28 - The Palaeontologist
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The Badlands, a famous and rich hunting ground for fossils. Image in public domain.
The fate of Jurassic Park depended, in large part, on the verdict that would be expressed by the endorsement team.
Perhaps more accurately: it depended on how InGen's consortium of investors decided to interpret this verdict. As always when dealing with finance, the situation was volatile. This was as much an issue of confidence and belief, as it was one of safety. Perhaps, even more so.
This meant that the composition of the endorsement team was critical. But there was no third party, no referee, involved in this selection process. It was the result of a delicately poised dance between Hammond, and the lawyers representing the financial backers of Jurassic Park.
From the very beginning, the selection process for the endorsement team presented John Hammond with a nearly intractable problem.
To begin with, the very nature of Jurassic Park defied the quest for easy recommendations, or the rapid identification of professional figures qualified to provide them. Even had the endorsement team been put together under better auspices, it would have had a difficult job, to put it mildly. (1)
But the core problem went deeper than that. Ultimately, the two actors behind the creation of this endorsement team wanted very different things from it. Hammond didn't want advice. As shocked as he was by Morales' death, he ultimately saw the endorsement visit as a hurdle and a threat, to be bypassed or removed as soon as possible.
At the same time, lawyers were primarily looking for opinions that would either reassure their investors, or convince them to pull the plug on a dangerous investment. Definitive answers.
What never featured prominently in these discussions was the truly important question: could Jurassic Park operate safely? And, perhaps in a more epistemological sense, how could this risk assessment be made in a reliable way?
There would be a considerable degree of back and forth over the selection of the experts. Yes, Hammond had scored an early victory. By dodging the prospect of accreditation, and reserving a role for a palaeontologist in the team, he had arguably bought himself some measure of control over the nomination, at least.
But even that was not enough.
Somehow, he needed to square the circle. The members of the team would have to be overwhelmingly likely to endorse the park, no matter what they saw. Additionally, they would also need to have a curriculum that could make them pass for relevant experts to the lawyers. As if that wasn't enough, they also needed to be reliable enough to trust with an NDA.
Not just any NDA, at that, but one of the biggest industrial and commercial secrets available on Earth at the time.
Not many people alive met this problematic list of requirements. This difficulty did not gel well with Hammond's obsessive and anxious personality, even more so given the recent strain. Contemporary accounts paint Hammond as undulating between bouts of hyperactivity, and periods of sleep deprivation and seeming depression.
Hammond eventually identified a palaeontologist that might fit his requirements, but even that wasn't enough for him. In what is likely a desire to tightly control the outcome of the whole process, Hammond decided to leave Isla Nublar for the mainland, in order to meet with the candidate himself.
This put him outside the immediate reach of most primary sources available, when it comes to reconstructing the early history of Jurassic Park. Therefore, we're not privy to Hammond's thoughts and state of mind, as he embarked on his personal charm offensive. What is indisputable, however, is what kind of professional figure he was after.
It would have to be someone whose work was sponsored by InGen, of course. He also preferred someone young and unproven. We can only speculate as to the reasons, though the claim made by his official biographists that "he always preferred the vision of young dreamers, to the caution of people closer to his age" should not be taken acritically.
As this work itself has shown so far, there are likelier and more nuanced explanations available. It is possible, for instance, that Hammond thought he could leverage a young scientist's ambition, desire for accolades, and financial security.
This had worked spectacularly well for him before, with Wu most prominently, and it's plausible that Hammond was trying to "recreate the magic" that had gotten Jurassic Park started in the first place.
Be that as it may, Hammond was soon on his private jet, determined to personally wine and dine his new advisor of choice. He had every intention of fully ensuring that the outcome was the one he wanted, this time.
The person he selected was Anna Rodriguez. (2)
Young and motivated, (3) she was a pioneer of techniques that were still new to palaeontology in the 1980s, such as modern cladistic analysis, and computer matrices to analyse relationships between taxa. Meticulous and with an eye for detail, she was equally at home digging out fossils in the field, compiling cladograms in the office, or writing papers of outstanding technical quality. (4)
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With her age and her drive, Rodriguez apparently fit Hammond's preferences in many critical ways. Confident in his charming abilities, Hammond waltzed into the university of Maryland - where Rodriguez worked in the Department of Geology - looking for her.
Here, his trip hit a first snag: Rodriguez wasn't there. With the field season well underway, she was out in the hilly wilderness of Maryland, digging through earth and rock. Hammond didn't let this deter him, and accompanied by his staff, embarked on a long and uncomfortable search for Rodriguez and her team.
Upon reaching the dusty dig site at last, the meeting took place. As far as can be reconstructed, Rodriguez's reception of Hammond was polite but reserved. Hammond's reputation preceded him, and she was wary of what the billionaire might possibly want from her. Nonetheless, she listened as Hammond launched into a long and animated spiel.
It was vague, or so she has claimed, when asked about it since. Rodriguez's account recalls that the mix of grandiose and bombastic reportedly didn't do much to woo her. On the other hand, the pledge of lavish financial support for the department, and its digs, did.
This very candid admission should not be taken as mercenary behaviour. Future events would prove that Rodriguez's integrity was not for sale. What Hammond promised was a financial backing package, in exchange for a weekend at his resort, and Rodriguez's opinion in the guise of a formal consultancy. Or, as he called it at the time, "a penny for her thoughts".
There can be little doubt that the terms were met.
The two shook hands. Hammond was ecstatic, thrilled that he had his first member of the endorsement team - one he believed was guaranteed to be in his corner, in any circumstance.
In his absence from the island, however, other moves were being made, and other personnel selections discussed, with a wholly different set of priorities in mind.
Footnotes:
(1) This is a question I intend to explore further in upcoming chapters. I had fun thinking of which professional figures might make for an ideal endorsement team in a situation like this, but also which ones would be selected by a system driven by these perverse incentives.
(2) Yes, I know, no Grant. Put down the pitchforks, please. Like I've said many times, I won't be lifting any members of the original endorsement team into this fan fiction. To me, personally, the human cast of characters was never the primary (or even secondary) draw of Jurassic Park.
I have only kept those characters that I feel would work well in a deconstructive portrayal. Malcolm is perhaps the one with the most specific reasons for me to not include him. Grant is far more likeable, and he offers us a good opportunity to discuss the portrayal of palaeontology in popular media, but we'll get to that in a moment.
(3) Palaeontology has a rich history of contributions from women, one that is fortunately getting even better all the time. This contribution is often undervalued and underplayed, in vernacular narratives about palaeontology. From Halszka Osmólska to Annie Montague Alexander and many others, some contributed at a time when it was extremely socially unacceptable for them to do so.
(4) I've gone for a description of Rodriguez that matches the new generation of palaeontologists that was starting to hit the field at the time. This is where it's interesting to look at Alan Grant, and what he represents.
Grant is a very inaccurate stereotype of what a palaeontologist would look like, and do. He is widely considered to be a mixture of Jack Horner/Robert Bakker, larger than life personalities in the field at the time, and obviously, Indiana Jones. In love with the outdoors, practical, unsympathetic towards pedantry and academics; he is essentially a caricature of the generation embodied by workers like Horner and Bakker.
In particular, in the book, it's made very clear that Grant believes important discoveries are only made in the field, and that obsessing over fossils in museums is a waste of time. Needless to say, this is completely inaccurate to the real world. The work of preparation, classification, analysis that can be done in a lab, is invaluable. Quite often, pieces are left to gather dust in museums for a long time, before identification and further studies lead to remarkable discoveries and conclusions.
No palaeontologist, no matter how enthusiastic about the field season, would reduce their profession to just trekking and digging for bones.
Interestingly, Crichton took great pains to present a more "accurate" or perhaps simply new-generation type of palaeontologist. Richard Levine is pedantic, extremely well-versed in comparative anatomy of all vertebrates, with an eye for detail and a passion for cataloguing. He is arrogant and sarcastic, but also methodical and very much, well, academic.
Rodriguez is written in a way that seeks to resemble those traits. I feel it is truer to life in regards to the palaeontologists I know myself, as well as representative of a new generational approach to the field. Modern matrices and cladistic analyses represented a true maturation of palaeontology at the turn of the millennium.
I feel like there is a scope, and perhaps a need, to talk more about what role a palaeontologist would fulfil in the endorsement team. But I've decided that it's best left to when they actually visit the island.