Jurassic Park: Fifth Iteration: Tyrannosaur Summary & Analysis

Muldoon and Gennaro speed across the island in the Jeep searching for the tyrannosaur. The radio crackles: Arnold calls to say that he’s found the giant dinosaur in sector 442. When Muldoon confirms that he’s picked up the dinosaur’s movements on the Jeep’s onboard computer, Arnold sternly reminds him to not hurt it. It is, after all, the park’s main tourist attraction. Focusing on tourists, after all that has gone wrong, strikes Muldoon as ridiculous.

When Muldoon and Gennaro catch up to the beast, Muldoon shows the lawyer how to load the rocket launcher with doses of tranquilizer large enough to bring down a herd of elephants. He’s just guessing at the dose, since they still know so little about how dinosaurs behave and how their physiology works. People used to think of them as a group of barely differentiated lizards, but it’s becoming clear that they were nearly as diversified as mammals are today. And some of them, especially the raptors, seem incredibly intelligent. They close some of the distance between themselves and the dinosaur in the Jeep, then Muldoon exits the vehicle with the launcher. His first shot misses. His second shot also fails to tranquilize the animal. It charges, and Muldoon leaps back into the vehicle as Gennaro guns the engine and they drive away.

The river carrying Grant, Lex, and Tim back towards the resort buildings moves so fast now that it feels like an amusement park ride. In the distance, the river appears to end abruptly in a straight line. Grant suddenly realizes that the river ends in a waterfall. Despite his furious efforts, he can’t stop the raft—and its passengers—from going over into the pool below, where the tyrannosaur stands, patiently waiting for them.

From Grant’s perspective, the fall into the pool 50 feet below seems to take an eternity. When he resurfaces, he manages to pull himself and Tim from the water quickly, but he can’t find Lex, whose bright orange lifejacket dangles from the tyrannosaur’s jaws. After an agonizing moment, though, her gray and waterlogged body pops to the surface of the water. Grant knows they don’t have much time to escape as the tyrannosaur shreds the lifejacket, scanning for signs of their movement downstream. Then, he sees a dirt path with clear signs of human use leading behind the waterfall. They’re just ducking behind the water when the tyrannosaur turns, catching a glimpse of them before they disappear into an alcove full of the pumps and filters that run the river. 

Lex worries that the dinosaur might have seen them ducking behind the waterfall while Grant inspects the alcove, looking for a phone to call the control room. The door—to a maintenance shed—is locked, but someone has helpfully scratched the code onto the keypad cover. When the door swings open, the children hesitate to enter the dark room, so Grant tells them to stay put. But then the door swings shut behind him and he’s left in darkness. A moment’s groping yields a handy flashlight, which illuminates the damp and slippery steps leading down into the maintenance shed. In the darkness beyond its beam, Grant hears animal movements.

A small electric vehicle sits charging at the back of the shed, but as Grant approaches it, a dinosaur springs from the darkness at him. Instinctively, he shoots it with a tranquilizer dart. The animal—a juvenile male raptor, according to Grant’s assessment—falls to the ground, dazed. Excited by the discovery of one of the wild-bred animals, Grant nevertheless has the presence of mind to return to get the children. He discovers, much to his chagrin, that the door locked behind him and he can’t open it from the inside.

Lex and Tim are waiting for Grant to return when the tyrannosaur’s head bursts through the waterfall. It swings wildly about but can’t find the children who have frozen in fear. When the dinosaur momentarily retreats, Tim and Lex slink as far back into the alcove as they can. The next time that the dinosaur pokes through the water, it sticks out an enormous, prehensile tongue and uses it to probe for the children in the darkness. After a minute or two, it finds Tim, wraps around his head, and starts to pull him towards the dinosaur’s gaping jaws. Lex grabs Tim’s waist and tries to pull him from its grip unsuccessfully. But just before the dinosaur can maneuver Tim into its jaws, it lets go and slowly pulls its head back through the waterfall.