13 - Stomping Grounds

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Isla Sorna is home to both more traditionally tropical areas, and to surprisingly temperate highlands, populated by redwoods and by a variety of flora. (1)

When we say that InGen’s dinosaurs came to life in an alien world, it’s easy to understand what is meant, at an intellectual level. But it is much harder to truly comprehend its scope, without specifics.

Therefore, consider grass.

Grass as we see it today is a huge part of the Earth’s ecosystem. It is hard to imagine the natural world without it. From the artificiality of front lawns to the endless vistas of the American and Eurasian grasslands, from the African savannah to the lush undergrowth of jungles and temperate forests, grass is everywhere we look.

It’s not just the background, either. Grassland provides foraging to horses, bison, and other ungulates, and some human civilisations have developed according to the opportunities and threats it presents.

And yet, grass is a relatively recent organism in Earth’s history. It appeared for the first time around 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. Even in the context of the long reign of the dinosaurs, grass was a novelty.

It was a rare one, at that. It only grew in select habitats, and not as a huge component of the ecosystems - although fossilised pollen grains have been found in dinosaur coprolites (fossilised faeces), which shows that at least some herbivorous dinosaurs could consume grass as part of their diet.

Grasslands themselves are an even more recent phenomenon, beginning only some 30 million years ago, long after the extinction of Mesozoic dinosaurs. None of the eight species cloned by InGen would have had any significant experience with grass in their previous lives, and the two sauropods preceded the evolution of grass by several million years.

What would they do, living on an island with plenty of grass? Would it affect their locomotion, their health, their mood? Would the herbivores eat it, and if so, with what consequences?

Muldoon didn’t have a huge staff on hand to tackle issues like these. He couldn’t just recruit and train people for the job on a large scale, not with the need for secrecy. So, Wu and him press-ganged a few of the junior scientists into running so-called Poop Squads. They would venture into the field and collect as much dinosaur poop as was feasible, to closely analyse it in the lab.

It was imperative to know what the animals were eating, and in what quantities, and if it was having any effect on their health. In time, this job would become the domain of keepers, and the scientists would focus on the development of bespoke foods for the dinosaurs, but for now, such makeshift systems would have to do.

Grass was just one example. In reality, this issue was replicated across every possible avenue of life for the newly hatched animals. Isla Sorna presented a bewildering variety of sub-climates. Some areas were properly tropical, others cold and temperate. Geothermal vents and volcanic soil also abounded, as did pristine beaches and the occasional swamp.

Temperature fluctuations, allergens, exposures to pollen, microorganisms in the air, food, and water. The variables were too many to count, and Sorna had nowhere near the number of personnel needed to tackle this complexity in a prompt and systematic way.

The high number of cloned animals, however, had a cruel logic all of its own. It was simply the path of least resistance to use the sheer volume of individuals to make corrections, test hypotheses, and implement changes, while still having a surviving population of decent size by the end.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

This numbers game, combined with Muldoon’s tenacity, allowed to solve most issues early on. Immune boosters, vaccines, intestinal supplements against harmful microorganisms, and a frequent routine of poop analysis soon became a daily reality on Sorna. Progress was real, and tangible. It just implied an uncomfortable number of dead and suffering animals.

The issue of food proved to be considerably more complex. The first herbivores cloned by InGen looked sluggish and relatively underfed, even after generous consumptions of the local flora.

This reality stemmed from two critical realities InGen had missed at first. If dinosaurs had a much higher metabolism than the cold-blooded reptilian standard Wu had expected, then that inevitably meant a much higher consumption of calories - especially so for animals that were supposed to grow to tremendous sizes.

The other critical divergence was in plant life itself. As confirmed by later experiments, vegetation in the Mesozoic had a much higher calorie output per unit, compared to modern-day vegetation - about two to three times higher. This was particularly true for horsetails and conifers. In effect, the available plant life on Sorna was far too lean for InGen’s dinosaurs, even at a young age. (2)

The production of “super-caloric” plant matter for the animals would be one of InGen’s few, genuinely unqualified successes, and would down the line open new commercial prospects for them on the global agricultural market. (3) It came too late to save some of the animals in the very first batch from malnutrition, but subsequent egg batches would enjoy a richer diet going forward - if one still far from being genuinely authentic.

InGen was considerably more carefree when it came to the dinosaurs’ impact on Sorna itself. While the herbivore population was still too small to make a serious dent in the island’s vegetation, and soon switched to bioengineered superfood in any case, the carnivores were a different matter.

By all measures invasive species, the young Tyrannosaurs were a devastation to any small vertebrate that entered their enclosure. Pueblan milk snakes, already reeling from climate change, saw yet another dip in their numbers. A few unfortunate encounters with strawberry poison dart frogs gave the staff considerable headache, too.

This issue has received considerably less public attention, compared to the health of the dinosaurs themselves. Given recent global developments, that is somewhat surprising. No present-day ecosystem has been exposed to cloned dinosaurs for so long a time as Sorna.

Surely there is no better model for the interactions between a cloned dinosaur population, and a native animal population. And there can be little doubt that the plight of Sorna’s native wildlife was a harbinger of things to come.

Footnotes:

(1) The real-world location depicted in that photo is Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, in California. This was one of the primary filming locations for the movie The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Credits for the photo belong to the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

(2) You can read a study about the caloric input and carrying capacity of Mesozoic vegetation, and the way it evolved with herbivorous dinosaurs, here.

(3) Or, “InGen accidentally fights world hunger while trying to not starve its theme park attractions”. While it is only referenced in passing here, this breakthrough actually has huge potential to impact global agriculture in unexpected ways. But its humble beginning is a frantic attempt to supply InGen’s new herbivores with sufficient calories.