33 - Arrival

image [https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcfLGOzjL8tJgrE0qTkb0et8amV2qq2g6xhCRvdjd3nmV-zhasvD8DkcxmyMWFgJz_6_aS-xDbzJFhJ6RHe0TRaJEYaBedpsE3DRWkT3nCrlvxezXxM2T-vQJkdH6Lt9ZGUAJEOjQcvgg0mT3syN0gxc9o?key=sk5mDY0KVwUOhjZyNn8dwA]Fossilised Oviraptorid embryo inside an egg, from the Late Cretaceous Hekou Formation of southern China.

At the height of summer, 1988, the fledgling Jurassic Park facility on Isla Nublar saw two distinct, contemporaneous arrivals: a dinosaur, and a group of human visitors.

For once, it was the former that was routine, and the latter that was a remarkable anomaly. The park was far from finished, and yet, for the first time since its very inception, it was about to receive visitors.

Even under the best circumstances - which these definitely were not - the situation would have proved stressful. It was a given that the novelty would have surrounded the imminent arrival of the endorsement team with a considerable degree of anticipation.

The stakes, of course, were much higher than that, with the park under scrutiny.

A major concern for all the players involved was to dissect the anatomy of the coming visit, so that they could steer its outcome. From a technical point of view, the trio of Hammond's lieutenants seemed perfectly poised to provide the endorsement team with all the material they needed for their assessment.

Henry Wu could walk the team through the cloning techniques and park processes surrounding dinosaur de-extinction. He could also act as a primary source for the team to quiz on the earliest years of the company, if hardly an unbiased one.

Muldoon could brief the team on the park's safety profile, its systems, and its likely points of failure. For this purpose, he had already prepared his report on the Morales incident, which the lawyers from Cowan, Swain and Ross had reviewed and countersigned prior to the visit.

Last but not least, Harding could share his observations about the animals up to this point, including a full account of the abnormal (or more accurately, unexpected) violent behaviour of the Dakotaraptor around the feeder, and the autopsy of the Dakotaraptor that perished in the Morales incident.

This combination would allow the endorsement team to, at least in theory, cast their net as wide or as narrow as they believed necessary - focusing on the particular circumstances of the incident, or trying to draw general conclusions about the safety of the park itself.

Hammond, however, had his own ideas. His primary interest was to choreograph the visit as much as possible, but how to do so exactly was not immediately obvious.

Had Isla Nublar possessed a full complement of adult dinosaurs, it's probable Hammond would have gone for shock and awe, keeping up suspense until the last possible moment before pulling the rug from under his guests, and confronting them with the might and splendour of Mesozoic wildlife. (1)

He was, after all, an entertainer at heart.

On an intuitive level, making sure that the endorsement team's very first contact with dinosaurs was an overwhelmingly positive experience certainly followed a compelling rationale: the objective would be to give the team a sense of personal, emotional stake in the park's continued existence. Having witnessed great beauty, they would feel an incentive not to deny it to the rest of the world. (2)

Inarguably, even juvenile dinosaurs would be capable of triggering such emotional responses, and hatchlings would have their own values as catalysts for empathy. The tacit implication that the baby dinosaurs would have to be culled if the park were to lose funding was a card that Hammond fully intended to play, during the visit.

All the same, the spectacle of pure grandeur Hammond envisioned was not yet available at the time of the visit, and he concluded that in the absence of such a centerpiece, it was crucial to finely curate every other element of the visit - starting with departure from the mainland itself.

An important consideration to keep in mind is that the members of the endorsement team were recruited under different circumstances, and thus went into the visit with different levels of knowledge of what, exactly, they were going to see during their weekend excursion.

Having been personally selected by Hammond, Rodriguez was the one most kept in the dark. Joger and Crane knew that they were being called to investigate a highly secretive wildlife preserve, and that their recruiters had serious safety and operational concerns, but no more than that.

James Oak, however, had been fully briefed by Cowan, Swain and Ross. After all, his task was the most onerous by far, requiring not only an investigation of the immediate incident, but a wider assessment of the long-term viability of the park.

As if that wasn't enough, Muldoon had made sure that a copy of his own report on the incident had been faxed to Oak ahead of the incident - a risky move in terms of information security, but one that had been cleared with the law firm beforehand.

If left to his own devices, it's clear that Oak would have rapidly assumed informal leadership of the endorsement team, and started disseminating information to his colleagues right away on the flight to Isla Nublar.

Realistically, there was no way to prevent this development, but Hammond believed it could be postponed. And if it came to pass only after the critical, initial establishment of an emotional connection between the park's denizens and its guests, then that might just improve the chances that Jurassic Park would receive the green light.

Which is why Hammond made sure to meet with the endorsement team on the mainland, in person.

The opportunity was there for the taking, and Hammond exploited it to the fullest. After all, it was a given that InGen would be responsible for arranging transportation to the island, given its remote location and the need for secrecy.

Using Hammond's private jet, however, also meant that he would be there from the start, playing the charming host, grandstanding before the team during the flight, and doing his utmost to deny Oak an opportunity for an early, confidential briefing with his colleagues.

Here, Hammond was in his element. Aboard his own jet, able to offer refreshments, to be courteous but also long-winded. Fundamentally, able to hold court.

It was a shrewd move, which allowed Hammond to leverage propriety and social position to reject the role of the investigated billionaire, and instead take on the mantle of the master of ceremonies, at least for a time.

Oak decided to make the best of things, writing down a detailed account of everything Hammond said during the flight, annotating his own thoughts and commentary at the margins.

An experienced and safe pair of hands, he'd seen his fair share of obfuscating and obstructing behaviour over the years. Hammond's antics didn't have any effect on him, beyond acting as the first opportunity for observation and analysis during his work.

Then again, they weren't meant to do otherwise.

It must be understood that, from a certain cynical point of view, Hammond always considered a candidate handpicked by the law firm to be a lost cause to him. It was the rest of the endorsement team that he meant to influence more directly, before they were inevitably briefed on the circumstances of their investigation.

Lecturing the team at length on the wonders of genetic engineering, the world-changing scope of his ambitions, and the perfidy of lawyers, Hammond built anticipation and a degree of confusion in Joger, Crane, and Rodriguez.

It was the first step in the intended build-up to their arrival. But for the next bit, timing would be absolutely critical.

When the jet touched down on Nublar, the new arrivals were greeted with a warm, bright and sunny day, clear skies, and manageable humidity by local standards - and an empty runway, but for the workers essential to the operation of the airstrip.

Right away, the endorsement team were ushered into a vehicle. Wu and the others were waiting for them at the visitors' centre, but they would be waiting longer than anticipated: that wasn't the first stop on Hammond's tour.

The stage management here was at its most careful. A long, slow drive through the jungle and close to the coast was preferable, as it would show the island's natural beauty, while also building anticipation. But Hammond couldn't afford too long a wait.

He wanted to make sure they'd make it to the lab in time, so he could treat his guests with the show of an eggshell cracking, and the hatching of a new baby dinosaur. (3)

Normally, new dinosaurs were not born on Isla Nublar, where construction had been primarily focused on the paddocks and visitor infrastructure instead. However, animal transport between Sorna and Nublar was an ongoing operation, and as such, it was relatively simple to coordinate with Weaver for an egg to be transported to Nublar prior to hatching.

However, even in a matter such as this, Hammond's powers were not limitless.

For starters, the timing constraint presented by the visit, combined with the need to select an egg relatively close to hatching, severely limited Hammond's potential choice in terms of the animal whose birth the endorsement team would witness.

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Another constraint was the need for transportation, which inevitably included an element of risk.

These material boundaries led to a somewhat peculiar choice: a Dakotaraptor egg. (4)

The species selection was down to more than just timing. As mentioned, it was also down to transportation and the associated risks.

Here it is important to keep in mind that, while all dinosaurs share similarities when it comes to their eggs, there are important differences as well.

Similarities include egg sizes. How large an egg can get is a measure limited by biological and physical constraints, meaning that past a certain threshold, eggs do not grow linearly with the body, even in the case of giant species. (5)

Egg clutches, numbering about a dozen each, also remain constant, irrespective of adult body size for any given species. (6)

Different dinosaur species, however, present different strategies when it comes to looking after a clutch of deposited eggs. Much like crocodiles, vegetation mats are present as a strategy to keep ground nests warm. (7)

A group of feathered theropods, however, pennaraptorans - to which Dromaeosaurs like Dakotaraptor belong - keep open nests, and egg temperature is regulated through brooding. (8)

It was much easier and more expedient to transport an egg that was comfortable with exposure to the open air, since it required no special arrangements or modifications beyond care of handling, and an appropriate source of heat to maintain stability. (9)

This profile, friendlier to transportation, combined with the coincidence of timing, meant that the endorsement team would be treated to the birth of a baby Dakotaraptor. And whether down to excellent judgement or pure luck, the timing was about perfect. Hammond ushered the team into the lab, just as the egg shell first began to crack.

In spite of this success, however, Hammond's plan was far from flawless.

The new hatchling had nowhere to go, past its purpose as a show to captivate Hammond's audience. It could hardly be housed with the surviving adult Dakotaraptors in their paddock, not after what happened. It could temporarily be housed in Nublar's lab, but past a certain body size, that wouldn't be practical, and the animal would have to be transported back to Sorna.

Hammond was well aware of these extra costs and logistical complications, and was happy to absorb them - or rather, for his employees to absorb them - if it increased Jurassic Park's chances to see completion. What else mattered, after all?

The bigger risk, from his perspective, was that after familiarising themselves with the reality of the Morales incident, the team would realise that the egg hatching was no happy coincidence, but a deliberate attempt to leverage empathy and influence their judgement.

Whatever Hammond's reasons, however, the benefits outweighed the risks, in his mind, and he got to enjoy the first-hand reaction of Oak, Rodriguez, Joger, and Crane, as they witnessed the birth of a non-avian dinosaur. (10)

Footnotes:

(1) The "Brachiosaurus in the field" rapidly followed by "they do move in herds" is truly the oldest trick in the book.

(2) This is one of those weird and interesting cases where the original scene from the movie, in all its innocence and rapturuous beauty, can also be interpreted more cynically. Grant, Sattler, Malcolm and Gennaro aren't treated to an early infodump, they aren't briefed ahead of time, the exposition comes later. First, they need to be over-awed by the spectacle.

And because Spielberg knew what he was doing, this works perfectly on the audience too, not just on the cast. The Brachiosaurus scene is so iconic that it's part of the history of cinema, at this point. It gives you goosebumps, it makes you feel emotional. It gives you a reason to care about the coming infodump, and to feel conflicted about whether you ultimately want the park to succeed or to be shut down out of caution.

If you take this away from the meta level and look at it from an in-world point of view, it really does feel like careful stage-management to determine the emotional reaction of the endorsement team. Even Gennaro points out to Hammond that this is not a weekend excursion but an investigation, only to be promptly blown away by the spectacle.

It made me wonder: what do you do, in the absence of that grand centrepiece? How do you stage manage the visit, so that it looks more like a leisure experience and having a good time, rather than a professional investigation?

(3) And this was my answer. It fits in a number of ways that I find really pleasing. BONE AND AMBER begins with the hatching of an egg, and that's where Amanda Weaver's journey begins. Both in the original book and movie, the endorsement team is present for the birth of a hatchling. For all sorts of cultural reasons, it's a powerful and symbolic moment. Plus, as previously established, if you can't show people an adult sauropod, showing them a newborn chick is a great way to stir up emotions, and to make the idea of shutting it all down pretty unpalatable.

It's important to note that dinosaur births normally happen on Sorna, not Nublar, so it was specially arranged by Hammond to have a handful of eggs close to hatching ready to go on Nublar in time for the arrival of the endorsement team.

None of this is going to butterfly away the fact that soon, everyone will have to talk brass tacks. But Hammond is maneuvering things to make sure that he gets that early entertainer win, to give his creation the best possible shot (as he sees it) at being positively endorsed.

(4) What's hilarious to me, is that this is actually what happens both in the book and the movie: the endorsement team is there because an adult raptor killed a worker, and what baby hatchling do they get to see upon arriving on Nublar? Why, yes, a baby raptor. As readers and viewers we sort of accept it at face value, but there's some dark irony to it when you think about it… and it may not be the best optics ever, if the team also makes that connection.

(5) This is something we've covered in the past. All dinosaurs start small when they're hatchlings. This is one of the major defining factors of dinosaur biology and ontogeny, and has had a big impact on the evolution of dinosaur faunas throughout the Mesozoic.

(6) Which makes the evolution of gigantism on land easier. For mammals, for example, there is an obvious disincentive: the more gigantic the species, the longer the gestation period for the mother.

(7) It's important to keep in mind that crocodilians are evolutionarily much closer with birds (and thus dinosaurs in general) than they are to, for example, snakes or lizards. Crocodiles and birds are the only two extant lineages of archosaurs that still survive to the present day. Crocodiles do utilise vegetation mats to keep their eggs' temperatures stable, and there is evidence of Mesozoic dinosaurs doing the same, including early birds - tree nesting came much later.

(8) This is very strongly corroborated by the fossil record, including the fossilisation of parent pennaraptorans in brooding positions over their nests. This strategy is only possible with relatively small body sizes and the presence of feathers. It's interesting to think about how InGen might have learned that this is the case, since no Dakotaraptor has yet had to look after a clutch of eggs in InGen's care; and paleontology at the time was yet to fully realise the extent of feathering in some theropod clades, and the impact on their biology.

The way I envision it is that a major component of getting the first batches of eggs to actually hatch, would have been to experiment with different temperatures and conditions. So initially InGen would learn how to get the egg to hatch by, essentially, trial and error. However, once you find yourself before a fully feathered subadult Dakotaraptor, you might put two and two together and realise that brooding is the likely strategy.

(9) I want to close out this egg-centric section with a quote from Professor Thomas Holtz's university lecture notes, which I've consulted extensively not just for this chapter, but for the story so far. I think it's a pretty interesting and often overlooked aspect of dinosaur parental care:

"In primitive modern birds it is the male rather than the female which broods the nest: paternal care. These nests are laid by multiple females. In these paternal care cases, the male rather than the female typically watches over the young after they hatch. When plotted against body size, the volume of eggs of nests of dromaeosaurids, troodontids, and oviraptorosaurs more closely resembles the pattern seen in paternal caring birds than in maternal caring or biparental caring birds; this suggests that paternal care may be an ancestral (pennaraptoran?) trait that was passed on to primitive avians but modified in more derived birds. However, we do not have evidence yet to see if more basal dinosaurs had paternal care, maternal care (as in crocodilians), or biparental care. And indeed the statistics supporting the paternal care hypothesis in non-avian pennaraptorans has been called into question."

(10) Point one for Hammond, but the visit has only just begun.