Alternate dinosaurs for Jurassic World: Dominion: The Prologue

For this post I'd like to another different thing with going over my personal ideas for a change in a movie.

Note: These are not mine, only replicas from the unofficial wiki.

As part of the promotion for the movie Jurassic Park, there was a series of educational books possessing the same name released in the year 1993 apparently in Canadian gas stations (according to the unofficial wiki, where I first discovered them). The books are said to give facts on the dinosaurs that physically appear in the movie (except for Parasaurolophus, likely due to its brief and easily-overlooked appearance) as well as going over the movie’s certain scenes. 

The series’ line up consists of the following: 

Tyrannosaurus Rex 

Triceratops

Dilophosaurus

Velociraptor

Brachiosaurus

Gallimimus

The Science

The Great Adventure

Out of all these books, the one I’m talking about for this post is the Tyrannosaurus Rex entry. This is because out of all the dinosaurs in the lineups, we actually were given a prehistoric origin story for T. rex in Jurassic World: Dominion's prologue, specifically for the character of Rexy that was the sole T. rex in Jurassic Park.

The poster for the prologue.

Rexy's prehistoric ancestor as depicted in the prologue.

I really do enjoy the prologue for Dominion in that it depicts the Cretaceous dinosaurs/prehistoric animals of the franchise in their natural state 65 million years ago (nowadays 66 mya in real life) which reminded me of the opening sequence for the Disney film Dinosaur released in 2000 that I have fond memories of growing up, although I will admit that I was taken by surprise upon seeing there be all kinds of animals that didn’t live at the same time or place as T. rex (which lived 68-66 mya in western North America). 

Such animals are the following:

The titanic long-necked Dreadnoughtus (76-70 mya in South America)

The crested pterosaur Pteranodon (86-84.5 mya, though in North America)

The bird-like Oviraptor (75-71 mya in Asia)

The cattle-horned Nasutoceratops (also North American, but 75.9-75.5 mya)

The small T. rex relative Moros intrepidus (once more North American, but 96.4 mya)

Spike-thumbed Iguanodon (actually Early Cretaceous 126-122 mya in Europe)

and colossal Giganotosaurus (also South American but 99.6-95 mya)

All of this surprisingly caused a lot of backlash from paleo-enthusiasts, despite the fact that the Jurassic franchise was never meant to be ultra-scientifically accurate. But there still were some animals that actually were neighbors to T. rex in real life such these two:

The towering pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus

and armored Ankylosaurus.

But if the filmmakers wanted to make the inaccurate environment more tame for Rexy's ancestor (whilst still keeping certain animals that would later play integral roles later on in the movie such as the Giganotosaurus and Oviraptor (the latter in the extended cut only)), they could have looked to the Tyrannosaurus Rex book for inspiration (though I’m not sure how common or recognized they are in the franchise’s popularity), especially since Rexy was the T. rex individual that appeared in the movie the book was trying to promote.

In this picture (which was the first page of the book I found) we see a list of animals that T. rex was said to have eaten. Of course we’ve got three-horned Triceratops (seemingly representing horridus) and duck-billed Edmontosaurus (certainly representing annectens) as animals that the book mentions direct fossil evidence of being eaten by T. rex via bite marks and broken teeth. The other animals we see in the lineup include the small hornless ceratopsian Leptoceratops and the small bipedal herbivore Thescelosaurus (appears to represent the species neglectus due to the length listed at 11 feet/3.4 meters), although these two were more likely on the tyrant’s menu during its younger years. Down bottom the last North American sauropod Alamosaurus makes an appearance (and said to have a length of 69 feet/21 meters, when today we know that it was far larger with a length of 85 feet/26 meters or longer) that would likely have only been preyed on by T. rex if the titan was young, injured or sick or if the tyrant was hunting in a mob. 

Using this page as a guide, I feel like these creatures could be put into the prologue in this setup:

-Alamosaurus in place of Dreadnoughtus as they are both sauropods (which is always done in other hypothetical remake projects).

-Leptoceratops can be the creature whose egg was getting eaten by the Oviraptor. This could be a reference to how the holotype of Oviraptor was initially thought to have been stealing the eggs of the other small non-ceratopsian Protoceratops. 

-Nasutoceratops can be replaced with both Triceratops and Edmontosaurus. The normal-looking herd members are being replaced with Edmontosaurus and the broken-horned male with the wallowing ones are now Triceratops. Many discussion posts want Triceratops replacing it entirely in hypothetical remakes due to being another ceratopsid, but that dinosaur is of the chasmosaurinae part of the family whose members likely didn’t live in as large as herds as members of the centrosaurinae part that Nasutoceratops is part of. However Edmontosaurus and hadrosaurs were very social like centrosaurines, so I felt that would be an appropriate choice. 

-As for the Iguanodon, all the fan remakes have it be replaced with Edmontosaurus due to both of them being large ornithopods but since the Iguanodon individual appeared to be noticeably smaller (it’s suggested that the one seen was simply not fully grown) and depicted as solitary, I feel like it can be replaced with the Thescelosaurus which itself is normally depicted as primarily a loner or in occasional small groups. It should also be noted that in the past, parts of this dinosaur’s skeleton were restored after Iguanodon’s early distant cousin Camptosaurus which was represented in the original Jurassic Park novel as a fossil skeleton.

So those were all my personal thoughts and suggestions on what I would do for the prologue. Hope you enjoyed reading!