Hello dino fans and welcome to the final book discussion of The Lost World by Michael Crichton! This is the last discussion for the book itself, but we’ll check in next week too to discuss the movie adaptation.

I talked about spoilers in more detail in the first discussion, so now I am just going to link to r/bookclub‘s spoiler policy.

Section summary

Sixth Configuration: “Order collapses in simultaneous regions. Survival is now unlikely for individuals and groups.” – Ian Malcolm

Chase

Sarah Harding and Kelly are on the motorbike racing across Isla Sorna’s plain, chasing the lone velociraptor with the key to the cage that Arby is trapped in. Kelly is holding the Lindstradt rifle while Harding drives. Kelly tries to aim for the raptor’s neck but the first shot misses, and it fake charges them before changing direction towards the river in an attempt to lose them. Harding tries to cut the raptor off but the swerve throws them off the motorbike and the rifle goes off. Harding tells Kelly there are only two shots left, and they scramble back onto the bike.

Thorne drives the jeep down the hill after the velociraptors that took Arby and the cage, while Levine yells from the passenger seat. When they reach the bottom they cannot see much, but ascertain that they are in a streambed. They follow the raptors along the streambed, and Levine wonders if Arby survived the cage being rolled down that steep hill.

They reach a clearing with trampled ferns, and see four apatosaur skeletons at various stages of decomposition, as well at least 10 raptors fighting over Eddie Carr’s remains. Levine states that it is the raptor nest. Over the radio, Malcolm asks him to describe it, and Levine reports its features and estimated dimensions; in his opinion, the nest is slovenly and uncared for, which is surprising because fossilised nests found by palaeontologists are usually orderly. The raptor nest has crushed eggs, the remains of dead newborns, and several juveniles that are clearly uncared for. Levine wonders how the apatosaurs got there are they would avoid predators’ nests and would be too big for the raptors to carry.

Thorne spots the cage on the other side of the clearing, but they cannot see Arby. The raptors are ignoring the cage as they’re too busy fighting over Carr’s remains. Thorne has six darts, which isn’t enough for the 10 raptors. Levine produces a silver cylinder labelled ‘Caution toxic metacholine (Mivacurium)’, which is a fictional substance designed as a non-lethal area neutraliser to paralyse all life forms for up to three minutes. Thorne worries that the gas will affect Arby, even if they try to place it downwind of him, and when they see the cage move Thorne resolves to rescue him the old-fashioned way.

Harding accelerates the motorbike and catches up with the raptor, and Kelly fires again but misses. The raptor approaches a herd of apatosaurs and they have to chase it beneath the larger dinosaurs’ legs as they stamp and bellow. Harding punches the raptor in the head and Kelly fires what she thinks is the last shot, and the raptor collapses in the grass. Kelly sees five more darts in the rifle – Harding had lied. Harding shoots the raptor again, and retrieves the key.

The raptors at the nest finish eating Carr’s body and start moving towards the cage. Thorne stands up in the back of the jeep while Levine drives through the skeletons and the surprised raptors, and Thorne jumps out to pick up the cage. He jumps into the back of the cage with it while Levine puts the car in gear and starts driving. The raptors pursue them as they get out of there, and one leaps on the back to hold onto the canvas tarp with its teeth.

Back at the trailer, Malcolm is in a morphine-induced dream filled with his mathematical theories, population graphs and computer models of evolution. He dreams about how complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost – it was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behaviour. This requires adults teaching their young, meaning that animals raised in isolation without parents without guidance are not fully functional. The raptors are among the most intelligent and ferocious dinosaurs, which demands behavioural control, but the raptors on the island were never shown proper raptor behaviour and so only the meanest and nastiest animals survived.

Levine speeds up the jeep and Thorne has to hold onto the bars to stop himself being thrown out. The raptor is still holding onto the tarp and the others are not far behind. The one holding onto the tarp climbs up onto the back and grab the cage in its jaws, trying to pull it onto the ground. Thorne grabs the vague too and they begin a sort of tug-of-war for it, with Thorne holding onto the car seat to hold onto it. Levine tries to hand him a rifle but he can’t let go of the cage. Realising this, Levine tries to fire backwards and the raptor grabs the gun barrel in its jaws, so he is able to shoot it in the mouth. The raptor falls off the jeep but takes the gun with it. Thorne pulls the cage back inside the car, but can’t see how Arby is doing. Harding gets through to them on the radio and he explains where they are, saying they will go back to the trailer via the ridge road.

They think they have lost the raptors, and Thorne is able to examine Arby who is covered in blood but seems to have working limbs. As they go up the ridge road, they see the raptors ahead of them at the top of the road, waiting for them. Thorne takes over the driving from Levine.

At the Edge of Chaos

Thorne shouts at Levine to find some weapons while he drives. He reckons they are about half a mile from the clearing with the trailer. As they come around the next curve, a raptor is waiting on the road and leaps onto the hood of the jeep, smashing the windscreen. Thorne can’t see where he is driving so he slams on the brakes, knocking the raptor onto the ground. He accelerates again but three raptors have caught up and charge the car from the side; one bites the side mirror, and Thorne swerves the car into the rocky side of the road until he hits the raptor into a boulder. Another raptor lands on the cloth top of the car, and starts slashing it with its claws. Levine pokes a large hunting knife into the cloth, and the raptor immediately slashes his hand, making him drop the knife. Thorne picks up the knife from the floor and tries to jab the raptor, then swerves the car again, throwing it off but it also takes most of the canvas roof with it. It hits the ground and knocks over the other two pursuing raptors, and all three fall off the cliff.

Levine thinks they are free, but another raptor pops up and leaps onto the back of the jeep. Levine thinks they’re about to die as the raptor gets into its attack posture, but before it can lunge at him foam comes out of its mouth and it goes into spasm – Harding is driving alongside them on the motorbike, and Kelly is holding the rifle. Thorne slows the jeep, and Harding hands the cage key to Levine, who is still thinking about his brush with death and how he reacted to it. At least six raptors are still running parallel to the car. Levine takes the gun from Kelly, and the car sputters and starts slowing down as they are out of fuel.

Thorne puts the car in neutral and tries to get over the next rise in the road, after which the road slopes downwards. He orders Levine to get Arby out of the cage, and they throw the cage into the road. The car slows to 10 miles per hour, but they get over the rise, and the car gains momentum again. They can see the trailer, but they won’t make it because of another rise in the road. Thorne decides instead to keep going downhill towards the laboratory. He sees the convenience store with the gas pumps, and wonders if there is still petrol in them. As they approach the lab, the raptors hesitate and drop back. Thorne notes that Harding and Kelly are no longer with them.

Trailer

Harding has steered the motorbike towards the trailer, and four raptors are following them. She tells Kelly to jump off the bike and run to the trailer, and not to wait for her. Kelly gets to the door and Harding follows, pushing the motorbike towards the raptors as a distraction. The holds the door shut as the raptors pound on it, and Kelly finds a lock. Malcolm has injected himself with more morphine and is and not very helpful, saying things like “Life is a crystal” as the raptors lunge at the window near his head. The raptors drag the motorbike away and jump up and down on it.

Harding asks Malcolm if there are any weapons. Kelly is reassured by Harding’s no-nonsense way of talking, seeing that she doesn’t let anything stop her. She had searched the trailer earlier looking for food, and remembers seeing packs marked with skulls and crossbones, so she locates them and brings them to Harding. Inside, there are three blocks of a rubbery substance and a small silver cylinder like an oxygen bottle. Malcolm mentions they are non-lethal smoke cubes with cholinesterase bombs to induce short-term paralysis, and tells her to pull the pin and throw it. The first one that she throws doesn’t go off, but a raptor bites into it which causes it to explode.

When the smoke cloud clears, the three of them go outside, Malcolm leaning on Harding’s shoulder. The raptors are motionless and glassy-eyed, but not dead. One of them is lying across the bike. Harding eases Malcolm to the ground, where he sings a Dixie song. Harding can’t pull the bike from underneath the raptor, so instead she lifts it while Kelly tries to pull the bike out. The raptor starts to regain consciousness, blinking its eye and twitching its leg. They get onto the bike – Harding driving, Malcolm behind her and Kelly on the handlebars – and the raptors start reviving as they drive away.

Village

Harding drives down the hill towards the worker village, and they see the jeep parked at the convenience store near the gas pumps. Kelly helps Malcolm inside, and Harding rolls the motorbike in and shuts the door. Inside, the shop is full of gone off food and old mouldy magazines. There are also some basic supplies, souvenirs and clothes. In the centre there is a cash register, a microwave and coffee machine. The windows are all barred, so Harding figures they will be safe there for a little while.

Thorne tells them that Arby has some gashes and bruises, but nothing is broken. Harding has brought the first aid kit from the trailer and examines Arby, finding that he is missing some teeth. Thorne tells her that the helicopter will be there in two hours, and that the landing pad is several miles away. Harding assures Kelly that they will find a way to get there.

Levine is freaking out, and starts screeching that they are trapped. Thorne tells him to shut tf up as he will scare the kids, and tells him that he’s too old to act like an asshole and needs to pull himself together. He resolves to go outside and check if there is petrol in the pumps, but Levine says it’s a waste of time as they won’t work after five years. Thorne steps outside and notices that Levine has locked the door behind him, so immediately knocks and tells him to leave it unlocked.

Outside, Thorne thinks it is too quiet, as he can only hear cicadas. He retrieves the radio from the jeep and brings it back to Levine. There is no petrol in the pumps, but he reasons that there must be stores nearby as everything would need to be brought to the island by boat. Following a thick pipe, he finds some 50-gallon metal drums, but they are empty. He notices a path, and finds a shed in the foliage with a warning sign saying ‘flammable’ in Spanish. He can hear the raptors in the distance but they seem to be far away, so he goes to the shed and enters. Inside, there are some rusted drums, but they are all empty too. As he returns to the shed’s entrance, he hears the sound of breathing.

Inside the convenience store, Levine is watching Thorne and freaking out; he wishes he could lock the door. He wonders why the raptors didn’t follow them down there, and mulls over the options, deciding it is most likely that it is another predator’s territory that they are reluctant to enter. He remembers that even the tyrannosaurus moved quickly through the area. Harding calls out for him to turn on some lights so she can tend to Arby.

Thorne hears snorting exhalations coming from his right and looks over that direction, but can’t see anything. However he senses that something doesn’t look quite right, with the pattern of the foliage shifting weirdly. The chain link fence is also rippling somehow. The lights come on in the store, and he sees two seven-foot dinosaurs staring at him. Their bodies are covered in a pattern that had blended in with the leaves and fence behind them, which he thinks is weird, and as he watches their patterns fade to a chalky white and they develop a pattern to match the shadows from the store windows. He can just about see their outlines, but would never have noticed if he didn’t know they were there. He realises they are some sort of chameleons and backs into the shed.

Levine sees the dinosaurs through the windows, and realises they are the ones that he glimpsed when Diego was attacked. He points them out to Harding, who cannot see them with their new camouflage, so he tells her to turn off the lights. They discuss the chameleonic effect of the dinosaur’s skin and Levine identifies them as Carnotaurus sastrei, pointing out their short snouts and the horns above their eyes. I linked to some pictures of them in a previous post but in case you didn’t click it, check out these stumpy arms.

Harding asks what they’re going to do to help Thorne, and Levine seems surprised by the very idea, saying he had told Thorne not to go out there. Harding tells him to turn the lights back on, and Levine is irritated and offended that this “little musclebound female” who is “not much of a scientist” is “barking orders at him” when he is “relishing his remarkable discovery” of the chameleonic abilities of the carnotaurus (if I was there, I would consider using Levine as bait/a distraction by pushing him towards the carnotauruses while I rescued Thorne, who is a much more useful and less dickish member of the group). She tells him to flick the lights on and off to confuse and bother the dinosaurs, as there is a refractory period) after they shift pattern (if you google refractory period you will get a bunch of articles about erections, which I don’t recommend, but that link is not about sex I promise). She grabs a bunch of torches and batteries from the shelves.

In the shed, Thorne hears the carnotauruses approach and sees the patterns on their skin shifting as they walk towards him. They approach cautiously, but enter. Suddenly, some beams of light shine out and move erratically like searchlights, forcing the dinosaurs to change their patterns more quickly and stressing them out. Agitated, they move away and bellow at the lights, and Harding calls out to Thorne to get out of there before they return.

Back inside the store, Levine says he “was never so frightened in my entire life” (has he forgotten about the raptor chase already? Or being in the raptor nest? Or the high hide being attacked by raptors, and hearing them rip Carr’s body apart and crunch his bones? This feels pretty tame by comparison). Harding tells him to get a grip on himself, and explains to Thorne about the refractory response, noting that most animals that rely on camouflage are ambushers rather than active hunters, so changing light conditions will make them anxious and feel exposed. Levine blames Thorne for wandering off, seemingly forgetting that they need fuel, and goes into a sulk.

Arby comes forward, leaning on Kelly and wearing some clothes from the store with InGen logos on them. He has a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, a bandaged forehead and lots of bruises, but he manages to smile. Malcolm asks if Arby needs morphine, and is glad he doesn’t, as he takes some more.

Thorne cleans a nest out of the microwave and heads up some canned stew for them all. Levine doesn’t take any, and is thinking about how the island is a true lost world. Malcolm has even less tact when he is high on morphine and is like LOL what, are you joking you absolute dickhead? He points out that the raptors couldn’t have dragged the apatosaurs to their nest, so they must have built it near a bend in the stream where the sauropod bodies were beaching. He says the answer is prions, but doesn’t explain further at this point, telling Levine to go away.

Arby dozes off in a corner while Thorne and Harding discuss how to get petrol, as it is about an hour until the helicopter will arrive. Levine tells them that they have visitors.

Good Mother

Six duckbilled dinosaurs approach the jeep, and Levine identifies them as maiasaurs (the name means ‘good mother lizard’, hence the chapter title). They start pulling the vehicle apart and tip it over, which Levine thinks is weird since they are herbivores and shouldn’t be aggressive. Two white Styrofoam cases fall out of the jeep onto the ground (remember, this is the jeep that Dodgson, Baselton and King brought over and were driving to the nests; Thorne found it abandoned after his own vehicle shorted out on his way to intervene in the tyrannosaur attack of the trailers) and they tear at those, exposing some hatching eggs. They become gentle in their actions, and scoop up the two infants, leaving the area.

Thorne points out that finding fuel is no longer an issue as the vehicle is destroyed, and Levine remarks that engineers didn’t expect a five-ton animal to stand on it. Thorne wonders how their own car would have stood up to those stresses, and Harding is excited to be reminded of the other car. She wonders if the short can be fixed, and if they had circuit-breakers for that, and Thorne remembers that Carr had put some in at the last minute.

Harding resolves to go to it on the motorbike and see if she can get it running. She radios back to them that the raptors are on the road and she’s going to try another route. They lose contact for a while, but she reaches the car and asks Thorne to walk her through fixing it. There are 20 minutes left until the helicopter arrives, and Levine says she might make it.

Dodgson

Dodgson wakes up in the utility shed (booooo), and sees that dawn is approaching. He is very thirsty and his body is sore. He follows the sound of water to a stream, tripping over a backpack near the bank. It is ripped and covered in blood, but he finds a water bottle and drinks from it. He looks for edible food, but finds a working radio inside a metal case. Turning it on, he hears Thorne and Harding’s conversation and learns that there is a car on the island.

Harding asks Thorne to ask Levine about the nearby pachycephalosaurus herd and whether they are dangerous, as there are around 50 of them surrounding the car. He tells her to be careful around them.

Explorer

Harding watches the dinosaurs for a while, but doesn’t know enough about their behaviour to judge if they are dangerous or not. Levine says nobody knows anything about them as a complete skeleton has never been discovered, but they may be aggressive, so he suggests walking into the herd slowly to see if they will let her through. Harding thinks they must have domed heads for a reason, and dismisses Levine’s stupid advice (which one of them is not “much of a scientist” now, Richard?!). Levine watches the sky grow brighter, and frowns, as there is something bothering him about it, something important about daylight and territory he cannot remember.

Harding radios that she is above the car, in a tree. She notices that the herd is restless. She tries to climb out across the branch to drop into the car, but one of the pachys charges the tree with no warning, swaying her branch and making her drop to the ground. Thorne radios her, but there is no response. Kelly has woken up and asks why they don’t watch her on the video feed to see what’s going on, pointing out that the cash register is a computer. It doesn’t switch on immediately, and she has to duck under the desk to plug the terminal in. She remembers that Arby made an account and finds his password on a piece of paper in the pocket of his discarded clothes. To her surprise, the system is different to the one they used in the trailer, probably because it is hard-wired through optical pipe. Eventually she finds the video feeds, to Levine’s surprise, and they see the Explorer surrounded by the herd, but Harding is not visible.

She is under the vehicle, as she crawled there after she fell. She gets the radio working again and calls Thorne, telling him where she is. He tells her that while she’s under there she should check the breakers, and explains what to do. It turns out that the box is in backwards. Some of the pachycephalosaurus butt the car, trying to get to her. The car starts to hum, but Thorne advises her to wait, although there are only 10 minutes until the helicopter will arrive. The herd get worked up again, and suddenly they stampede away. Thorne tells her to stay under the car and not talk, and turns his radio off.

She sees two feet standing by the driver’s door and recognises the boots as Dodgson’s; she hears the door open, so she grabs his ankles and pulls to prevent him from getting into the car. He falls on his back and is furious to see her, saying he thought he had killed her. Harding starts crawling out from under the car and he scrambles to his knees, but the ground shakes as an adult tyrannosaurus approaches. Dodgson starts crawling under the car beside her and the tyrannosaurus pauses next to the car, growling; Harding realises it can smell them. She braces her head and shoulders against a wheel, then uses her boots to push his legs out into the open. He tries to push back, but she has the stronger position. Dodgson asks wtf she is doing and calls her crazy, but she gets her boot on his shoulder and pushes more of his body out from under the car. The tyrannosaurus gets him in its jaws and pulls him out, and he grabs Harding’s boot, but she kicks him in the face, forcing him to let go. She sees terror on his face as he is dragged away, and his fingers leave gouges in the mud. The tyrannosaurus picks Dodgson up in its jaws and carries him away without killing him.

In the convenience store, the others watch Dodgson being carried away screaming and Malcolm remarks that there is a God. Levine wonders why the tyrannosaurus didn’t kill him. As Dodgson’s screams fade away into the distance, Harding gets into the Explorer and drives, hearing the thumping of a helicopter in the distance.

Daylight

As Harding drives, Thorne tells her over the radio that they cannot communicate with the helicopter, so she needs to find the landing site and tell them to wait, then come back for the rest of the group.

Levine is still pondering the dawn and what the daylight means, and suddenly puts it together – the carnotauruses are gone, as this is only their territory at night. He says this is bad.

Harding radios to say she can see the helicopter. She has to drive down a series of switchbacks, which force her to go slowly, and when she sees the helicopter again its rotors are spinning faster. She honks but the pilot and copilot don’t hear her, and the helicopter lifts off and flies away.

Levine says they need to stay calm, but hasn’t told the others what the problem is. He finally explains that the other animals won’t come in at night when the carnotauruses are there, but they can’t hide in the daylight which leaves the territory open to other animals, and that they need to get out of there immediately. Kelly feels nervous, and wishes Harding was with them. She is worried about the helicopter and notices the men do not mention anything about it returning to the island. Levine suggests going back to the trailer. Kelly notices some writing on the other side of the paper with Arby’s password; it is a screenshot from Levine’s apartment, and one of the words is ‘boathouse’. Thorne tells her to try finding it on the video feed.

Over the radio, Harding tells Thorne she has had to stop as the tyrannosaurus carrying Dodgson is in front of her on the road. She is surprised to feel nothing at all about Dodgson screaming in the dinosaur’s jaws.

Kelly finds an image of a wooden dock enclosed in a boathouse, with a powerboat tied up inside. Arby wakes up and looks at the screen as well. Levine is pacing and tells them they need to get out, as the building is no more than a shack. He raps the locked door, and a velociraptor chooses that moment to slam it open, knocking Levine to the ground.

A Way Out

Kelly freezes in terror at the sight of the raptor, but Thorne throws his full weight against the door, slamming it against the dinosaur. Levine adds his weight to the door but can’t resist an “I told you!” because he is such a KNOB. Raptors surround the building, flinging themselves at the windows and denting the steel bars. Levine tells Kelly to find a way out, and she clicks around the computer system, making the icons twist and distort into a cube. Thorne pushes a fridge in front of the door. Levine asks about guns, but the three remaining ones are in the car with Harding. Some windows are broken and the raptors are splintering the wooden walls.

Kelly watches the cube rotate on the screen, and remembers what Harding told her about most information that other people tell you being wrong. She thinks about the cord under the desk, and realises the cables go through a crawlspace tunnel under the floor.

The raptors knock over the fridge and crash into the building, and find Arby’s old clothes, but the people are gone.

Escape

Kelly leads the group in single file along the tunnel, holding a torch. The tunnel is around four feet square and has cables running along the sides. At a Y-junction, she thinks the longer tunnel on the right probably leads to the lab, so she chooses a shorter one to the left that leads to a set of stairs. Crawling up a narrow shaft, she finds a trapdoor at the top that leads to a utility building. She sees Harding driving down a hill towards them.

Harding drives the group to the boathouse, and Kelly explains how she realised that all the data running the computer’s graphics would require a cable, meaning there must be space for it with enough room for maintenance. Harding says the others owe Kelly their lives, and Kelly shrugs it off, but Harding says she shouldn’t dismiss her own accomplishments as other people will do that for her.

They see the boathouse ahead, and Levine says he has a bad feeling. Thorne and Harding smash down the door, and they all enter. The boat looks ok, and Levine says they may get off the island after all.

Exit

Dodgson falls from the tyrannosaurus’ jaws and lands on an earthen slope, knocking the breath from his body. He smells the odour of decay and hears high-pitched squeaking, then sees he is in the tyrannosaurus nest. Three infants, including one with a piece of aluminium around its legs, toddle towards him. He gets to his feet and tries to run, but the adult knocks him down. He tries getting up again, but it stops him quickly a second time. He tries crawling away instead, so the adult grabs his leg and breaks it. Dodgson screams in pain as the infants approach and start biting his flesh, including one that bites a chunk from his face. Yikes.

Seventh Configuration: “Partial restabilization may occur after eliminating destructive elements. Survival partly determined by chance events.” – Ian Malcolm

Departure

The boat moves down the river and through the cave into the open sea. Kelly cheers and hugs Arby, and he smiles while also wincing in pain. Levine comments that with the cameras in place, and the uplink, they can continue to gather data until they get an answer about extinction as it is “a perfect Lost World.”

Harding points out that it is nothing of the sort, reminding him that there are too many predators, and that she and Malcolm found evidence of a mistake many years ago – the lab fed the infant dinosaurs with goat’s milk for a while, but as they grew they gave them ground-up sheep protein. Levine doesn’t see a problem with that, so she explains that zoos don’t use it because of the danger of infection from prions.

She tells him that these protein fragments are the simplest disease-causing entities known, even simpler than viruses, and have to be passively ingested. However, once eaten they cause diseases such as scrapie in sheep, mad-cow disease in humans (another one she doesn’t mention is chronic wasting disease, which affects deer, elk, reindeer and moose). The dinosaurs on Isla Sorna developed a prion disease called DX from a bad batch of sheep protein extract, and the lab couldn’t get rid of it. The disease spread, possibly because prions are excreted in faeces, and Levine realises that compys were eating faeces; all the compys are infected, and they spread the proteins across carcasses, infecting the other scavengers who ate the contaminated carcasses. This infected all the raptors eventually, and as they aren’t always successful in their attacks, some animals survived raptors bites but contracted DX. This spread the disease throughout the island, causing the early die-offs, which supports the larger than expected predator population.

Levine is worried because one of the compys bit him and he may have been infected, but Harding says while he may have mild encephalitis he will probably be fine as it takes a week to take hold and they’ll take him to a doctor in San José (I’d like to remind everyone here how much of a prick Levine was to Eddie Carr when he tried to clean his compy bites to stop them getting infected, as he would “prefer to get on with his observations” and that cleaning the “trivial injury” was “absolutely unnecessary”). Either way, the island won’t tell him anything useful about extinction.

Malcolm interjects with a morphine-induced ramble about how extinction has always been a mystery, and that it is has happened five major times on this planet. Everyone is interested in the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, but the Permian extinction event was much more catastrophic and killed 90% of life on the planet (RIP to the trilobites). He wonders if humans are the cause of the next one as we are so destructive, like a plague that scrubs the planet clean, and that perhaps every few aeons an animals comes along to clear the decks and allow evolution to proceed to its next phase.

Thorne tells Kelly not to take it all too seriously, as they are just theories and they can change. He mentions a few older theories that have been disproved, and maybe future scientists will find some of the things we currently believe to be laughable. Meanwhile, they should feel the way the boat moves, smell the salt in the air and feel the sunlight on their skin, as those things are real, concluding that life is wonderful and it is a gift to be alive.

Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Sci-fi (grey), Horror, A Book Written in the 1990s, Bonus Book (blue)

Trigger warnings: Storygraph users have marked the book with the following trigger warnings: Death, Violence, Gore, Animal death, Blood, Cursing

Other potentially useful links:

• The first discussion
• The second discussion
• The third discussion
• The fourth discussion
• Michael Crichton on Wikipedia
• Carnotaurus Had Scaly Skin with No Feathers, Paleontologists Say [no mention of them being chameleons]
• 9 Animals That Can Change Color
• Amazing Octopus changing colour transformations (video)
• The Real Pachycephalosaurus
• Prion diseases [which have only been documented in mammals, as far as I can tell; actually now that I think of it, why were the dinosaurs drinking milk at all? Can birds or reptiles even digest milk?]
• Researchers Identify What Causes Prions to Become Pathogenic
• The 5 mass extinction events that shaped the history of Earth — and the 6th that's happening now
• Also a minor thing, but I realised that John Roxton – who is mentioned a few times as being a crap palaeontologist, and published the paper that erroneously said the tyrannosaurus vision was based on movement – is probably named after the main character of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

The discussion questions are in the comments below.

Join us for next Sunday for the book vs movie discussion, where we will compare this book to the 1997 adaptation! If you would like to revisit the thread on the Jurassic Park book vs movie, you can read it here.