Alan Grant (S/F) / (S/F-S)

Dr. Grant (2022)

Dr. Alan Grant is an American vertebrate paleontologist specializing in deinonychosaurian evolution and biology. He is best known for his widely-acclaimed books, Dinosaur Detectives and Lost World of the Dinosaurs, as well as his involvement with International Genetic Technologies in the 1993 and 2001 incidents on Costa Rican islands in the Gulf of Fernandez. Grant was also involved with the 2022 Biosyn Valley Incident in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy. As of 2001, he was affiliated with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. He was also the curator of paleontology at a museum near Hell’s Bells, Montana at around the same time.

Name

Alan is a name of Northern European origin, introduced to the British Isles in the 11th century; it may have originally come from Norman French or Celtic. Its meaning is disputed, but possible meanings include “deer,” “noble,” “handsome,” or, perhaps most fittingly for Dr. Grant, “rock.” It may also refer to the Alans, a people who lived in what is now Russia. The surname Grant comes from Old French and Anglo-Norman, and means “tall” or “large.” Together, these suggest that Dr. Grant’s ancestry is largely French as well as British or Irish.

Biography
Early life

Dr. Grant’s exact date of birth is not known, but the Jurassic Park script states that he was in his mid-thirties as of 1993. This would place his birth year in approximately 1958.

He became interested in dinosaurs at a very early age. During his early childhood in the 1960s, many new fossil species were being discovered and named; by the 1970s, even more discoveries were made in places such as Africa and South America, and Dr. Jack Horner discovered the first dinosaur eggs known in the Western Hemisphere. When he was a child, Grant’s favorite dinosaur was Triceratops, one of North America’s most well-known ceratopsids.

Paleontology career

Grant attained higher education in the paleontological field, though the institution he attended is currently not known; it may have been Montana State University in Bozeman, which is affiliated with the Museum of the Rockies which Grant is also associated with. If Grant attended MSU during the late 1980s, when he would have been in his late twenties, he would have likely studied under famed paleontologist Dr. Jack Horner. Grant does exhibit many Horner-like characteristics (including a strong sense of rivalry with Dr. Robert Bakker), suggesting that he highly respects Horner as an authority in his field.

Grant achieved a doctorate degree by the 1990s, specializing in deinonychosaurian paleobiology. His degrees are said to have come from obscure schools not well-known to the general public. He adhered to the classification system proposed by Gregory S. Paul in his 1988 book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, in which many dromaeosaurid deinonychosaurs were lumped together in the genus Velociraptor.

He worked with other paleontologists at dig sites, including paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. By the early 1990s, Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler were involved in a romantic relationship. However, Dr. Sattler was interested in eventually having children, while Dr. Grant was disinterested in starting a family and did not get along well with children at the time. He and Dr. Sattler did raise a macaw named Jack together, teaching the bird to speak.

Grant was awarded a fellowship by the Nimitz Foundation in 1992. Not much is known about this (in real life the only known organization with a similar name is the Admiral Nimitz Foundation, associated with the National Museum of the Pacific War located in Fredricksburg, Texas). Probably around a similar time, Dr. Grant became the paleontology curator at a museum near Hell’s Bells, Montana. The name of this museum is not known, but it is referred to as the “museum of the hills” by Grant. This may be the museum’s nickname, or its actual name assuming Grant made a typographical error in not capitalizing the museum name.

Dinosaur Detectives

By 1992 or early 1993, Dr. Grant had published a book coauthored by Michael Backes entitled Dinosaur Detectives. In it, he detailed much information about dinosaurs, how they lived and why they may have become extinct. The book was fully-illustrated and included a compelling argument for the theory that birds are a branch of theropod dinosaurs that survived the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. It also gave unique insight into the lives of the paleontologists themselves, and how they use fossil evidence to discover how ancient creatures lived. Grant’s book became a nationwide bestseller, gaining attention from both paleontologists and the general public.

Dinosaur Detectives was published by Perineum Press and Quinn & Ryan Publishers with a foreword by actor Sir Richard Attenborough, and was highly praised by other scientists such as Martin Kline of Columbia University. The book made Grant an internationally-known scientist by 1993. At some point he began to receive funding from Dr. John P. A. Hammond, CEO of International Genetic Technologies, Inc.; the runaway success of his book may have caught Hammond’s attention, but it is also possible that Hammond was already funding Grant and his book’s success reaffirmed Hammond’s choice to fund his expeditions.

One of the dig sites funded by Hammond was located near Snakewater, Montana; this dig site yielded excellently-preserved dromaeosaur fossils, which Grant classified in the genus Velociraptor (though they likely belonged to Deinonychus antirrhopus) as per Gregory S. Paul’s classification.

1993 incident

On June 7, 1993, John Hammond visited the Snakewater dig site where Dr. Grant was researching his dromaeosaurid specimens to invite him to tour a mysterious biological preserve on the small Pacific Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar with the intent to have him give his endorsement to InGen’s Board of Directors. While there, he extended the offer to Dr. Sattler despite her not originally being his intended guest. As Hammond had never made a personal appearance before, and they had just uncovered some exceptional specimens, Grant was initially reluctant to leave on the trip so suddenly; Hammond promised to continue funding Grant and Sattler’s digs for a further three years, at which point they both agreed to go. They departed from Snakewater to Choteau via Hammond’s helicopter, from which point they took a jet to Costa Rica. On June 11, they boarded another helicopter and flew westward to Isla Nublar.

While journeying to the island, they became acquainted with Hammond’s other guests, including another celebrity scientist, mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, and an InGen legal consultant named Donald Gennaro. Both Malcolm and Gennaro appeared to have more information about Hammond’s park than Grant or Sattler, but did not disclose what they knew. The group arrived to Isla Nublar from the southwest, approaching the island’s central valley area to land at a heliport.

They were taken by Jeep northward across the island. Upon reaching a large animal enclosure in roughly the middle of the island, Grant was astounded to learn that InGen had succeeded in performing de-extinction; the paddock was inhabited by living Brachiosaurus and Parasaurolophus, and Hammond revealed the existence of a Tyrannosaurus rex elsewhere on the island. Continuing on to Jurassic Park’s Visitors’ Centre, Grant and the others were informed on how InGen had managed to extract ancient DNA from mosquitoes and other blood-drinking parasites found in Mesozoic amber samples. Grant and Sattler, along with Malcolm, left the tour partway through in order to see the laboratory in person, where they witnessed a hatching Velociraptor. Grant asked to see the adult raptors, suddenly concerned about the island’s safety upon discovering that these animals were housed there.

At the raptor holding pen, Grant became acquainted with the Park’s warden Robert Muldoon, who agreed with Grant that the raptors were highly dangerous animals due to their athleticism and intelligence. The group witnessed a live bull being fed to the raptors, which further sobered their opinion of the Park. Grant voiced his concerns to Hammond over lunch, explaining that animals so far separated in time could interact in unexpected ways. Grant’s concerns more or less echoed those of his fellow scientists, though they were less extreme than Malcolm’s criticisms of the Park.

Dr. Grant during the 1993 incident

After lunch, the tour group was joined by Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy, much to Grant’s disappointment as this meant he would have to interact with children. The group boarded the electric Ford Explorers used as tour vehicles, with Grant managing to get the children to join Gennaro in the lead Explorer while he remained in the rear Explorer with Drs. Malcolm and Sattler. Unfortunately, most of the tour was disappointing, as two of the dinosaurs (the Dilophosaurus and Tyrannosaurus) failed to show. As they passed by the Triceratops paddock, Grant noticed a gas Jeep in the field; he exited the Explorer to investigate. He was followed by the remainder of the group and the tour came to a halt. In the field, he found a sick Triceratops being treated by Park veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding. Despite his reservations about the Park, he was delighted to experience the animal up close, his childhood favorite bringing him back to when he first became interested in dinosaurs.

With the approach of a tropical storm, the tour was recalled; Dr. Sattler remained with Dr. Harding caring for the sick animal while Dr. Grant and the others returned to the Explorers. The vehicles were turned around to go back the way they had come, the rest of the tour to be completed the following day. During the thick of the storm, and unbeknownst to anyone in the tour group, a disgruntled employee shut down much of the power to the Park in order to steal InGen trade secrets; this shutdown included the entire animal paddock area, causing the Explorers to stall as they returned past the tyrannosaur paddock. The group decided to stay put and wait for the power to return, assuming that it was a brief outage caused by natural events.

Dr. Grant faces the Tyrannosaurus, Isla Nublar (6/11/1993)

As they waited, the Tyrannosaurus approached the fence to eat a goat which had been left to lure her out for the tourists some time before. While the animal ate, its arm brushed against the electric fence. The fence, being deactivated, failed to shock the animal. This caused it to realize its movement was no longer restricted by the fence, making the barrier useless. The dinosaur pushed its way out through the fence to explore its new territory; Gennaro fled the vehicle in the front when he realized the animal was attempting escape. Grant, having subscribed to the theory that tyrannosaur vision was movement-based, advised Malcolm to remain still, but had no means to communicate this to the children in the other vehicle.

The dinosaur was drawn to the front vehicle by a flashlight the children were using, and it attempted to break inside. Grant, unable to stand by while the children were in danger, lit a road flare and used it to draw the animal away from the Explorer. Malcolm tried to follow Grant’s lead, drawing the dinosaur farther away so that Grant could safely get the children out of the damaged vehicle. This effort ended disastrously, as Malcolm was grievously wounded and Gennaro was killed. Grant, the sole remaining adult, was left alone to pull the children out.

He was able to free Lex, but Tim remained trapped; the tyrannosaur returned to them, and Grant kept them still. The tyrannosaur, frustrated that they were no longer moving, pushed the Explorer over a cliff into the adjoining paddock area; Grant and Lex rappelled down the side of the paddock wall using a broken fence cable, and the Explorer became stuck in a large tree. Calming Lex down, Grant scaled the tree to retrieve Tim, who was injured but alive. In the process of getting him out, he caused the vehicle to fall from the tree, but both Grant and Tim avoided further injury. Grant lost his hat during the attack, and never recovered it.

Using a brochure map obtained from the Explorer, Grant led the children westward toward the Visitors’ Centre where he hoped to regroup with the others. They were able to get out of the tyrannosaur paddock, but in order to get to safety as quickly as possible, they did not utilize the tour road but instead cut through the northern herbivore paddock. As the storm passed and night fell, they climbed into a large Moreton Bay fig to spend the night, accompanied by the Park’s Brachiosaurus herd. Grant did not sleep, staying awake to keep the children safe and comfortable.

On the morning of June 12, Grant and the children fed a sick Brachiosaurus and ventured through the former Velociraptor paddock on their journey westward. Here, they made a vital discovery; before they were removed to the holding pen, the Velociraptors had bred, and a nest of eggs had hatched. Fresh footprints indicated that the eggs had hatched after the storm, within the past few hours. Grant theorized that the raptors, which were genetically modified using genes from a West African species of frog, were capable of protogyny which they used to breed despite being in a single-sex environment.

The group continued through one of the herbivore paddocks, witnessing the tyrannosaur hunt and eat a Gallimimus. By this point, the Visitors’ Centre was only a short distance away. While crossing the twenty-four-foot perimeter fence around the animal paddock area, the power was turned back on by an unsuspecting Dr. Sattler from the maintenance shed; Tim was electrocuted as the fence powered up, but fortunately was only stunned. Grant attempted CPR; he administered it improperly, but Tim resumed breathing within a few seconds and regained consciousness.

Grant led the children the rest of the way to the Visitors’ Centre, leaving them in the dining area where he assumed they would be safe. He then searched the visitor compound for Dr. Sattler, reuniting with her near the maintenance shed. She updated him on what had happened: the Park had been sabotaged, and their attempt to restart the system had inadvertently released the adult Velociraptors. Malcolm had been rescued the previous night and was alive, but Robert Muldoon and the Park’s chief engineer Ray Arnold had been hunted down and killed by the raptors. The alpha raptor was contained inside the maintenance shed, but the remaining two were still loose. Realizing that the children could be in danger, Grant and Sattler made for the emergency bunker to arm themselves and then headed to the Visitors’ Centre.

In the Centre, they found the children fleeing the kitchen with a raptor in pursuit (the other had been locked inside a walk-in freezer). The four retreated to the control room, where Grant held off the raptor as Lex worked to undo the sabotage. Lex succeeded, locking the raptor out and restoring all the Park’s systems. Grant called Hammond from the control room, informing him of their success and telling him to call a rescue helicopter. As he did, the raptor positioned itself to break through the window into the room; Grant attempted to shoot it, but missed. His gun jammed due to an extractor malfunction, so he discarded it and they escaped into the ventilation shafts as the raptor broke into the control room.

Grant led the group through the air ducts toward where he presumed the Centre’s rotunda was located, pursued by the raptor along the way. Upon reaching the rotunda, they found that they only way down from the ventilation was by means of the construction scaffolding; the raptor caught up to them at this point, forcing them to climb down using the fossil display in the middle of the rotunda. The alpha raptor entered the Centre through an unfinished wall, joining its fellow in cornering the four humans. As the alpha moved in for the kill, it was ambushed by the Tyrannosaurus, which had been stalking the raptor; this inadvertently saved Grant and the others as the final raptor attacked the tyrannosaur in an act of fury.

Grant and the others were picked up in a jeep by Hammond and Malcolm, who drove them to the heliport. By the time they arrived, a helicopter had already landed to rescue them, and they boarded to escape the island.

Aftermath of the Nublar incident

Having nearly been killed by dinosaurs, Grant suffered psychologically after the incident. He showed signs of post-traumatic stress brought on by being reminded of it; nonetheless, he refused to abandon his study of dinosaurs, and doubled down on his deinonychosaur research. This put a strain on his relationship with Dr. Sattler, who was likewise traumatized but needed to distance herself from dinosaurs in order to recover.

At some point, Grant purchased a new hat to replace the one he lost.

Grant honored his nondisclosure agreement with InGen, refusing to speak to the public about what had happened on the island. He did inform InGen that the dinosaurs were breeding, though he did not know what they did with this information. Grant’s decision to honor InGen’s nondisclosure agreement had ulterior motives; he had recognized during the incident that de-extinction had the power to end traditional paleontology as a respected field of science.

In 1995, Dr. Malcolm violated his nondisclosure agreement and spoke to the press in a television interview about Jurassic Park. While the public largely dismissed Malcolm as a fraud thanks to the efforts of InGen’s Peter Ludlow, Grant and Sattler were still suddenly pushed into the spotlight. Their relationship ended around this time; Malcolm’s interview and the fallout resulting from it may have been the final straw in the wedge that pushed Grant and Sattler apart. Sattler kept Jack, the pet macaw they had raised together.

De-extinction as public knowledge

Two years after Malcolm’s disastrous interview, Jurassic Park once more made the news: a fully-grown male Tyrannosaurus rex was loosed in San Diego, California in an incident perpetrated in part by Ludlow and in part by Hammond’s interference. This irrefutable evidence proved to the public that Malcolm was not a fraud, but made Grant’s fear of obsolescence a reality. Not only had the dinosaurs survived on a second island, they were thriving, and the public was now fully aware of their existence and more interested in them than traditional paleontology.

Following the San Diego incident in 1997, Grant’s career suffered. He continued to research deinonychosaurs in the Montana badlands; by 2001, he was working for the Museum of the Rockies and had uncovered excellently-preserved dromaeosaurid remains near Fort Peck Lake, Montana. By this time, he had taken up a young protégé named Billy Brennan, despite the poor funding they received for the dig (if Hammond honored his promise to fund Grant’s digs for a further three years, this money would have run out in 1996, a year before Hammond’s removal as InGen CEO and his subsequent death).

Grant’s frustration with the public grew over time. He came to blame InGen’s dinosaurs for the decline of traditional paleontology more than InGen itself, which was reflected in Lost World of the Dinosaurs, a book he wrote between 1997 and 2001. This book was said by some fans to be inferior to Dinosaur Detectives, lacking the original’s unbridled love for dinosaurs and the science used to learn about them. Grant traveled around the United States lecturing about paleontology, particularly his new discoveries regarding the intelligence and communication methods of dromaeosaurids. However, when it came time for his audiences to ask questions, they invariably asked about Jurassic Park, San Diego, and Isla Sorna.

Throughout this time, Grant did remain friends with Sattler. Sometime before 1998, she married U.S. State Department official Mark Degler, and by 1998 they had a child named Charlie. In 2000 or 2001, they had a second child, and by that time resided in Washington, D.C.

On July 16, 2001, Dr. Grant was in Washington lecturing at Georgetown University about recent discoveries he and Brennan had made regarding dromaeosaur evolution. As he was accustomed to, most of the members of the audience had questions about the Isla Nublar or San Diego incidents, which he dismissed. Others asked if he would be willing to go to Isla Sorna to study its de-extinct life in the wild, which he also dismissed; he stated in no uncertain terms that InGen’s animals were genetically-engineered “theme park monsters” and that he did not believe them to hold any real paleontological value. While there, he visited the Degler family at their home, seeing Jack for the first time in years. He returned to Fort Peck Lake that night.

2001 incident

Upon his return to the Fort Peck Lake dig site on July 17, 2001, Dr. Grant was approached by a man named Paul Kirby who apparently had found him through Brennan. Kirby claimed to run a company called Kirby Enterprises; he arranged a meeting with Grant and Brennan at the Hell Creek Bar & Grill in nearby Jordan, Montana where they met Paul’s wife Amanda Kirby. The Kirbys claimed to have permission from the Costa Rican government to fly lower over Isla Sorna than anyone else, and offered Grant and Brennan any sum of money to act as tour guides. Desperate for money to fund his research, Grant reluctantly agreed.

On July 18, Grant and Brennan departed for Isla Sorna in a chartered flight piloted by M. B. Nash; also in the group were two men named Cooper and Udesky, who claimed to be friends of the Kirbys. After several hours, they arrived at Isla Sorna and circled around to approach from the west of the island. In spite of his ill feelings toward the dinosaurs, Grant was thrilled to see a herd of his old favorite Triceratops, as well as a burgeoning population of various other species. As they flew inland, however, the crew began to discuss landing at the island’s airstrip; Grant became agitated and tried to stop the landing, but was knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of the head from Cooper.

By the time Grant recovered, the airplane had already landed. Brennan brought him up to speed; it appeared that the Kirbys were searching for someone who was already on the island. As the Kirbys’ supposed friends went to set up an armed perimeter around the airfield, Amanda was heard calling through a megaphone for people named “Eric” and “Ben.” Grant tried to stop the operation, but by the time he was able to get the Kirbys’ attention, Amanda’s calling had attracted a large animal. Grant did not recognize its cry from his past experience, but based on its volume estimated that it was larger than a Tyrannosaurus. Gunfire and roaring could be heard in the forest, and Nash and Udesky retreated moments later. They made a hasty attempt to take off, interrupted by a wounded Cooper emerging onto the runway. Nash was unable to stop the airplane to pick him up, and the injured man lured the unknown predator onto the runway; despite Nash’s attempt to lift off, he did not have enough time to get the plane high enough and struck a glancing blow off the animal’s back. The airplane swung off course and crashed into the nearby jungle, suspended in the trees. This left the survivors stranded.

Moments later, the animal returned to attack the vehicle in response to being hit. Nash was killed and eaten while attempting to call for rescue using their satellite phone. The airplane fell from the trees, permitting the survivors to escape; while the attack took place, Grant was able to get a good enough look at the animal to discern its species: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, which he did not recognize from InGen’s list. The group fled from the scene of the crash, stumbling into a kill site presided over by a young adult male Tyrannosaurus; this second predator chased them away in defense of its food, but ultimately was forced to abandon the chase as it was challenged by the Spinosaurus. While the predators fought, Grant managed to escape being crushed between them and escaped along with the others.

Grant confronted Paul about the truth of their mission. Paul was forced to come clean; he and Amanda were neither wealthy nor truly a couple. Rather, they were divorcees, Paul being the manager of a small interior decorating company while Amanda was the girlfriend of a web design entrepreneur who was among the two missing people. The other missing person was Eric Kirby, the twelve-year-old son of Paul and Amanda. Both of them had gone missing eight weeks prior during an illegal parasailing tour of Isla Sorna, and the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica had declined to help with any rescue operation. Paul had reached out to Grant as an act of desperation, hoping that Grant’s experience with the island would help them rescue Eric. Unfortunately, Paul had made a grave error: he was unaware that there were two islands that InGen had used for de-extinction, and assumed that Grant had been on Isla Sorna before. With the knowledge that they would not be receiving the money they were promised, Grant decided to make for the coast and signal for rescue.

Shortly after the revelation, the group discovered the parasailing crash site. Here they recovered a video camera with footage revealing that Eric survived the crash; Brennan pulled the parasail down from the trees, which dislodged a skeletal corpse identified as Amanda’s boyfriend Ben Hildebrand. This meant that Eric, if he was still alive, was alone. Nearby, the group discovered a Velociraptor nesting site; Grant led the group away, though they briefly lost track of Brennan.

They spotted the Embryonics, Administration, and Laboratories Compound from afar, heading into the facility to try and radio the mainland for help. The phone lines were dead, making the facility useless in terms of rescue. They entered the production floor, with Grant experiencing a mixture of horror and disgust at the evidence of cloning and genetic experimentation in the room. While there, they were ambushed by a male Velociraptor; Grant and the others fled into the kennels, where they were able to shut the raptor behind a cage door. The animal made a call that Grant was not familiar with; in a moment of realization, he identified the sound as a cry for help. Knowing that the raptor’s packmates would not be far behind, he led the survivors into the forest to escape.

Dr. Grant is surrounded by three male Velociraptors, Isla Sorna (7/18/2001)

They fled into a field where Grant had them run through a herd of hadrosaurs to lose the raptors. The herd panicked, stampeding away; Grant was separated from the others, though he was able to rescue Brennan’s camera bag. While hiding in the woods nearby, Grant overheard two raptors having what could be described as a conversation; he recognized the raptors’ search pattern, which suggested they were looking for something rather than simply hunting. Grant suddenly found himself surrounded by most of the pride, the alpha female coming to confront him. He was rescued by an unknown figure that tossed gas canisters among the raptors, driving them off.

Led by his rescuer to a tanker truck partially submerged in a marsh, Grant found that it was Eric himself who had saved him. Eric was surprised to learn that both his parents were on the island working together, and that they had recruited a renowned paleontologist to help. Grant, likewise, was astounded that Eric was still alive, and impressed at the resourcefulness Eric had demonstrated in order to survive the island. They spent the night in the tanker truck, keeping safe from the local animal life.

On the morning of July 19, Grant and Eric departed the tanker truck to try and find the others. As they searched, they spotted a transport barge within the island’s central river, separated from them by a steep canyon wall. Grant and Eric made their way for it. While traveling, they overheard the sound of Paul’s satellite phone, Eric recognizing it as the Kirby Paint and Tile, Plus commercial jingle. They were drawn to the sound, and Eric’s excited shouting drew Brennan and the Kirbys to them. Udesky had died by this point. Grant was pleased to see that Brennan had survived, but suspicious about Brennan’s sudden protectiveness over his camera bag. The sound of their joyous reunion also drew the attention of the Spinosaurus, which chased them into a nearby observatory building.

Inside, Grant discovered the reason for Brennan’s strange behavior. His camera bag contained two stolen Velociraptor eggs from the nests they had discovered the previous day, and Grant reasoned that this was why the raptors were tailing them. Angry with Brennan for his reckless behavior but understanding that the eggs could be used as leverage, he decided not to destroy them. They descended into the structure, finding the way into the canyon by means of catwalks and stairwells. Part of the stairs collapsed as they tried to use it, prompting them to cross a bridge to find another way down. Amanda and Grant crossed safely; Eric was confronted by an unknown animal. Grant identified pterosaur droppings on the metal structure, and as the morning fog lifted, he realized they were inside an aviary inhabited by genetically-engineered Pteranodons.

One of the animals attempted to feed Eric to its offspring, prompting Grant and the others to chase after it. Brennan used the recovered parasail to rescue Eric, while the pterosaur broke into the catwalk to confront Grant and the Kirbys. Grant attempted to fight it off, but the combined weight of the three humans and one pterosaur caused the catwalk to collapse and deposit them all into the river. The collapsing catwalk crushed the Pteranodon, thought Grant and the Kirbys survived. Brennan returned Eric to them, but was taken down by the remaining adult pterosaurs and washed away down the river as they mauled him. Grant and Paul escaped the aviary by swimming underneath its border, while Amanda and Eric fled by land through the gate. Grant lost his hat in the river while escaping the aviary.

They used the barge to travel south along the river toward the coast, Eric comforting Grant about losing Brennan. As they talked, they passed a field inhabited by a few groups of dinosaurs, and Grant began to realize that the damage to his career was not really their fault; he began to gain a new appreciation for them despite their genetic modifications.

Night fell on the island again as they traveled south, stopping at one point when they heard the ringing of Paul’s satellite phone. Grant and the others recovered it from a large pile of spinosaur dung, along with some of Nash and Cooper’s remains. The caller, unfortunately, was simply advertising a timeshare and was of no help. With only enough power left for one call, the group opted not to waste the opportunity and held off on calling anyone until the next morning. They continued southward, spending the night on the river where they could be safe from terrestrial predators.

In the morning on July 20, a fierce thunderstorm struck the island, reducing visibility and slowing their journey. While the storm raged, the group encountered the Spinosaurus on its home turf in the river near an unfinished marina. The dinosaur tore the barge apart while Grant and the others took refuge in the barge’s dinosaur cage. Grant managed to get a call through on the satellite phone to Dr. Sattler, though he was unable to relay much information before the barge was sunk.

Gasoline had been spilled on the river when the spinosaur attacked the barge, and while Paul distracted the animal from atop a crane, Grant used a flare gun to ignite the gasoline and frighten the dinosaur away. Paul was nearly killed in the attack, but ultimately all four survived.

The storm abated as the group neared the ocean. As they grew close, they were ambushed by the raptors, who had finally caught up. Grant retrieved the eggs as the alpha female challenged Amanda, believing her to be the humans’ leader and therefore in possession of the eggs. As he gave the eggs to Amanda, Grant realized that Brennan had also packed a prototype model of a deinonychosaur resonating chamber he and Grant had developed in Montana. Grant used the model to imitate the raptors’ calls, making their help cry at Paul’s suggestion. Coincidentally, a helicopter passed by almost immediately afterward; the raptors believed that the helicopter was responding to Grant’s call and fled with their eggs.

Following the sound of the helicopter toward the coast, Grant and the Kirbys found a government agent calling for them. The United States Navy and Marine Corps had arrived to the island at the behest of Mark Degler and Ellie Sattler, having swept the river in search of the survivors. Grant was shocked to discover that the military had recovered Brennan severely wounded but alive, and that Brennan had been lucid enough to pull Grant’s missing hat from the river.

Grant and the others were flown by helicopter off of Isla Sorna, witnessing three Pteranodons escape the island. The military brought them to an aircraft carrier, which returned them to the United States.

Aftermath of the Kirby incident

Due to the fact that he was brought to Isla Sorna against his will, Grant would have been the only member of the party not guilty of any crime. Unlike the 1993 incident, this gained him less notoriety for a singular reason: Isla Sorna had been illegally used by InGen for research purposes between 1998 and 1999, and Grant had witnessed some of the results firsthand. Much information about the incident, except for what was eventually published in Eric’s autobiographical book Survivor, was buried by government officials paid off by InGen’s new parent company Masrani Global Corporation.

According to the Jurassic Park Adventures series of junior novels, which may or may not be canon at the discretion of Universal Studios and relevant franchise authorities, Grant would go on to implore the United Nations to establish a research facility on Isla Sorna and an international bureau to protect de-extinct animal life. Until these aspects of Grant’s life are confirmed by a franchise authority, they are considered soft-canon and are discussed on Alan Grant’s (J/N) page.

In any case, Grant was no longer involved with Isla Sorna by 2005, when the last of the island’s de-extinct animals were rescued from a population collapse encouraged by InGen’s illegal research during the late 1990s. They were transported to Isla Nublar, where they were prepared for exhibition in a resurrected form of Hammond’s Jurassic Park, now called Jurassic World.

The age of neopaleontology

In the year 2000, shortly before Grant’s second run-in with InGen, the company’s researchers Curtis and Bridges working under Dr. Henry Wu discovered that ancient DNA owed its abnormal longevity to stores of particular iron structures that reduced the rate of decay. This enabled them to predict with much greater accuracy which fossilized remains would be good sources of DNA, and allowed them to extract it from sources other than amber. In particular, a Mosasaurus fossil was found to contain viable DNA. This ushered in a new age of paleontological science, called neopaleontology.

Fossils were considered valuable again, but not due to the knowledge that could be obtained from observing their anatomical details or geographic location. Now, they were considered as a source of DNA; their destinations were no longer museums, but genetic laboratories. Grant’s fossil finds could still be a source of profit in the early 2000s, but the change in scientific methodology meant that his career would still be seriously impacted.

In 2002, Simon Masrani (CEO of Masrani Global Corporation) announced that he would be reattempting Jurassic Park using the knowledge that had been gained about de-extinct life over the past nine years. This new project, called Jurassic World, would focus both on using the animals as a source of edutainment and on researching them to learn more about their biology. Much of Grant and Brennan’s research into raptor intelligence was sourced by Masrani Global for this purpose, as InGen Security had already formed plans for the raptors’ future. How much Grant was compensated for his contributions is not known, but it is doubtful that he was willingly supportive of InGen’s plans to use raptors for their own purposes.

Jurassic World opened its gates on May 30, 2005 and had 98,120 visitors in its first month alone, making it a huge success. Jurassic World’s popularity would remain consistently high for ten years, further waning the public’s interest in traditional paleontology. Discoveries were made by paleogeneticists years ahead of scientists like Dr. Grant, with InGen’s researchers learning more about prehistoric life in those few years than in the whole of the past century. By 2015, Grant’s profession was largely obsolete.

Still, he continued research anyway; in April of 2015, studies were published demonstrating evidence of craniofacial biting between theropods. While many paleontologists believed these skull-biting attacks to be competitions for dominance, territory, or mating rights, Dr. Grant published a hypothesis that some of these bites may have been play behavior. The theories of Dr. Grant gained more coverage thanks to his association with Jurassic Park, and members of the Jurassic World Fan Forum were quick to share and discuss his research findings. Even with neopaleontology and Jurassic World dominating the scientific and public scenes, dedicated fans still considered Grant’s work as worthy of respect. To his own credit, Grant did check in from time to time on what was happening in Jurassic World, especially anything that they did involving raptors. InGen was apparently running a program to see whether they could be trained to follow commands like dolphins and other intelligent animals, and from the sounds of it, their lead trainer Owen Grady was having some degree of success.

On December 22, 2015, Jurassic World closed due to an incident involving the escape of a genetically modified hybrid animal and a large pterosaur flock. The public’s opinion on dinosaurs became heavily divided after this incident, with some believing that de-extinct life should have the same protections as naturally extant organisms while others believed that de-extinct life posed an immediate, existential threat to the natural order or even (as proposed by some alarmists) human civilization itself. The issue of de-extinct animal rights was exacerbated in 2017 and 2018, when Isla Nublar became threatened by volcanic activity. Up until the eruption on June 23, 2018, the public and world governments viciously debated what, if anything, should be done. Despite his own conflicting opinions on de-extinction, Dr. Grant did not make any public comment about the controversy. Malcolm spoke publicly against taking any action, and the United States government concurred. The decision was made only a day before the eruption finally took place.

Prehistory returns for good

But on June 24, the day after the eruption, news sources reported the release of dozens of InGen animals from the Lockwood estate just outside Orick, California. They had apparently been relocated from Isla Nublar just before the eruption and brought to the estate illegally. While many of the people advocating for the dinosaurs’ rescue had their welfare in mind, the forces that smuggled them to the United States appeared to have had darker intents, with reports that many of the animals had not escaped into the wild but instead been sold to the black market.

There was no longer any chance of going back to the way things had been before. De-extinction had now reached its conclusion: the animals released into the wild had only been the beginning of a new world. They had begun to breed by mid-2019, but an even greater force for change was the technology to engineer new ones, which had fallen (like the dinosaurs themselves) into the hands of criminals during the 2018 incident. The scientific knowledge behind de-extinction and InGen’s genetic engineering techniques were now effectively open-source, and species both new and old could be created by any interested party with the resources to spend. The dinosaurs Grant had known about before were cropping up in illegal markets and escaping into the wild all around the world, and before long, new variants of old species as well as completely new ones were appearing too.

The governments of affected countries struggled to cope, with the United States in particular contracting Biosyn Genetics to round up problem dinosaurs in on American soil. Once, Biosyn had been a major rival to InGen, but they had never been able to crack de-extinction on their own. Now it seemed they would not have to. Congress awarded them sole collection rights to any dinosaurs found in the United States of America, which they shipped off to their sanctuary in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy for biomedical research. This also isolated the animals away from inhabited areas, although that only dealt with the ones the authorities could catch.

All kinds of changes were happening rapidly as the new decade began, affecting every aspect of life. The 2020s saw technology advance at a breathtaking pace, but at the same time, disasters were nonstop politically, economically, and ecologically. Grant, who had already seen the world change so radically, was very much being left in the dust. As a paleontologist he was affected by the dinosaur issue in ways that the general public would not really understand; interest for his work was high, but conflicted. If looking at fossils had been old hat during the days of Jurassic World being open to the public, there was little chance anyone would want to see bones in the dirt now, especially not young people who had grown up with de-extinction.

Grant began to feel that, like the prehistoric creatures he studied, he was at the end of his time. His profession would go down in history as little more than a stepping stone toward the modern world, an obsolete field of science that few people saw value in any longer. The world, as it always did, evolved; Grant, as he always had, stayed the same. He did not let himself become bitter, instead merely resolving to accept his fate and fade away into irrelevance. At the same time, though, he looked back on his life and imagined how things could have gone differently. Most of all, he regretted losing Ellie Sattler. They had stayed friends, but drifted as the world changed. Sattler was not like Grant; she had adapted, every crisis strengthening her resolve to protect both humanity and nature. Grant read the articles she published about soil science and regenerative farming, happy to see that she had not only gotten back into research but was using paleobotany to inform a better future. The 2020s had thus far been defined by overwhelming hopelessness, and Dr. Sattler was a light in the dark for young people during these troubled times. She was a light in the dark for Dr. Grant, too.

In the late spring of 2022, he was at an excavation site in the Cretaceous rocks of Utah, where tyrannosaur fossils had been found. This discovery would have been thrilling years ago, but here in the western half of North America, living recreations of such animals were wandering the earth, including InGen’s oldest tyrannosaur herself. Just recently she had been chased by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through a drive-in theater in Oregon, causing a media sensation. For the young generation, it was not the kind of thing fossils could compete with. Grant’s colleagues and many of the tourists at his dig site were supportive, but he knew his passion was not connecting with them the way it used to. His work was no longer being funded, so he tolerated the tourists as best he could, knowing their money would allow him to continue.

That morning, though, one of his colleagues called him back to the main tent, telling him only that something surprising was waiting for him there. What he found surprised him indeed. Ellie Sattler had come to visit, all the way from her university in West Texas. He offered her a beer (though she accepted lemonade instead), and he asked about her family; he had known she and Mark Degler were having marital troubles, but now learned that they had finalized their divorce. Grant was sorry to hear she had suffered such emotional pain, but also a little glad. He had never truly gotten over her, and while he did his best to hide his feelings now, he no longer had as much guilt about feeling them.

Grant correctly presumed that Sattler had more on her mind than a friendly hello, to have driven all the way from Texas to Utah to see him. She filled him in on what she had discovered: a species of huge locust had been devastating cropland throughout the Midwest for some months now, their origin a mystery. Sattler had captured one and tested its DNA, finding that some of its genes were not natural to modern locusts and instead belonged to a lineage of orthopterans that had gone extinct alongside the dinosaurs. Grant even saw her captured specimen himself; it was a remarkable insect, but the fact that its genes were apparently hybridized was alarming. This meant someone had deliberately engineered it, likely using the same techniques InGen had pioneered for decades. It had the potential to cause famine on a global scale, having rapid breeding cycles and no natural predators. Sattler had suspicions as to who was responsible: in all the fields she had surveyed, the locusts had devoured everything except for crops sold by Biosyn’s agribusiness division. The implication was obvious. Sattler wanted him to join the investigation as a witness, knowing that the public still trusted Grant’s opinions and that his support would bring attention to Biosyn’s crimes. Grant was reluctant about stepping once more into the spotlight; it had never ended particularly well for him, and he was tired now, ready to accept his impending obsolescence. Sattler, though, would not allow him to refuse, claiming that the dire state the world was in necessitated all hands on deck, no matter how old and irrelevant they thought themselves to be.

Though Grant’s stubbornness was eroding away, he had his doubts about getting to the sanctuary in Biosyn Valley. It was far from civilization, separated by a daunting mountain range and closely monitored by top-of-the-line security. Sattler had a solution to this; she and Grant would not be sneaking in, they would be welcomed in with a red carpet. Ian Malcolm had been working at Biosyn’s headquarters as a lecturer, still preaching the same warnings of doom Grant was all too familiar with, and recently invited Sattler to the facility. All he had told her was that there were “things [she] would want to see,” an ambiguous and somewhat ominous message. Biosyn’s administration was happy to have more Jurassic Park fame walking their halls and was already preparing for their tour. Grant, having run out of excuses to stay behind, got ready for the trip.

2022 incident

From Utah Grant and Sattler flew to Pennsylvania, where a transport hub had been built up near the Appalachians over the past few years by Fish and Wildlife. At this U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility, dinosaurs captured by authorities were held and given health checks by a team of paleoveterinarians before being shipped to Biosyn Valley. A vet named Shira gave them a tour, commenting on the burgeoning dinosaur black market and the need for security. With the animals widespread but still uncommon so far, they were hot targets for poachers and smugglers. They encountered many dinosaurs, including a group of juvenile ceratopsians that Shira explained had recently been rescued from an illegal breeding operation in Nevada. Grant had always been fond of ceratopsians, and as he watched Sattler pet a young Nasutoceratops, he began to sympathize with the animals again. The rapid changes in the modern world were no easier for the dinosaurs than for him.

Once their plane was done fueling up, they boarded the Whisperjet and began a multi-hour flight across the Atlantic and then across Europe. Along the way they rested, Grant trying to remain professional despite his feelings for Sattler quickly reemerging. When they landed in Italy, they were already most of the way to their destination, having arrived at an airfield just west of Biosyn Valley. Here they met Ramsay Cole, the head of Biosyn Communications and their chaperone for the tour. Cole was thrilled to meet them, but also seemed to be a huge fan of Malcolm’s, to Grant’s mild annoyance.

They flew eastward into the valley by means of a Biosyn helicopter, following an alpine river and passing over the massive hydroelectric dam that powered the valley’s facility. From here they flew north, and Cole described the facility to them. Biosyn had owned the land since the 1990s, hoping its rich amber deposits would yield results, but now it had been refurbished into a sanctuary for the animals they were recovering from the outside world. The first arrivals had been from Isla Sorna, and now the Isla Nublar dinosaurs joined them too. Even InGen’s original Tyrannosaurus had joined the population, having arrived from Pennsylvania mere hours ahead of Grant and Sattler. They flew over a lake on their way north, where Grant was stunned to see a Dreadnoughtus bathing while Pteranodons roosted on its back. This gigantic sauropod was one of the new creatures brought back since the events of 2018. Cole informed them that the herbivores’ food sources, mainly hawthorn and ferns, were all native to the valley; the only imported food was the deer population. This fed the carnivores, including the valley’s apex predator, Giganotosaurus.

The valley was peppered with research outposts, which were connected by an underground hyperloop network. This meant that the dinosaurs did not need fences to restrict their movements, and could live as they would in the wild. If the animals needed to be herded away from or to an area, Biosyn had outfitted them all with neural implants that would send electrical signals to their brains, forcing their bodies to move as instructed. The implants also kept the pterosaurs away from aircraft, and below an altitude of five hundred feet so they could not cross the mountains. Grant and Sattler were concerned that this process seemed cruel, or that it might be painful, but Cole assured them it was as painless as the normal signals the brain received from the body. It was, as Grant was forced to conclude, more humane than the 10,000-volt electric fences Jurassic Park had employed.

They landed in the headquarters, a ring-shaped building nestled at the foot of the mountain Cimon del Froppa at the north end of the valley. In the central courtyard, Grant remarked on how young all the staff members were; Biosyn was at the forefront of science here, and Cole mentioned that they made it their business ethos to hire the most promising newcomers in their respective fields. Before Grant had the chance to sulk about his age, they met Lewis Dodgson, the CEO of Biosyn and one of the most famous businessmen alive. He was excited to meet them both, though he was awkward about it, and posed for a photo op with both of them. Dodgson advised Cole to bring them to the Brusatte Lecture Theater, where Malcolm was giving one of his lectures. Their visit so far had been whirlwind-fast, and Grant struggled to keep up with what was going on.

Hearing Malcolm’s voice, while not exactly welcome, at least brought a sense of familiarity. Like Sattler, Malcolm was concerned about the future, but his style involved less hope and more dire warning. When he caught sight of Grant and Sattler at the back of the theater with Cole, he wrapped up his speech to a round of enthusiastic applause and met them outside, managing to sign a few copies of his latest book along the way out.

Sattler and Malcolm greeted each other warmly; Grant was now a bit more standoffish, having less to bond over. He alone among the three of them had no children, nor any remaining family. Malcolm and Sattler seemed close, and Grant learned that they had been talking often over the years. (Sattler mentioned Malcolm had “slid into [her] DMs,” a phrase which defied Grant’s comprehension.) They made their way to the commissary, Sattler describing her findings to Malcolm while they stayed far enough ahead of Cole that he hopefully would not overhear. Unfortunately, Malcolm was unenthused about her discovery. To him, it seemed, the apocalypse had long since been inevitable. To Grant and Sattler’s frustration he was uninterested in aiding them and had only summoned them to the valley to bid them a dramatic farewell before the collapse of civilization. He offered an irked Grant coffee, engaging a barista named Tyler in conversation. While Grant became embroiled in an argument with Tyler trying to get the young man to understand he did not want coffee, Malcolm had an apparently more intimate conversation with Sattler; once Tyler’s milk steamer had quieted down, Grant overheard Malcolm admiring Sattler’s sustainable-bamboo coat. Malcolm bid them farewell, leaving them with Cole once more, and Grant felt a sense of defeat at having the flirtatious Malcolm steal away Sattler’s attention. But as he approached, she quietly informed him that Malcolm’s apparent forwardness had masked his real intentions: he had not given up hope at all, and was only putting on a facade for Biosyn. He had not been flirting, but rather slipping Dr. Sattler a wristband ID that would get them into the lab where Biosyn was holding their locusts.

Cole, seemingly oblivious to their plot, concluded their tour of the facility in the habitat development lab. Grant witnessed one of the newest dinosaurs, a small tyrannosaur called Moros intrepidus, which Cole described as having a virtually unaltered genome. With their tour concluded early, Cole offered to let them tour the facility at their own leisure, meeting them at Hyperloop Station 3 when it was time for their departure. The ride would bring them through the amber mines within the mountains, letting them see the beautiful cave system underneath. While giving them directions, Cole indicated the entrance to the restricted sublevels where the genetics labs were located. This was the chance they needed: Sattler led Grant to the decontamination room, where they donned Biosyn Hazmat suits to blend in. Having avoided detection so far, they descended to Sublevel 6 and headed to a laboratory marked L4, which Malcolm had told Sattler was the arthropod lab that Biosyn was using for its secret Hexapod Allies program.

The lab was unattended for the moment, so they took the opportunity and acted quickly. Sattler led them inside, identifying a mature locust while warning Grant not to alarm the skittish insects. If they took flight in such a confined area, they could cause all kinds of damage. She needed both hands to take a sample from the locust’s mouth, and so Grant was tasked with reluctantly handling the big insect while she did so. It struggled and became agitated, signalling distress to its swarm. Grant and Sattler recognized that the swarm could take to the wing at any moment and prepared to leave, Sattler having obtained a sample, but as they made to leave an alarm went off. The sudden loud sound drove the locusts into a panicked frenzy, crashing into walls and lab equipment as well as the two scientists. Grant and Sattler struggled to the pressurization antechamber, but briefly lost the wristband while being battered by locusts; eventually managing to find it again after a wild few moments, they escaped, locking most of the swarm inside the lab behind them.

The alarm was switched off by now, and they had not been apprehended by Biosyn security staff, so it seemed that the alarm had been for something else. One hint as to what may have triggered it soon presented itself: a young teenager, clearly out of place in the corporate environment. Grant and Sattler reassured her they were not Biosyn employees, and she introduced herself as Maisie Lockwood. This was a shocking revelation to Grant; news reports had claimed that a girl by that very name had vanished from the Lockwood estate during the night the dinosaurs were released into the wild, and that she was a clone of Sattler’s deceased colleague Charlotte Lockwood. Maisie’s grandfather Benjamin Lockwood had been a friend of John Hammond’s, so this young girl had a connection to Jurassic Park too. Quickly realizing that Maisie was not here of her own volition, Grant and Sattler offered to help her escape alongside them. They made for the hyperloop, avoiding any signs of Biosyn staff along the way.

They arrived at the station and tried to gain access, but were interrupted as Cole arrived. Maisie hid behind a pile of supplies while Grant and Sattler acted lost and confused and relieved to see him, pretending as though they had taken a wrong turn in the facility, but Cole dismissed this by asking whether they had the DNA sample. He had known all along that they were trying to expose Biosyn, and told them that he was on their side; he had tried to convince Dodgson to admit his crimes but the CEO had refused. It was Cole who had first told Malcolm about Hexapod Allies, and together they had orchestrated this entire plot. Now he sent them on Pod A-7 toward the airfield to the southwest, Grant signalling that it was safe for Maisie to come out and escape with them.

On the ride out, Grant listened to Sattler and Maisie talk. Charlotte had indeed cloned herself, but Maisie had been more than just an experiment; Charlotte had loved Maisie dearly, and when she discovered they both shared a fatal genetic disorder, Charlotte developed a revolutionary cure but had only the time and resources for one dose. She had given that to Maisie, altering her DNA to save her life. It was that cure for which Biosyn had hunted Maisie down, kidnapping her from her adoptive family back in the United States.

As they traveled, the hyperloop pod suddenly deactivated, slowing to a halt at the nearest station. They were now in the amber mines within a mountain on the western side of the valley. It was unlikely that this had happened by mistake; obviously someone with power in Biosyn had discovered their subterfuge. The only way out now was to walk through the dark cave. Maisie was reluctant to leave the pod, despite the door locks being forcibly disengaged; Dr. Grant managed to talk her into leaving and making the harrowing trek underground. To convince Maisie they would be safe, he spoke glowingly of Dr. Sattler and her skill at leading the way through any obstacle. Sattler’s confidence, however, faltered as she began to regret bringing Grant into danger. When she expressed this, Grant countered her, finally admitting that he was not happy in his life any longer. Maisie began to suspect their romantic past, though they both denied having feelings for each other.

Sattler and Maisie were armed with flashlights, while Dr. Grant carried a makeshift torch to light their way. They discovered an air current, realizing that they must be near an exit to the mine. A short ladder led upward to a higher level, and they prepared to climb. The sound of clattering rocks only added to their collective suspicions that they were not alone underground. Grant handed Sattler his torch in order to ascend the ladder, and upon reaching the upper ledge he took the torch back in his now-free hand. As he held it aloft to check for danger, he practically struck an animal in the face, and it attacked. Grant fell backward off the ladder, striking his head on the bedrock, but thankfully avoided any serious injury. Two of the animals were now advancing on them: they were Dimetrodons, ancient relatives of mammals whose lineage was far older than the dinosaurs. The group prepared to defend themselves, Grant picking up a heavy bone to use as a club. He had lost his hat in the fall, and as he tried to rescue it, he was driven back by the jaws of one of the Dimetrodons. Forced to abandon his beloved hat, he fled with the others down the nearest cave passage.

The tunnel was winding and the animals were hot on their heels, but a mine cart track led them to an exit. Unfortunately the way was blocked by an electronically locked gateonce it had kept animals away from construction workers, but now that animals had begun living in the abandoned mine, it trapped Grant and the others inside with the predators. An old mine cart loaded with debris was all they had to keep several of the Dimetrodons away, engaging the brakes and pelting rock scrap at the animals. Grant kicked one to drive it back. Outside, company arrived in a Biosyn Jeep, and Malcolm emerged. While Grant and the others held the predators at bay, Malcolm puzzled with the coded lock, having been given no hints as to the password and guessing any numbers that came to mind. Eventually, somehow, this worked, and the gates opened. Grant and the others escaped, shutting the gates again before any of the animals could give chase. Thanking Malcolm for saving their lives, they boarded the jeep to escape the valley.

As they drove along a service road, the night sky above them went ablaze. A cloud of living flames was racing south across the valley, and Dr. Sattler soon realized its true nature when it began to rain down: they were Biosyn’s hybrid locusts, set on fire and released into the open air. Dodgson was destroying the evidence of his crime by burning it alive. The dying insects began to rain upon the valley, their thin wings having turned to ash, and the horrific spectacle distracted Malcolm enough to almost send them over a ledge. While they tried to stabilize themselves, their efforts were in vain; the ground gave way and they rolled into a gully. Thankfully they suffered only minor injuries, and found themselves near a safe haven. One of the research outposts was nearby.

Three people were already there, and Maisie identified two as her parents, Claire Dearing and Owen Grady. They had somehow managed to come all the way to Biosyn Valley in pursuit of their kidnapped daughter; the third member of their group, Kayla Watts, was a pilot who had aided them. The trio helped everyone escape the overturned jeep, and thanks were exchanged by all for the parts they had all played in rescuing Maisie. When the jeep had crashed, Watts had been leading the way in an effort to break into the outpost, where they would be sheltered and have access to other means of escape from the valley. Before Grant’s party could join in this effort, though, they were joined by a much larger and more menacing presence.

Pursuing fluttering locusts into the small clearing was a colossal theropod. Grant recognized its characteristic skull, and recalled Ramsay Cole having mentioned it on the flight in. This was a Giganotosaurus, and evolution had yielded no larger predator to ever walk on land. Fifty feet and nine tons of theropod now turned its gaze toward the humans. They hid behind the overturned jeep as it approached slowly and deliberately. It circled the vehicle, and they tried to keep ahead of it. When the ladder to the outpost’s exterior catwalk was within reach, Watts led them toward it, and the group shepherded Maisie up right after her. The Giganotosaurus now charged, and Maisie was only spared by a protective cage she had managed to reach near the top of the ladder. Grant and the others were helpless, forced to scatter when the dinosaur charged them, and were given only a moment to move when it ripped the cage free. Maisie overcame her shock and made it to the top, and everyone else scrambled up before the dinosaur could get the metal wreckage out from its jaws. Grant took up a rear position, though he was not the last one up. Malcolm had hidden within the jeep during the initial attack and was still on the ground.

The dinosaur reared up to level with them on the platform. Watts had not yet pried the door open, and there was nowhere for them to run. Grant was not directly in the dinosaur’s sights, as it had fixated upon Maisie. Before it could bite, though, its attention was drawn to something on Grant’s left. It was Malcolmhe had used a piece of debris to impale a burning locust carcass, using it to draw the theropod’s attention. Grant had seen Malcolm do this with a road flare years ago, when they faced the tyrannosaur at Jurassic Park, and it had ended disastrously for the mathematician. But this time, as the predator aimed to devour him, he threw his burning spear directly into its maw. The Giganotosaurus was taken by surprise, the spear embedded in its flesh and flames licking the roof of its mouth, and Dr. Malcolm ran for the ladder. As he climbed, his bad leg gave out and he fellbut Grant had moved just in time, grabbing his outstretched hand. He helped his friend onto the platform, safe and alive. By now Watts had gotten the door open and they all piled inside.

As they made for safety, the angered Giganotosaurus made another attack. It grabbed the catwalk, endangering Sattler and her DNA sample. Grady was nearby, though, and ensured her escape. Grant and Dearing aided Grady and Sattler in getting into the outpost safely. Now everyone was inside, but the dinosaur made one final attempt, breaking through the viewing window and ensnaring Dearing in a cable. Her allies managed a counterattack, assaulting the dinosaur with tasers, tranquilizers, and Grady’s hunting knife. Overwhelmed by their group effort, the predator backed down, stalking off to find easier prey.

Finally they had a moment to breathe. Grant became acquainted with Grady, thankful for his help saving Dr. Sattler and recalling his name from what he had heard of Jurassic World. It was Grady who had attempted to train the Velociraptors, animals so intelligent that Grant himself considered them second only to humans. While he was uncertain how wise this was, Grant could not help but be impressed that someone had not only tried but partly succeeded. Grady, for his part, knew Grant’s work well, and had even listened to his book on tape.

The two groups shared their objectives, to bring Maisie home and bring Biosyn to justice. Sattler’s DNA sample was safe, and so was Maisie, so now their separate goals had something in common: get out of Biosyn Valley. With the facility’s power grid taxed to its limits and damaged by a growing wildfire the locusts had sparked, there was no chance of calling for help, so they concocted a different plan. The outposts and other buildings were all connected by the hyperloop system, and if the power to the outposts was cut, it meant the hyperloop would not be running. Grady had one more goal to complete before they could leave, and that was to retrieve a juvenile Velociraptor called Beta who had been kidnapped along with Maisie. Beta was the daughter of Blue, an adult raptor that Grady had raised from the egg at Jurassic World, and who now lived in the wild near Grady’s property in rural Northern California. They would also need to make sure that the Aerial Deterrent System, which controlled the pterosaurs via their implants, was active before they tried to fly out from the valley. Watts knew where a helicopter was parked in the main compound, so once it was safe, they could escape.

Luck was on their side as they descended into the tunnels, as the fire had indeed caused the hyperloop to shut down. The long trek through the tunnels was uneventful, and was much quicker than walking over the surface, so they arrived to the headquarters without any further impediment. It was here that they found their first obstacle. The fire had grown into an inferno, and Biosyn had initiated emergency protocols. Staff were evacuated to shelters and the dinosaurs’ neural implants were being used to summon them to a bunker within the mountain. Dearing attempted to turn on the ADS from the control room, but there was not enough power; Ramsay Cole rejoined them now, advising them that because of the emergency the primary system had taken all the available power to keep itself running. Anything that was not system-critical would be shut down, including the ADS.

They split off in order to get done what they needed. Watts went off to prepare the helicopter for departure, Dearing and Sattler went to shut down the primary system in order to reroute power to the ADS, and Grady and Maisie went to track down Beta where she had holed up in the water treatment center on Sublevel 7. Cole and Malcolm would remain in the control room coordinating all of this. Grant initially was going to remain with them, but Grady and Maisie wanted him to join their group. His expertise on Velociraptor impressed even Grady, and ultimately he and Maisie convinced Grant to go with them. They descended downward, finding signs that Beta had been tearing through the water treatment plant. Grant was nervous, having not faced a live raptor in nineteen years, and warned the others of vicious attacks directly to the neck.

Beta soon emerged, agitated by her general situation and now confronted by three people. Grady was unable to hit her as she was dodging back and forth too quickly, using the pipes and chemical storage tanks as cover. Maisie got Beta’s attention, using a dominance display she had learned from Grady. This gave Beta pause, the young raptor momentarily deferring to Maisie’s gesture. Taking the opportunity, Grady advised Grant to use the same gesture, triangulating Beta so that she was cornered and easier to hit. Grant copied the display Maisie was performing: his hand extended outward, thumb separated in a manner that made his hand look almost like an open-jawed raptor’s head stretched forth in a show of dominance over a subordinate packmate. The “mouth” made by his hand lined up between Beta’s line of sight and Grant’s own eyes, so when she looked at the “head,” she was looking at him.

For a few seconds, Beta was cowed. She stalled, looking back and forth between Maisie and Grant, while Grady moved into position with a tranquilizer rifle. Suddenly Beta made a movementthe shock of their display had worn off and she targeted Grant, the oldest member of the group. Before she could pounce, she was hit in the neck by a tranquilizer dart from Grady’s rifle. The impact knocked her onto her side, and her agitated heart rate carried the drug quickly from her neck to her brain. She was dazed within moments, and was safely secured by Grady. Grant’s heart was racing too, but in those few seconds before Beta’s attempted attack, he had actually communicated with a raptor.

They regrouped in the control room and headed to meet up with Watts. On the way out, they ran into yet another straggler, this one familiar to Grant: it was Henry Wu, the former InGen geneticist and the architect of de-extinction itself. Grant had met him in person once, nearly thirty years ago at Jurassic Park. For some years now Wu had been on the run, implicated in corruption at InGen that had led to numerous deaths, but his years in hiding had broken him. Now Wu was desperate to stop the locust plague Biosyn had started. Evidently he was behind that, too. Wu insisted that he could use Charlotte Lockwood’s research to destroy the locust swarms, but no one was willing to trust him at first. It was Maisie who made the final decision; the disgraced scientist would evacuate with them, and she would help him stop what he had started. Wu was grateful, even though this meant he would be turning himself over to the authorities. His repentance, it seemed, was genuine.

Watts was ready to airlift them all out, but the courtyard was no longer a safe landing place. The evacuation protocols had herded all the dinosaurs through the courtyard on their way to the bunker, and stragglers from the other side of the valley were still filing in. But with the wildfire outside, there was no safe place to land beyond the headquarters, forcing them to take their chances with the dinosaurs. Grant and the others exited the building to meet Watts, bearing witness to the last of the frightened dinosaurs making their way to safety. The Dreadnoughtus were among them, not even their awesome size giving any meaningful protection against the all-consuming hunger of the blaze beyond the facility’s walls.

As the huge creatures made it to safety, Grant and the other evacuees prepared for their own escape, but were brought to a halt as one more dinosaur arrived. This one Grant had met before. InGen’s eldest Tyrannosaurus, far older but no less fearsome, entered the courtyard. For a moment she looked ready to size up the humans, but her attention passed over them. She was not the only apex predator in the courtyard now. Also among the last evacuating dinosaurs was the Giganotosaurus, larger and younger than the aging tyrannosaur. Biosyn had forced the two giant theropods into close quarters, and there was no stopping the result. Grant, recognizing what was about to take place, warned the group that the two theropods had no interest in anything as insignificant as human beings right now. Everyone scattered as both dinosaurs charged into a titanic clash, unleashing primordial fury upon the courtyard.

Grant fled in one direction alongside Sattler, Malcolm, and Wu. As they ran for the helicopter, they dodged the battle as best they could; the theropods had by now quite forgotten the humans and would never so much as notice if they crushed one. Wu was injured in the battle when the tyrannosaur was thrown to the ground nearby; the others helped the wounded geneticist to his feet and reached the helicopter. The second group, consisting of Maisie’s family and Cole, was not as lucky. They too were caught in the crossfire, but they had tried to shelter behind a copper sculpture and become trapped when the Giganotosaurus threw its rival into the piece of art. The sculpture toppled, and as the Giganotosaurus pinned the old tyrannosaur down, nearly twenty tons of ancient carnivore threatened to collapse the sculpture on top of Maisie’s group and crush them. The tyrannosaur was stunned and unconscious, possibly even dead; if Maisie’s group ran now, the Giganotosaurus would surely notice them, and this time there was nowhere safe to shelter from it. Sattler tried to run to them, but the giant theropod now turned its eyes upon her.

To save them all, Watts fired off a flare, knowing this would distract the animal. Her plan worked, and the Giganotosaurus watched the flare’s arc across the courtyard until it settled to the ground. Now its attention was drawn to the creature closest to where the flare had landed, an herbivorous theropod called Therizinosaurus. Leaving the fallen tyrannosaur and the people trapped underneath her resting place, the Giganotosaurus crossed the courtyard eager for a new fight, and Maisie’s group managed to escape to the helicopter. Everyone piling inside, Watts lifted the encumbered craft into the air as it began to rain, turning her spotlight for a moment on the tyrannosaur’s body. She looked lifeless, but suddenly regained consciousness, prepared for a final stand. Her enemy was distracted, and she used this to her advantage. As the helicopter flew southwest as fast as it could go, the tyrannosaur managed to overpower her foe and emerge victorious.

Aftermath of the incident

They landed on the airstrip just outside the sanctuary, where they were met by the authorities in the morning. Rain had saved the valley, extinguishing the fire, and the animals were allowed to return home. Grant bore witness to the beginnings of a legal investigation into Biosyn: Cole was giving his testimony as a whistleblower, and Malcolm supported him. Maisie would be allowed to return to the United States alongside her adoptive parents, and Beta, it seemed, would be taken care of as well.

As for Dr. Sattler, she had her DNA samples, which would prove the wild locusts and those in the Biosyn lab were one and the same species. She planned to get her sample vetted at a genetics lab, and then pass the information on to a friend of hers at the New York Times to break the story about Biosyn’s corruption. She half-expected Grant to return to his dig in Utah, but he dismissed the idea. She had gotten older, just like him, but she had not accepted obsolescence as inevitable. Just as the dinosaurs had lived on in the form of birds, she had adapted to the changing world, and was striving to make it a better place for future generations. If she could do this, Grant would be by her side through thick and thin. He vowed to help her in bringing about justice, and for the first time in many years, she kissed him.

Everyone departed Biosyn Valley together. Grant even found he could greatly respect Malcolm; his one-time nemesis had shown courage and risked his life to protect the others, and Grant could bring himself to think of Malcolm as a friend. The crisis had brought out the best in each of them, and come what may, they were bonded by their experiences.

Back in the United States, Congressional hearings began surrounding Biosyn. Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm all came to Washington, D.C. as key witnesses supporting Cole’s statements to the government, who were able to bring to justice most of the people responsible. Dodgson evaded the law, but not in the way he had hoped; the investigation likely found his mostly-eaten remains deep within the hyperloop tunnels where he had tried to flee the valley alone. During the evacuation some dinosaurs had apparently gotten into the tunnels, and nature had executed its own kind of justice upon Biosyn’s CEO. Grant’s testimony played a pivotal role in the trial against Dodgson’s collaborators, though; he was not exactly comfortable in a courtroom, but with Sattler by his side, he could face whatever would happen. Before they attended the hearing, Grant happened to spot a child feeding a feral Moros that had integrated itself into a flock of ducks, another reminder that the world was not done changing yet.

Since the incidents in 2022, Dr. Grant has partnered with Dr. Sattler both romantically and professionally. He is certainly still a paleontologist, but like Sattler, he now faces the fact that his knowledge of the ancient past is relevant to the modern world in ways he could never have imagined when his career began. By studying the patterns of evolution on Earth, the future of its environment becomes easier to predict, and people can better prepare for future crises. Of course, with de-extinction set to play a role for the foreseeable future as well, knowing a thing or two about dinosaurs also makes Grant a valuable resource to the world. The game Jurassic World: Evolution 2 gives one suggestion as to Grant’s future; in the game he and Dr. Sattler act as advisors to Ramsay Cole during efforts to clean up and better manage Biosyn Valley.

The sanctuary is no longer run purely by Biosyn; it is globally available as per United Nations decree, with any dinosaurs that cannot safely adapt to the modern world being relocated there to live out their lives. Like Dr. Grant, struggling dinosaurs can now be given a second chance. Grant himself has found that while extinction does come for all things eventually, this does not mean they are destined to be forgotten. His entire career is based on discovering creatures long gone from the world, bringing them back into the light, and learning all he can about their lives. It is only fitting that those same creatures have given him the opportunity to make his own impact on the world too.

Skills
Paleontology

A degree-holding paleontologist, Dr. Grant is highly knowledgeable on many topics of vertebrate evolution. His main area of expertise is in deinonychosaur paleobiology, though as of 2001 he still subscribed to Gregory S. Paul’s 1988 classification system in which many species are lumped together under the genus Velociraptor. This means that many of Grant’s “Velociraptor” specimens are, by more modern paleontological opinion, not this genus at all. Modern paleontologists only recognize two species of Velociraptor, both found in Mongolia; the fossil specimens discovered by Dr. Grant in Montana, USA are almost certainly Deinonychus antirrhopus. Nonetheless, Dr. Grant is known for having discovered exquisitely-preserved deinonychosaurian remains over the course of his career, including some which provide strong evidence for social behavior in these animals.

Dr. Grant was also familiar with theories regarding the evolution of birds, and causes of extinction throughout the Mesozoic. In his book Dinosaur Detectives, he suggested that some dinosaurs had died out due to dwindling food sources, particularly the sauropods. He similarly believed that a massive impact at the end of the Cretaceous period had caused the mass extinction event at that time, causing all but the smallest dinosaurs to die out; in his book, he argued that natural selection had spared only the birds from extinction due to their small size. While the idea of birds being a part of the dinosaur family tree was not new in the early 1990s, it had yet to truly become a part of the public’s perception of dinosaurs; Grant’s book helped to popularize this well-supported theory.

Some of his paleontological theories have been met with some controversy; for example, he posits that deinonychosaurs may have been more intelligent than modern birds, cetaceans, and primates. This theory is highly influenced by Grant’s experience with InGen specimens, which are considered to be more intelligent than their fossil counterparts. In actuality, there is little evidence to suggest that any dinosaur was more intelligent than small mammals in the modern day. Grant also subscribes to the theory that tyrannosaur vision was movement-based, with the animals unable to distinguish a stationary object from the background. While InGen specimens seem to confirm this theory, InGen’s own Dr. Laura Sorkin hypothesized that this attribute was a byproduct of genetic engineering rather than a natural feature. More recently, he has suggested an alternative hypothesis to explain intraspecific bite marks found on theropod skulls in 2015. While many paleontologists believe these to represent fights for dominance, territorial combat, or mating standoffs, Dr. Grant has posited that rather than aggressive combat, some of these injuries may have come from animals that were simply roughhousing with each other.

Grant’s research primarily focuses on vertebrate paleontology, but his work with other leading experts in the field have likely brought him knowledge from other branches of this science. He worked closely with paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler in the 1990s, making it likely that he learned much about ancient plant life from her. Likewise, he is known to have been familiar with Juanito Rostagno, a geologist working out of the Dominican Republic, who had a substantial body of knowledge about amber inclusions. Along with his scholarly expertise, Grant is well-versed in fieldwork, having an extensive understanding of traditional paleontological tools. However, he does not have as much knowledge of the use of newer computer technologies used to research prehistoric life.

Contemporary animal biology

Along with his knowledge of ancient animal life, Dr. Grant is familiar with the evolutionary adaptations featured in many modern animal species. For example, he had learned about the process of protogyny occurring in Hyperolius viridiflavus (though he did not identify the species, simply stating that it occurred in “some West African frogs”), which was a fairly new discovery in 1993. He also appears to be familiar with vertebrate embryology, showing a detailed understanding of the process during his tour of the Jurassic Park facilities. Grant was also, in 2001, able to identify bonitos at a glance. He has a basic level of entomological knowledge, able to visually identify insect anatomy.

Physical strength

Due to extensive fieldwork experience, Dr. Grant has considerable athletic ability. He is able to walk fairly long distances on foot and climb several types of structures, both of which are useful skills in the Montana badlands. During his run-ins with de-extinct animals, his strength has helped him survive and protect his friends; he has been seen to fend off a Velociraptor, a Pteranodon, and a Dimetrodon on separate occasions, the latter when he was in his sixties. At the same age, he maintained the upper-body strength necessary to haul a grown man up to a raised platform using one arm.

Grant has maintained excellent physical health into his old age due to the demanding nature of his work. The only area in which his physical health has declined is his vision; while he does not have severe visual impairment, he does need eyeglasses when viewing anything up close in detail as of 2022, suggesting that he is becoming farsighted.

Firearms skill

Dr. Grant rarely uses firearms, but is capable with them. During the 1993 incident, he wielded a Franchi SPAS-12 with confidence. However, he was unable to hit a Velociraptor at close range, and made no attempt to clear a stovepipe jam and instead abandoned the weapon. Later, in 2001, he utilized a 25mm Olin flare gun to deter a Spinosaurus. He succeeded by using the flare to ignite spilled gasoline and frighten the animal away, but it is unlikely Grant’s intention was to light the gasoline on fire; this was probably an accident.

Writing and public speaking

In the early 1990s, Dr. Grant published Dinosaur Detectives, a nonfiction book about paleontology that became a nationwide bestseller acknowledged by scientists, celebrities, and the public as a valuable insight into the world of paleontologists. Following the book’s success, Dr. Grant often gave lectures at universities around the United States; even after the San Diego incident of 1997 revealed de-extinction to the public, Grant continued to travel giving lectures about his newest discoveries and theories. He eventually wrote a second book, Lost World of the Dinosaurs, this one openly discussing Jurassic Park and InGen’s work. This book was less positively received, with some readers considering it overly negative in its discussion of dinosaurs.

In more recent years, Grant began to shy away from public speaking and publishing, though he continued to publish scientific papers into the mid-2010s. His disappearance was less due to loss of ability and more due to depression, as the proliferation of de-extinction threatened to take more of the public’s attention away from his research. He still spoke to tourists at his dig sites, but otherwise allowed himself to fade away. However, most recently, Dr. Ellie Sattler has pulled him out of this half-retirement and helped him find his place in the world once more.

Skill with children

While Dr. Grant was uncomfortable around children during much of his adult life, his experience in the 1993 incident on Isla Nublar did soften his opinion of them. After rediscovering his childhood favorite dinosaur in the flesh, Grant became more empathetic toward the Murphy children, and fought to protect them as they later journeyed through the dinosaur paddocks toward safety. While he never had children of his own, he showed great skill at bonding with children later on; he encouraged Dr. Sattler’s son Charlie to become interested in dinosaurs and science, and became fast friends with one of his young fans, Eric Kirby. During the 2022 incident he also befriended Maisie Lockwood, helping her to escape her kidnappers and return to her family safely. In general, it seems that Grant’s reluctance to interact with children when he was younger was mostly due to his hesitance to start a family of his own.

Skill with animals

Perhaps as a result of his line of work, Dr. Grant does well with animals and understands their needs and biology. He and Dr. Sattler raised a blue-and-gold macaw named Jack together, even teaching him to speak; he was still in good health as of 2001. During the 1993 incident, Dr. Grant was quick to befriend a herd of Brachiosaurus while staying in their paddock, communicating with them and feeding one. He also was able to empathize with a pride of Velociraptors during the 2001 incident, understanding their motivations and attempting to communicate with them using a replica of their resonating chambers. During the 2022 incident, he even learned a simple raptor-training technique, using a hand gesture to establish authority over a juvenile Velociraptor by emulating an adult dinosaur’s dominance display.

Swimming

Dr. Grant was, as of 2001, a very capable swimmer even when under duress. His athletic ability owing to his life of field research likely contributed to his strong swimming skills.

Driving

As of July 2001, Dr. Grant possessed a valid United States drivers’ license, and he is capable of driving a vehicle with manual transmission. During his visit to Washington, D.C., he drove a 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue, but this was likely a rental car as he lived and worked in Montana at the time. He drove a 1987 Ford F-350 as of July 2001, which was provided by the Museum of the Rockies. He has been seen to have other vehicles at his dig sites, including various trailers and mobile homes that he lived in while in the field.

Technology

One of the fields in which Dr. Grant is unskilled is the use of technology. Part of this is due to his belief that technological advancements in paleontology are taking the fun out of his work; the use of ground-penetrating sonar, for example, is now used to locate and take images of fossils that have not been excavated. Even normal computers pose a challenge for Grant, whose knowledge of computer technology seems to have stagnated sometime in the late 1980s. When technology becomes a necessary part of his work, he usually relies on younger associates such as Billy Brennan.

Views
On paleontology

Dr. Grant has made his opinion clear on a number of paleontological theories. He has strongly argued in favor of the status of birds as theropod dinosaurs, and that food scarcity selected for smaller body size in dinosaurs during the end of the Cretaceous period. He also argues that sauropods migrated from North America to South America in search of food, becoming extinct due to food scarcity in a manner similar to many of the larger dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic. In the 1990s, he argued that this was a leading cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, more so than disease (as proposed by other paleontologists) or bolide impact (which was a fairly new theory at the time, only discovered in 1980).

Many of Dr. Grant’s theories pertain to deinonychosaurian theropods, particularly the dromaeosaurs he classifies as Velociraptor. As he ascribes to Gregory S. Paul’s classification system, Grant considers many other dromaeosaur genera such as the North American Deinonychus to be different species of Velociraptor, which most paleontologists would disagree with. He also proposed that deinonychosaurians used their large toe claws to lacerate prey items; new evidence has since refuted this, and Dr. Grant has agreed with conclusions that raptors would use their jaws as the primary killing implements while the claws were instead used to pin prey down, not disembowel. Other controversial theories he proposes include his famous theory on deinonychosaurian intelligence; based on the complexity of their communication and social lives (based both on his own discoveries and InGen specimens), he believes that they were more intelligent than modern-day birds, cetaceans, and primates. This is not supported throughout the scientific community, especially as humans are a type of primate. However, Grant has discovered compelling evidence for social behavior in fossil deinonychosaurs. He also suggests intelligent behavior in larger theropods, based on tooth marks found on skulls that he has hypothesized may have come from rough play behavior rather than genuine aggressive fighting. He has suggested that tyrannosaurids had good memory and were capable of social traits such as loyalty to each other.

Another of his theories regards the ecology surrounding prehistoric watering holes. In the modern day, some animals that would normally be at odds may coexist at sources of fresh water, temporarily ignoring typical predator-prey relationships. Dr. Grant has proposed that similar “truces” may have occurred during the Mesozoic era between carnivorous species of dinosaurs and their usual prey or rivals.

Dr. Grant, as of 1993, also endorsed the theory that Tyrannosaurus rex was unable to distinguish stationary objects from their backgrounds. While the fossil evidence to support this theory is very scant, InGen’s cloned tyrannosaurs did exhibit this trait. There is evidence to suggest that InGen’s specimens only had this trait due to gene splicing involved in their creation.

In general, Grant’s approach to paleontology can be considered Hornerian, in line with paleontologist Jack Horner. This contrasts with Bakkerian paleontological methodology, in line with paleontologist Robert T. Bakker; Grant has openly expressed dislike for Dr. Bakker and his theories, viewing him as a competitor as do many Hornerian paleontologists.

In terms of evolution, Dr. Grant considers intelligence to be the best example of evolutionary fitness. This led him in 2001 to propose a satirical theory of “Reverse Darwinism,” or the “survival of the most idiotic.” If low intelligence (or rather, foolish behavior) is the reverse form of Darwinian fitness, then high intelligence (or wise behavior) would naturally be the most ideal trait to possess in terms of evolution by natural selection. However, in reality, many evolutionary traits can bring greater or lesser fitness, and intelligence is only one of them. Unintelligent organisms such as jellyfish have thrived for hundreds of millions of years; in fact, an intelligent animal is actually more likely to appear foolish, as it is relying on conscious thought to make decisions rather than instinct, and therefore its mistakes are less excused by observers.

On de-extinction

Dr. Grant has had a difficult and conflicting relationship with de-extinction. He was astounded and thrilled when he first discovered that it had been accomplished, and was particularly excited that it supported scientific theories about homeothermy and social behavior in dinosaurs. The sometimes cavalier approach that InGen took toward its animals was upsetting to Grant, though; he was concerned about their cloning of Velociraptors, animals which he believed were too dangerous to be allowed to coexist with humans.

Though Grant remained excited about the potential to see living dinosaurs, he remained aware that their existence threatened his paleontological career. Following the 1993 incident, his view on de-extinction soured considerably. In 2001, he openly referred to InGen’s animals as monstrosities, stating that their status as genetically modified organisms made them useless to paleontological research. His views were softened during the 2001 incident, as he came to realize that while InGen had assuredly damaged his career, the dinosaurs themselves were innocent in this respect as they were simply existing as their instincts told them to.

Once de-extinct animals hit the black market and were released into the wild, there was no going back to the way the world had been before. While Grant knew better than to blame the animals, it was still upsetting to him; he sunk into depression as he believed himself doomed to obsolescence. After years of this, his sullen semi-retirement was interrupted by Ellie Sattler recruiting him into the events of the 2022 Biosyn Valley incident, which led to him encountering numerous dinosaurs again. During the mission, he met former InGen animal trainer Owen Grady, who had famously managed to train a group of Velociraptors at Jurassic World. Despite Grant’s reservations about the animals, he was impressed, and later aided in recapturing a juvenile raptor that Biosyn operatives had poached from the wild. Although the presence of wild dinosaurs throughout the world is still a challenge for Grant to adapt to, he had seen incredible things during this last adventure, and what he witnessed gave him hope that he could evolve and survive this new world too.

On scientific discipline

Like his colleague Dr. Ellie Sattler, Dr. Grant is a supporter of the precautionary principle, believing that scientific research should be approached carefully and with forethought rather than advancing for the sake of discovery. His views are not nearly as extreme as those of Dr. Ian Malcolm, who has expressed open opposition to many forms of scientific discovery. Nonetheless, he was accused by John Hammond as expressing Luddite tendencies with regards to science. In reality Dr. Grant’s views are not truly conservative enough to be comparable to Neo-Luddism, though he does show hesitance toward the development of new technologies. This hesitance is born of a combination of nostalgia and a lack of technological expertise.

On technology

In his paleontological career, Dr. Grant has opposed the use of new technology. As of 1993, computer-assisted sonic topography was being used to image fossils that were still uncovered, enabling paleontologists to observe these remains without excavating them. Grant, while willing to tolerate use of such devices by his colleagues, was still opposed to it, believing that it might one day take the enjoyment out of his work. He has long been viewed by his colleagues as technologically impaired, as computers often malfunction when he attempts to use them. As of 2001, Grant’s digs did not utilize computer-assisted sonic topography, though his colleague Billy Brennan made use of a rapid prototyping device to manufacture replicas of dinosaurian fossil remains.

The development of neopaleontology as a field of science during the twenty-first century continues to threaten Dr. Grant’s personal methods, with some people believing that new fields such as iron analysis and paleogenetics would ultimately replace the physical excavation and study of fossilized remains. De-extinction also has been considered an “alternative” to traditional paleontology by the general public, who often do not understand that de-extinct organisms must always have at least a small amount of alteration in order to survive in the modern world. While modern techniques allow for species to be cloned with negligible modifications, some (especially earlier attempts) show marked deviation, which can sow confusion among non-paleontologists as to what is natural and what is a genetic fabrication. Grant maintains that fossils are the only reliable source of truth about the ancient world.

On children and family

In 1993, Dr. Grant expressed discomfort around children and a strong opposition to having any of his own. It appears that the former was heavily influenced by the latter; Dr. Grant’s hesitancy about having children almost certainly led to his dislike of them in general. During the incident on Isla Nublar that year, he encountered a Triceratops which brought back childhood memories of when he first became interested in dinosaurs, and circumstances of the incident forced him to protect the Murphy children from danger. These events softened Grant’s view of children, though he did not end up having any of his own. By 2001, Grant was entirely comfortable working with children, encouraging Dr. Sattler’s son’s interest in dinosaurs and becoming friends with the twelve-year-old Eric Kirby, who was a fan of Dinosaur Detectives.

Today he still enjoys educating children about dinosaurs, and got along quite well with the young Maisie Lockwood when he met her in 2022. However, he bears some trepidation about newer generations who grew up with de-extinction and often do not consider paleontological science relevant any longer.

On religion

Dr. Grant remains mostly quiet about his religious views. He has referred to genetic engineering as “playing God,” though this does not appear to indicate a particular religious belief. Similarly to Dr. Ian Malcolm, he appears to equate the idea of a God with the concept of nature as a distinct entity. As a professional paleontologist, Dr. Grant supports the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection.

Relationships
Dr. Ellie Sattler

Alan Grant was in a romantic relationship with Dr. Ellie Sattler during the early 1990s, and also worked with her in a professional capacity. Her expertise as a paleobotanist complemented his own knowledge of vertebrate paleontology, and vice versa; this made them an excellent pairing for research into paleoecology. Not all aspects of their relationship were entirely harmonious, as Dr. Sattler was very interested in someday having children while Dr. Grant was highly hesitant about doing so. While Grant’s discomfort around children was resolved during the events on Isla Nublar, the aftermath of the incident drove a wedge between himself and Dr. Sattler; their relationship was ended by 1995. Though she eventually married a U.S. State Department employee and had distanced herself from dinosaurs, she and Grant were able to amend any conflicts they had and were close friends again by 2001.

As the years went on, they drifted apart, and Grant became depressed as his career suffered. He also regretted losing Sattler, and mourned for what could have been. Though they did not talk much, he read her scientific publications, finding her a source of inspiration during the tumultuous decades of the twenty-first century. She unexpectedly came back into his life in 2022, both of them older and wiser, and Sattler recently divorced; she brought him on her mission to expose ecological crimes committed by Biosyn Genetics, ostensibly as a witness the public would trust but clearly driven by the fond memories they shared. She convinced Grant to come out of his self-imposed exile from the spotlight and join her in fighting for a better future, and by the end of the mission, both of them had admitted their feelings for each other had never truly gone away. Having found each other again in the twilight of their lives, they are a couple once more, facing the world as a team.

Billy Brennan

By 2001, Dr. Grant had recruited a number of graduate students to assist in his digs, in spite of de-extinction becoming a public fact. Among these students was Billy Brennan, who worked very closely with Grant and became his trusted protégé. Brennan’s proficiency with new technology assisted Grant, who was still resistant to technological change and was largely incompetent with computers. Brennan was also responsible for roping Grant into the 2001 Isla Sorna incident; it was through Brennan that Paul Kirby arranged his meeting with Grant that July, and Brennan would accompany Grant on their journey to Isla Sorna the following day.

Brennan well understood the financial difficulties facing Grant’s career, and made an ill-advised attempt to gain funding during the incident. He stole two Velociraptor eggs out of their nest, hoping to sell them on the black market once they returned to the mainland. This act directly led to the death of mercenary Udesky as the raptors pursued the egg thieves, and gravely disappointed Grant when he learned what Brennan had done. Despite this, Brennan used his paragliding skills to rescue Eric Kirby later on, redeeming himself by risking his own life. While Brennan was presumed dead after this part of the incident, he was ultimately rescued by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and was reunited with Grant at the end of the incident. His act of self-sacrifice softened Grant’s view of his rash actions, and the two appear to have made amends.

John Hammond and InGen

During the early 1990s, Grant’s research was funded by International Genetic Technologies, and he was the top choice in paleontologists of InGen’s CEO at the time John Hammond. In early June of 1993, Hammond personally approached Dr. Grant’s dig site near Snakewater, Montana in order to invite him to tour the as-of-yet incomplete Jurassic Park; Grant was originally intended to be the tour’s sole paleontological consultant, though Dr. Ellie Sattler was invited along as well. Hammond did not inform Drs. Grant or Sattler about the true nature of the Park or the reason he needed an endorsement from either of them, unlike Dr. Ian Malcolm, instead choosing to keep the reality of de-extinction a surprise to shock them and thus increase his chances of getting the endorsement.

While Hammond was fully supportive of Dr. Grant’s work and understood its importance to InGen (even offering to completely fund Grant’s career for another three years), Jurassic Park still posed a threat to Grant’s work as it would eventually make traditional paleontology obsolete. Grant did not put much blame on Hammond himself for this challenge, but his opinion of InGen greatly soured following the 1997 San Diego incident that revealed de-extinction to the world.

During his time on Isla Nublar, Grant briefly met a few other InGen employees. He learned from Dr. Henry Wu that InGen had bred Velociraptor, and discussed the animals’ physiology and intelligence with Park warden Robert Muldoon. Much of Muldoon’s knowledge confirmed theories that Grant had already formulated about deinonychosaurian behavior, and Grant concurred with Muldoon that they were among the most dangerous animals in nature. He also briefly met Dr. Gerry Harding, the Park’s chief veterinarian, who introduced him to a sick Triceratops. While Grant respected Muldoon and had little familiarity with Wu or Harding, his overall opinion of InGen was negative due to the harm de-extinction did to his work. It is likely that following Masrani Global Corporation‘s resurrection of Jurassic Park as Jurassic World and the rapid development of neopaleontology, his opinion of InGen remained largely unpleasant.

Despite his distaste for InGen’s work, he did keep tabs on what they were accomplishing in Jurassic World. He was particularly interested to see how they handled the theropods, with the Velociraptors proving a difficult species to house in captivity at all. Grant was surprised and impressed to hear that InGen Security’s I.B.R.I.S. Project, which aimed to learn how the raptors thought in order to better house them, had some degree of success in teaching the raptors commands. InGen’s animal behaviorists, led by Owen Grady, had learned much about how the dinosaurs’ minds worked and were able to establish some rudimentary communication with the animals. Grant’s own research had partly informed this project. Grant even met Grady himself during the 2022 incident in Biosyn Valley, learning that Grady was a fan of his work and had listened to an audiobook of Grant’s. During the incident Grant got a firsthand look at Grady’s techniques when he was brought along to recapture a juvenile Velociraptor that had been poached by Biosyn. Grant also became acquainted with Claire Dearing, the former Operations Manager of Jurassic World and a prominent de-extinct animal rights activist.

During the 2022 incident, Grant had a brief encounter with a former InGen scientist, Henry Wu, who he had met many years before. In the intervening time, Wu had worked at Jurassic World, discovered how his genetic engineering processes had created hybrids, and explored this new science, but was contracted by corrupt parties to weaponize that discovery. Grant remembered Wu and was none too happy to see him, but by now Wu’s life had taken many an unwelcome turn and he was desperate to stop his creations from causing any further damage. With this in mind, Grant helped Wu escape Biosyn Valley safely, bringing his research to the outside world where he was able to halt an ecological crisis.

Dr. Ian Malcolm

One of the other consultants on Jurassic Park’s 1993 endorsement tour was mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, who appeared to have more insight into Hammond’s project than Grant was given. During the tour, Grant and Malcolm became acquainted with one another. Grant largely disapproved of Malcolm’s flirtatious behavior toward Dr. Sattler, and also Malcolm’s flippant attitude toward romance and marriage. During the tyrannosaur attack on the main tour road, they briefly cooperated to try and lure the animal away from the Murphy children; Malcolm was wounded in the effort, and he became separated from Grant until the end of the incident.

While it is unknown to what degree Drs. Grant and Malcolm kept in touch following the incident, it is known that Grant’s opinion of Malcolm did not improve in the following years. He did read Malcolm’s groundbreaking book, God Creates Dinosaurs, but found it too preachy for his tastes and Malcolm’s narration overly egotistical. Malcolm was the only survivor of the 1993 incident to violate his nondisclosure agreement with InGen, and this happened the same year that Dr. Grant’s relationship with Dr. Sattler ended; it could even be that Malcolm bringing Jurassic Park to the public’s attention placed further stress on Grant and Sattler, contributing to their breakup. If this is the case, then Grant’s dislike of Malcolm may have had a more personal angle as well.

Grant and Malcolm had little contact with each other during their later lives, up until 2022. Malcolm was the one who invited Dr. Sattler to Biosyn Valley as a part of her investigation into a corporate coverup, and she brought Grant along for the ride. Although Grant was still wont to make sarcastic remarks about Malcolm, he willingly met with the mathematician at the sanctuary. At first, Malcolm appeared uncaring about the coverup and seemed to be flirting with Sattler, upsetting Grant, but it soon turned out he was faking all of this in order to avoid suspicion from Biosyn. When Grant and Sattler made their escape from the valley and were imperiled by Biosyn’s efforts to stop them, Malcolm rushed to their rescue. Later, Malcolm risked his life to save Grant and his other allies, and moments later Grant returned the favor by saving Malcolm. Having seen the lengths Malcolm was willing to go to in order to protect the others, Grant realized that he had misjudged Malcolm all these years. His snark and egotism were just the surface, and buried beneath was someone loyal and dedicated. By the time they left the valley, Grant and Malcolm were friends.

Lex and Tim Murphy

During the 1993 incident, Grant became aquainted with John Hammond’s grandchildren Lex and Tim Murphy. The children took an immediate liking to Dr. Grant, in spite of his at-the-time discomfort around children in general. Lex in particular developed a precocious crush on Grant, taking any opportunity to hold hands or otherwise be close to him, while Tim had read Dinosaur Detectives and even brought a copy along with him to discuss with Grant. During the tour, Grant attempted to distance himself from the children in spite of Sattler’s insistence that he spend time with them. While on the tour they encountered a sick Triceratops, Grant’s favorite dinosaur when he was a child. This brought back memories of his own childhood, helping him to empathize with the young children and their love of dinosaurs. When disaster struck in the Park, Grant was the only adult left to protect the children as Donald Gennaro was killed and Malcolm severely wounded.

After the tyrannosaur attack on the main road, Grant fully devoted himself to getting the children to safety. They spent the evening and following day trekking westward to the Visitors’ Centre, with Grant leaving them alone only once they had arrived there. When he learned that the Velociraptors had escaped, he quickly armed himself and made haste back to the Centre to rescue them. He and Sattler led the children safely to the main rotunda, evading the raptors at every turn; even when they were surrounded and all hope seemed lost, he and Dr. Sattler kept the children in between them, shielding them from the raptors’ advance. Ultimately, the tyrannosaur inadvertently saved them by hunting down the raptors. On the helicopter ride back to the mainland, Grant and the children remained close, having bonded and become friends throughout the incident. Their relationship was instrumental in changing Grant’s overall feelings toward children.

It is unknown how much Grant and the Murphy children kept in contact after the incident, but the children did keep in touch with Dr. Malcolm to some degree. This would suggest that they likely remained in contact with Grant as well, particularly given the harrowing circumstances they survived together.

Degler family

Dr. Grant’s one-time romantic partner Dr. Ellie Sattler married into the Degler family sometime between 1995 and 1998, eventually having two children with her husband Mark Degler. The blue-and-gold macaw that they had raised together, Jack, went to live in the Degler household as well. Years prior, Jack had been taught to speak and knew Dr. Grant’s first name; by 2001, he had apparently forgotten this. According to the almost-final Jurassic Park /// script, Grant and Jack had not seen one another in six years, meaning they had last seen each other in 1995.

Despite no longer being in a relationship with Dr. Sattler, Grant maintained a positive relationship with her new family. He encouraged her son’s interest in dinosaurs, despite the boy’s very young age; Charlie came to know Dr. Grant as “the dinosaur man.” Grant also had a good relationship with Dr. Sattler’s husband Mark, who respected their friendship without any signs of jealousy and openly welcomed Grant into their home. When he heard from his wife that Grant’s life was in peril on Isla Sorna, he wasted no time in using his government connections to send the U.S. military to the island to extract him safely.

In the years that followed, Grant drifted apart from Sattler as he slowly sunk into long-term depression. He learned that the Degler family was having marital trouble, but did not pry. However, when he finally met Sattler again in 2022, he learned that they had divorced; this was welcome news to Grant, but he was sad to hear that Dr. Sattler had gone through such emotional pain. Though Grant had no particular closeness to Mark Degler by this point, he still cared about Sattler’s children, and was happy to hear both of them were doing well in college.

Kirby family

Among Dr. Grant’s young fans was Eric Kirby, a boy from Enid, Oklahoma with a childhood interest in dinosaurs reminiscent of Grant’s own youth. Eric was the center of an international incident occurring in 2001 which Grant was involved with by means of Eric’s parents, Paul and Amanda Kirby. The Kirbys originally posed as a wealthy couple with permission from the Costa Rican government to fly low over Isla Sorna to experience an aerial tour; it was not until the group was stranded on the island that Grant learned the truth. He was initially furious with them for lying to and kidnapping him; after he was rescued by Eric in the forest, his feelings softened as he realized that they were simply parents doing whatever it took to save their child’s life. Grant and Eric bonded quickly during the time they spent together, and Grant ultimately showed no ill will toward the Kirby parents in spite of the harm they caused him.

According to the Jurassic Park Adventures junior novels, Grant and Eric remained friends in the following years and regularly kept in touch. Despite their interpersonal conflicts with regards to Isla Sorna and how the government and public should handle it, they usually found ways to resolve their disagreements and maintain a friendship. As Eric was still a minor in the early 2000s, Grant also stayed in touch with his parents, who appreciated Grant’s help in understanding the psychological trauma their son was going through.

Paleontological colleagues and volunteers

Dr. Grant often works alongside other paleontologists on his digs. Along with his longtime colleague and romantic partner Dr. Ellie Sattler, many fellow scientists and local volunteers could be found at the sites he worked on in the 1990s. Some of these scientists and volunteers brought their children to work, lacking the funds necessary for child care; this irritated Grant prior to the 1993 incident, when his opinion of children was still quite negative. His feelings toward children were more amicable following the incident.

Locally, Dr. Grant is a major figure in Montana paleontology and is associated with the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. He is also the curator of paleontology at a museum near Hell’s Bells, and as of 1992 held a fellowship with the Nimitz Foundation (assumed to be a fictitious paleontological organization; no such foundation exists in real life). Any excavations that Dr. Grant is a part of are sure to draw interested locals from all around.

He is also familiar with international members of the paleontological and geological community, such as Dominican-based Costa Rican geologist Juanito Rostagno. His colleagues include world-famous Dr. Jack Horner, upon which Dr. Grant based much of his methodology; he has a more critical opinion of Horner’s longtime rival Dr. Robert Bakker and was dismissive of Bakker’s work. It is likely that Grant opposed Dr. Robert Burke, who made obvious attempts to emulate Bakker’s style (though not necessarily his scientific views). Grant subscribes to Gregory S. Paul’s older taxonomic theories, but it is unknown if Grant and Paul have ever actually met one another.

At a 2001 dig, he was assisted by graduate students, likely from the nearby University of Montana. This allowed Grant to help cultivate young minds and encourage up-and-coming paleontologists to hone their skill in the field under his expert tutelage. He has consistently welcomed locals and tourists, especially budding science students, to his dig sites for this purpose. By 2022, though, he also relied upon them for income, as his research had lost its funding. De-extinction had taken the world by storm for many years at that point, and Dr. Grant found that many of the youths had little interest in paleontology any longer. With living replicas of these lost animals roaming the continent, some people believed there was no reason to search for fossils any longer. This frustrated Grant, although he tried to keep a smile on for the public. On the other hand, Grant’s publications are popular on the Jurassic World Fan Forum, although his ineptitude with technology means he is probably unaware of this.

Biosyn Genetics

After the events of 2018 brought de-extinct life into the wider world, as well as the technology necessary for creating more, the United States government awarded Biosyn Genetics sole collection rights to de-extinct animals found on American soil. Once, Biosyn had been a rival to InGen, but with the latter out of the game Biosyn rose straight to the top. To Grant, though, one bioengineering company seeking to exploit dinosaurs was much the same as another, and he was hardly surprised in 2022 when he learned from Dr. Sattler that they were potentially trying to manipulate and control the world’s food supply through genetic engineering of insects.

Grant joined in a mission with Sattler to investigate and implicate Biosyn. They were flown to the corporate headquarters, located in a valley sanctuary of the Italian Dolomites, where they met Biosyn Communications employee Ramsay Cole. While Cole was thrilled to meet both of them, Grant was a little bemused to learn that Cole was a particularly big fan of Malcolm’s, but could do nothing to convince the younger man of Malcolm’s unwarranted egotism.

They also briefly met Biosyn’s CEO, Lewis Dodgson, who posed for publicity photos with them before sending them on their tour. While their espionage took them down secretive paths evading Dodgson for the remainder of their time there, he was responsible for shutting down the hyperloop pod they were using to escape, stranding them underground and placing them in mortal danger. Cole, on the other hand, turned out to be a whistleblower working with Malcolm to expose Dodgson’s crimes; he was the architect of the plot, and aided Grant and Sattler’s escape from the valley.

The time they spent in Biosyn Valley was fairly short and they only met a handful of people, even fewer by name (one exception was a barista named Tyler, with whom Grant argued; this confrontation was orchestrated by Malcolm as a cover for him slipping Sattler classified information and a wristband ID). After the incident, though, Grant did play a major role alongside Sattler, Malcolm, and Cole in bringing other Biosyn executives to justice before the United States Congress; if Jurassic World: Evolution 2 is to be believed, Grant and Sattler now serve as science advisors to Cole in his efforts to rebuild Biosyn after the purge of its corrupt upper ranks.

Maisie Lockwood

Alan Grant probably knew little about Maisie Lockwood aside from what the tabloids printed before encountering her out of the blue during the 2022 Biosyn Valley incident. He learned from her and Dr. Sattler that much of what was said on the news was true: she was indeed the first human clone to be born, a genetic twin to Sattler’s deceased friend Charlotte Lockwood, who herself was the daughter of John Hammond’s one-time friend Sir Benjamin Lockwood. Maisie had vanished from her home after living in secret for her entire life, and was now unofficially adopted by former InGen employees Owen Grady and Claire Dearing. But more recently, Maisie had learned that her DNA had been altered during her infancy to cure her of a genetic disorder she inherited from Charlotte; for this reason, for the knowledge hidden in her genome, Biosyn had kidnapped her.

Grant and Sattler quickly took the teenager under their wing and helped her to escape. While they made their way out of the valley, Grant helped Maisie trust them in times of danger by speaking glowingly of Dr. Sattler’s reliability in a crisis, unwittingly revealing to the both of them how he still felt about his old love. Maisie suspected their romantic past before very long. After escaping Biosyn Valley together, Maisie was glad to see Grant and Sattler’s long-lost relationship rekindled.

Kayla Watts

During the 2022 incident in Biosyn Valley, Maisie Lockwood’s adoptive parents were smuggled into the valley in pursuit of their kidnapped daughter by Kayla Watts, an Air Force dropout who had spent some time ferrying illegal cargo around the worldmuch of it dinosaurian, in recent years. Grant met her alongside Owen Grady and Claire Dearing. He and Watts had only a few interactions, but she was instrumental in his survival through the later part of the incident, including leading the way breaking into Outpost 04 and driving away the Giganotosaurus, distracting the theropod a second time with a flare gun later, and flying their escape helicopter out from the main compound.

Donald Gennaro

InGen legal representative Donald Gennaro was among the members of the 1993 endorsement tour, and was the only one to disagree with Grant’s hesitant opinion on the Park. Grant and Gennaro did not interact much during the tour, but Grant was among the last people to see Gennaro alive before a tyrannosaur used him as a plaything to fatal effect.

M. B. Nash, Cooper, and Udesky

During the 2001 incident on Isla Sorna, Grant briefly met three men hired by the Kirbys to assist in the rescue mission. At the time, Grant was under the impression that they were friends of the Kirbys and that they were flight crew rather than mercenaries. When they attempted landing on the island, Grant became aggressive and was knocked unconscious by Cooper. Both Cooper and pilot M. B. Nash were killed shortly after landing on the island, so Grant did not get to know either of them particularly well. He became better acquainted with Udesky, the booking agent responsible for hiring the other two men; Udesky himself was filling in for a man who could not show. Grant considered Udesky to be the most intelligent and competent member of the Kirby party. Despite this, he did not immediately realize that Udesky was missing from the group when he was reunited with the others later.

Grant and the Kirbys were, technically, the last people to interact with Nash and Cooper, by means of extracting parts of their digested remains from a pile of Spinosaurus dung.

De-extinct life

During his 1993 trip to Isla Nublar, Dr. Grant encountered many of the island’s dinosaurs. The first he met were several Brachiosaurus and a herd of Parasaurolophus, which introduced him to the idea that de-extinction had been accomplished successfully. He would later go on to imitate the brachiosaurs’ calls and befriend one of them by feeding it. During the tour, he hoped to see the Dilophosaurus, but they failed to show. The Tyrannosaurus rex also did not show initially, but later appeared during a tropical storm and escaped captivity. This would be the first dinosaur that seriously threatened Grant, though its behavior was exploratory. Even if it was being more or less curious and playful, its enormous size and strength made its play behavior lethal to the humans it was interacting with. The tyrannosaur was responsible for separating Grant and the Murphy children from the main tour path, forcing them to make an overland journey on foot back toward the Visitors’ Centre.

The tyrannosaur would be sighted by them on a few other occasions; at one point, Grant observed it hunting a flock of Gallimimus. These smaller dinosaurs posed a minor threat to Grant and the children’s safety during a stampede, but the Gallimimus swerved to avoid trampling them in spite of their panic at being hunted. The tyrannosaur could be heard vocalizing as Grant and the children crossed the Park’s perimeter fence, but it did not approach them at that time.

Perhaps the most significant dinosaurs to interact with Grant during the 1993 incident were a sick Triceratops and a group of Velociraptors. The trike, which was tranquilized at the time, was the first dinosaur that Grant was able to really interact with closely; it reminded him of his childhood interest in dinosaurs, a vital step in his ability to empathize with children. The raptors, on the other hand, hunted him and the children through the Visitors’ Centre, causing terrible psychological damage to Grant bordering on post-traumatic stress disorder. The raptors’ hunt was only interrupted by an ambush from the tyrannosaur, which killed one raptor and dueled the other while Grant, Sattler, and the children escaped.

In 2001, Dr. Grant was brought to Isla Sorna by the Kirby family, which permitted him to encounter a variety of prehistoric animals again. During the flight into the island, he was able to point out his childhood favorite Triceratops, this time in full health and great numbers, as well as a herd of Brachiosaurus. Alongside them were herds of Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, and Stegosaurus, the latter two of which he had never seen in the flesh before. These herbivorous dinosaurs would reawaken Grant’s appreciation for de-extinct animals, causing him to remember the awe and wonder he experienced at seeing them. Later on, Grant would take advantage of a herd of hadrosaurs to escape a pride of Velociraptors, though the huge panicked animals endangered his life. He would later spot two Ankylosaurus, another genus he would see alive for the first time.

The island’s carnivorous animals would be less amenable to him. An aggressive Spinosaurus was the cause of his stranding on the island, and he was nearly crushed by a male Tyrannosaurus at one point. He and his companions were directly responsible for drawing these two large predators into a territorial clash, which would prove fatal for the tyrannosaur. Later, he had to escape the Spinosaurus and then a third time face it down in its natural habitat; he drove it away using a flare gun to ignite spilled gasoline. His trainee Billy Brennan stole two Velociraptor antirrhopus sornaensis eggs, leading the animals to viciously pursue Grant and the others; Grant appears to have been aware of this subspecies prior to his arrival on the island, as he had a nightmare about one on the flight in. Grant’s interest in raptor communication would lead him to almost be captured and killed by the animals at one point, but ultimately saved the group as he confused the raptors by imitating their calls.

He also had a brief but violent conflict with four Pteranodon longiceps hippocratesi, which he was not aware InGen had cloned at all. Brennan was nearly killed by the creatures, and Grant’s newfound friend Eric Kirby was also threatened by the animals’ offspring. Grant himself would have to physically fight off one of the adults to defend the Kirbys. During this incident, a collapsing catwalk crushed one of the Pteranodons in the aviary’s river; this was the second animal death directly caused by Grant’s group.

Two other carnivore species, Ceratosaurus and Compsognathus, were briefly seen by Grant during the incident, but they did not make any move to threaten him.

According to the Jurassic Park Adventures series of junior novels, Grant reluctantly agreed to assist the United Nations in directly protecting and providing care for Isla Sorna’s animals, including relocating troublesome predators such as the Spinosaurus to balance the collapsing ecosystem. He remained opposed to letting the public interact with the island in any capacity. By 2005, he would no longer be involved with the island at all due to the fact that Masrani Global Corporation had by May of that year supposedly relocated all of the animals to Isla Nublar for safekeeping.

It is unlikely that Grant visited Jurassic World between 2005 and 2015 due to his opinions on de-extinction and his tumultuous relationship with InGen, so the animals of Isla Nublar during that period had no direct interaction with him. Instead, they were a more abstract obstacle to his goal of educating the public about dinosaurs: the average person would simply rather look at a living animal than a fossil, even if the living animal has been genetically altered and no longer resembles its ancestor. After the events of 2001, Grant came to realize that InGen’s animals were not at fault for this, but his relationship with them remained a difficult one.

For a brief time after the closure of Jurassic World, it seemed as though de-extinction might become a thing of the past. Isla Nublar, now largely unmonitored, became a death trap as the overcrowded dinosaurs suffered from disease and natural disasters, with volcanism threatening to kill off most of them in 2018. However, this was not to be: the animals were relocated in the nick of time by poachers, who sold many to the black market and allowed others to escape into the wild. The technology to create more of the animals was also sold illegally, spreading around the world. Before long, ancient creatures of all sorts were appearing closer and closer to humanity. Public interest in them surged once again, and Grant’s career was shafted. InGen’s now-famous Tyrannosaurus was roaming the Pacific Northwest and making sporadic but terrifying appearances, and this was far more captivating than any of her ancient kin whose bones had long since turned to rock.

He did not blame the animals this time, but allowed himself to slip into depression. It was not until Dr. Sattler roped him into a mission to expose a corporate coverup in Biosyn Genetics that Grant’s melancholy was interrupted; as they made the transit to Biosyn Genetics Sanctuary in Italy, they had a layover at the U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility, a transport hub for animals on their way to the sanctuary. Here Grant saw dinosaurs up close once again; many were species that he had seen before, such as Parasaurolophus and Stegosaurus, but a group of ceratopsians was new to him. These included not just his old favorite Triceratops, but the more exotic Nasutoceratops and Sinoceratops. Sattler was allowed to pet one of the juveniles, and with both of Grant’s oldest loves—ceratopsians and Dr. Sattler—in one place, his sadness finally began to break.

On the flight into Biosyn Valley, they witnessed several more animals, including a small Pteranodon flock accompanying a gigantic sauropod, Dreadnoughtus. Ramsay Cole described to them some of the valley’s other inhabitants, including their own apex predator Giganotosaurus as well as InGen’s classic Tyrannosaurus, finally captured in Oregon and brought to the valley just hours before Grant and Sattler’s own arrival. Upon learning about Biosyn’s method of using neural implants to control the animals’ movements if needed, Grant became concerned for the animals’ comfort and health before being reassured that this was more humane than previously-used methodsincluding those he himself had experienced firsthand. In the company headquarters Grant witnessed young dinosaurs in the habitat development lab, such as Moros, a type of early North American tyrannosaur. This was among the genetically purest of any dinosaurs yet brought back to life.

Grant’s reason for visiting the facility was espionage, and this meant encountering a wholly new kind of animal: a hybrid locust, engineered by Biosyn in secret. Sattler had shown him a specimen she had obtained in the wild, and now they snuck into a laboratory to obtain a DNA sample from a captive specimen too. If the two samples were a match, it would prove that Biosyn was indeed responsible for their creation. After this espionage they had to make a hasty escape, during which Biosyn’s CEO attempted to strand them in the valley; to escape, Grant fought his way through a small group of Dimetrodons (one of which cost him his beloved hat) and faced the hulking Giganotosaurus. This time he and his allies were not immediately responsible for animal suffering, but animals nevertheless did suffer when Biosyn attempted to destroy evidence by burning the locusts alive. Driven into a panicked frenzy, the swarm damaged a ventilation shaft and fled into the valley, sparking wildfires that endangered not just the other animals but Grant and his friends as they tried to reach safety.

Before they could evacuate, Grant needed to aid Owen Grady and Maisie Lockwood in recapturing Beta, a juvenile Velociraptor and the offspring of one of Grady’s animals. Biosyn had poached the raptor along with kidnapping Maisie. Grady appreciated Grant’s expertise, and though he was inwardly frightened of encountering a live raptor once more, he faced his fears and joined them. During the confrontation, he learned a basic raptor-handling tactic, a method of emulating the animals’ dominance displays to assert authority. Grant performed admirably, but as the oldest of the group, Beta still chose him when she ultimately attacked out of stress. Fortunately, Grant’s help in cornering her had allowed Grady to hit her with a tranquilizer dart, saving Grant from a nasty bite.

While he was able to rescue Beta from Biosyn, the other dinosaurs were another matter. Biosyn’s remote herding system came active during the emergency, bringing all the animals into an underground shelter to protect them from the fire. This meant that in order to reach their own method of escape, Grant and his allies would have to cross right through the dinosaurs’ evacuation route; he now saw a Dreadnoughtus up close, along with some Pteranodons and Iguanodons as they made their way into the emergency shelter. Last to evacuate were three giant theropods: Grant encountered InGen’s oldest tyrannosaur one last time, and witnessed her fatal confrontation with the Giganotosaurus. The third animal was a blind Therizinosaurus, and it also clashed with the biggest of the three dinosaurs. Grant’s escape via helicopter gave him a vantage point over the battleground, allowing him to see the tyrannosaur get back up from an apparent defeat and land one final blow against her younger rival.

Prehistoric creatures are now a fundamental part of the modern world. While sanctuaries like Biosyn Valley are able to take in animals that cause too much trouble to integrate effectively into our ecosystems, the global black market and escapees that have begun to breed in the wild mean that the animals are here to stay. Grant, while still holding a sense of unease about sharing his planet with anicent species brought back to life, has now committed to adapting to this new world. People of his generation are among the last to remember a distinct before and after for the science of de-extinction, and as time goes on, the same will happen regarding the release of dinosaurs into the modern biosphere. Grant’s knowledge of the past is a useful resource for the future, and he has resolved to make his knowledge available to the public for the benefit of both man and beast.

U.S. government

Until historically recent times it was unusual for a paleontologist to be called in by the United States government or any political body for reasons other than land use and geological surveying, but de-extinction changed this forever. Grant has had a few encounters with American government officials throughout the years, including in 2001 when he was marooned on Isla Sorna and rescued by the United States Navy and Marine Corps. While the nature of any ensuing investigation is unknown, it would not be the last time Grant became embroiled in a major political issue. After years of trying to stay out of de-extinction politics and focus on his work, Grant was a part of the investigation into corporate corruption at Biosyn Genetics in 2022, which ended with the U.S. Congress getting involved. A Biosyn whistleblower, Ramsay Cole, became allies with Grant during the incident and brought him to Washington, D.C. along with Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm as key witnesses. Their initial flight into Biosyn Valley had involved a layover at the U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility, run by the Department of the Interior; here a paleoveterinarian named Shira gave them a tour of the animal pens and clinics. Their evacuation from Biosyn’s airstrip was also government-facilitated.

Grant may have had some other government involvement in the intervening years, according to the junior novels. These books depict the United Nations creating a Bureau of Ancient Animal Affairs in late 2001, with Alan Grant being an advocate of the Bureau’s creation. The organization studied and protected de-extinct animals on Site B, with Grant himself being appointed as a lead staff member (against his wishes). However, it is not confirmed that this happened in the film canon, and in any case the Site B ranger station would have been canonically closed down in 2005 in order to preserve the cover story of Isla Sorna being abandoned and empty of prehistoric life.

General public

While Dr. Grant was a popular paleontologist before the 1993 incident (his book Dinosaur Detectives gaining wide acclaim), his association with Jurassic Park boosted him to scientific stardom. Unfortunately, this was not ideal for Grant; he detested the idea of genetically engineered dinosaurs supplanting the real thing, and most of his fans were more interested to hear about his nearly-fatal experiences on Isla Nublar than his paleontological research. At a 2001 lecture at Georgetown University, audience members were mostly prepared with questions about InGen, Jurassic Park, and genetic engineering; even when he specifically requested that people not ask about these topics, the people he accepted questions from still asked about Isla Sorna.

During the age of Jurassic World, the park’s fans joined an online forum where they could discuss the park, dinosaurs, and genetic engineering with one another around the world. People associated with Jurassic Park, such as Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, were serious celebrities in this fan community not just because of their links to the park’s mysterious past, but because of their scientific knowledge of prehistory. Many of the forum users, such as Darius Bowman, were financially unable to visit the park; therefore, paleontological theories gave them insight into what the park’s famous animals might really be like. In a world where Dr. Grant’s profession had been made nearly obsolete by the expansion of paleogenetic technology, his research found a new form of relevance online, among these underprivileged Jurassic World fans.

Portrayal

Dr. Alan Grant was portrayed by Sam Neill. He is loosely adapted from the character of the same name in Michael Crichton‘s 1990 novel; many aspects of his character were altered, including his initial dislike of children (in the novel, he loves children from the start) and his romantic relationship with Ellie Sattler (which is completely absent in the novel). These changes were intentionally made to make his character more relatable to the audience, and to give him a character arc. Much of his film portrayal was influenced by paleontologist Jack Horner.

In the novel, Dr. Grant previously had a wife who died some years prior to the incident. No mention of a previous relationship is made in the films, but some aspects of Grant’s character (such as his dislike of Malcolm’s flippant approach to romance, and his hesitancy to have children) may be derived from the novel version of Grant having a deceased wife.

Disambiguation Links

Alan Grant (C/N)

Alan Grant (JN)

Alan Grant (L/M)

Alan Grant (IDW-JPR)

Alan Grant (CB-Topps)