24 - Raptor​

Life sized replica of a Dakotaraptor claw, made for backers of the videogame Saurian.​

The event that followed the failure of the feeder is one of the most studied and discussed, among researchers of the history of de-extinction.

It is clear beyond the point of argument that the native Costa Rican workforce was the weak link in the chain of Muldoon and Harding’s efforts to regulate interactions between workers and animals on the island.

For reasons of secrecy, the workforce - besides signing strict NDAs regarding the nature of the “resort” - was only informed that the preserve would include rare and exotic animals, and encouraged not to pry further than that.

Even this was insufficient to quell Hammond’s paranoia, and he insisted on frequent rotations and brief shifts for every contracted worker on the island. The less individual time they had to be around the animals and ask questions, the better.

For the past three years, InGen had gotten lucky. Both on Sorna and Nublar, initially at least, the crews simply had to carry out construction. None of the workers lay an eye on the animals at least in the opening phases.

But the situation had changed. Sorna was now teeming with dinosaurs, which made it fortunate that the bulk of construction was taking care of Nublar, where the animal population was quite small.

But the relocation, the need for frequent maintenance of the electric fence, the excavation of tunnels and construction of bunkers inside the enclosure, did allow workers to get passing glimpses of Nublar’s new residents.

The workers, it’s sensible to assume, saw what they expected to see. The baby theropods in particular, fluffy and plump with soft tissue, were different enough from the image of dinosaurs as big lumbering lizards in popular culture, that few questions were asked.

The herbivores, particularly Triceratops and the two sauropods, were more distinct, and Muldoon did his best to minimise the workers’ exposure to these animals.

But by the time of the incident, even the theropods were starting to raise a few eyebrows, and trigger bouts of intimidated whispers among the staff. They seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, after all.

The Dakotaraptors themselves weighed 150kg at that point in time. It was hard not to notice the teeth in their snouts, or the claws peeking under the feathers of their “wings”.

Eventually, Marcos Morales, one of the returning construction workers that had been working on InGen’s facilities since the very first day, decided that something was afoot.

While being rotated away from the island and onto the mainland, he equipped himself with a 35mm Canon portable camera, carefully hidden with the rest of his personal belongings. He wanted to look for an opportunity to snap a photo of Nublar’s new residents.

Morales never shared his plans with anybody, not even his close family. As such, there is no way to know what he intended to do with the photos. Suggestions that he planned to blackmail Hammond are pure speculation, and unsupported by any evidence.

It is of course equally possible that Morales planned to leak the photos to the press, or perhaps he had another objective entirely for the photos he intended to take.

Unfortunately for him, he picked the wrong day to go hunt for photos, and would pay a terrible price for it.

InGen has never released official information on how Morales got himself into the enclosure. Some have suggested that he used the observation bunker in the Dakotaraptor enclosure - unfinished at the time, and overlooking the feeding area - as a point of ingress, but this is again speculation.

What is known is what Morales found, upon sneaking into the enclosure to take photos of the animals.

Some of the Dakotaraptors - five, as it would later turn out - were either dead or dying, bloodied feathers ripped off and scattered across the enclosure. Having long since exhausted the meat provided by the one functioning feeder, the three survivors were cannibalising the others. (2)

In spite of the shock, Morales didn’t forget what he was there for, and quickly started photographing the scene. The graphic photographs were in InGen’s possession for years, and it was only years later, as part of the public controversy surrounding InGen, that they were leaked to the press.

The Dakotaraptors, wounded, traumatised, and in the process of feeding, assumed threatening behaviour to stave off Morales. This too was caught on camera, as the worker slowly walked backwards, documenting what was happening in front of him - and not taking his eyes off the animals.

Unfortunately for him, Morales slipped on some of the blood the raptors had spilled during their fight. The fall was on rather soft ground, and he didn’t get hurt during the landing.

What happened next is harder to discern, due to the lack of photo evidence, but the basics are clear. One of the Dakotaraptors peeled off the others, closing in on Morales, and delivering several savage kicks to his body while he was on the ground.

This was not an act of predation. There was no raptor prey restraint involved, and save for the result of these kicks, Morales was left untouched. (3)

Unfortunately for him, the kicks themselves were devastating, with the raptors’ sickle claw inflicting multiple lacerations and puncture wounds across his face, arms, thighs, and abdomen.

At this point, alerted by the security cameras, Muldoon was already driving into the enclosure, with a handful of his ranger-trainees in tow. The Dakotaraptors were chased off, as Harding was alerted to come look after them - and the carcasses.

Muldoon acted with all possible haste, and Morales was airlifted to the mainland in minutes. In the context of the tragedy, InGen’s emergency responses actually performed admirably.

Unfortunately, this was not enough to save Morales’ life.

One of the kicks by the Dakotaraptor had severed Morales’ brachial artery, in his upper left arm. The blood loss was so severe that, by the time the medical staff of the Bahía Anasco medical facility tried to revive him, it was already too late.

It was a secondary consideration in the tragedy of the first death to take place in Jurassic Park, but the incident inevitably started a new set of rumours among the medical personnel of the facility.

They all knew InGen was building a resort of some kind on Isla Nublar. So, they were quite sceptical when InGen’s staff claimed Morales had been attacked by a large bird.

They knew there was no flightless bird on Nublar that was large enough to inflict such wounds. Was it a cassowary attack? There had been rumours, after all, that Hammond was building a preserve for exotic birds on the island.

But even then, the damage inflicted was like nothing the doctors had ever seen before. They weren’t in a position to press InGen’s medical helicopter crew for details, of course, but the seeds of doubt were well-sown. (4)

But that was a secondary consideration for everybody at InGen at the time, even John Hammond.

Jurassic Park had just witnessed a fatal accident, and five of the eight raptors had been brutally killed. Shock, worry, and panic rippled across the entire operation. As an impromptu emergency meeting began in Nublar’s visitors centre, the question on everybody’s lips was the same.

What now?

Footnotes:

(1) A model actually extant in 1988.

(2) To reiterate, this behaviour is based on finds that evidence cannibalism in Deinonychus, an earlier relative of Dakotaraptor. These episodes of cannibalism were the likely result of many individuals competing over a carcass. The feeder malfunction, as well as the stress of relocation and forced cohabitation, pushes the animals to this violent outburst. In the book, three of the Velociraptors killed the other five as part of a weird and violent dominance establishment mechanism, likely to build the animals up as scary. But as Deinonychus Quarry #1 and #2 demonstrate, real life beats fiction every time.

(3) I’ve based this behaviour on an incident that took place in Florida in 2019, when a man was killed by a cassowary he was (legally) breeding, after stumbling while just outside the cassowary enclosure. That was likely a case of nest defence, but given the circumstances of Morales stumbling onto this dramatic scene, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch.

(4) This is essentially the opening event to the novel. In the book, InGen’s justification to the doctors is that the worker was killed by an earth-mover, which they immediately see through as a blatant lie. I think this version, in which they claim a bird attack that leaves the doctors wondering, is more balanced.