Fifteen years before the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, then-CEO of InGen John Hammond envisaged opening a dinosaur park in the city of San Diego. The dinosaurs were to be contained in an amphitheater-like arena, with several other paddocks surrounding the complex. However, for unknown reasons, Hammond decided to abandon the San Diego project and instead decided to construct a zoo in a “far grander” island setting in Costa Rica. After the Isla Nublar Incident, InGen was forced to cancel all work on the park and as a result went into bankruptcy. After being removed from its board of directors, John Hammond was replaced by Peter Ludlow as CEO of InGen, who opted to resuscitate the Jurassic Park project in a last-ditch effort to save the corporation from financial ruin.
Believing the abandoned complex could be finished and opened to the public in less than a month, Ludlow’s initial plan was to transport a relatively small population of dinosaurs from Isla Sorna to the mainland, where they would be put on display at the park. A large team of hunters, lead by Roland Tembo, was employed to capture the animals, and while the first leg of the operation was largely successful, all of the dinosaurs caught were secretly freed by Nick Van Owen within the first night, destroying the group’s basecamp, vehicles and communication equipment in the process. By the end of the expedition, most of the team had been picked off by carnivorous dinosaurs encountered during the group’s trek across the island to the Operations Center, located in the Worker’s Village.
Presumably realizing it would prove impossible to recapture the lost animals, Peter Ludlow decided to deviate from his original plan and bring two tyrannosaurs, one adult and one infant, back to the mainland. Both heavily tranquilized the adult and infant were transported to San Diego on the SS Venture and Ludlow’s private jet, respectively. However, as the catastrophic events of the San Diego Incident began to unfold, it became increasingly obvious that Hammond’s dream was impossible to realize.
