male tyrannosaur and its offspring were brought to San Diego in a failed attempt to save InGen; Tim’s cousin Peter Ludlow, who had ousted Hammond from InGen and taken his place, was killed during the ensuing disaster. The dinosaurs were sent back home alive, but the world was now aware of their existence, and encounters between humans and dinosaurs became more frequent.

Jurassic World was constructed between 2002 and 2005, opening that summer and seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors over the course of each year it operated. It is unknown if Tim was among them, and if he did go, which animals he witnessed. This second park operated for ten years before a major incident occurred, but when it did, the park closed indefinitely. The dinosaurs’ lives were jeopardized not long after this when volcanic activity threatened to wipe them out; they were “saved” by the illegal wildlife trade and many were released into the Pacific Northwest. It is not known where Tim currently lives, but sooner or later, de-extinct animals will probably become a part of his life again. Whether they arrive simply as animals moving around of their own volition, or are brought there by humans with more ethically dubious agendas, has yet to be seen.

Portrayal

Tim Murphy is portrayed by Joseph Mazzello. His character in the films is loosely based on the character of the same name in Michael Crichton‘s novel, but with major alterations. Foremost is his age, which is switched with his sister’s; in the novel, Tim is the elder sibling and Lex is younger. Also, Tim has both the paleontology knowledge and computer skills in his original incarnation; these skills were instead divided between him and Lex for the film so that each of them would have a use. Tim and Lex’s relationship is also healthier in the film, whereas in the novel, Lex (who is portrayed as more irritating and immature than either sibling in the film) mocks and teases Tim as she learned from observing their abusive father. Tim, on the other hand, is patient and tolerant, caring for Lex during the disaster. Tim in the films is the younger sibling and so in Jurassic Park is the less capable child in this situation.

His cameo in The Lost World: Jurassic Park was made up entirely for the film, with his character being only briefly mentioned in the novel.

Disambiguation Links

Tim Murphy (C/N)

Tim Murphy (JN)

Tim Murphy (IDW-JPR)

Tim Murphy (CB-Topps)