The Jurassic Park story so far ahead of new film Jurassic World: Rebirth
The Jurassic Park franchise will soon return with a brand new story following new characters in a new setting in Jurassic World: Rebirth, but one that has a strong connection with its predecessors.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is set five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, and it follows a team of scientists who travel to a remote island that has been taken over by dinosaurs in order to extract DNA for groundbreaking medical research. Jonathan Bailey, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali lead the cast of the exciting new film.
While it is, for all intents and purposes, a rebirth for the franchise (pun very much intended), the film is impacted by the events of the movies that came before it. So for those in need of a refresher, here is what has happened in the franchise so far.
The one that started it all, Jurassic Park sees wealthy businessman John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) invite paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neil), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to the tropical island Isla Nublar where he has built a park full of dinosaurs. In order to open it Hammond needs to complete a safety check with some of the best scientists in the business, or his funding will be pulled.
The dinosaurs were brought back to life by cloning dinosaur DNA found in fossils and splicing it with the DNA of other animals. The result is spectacular but also, as it will soon become apparent, incredibly dangerous.
At the park a tropical rainstorm hits leading to issues with the technology, computer programmer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) claims he will get the park back online but really he plans to hack the database to stop anyone from foiling his plan — get out of the park with dino DNA that he can sell to the highest bidder.
However, things start to take a turn when the dinosaurs escape their confines, with Dennis being killed by a venomous Dilophosaurus. While Alan, Ian, and John's grandkids Tim and Lex contend with a rampant Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ian is injured in the process while Alan and the kids manage to escape, as they try to piece their way back to the visitor centre Ellie helps get Ian to safety.
After contending with many dangers, Alan and the kids make their way to the visitor centre which is still without power because of Dennis' hack (though Samuel L Jackson's engineer Ray Arnold is on the case) and Alan goes in search of Ellie. Unfortunately this leaves Tim and Lex on their own, where they must evade a group of Velociraptors. The pair manage to escape through some quick thinking in a kitchen, and they find their way back to the others in the control centre.
Before everything can go wrong the remaining raptors are killed by the Tyrannosaurs Rex, giving the team enough time to escape. As the group leave the island via helicopter the scientists agree not to endorse the park.
Only Goldblum of the main trio returned for Jurassic Park 2, subtitled The Lost World. Set four years after the original, Hammond (Attenborough) has lost control of his company InGen to Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) his nephew.
Ludlow wants to exploit his uncle's work and use the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna — the second island owned by the company — to save it. In a bid to avoid disaster Hammond sends Ian and a crackpot team to go to the island and document the dinosaurs, so that they can persuade the powers that be to leave them alone.
Ian heads to the island where he reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianna Moore) and Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), there they learn that Ludlow's plan is to capture the dinosaurs and ship them to San Diego where he intends to create a dinosaur theme park in Los Angeles. They face a number of obstacles along the way, including several terrifying dinosaurs.
Ian, Sarah, and Nick try their best to dissuade Ludlow from taking the dinosaurs to San Diego, and after a Tyrannosaurs Rex manages to run rampant throughout the city the trio are forced to try and capture it. The mistake leads to any plans for the park to be scrapped, with the dinosaurs taken back to Isla Sorna which is declared a nature reserve by the American and Costa Rican government.
It was Neil and Dern's time to return with 2001's Jurassic Park III, which sees Alan Grant tasked with helping a divorced couple who will fund Alan's research into Velociraptors, which has hit a dead in the years since the original, if he gives them a guided aerial tour of Isla Sorna.
Alan and his assistant Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola) head to the island alongside the couple and a number of others where it is revealed that the divorced couple Paul and Amanda Kirby actually wanted Alan to help find their missing son and Amanda's boyfriend Ben Hildebrand who were illegally parasailing on the island.
The group encounter the likes of a Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus along the way, learning that Ben was killed above a Velociraptor nest. When he is separated from the group Alan encounters Eric, who saves his life from raptors, and the duo try to reunite with his parents.
It turns out that Billy stole Velociraptor eggs which is why they were attacked, later in the film the raptors take their eggs back after Alan successfully confuses them while they try to kill the group. After reclaiming their eggs they retreat, giving Alan and the group the window they need to get off the island — but not before Alan dreams of a raptor calling out his name.
In 2015 the Jurassic Park franchise was rebooted with Jurassic World, which takes place on Isla Nublar 22 years after the original film. The Jurassic Park as Hammond envisioned it has come to fruition, though this time is is called Jurassic World.
The park has been up and running for years, but when a genetically spliced dinosaur the Indominus rex escapes from its enclosure and goes on a rampage everything starts to go awry. Brothers Zach and Gray Mitchell (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) get caught in the chaos whilst visiting their aunt Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) who is operations manager of Jurassic World.
Claire asks Navy veteran and ethologist Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) for his help to get them to safety. Owen has been working in the park to train Velociraptors into a squad with Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo listening to his commands, and InGen want to weaponise the creatures but he is determined not to make that happen.
As Claire and Owen search the park they evade the Indominus by the skin of their teeth, with the creature's rampage leading to a number of dinosaurs escaping their confines and attacking the guests. The good news is that Claire and Owen find her nephews and take them to safety.
With the Indominus on the loose, Owen agrees to use his raptor squad to try and stop the beast and all but Blue perish in the process. In order to stop the dinosaur Claire decides to take matters into her own hands, and lets loose the Tyrannosaurus Rex which battles the Indominus.
The T-Rex is overpowered but the battle gives Blue the chance she needs in order to recover and attack the Indominus, and the two dinosaurs work together to defeat the genetically enhanced creature. They ultimately win when the Indominus is dragged underwater by another dinosaur.
Six months after the events of the first Jurassic World movie a mercenary team travel to Isla Nublar in order to extract DNA from the Indominus Rex. While many of the team are killed by dinosaurs, some successfully escape with the DNA sample giving scientists Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) the tools he needs to create an all new dinosaur.
Cut to three years later and the US government are considering whether to save the dinosaurs who live on the island, and whose lives are threatened by an impeding volcanic eruption. Dr Ian Malcolm returns to tell them all that the dinosaurs are meant to be extinct and this event shows that "life finds a way" to redress the balance.
Claire wants to protect the creatures after establishing a dinosaur sanctuary, but officials vote not to save the animals. However, she is invited to the home of John Hammond's former partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) who tells her of his plan to bring some of the dinosaurs to his own personal sanctuary and he asks Claire for her help.
Claire enlists the help of Owen to complete the rescue mission, particularly to find Velociraptor Blue, however while they are on the island they are betrayed and left to die with an injured Blue taken captive by mercenary Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) who also takes paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) with him to save the animal's life.
Owen and Claire manage to sneak onto a ship full of captured dinosaurs headed for Lockwood's manor, and the remaining dinosaurs are killed by the volcanic eruption. At the estate it is revealed that the dinosaurs aren't intended for a sanctuary but will be sold on the black market, and that Dr Wu created a new Indominus Rex that has been genetically cloned with Velociraptor DNA — but it's only a prototype and he hoped to use Blue's DNA to make it susceptible to commands.
At the auction, Owen and Claire work towards creating a distraction so they can stop the dinosaurs from being shipped off to private clients. During the chaos the Indominus Rex prototype goes on a rampage and it's up to Blue to try and stop the creature — the pair battle atop the glass roof of the building and fall through it with the Indominus impaled.
Blue survives the encounter, and while someone tries to make off with a tooth from the Indominus the man is eaten by a T-Rex and the DNA sample trampled on. The dinosaurs in the estate manage to escape, leaving humanity to try and find a way to co-exist with dinosaurs.
Four years have passed since the Lockwood Estate incident and dinosaurs now roam freely on Earth, and in a bid to control them a dinosaur preserve has been established in Italy's Dolemites by Biosyn Genetics where genomic research is conducted ostensibly for pharmacological purposes.
Claire, Zia and Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) work towards exposing illegal dinosaur breeding, while Owen helps rescue and relocate stray dinosaurs. Claire and Owen live in a secluded mansion with Lockwood's biogenetic granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who leaves the safety of their home with the asexually-produced baby of Velociraptor Blue, named Beta, and are kidnapped. It's up to Claire and Owen to save Maisie.
Meanwhile, the original trilogy's trio Neil, Dern and Goldblum return as Alan, Ellie and Ian, who now work towards exposing the truth about Biosyn Genetics and what they are doing. Biosyn are genetically engineering locusts using dinosaur DNA in a bid to dominate the world's food supply, forcing Dr Wu to make this a reality despite his protestations that it will cause an ecological collapse.
Dr Wu meets Maisie and reveals that his former colleague Dr. Charlotte Lockwood used her DNA to create an exact genetic copy of herself, Maisie, who she could give birth to. He reveals that Maisie and Beta's asexual conception could be key to stopping the locusts if he creates a pathogen with their DNA.
Ellie, Alan and Ian reunite in Biosyn where they plan to get a DNA sample from the locusts to uncover the conspiracy, with CEO Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) trying to get away with dinosaur embryos in order to continue his research. When Claire and Ellie manage to stop him from escaping he is killed by a trio of dinosaurs, while the characters from both the original and sequel trilogy unite in order to save Maisie and Beta.
The group succeed but not before some locusts escape a blaze started by Dodgson and start a wildfire, they and Wu manage to escape Biosyn whilst dodging a number of dinosaur encounters and reunite Blue with Beta. Dominion ends with Ian testifying against Biosyn and Wu releasing a locust hosting a pathogen that will be able to eradicate the locust swarms that escaped Biosyn.
The film ends with man and dinosaur finding a way to co-exist peacefully, with Biosyn Valley deemed a dinosaur sanctuary.
Jurassic World: Rebirth premieres in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 2 July.
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Khankhuuluu mongoliensis was slender with features like no other member of the tyrannosaur family tree. This illustration depicts how the slender Khankhuuluu mongoliensis may have appeared as it roamed Mongolia during the Cretaceous period. The newest addition to the tyrannosaur family, the discovery of this "dragon prince from Mongolia" sheds light on the origins of Tyrannosaurus rex. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi Tyrannosaurus rex is a carnivorous icon. Exceeding 40 feet in length and nine tons, the bone-crushing giant stands out as the largest and last of its meat-eating family. Now a new and far smaller tyrannosaur is filling in the famous dinosaur's evolutionary backstory. The newest addition to the tyrannosaur family tree is named Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which translates to 'dragon prince from Mongolia.' 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Comparing the fossils of mature Khankhuuluu (a, d, g) with fossils of mature Gorgosaurus (c, f, i) and juvenile Gorgosaurus (b, e, h) provides new insights into the evolutionary lineage between the smaller-bodied tyrannosauroids, such as Khankhuuluu, and the larger eutyrannosaurians like Gorgosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Silhouettes compare the sizes of Khankhuuluu (left) with a juvenile (right) and adult (middle) Gorgosaurus. Scale bars, 5 cm (individual elements) and 1 m (silhouette). Illustration by Voris et al. (2025), Nature In the early 1970s, Mongolian paleontologist Altangerel Perle found a pair of partial tyrannosaur skeletons in the eastern part of the country. The bones seemed similar to a small tyrannosaur that had been named before, Alectrosaurus. But when University of Calgary paleontologist and study co-author Jared Voris studied the bones during a research trip to Mongolia in 2023, he soon realized that the bones did not belong to Alectrosaurus at all. The bones from the two skeletons belonged to a new form of tyrannosaur that had been waiting to be discovered in collections for half a century. 'It had features like a hollow air chamber in side its nasal bone, which no other tyrannosaur species has,' Voris says. The fossils deserved a new name and have been recategorized as Khankhuuluu. Voris has found tyrannosaurs hiding in plain sight before. In 2020, Voris and colleagues named the 80 million-year-old tyrannosaur Thanatotheristes from bones assigned to another species found in Alberta. ("Reaper of Death" tyrannosaur discovered in Canada.) The finds are part of a burgeoning array of tyrannosaur discoveries. Instead of a simple line of evolution from early tyrannosaurs to T. rex, paleontologists have uncovered a wildly branching evolutionary bush of different tyrannosaur subgroups that came and went through the Cretaceous. The glut of new tyrannosaur species is allowing experts to piece together how big tyrannosaurs, including the gigantic T. rex, evolved and spread across vast stretches of the planet. What the 'dragon prince' tells us about the evolution of T. rex When compared to other tyrannosaurs, the researchers found that Khankhuuluu is a close relative of the broader group of tyrannosaurs that include Gorgosaurus from Alberta, the bumpy-snouted Alioramus from Mongolia, and the iconic T. rex. The new family tree, as well as where the fossils were uncovered, create an updated picture of how tyrannosaurs evolved over 20 million years. 'It is a pivotal species in understanding the evolutionary success of T. rex and its relatives,' says University College London paleontologist Cassius Morrison, who was not involved in the new study. In particular, the new analysis reveals how tyrannosaurs evolved into many different species as the carnivores wandered into new landscapes. Sometime around the time of Khankhuuluu, Voris and colleagues propose, such small, slender tyrannosaurs were dispersing from prehistoric Asia into North America over a land bridge. 'Tyrannosaurs evolved into those giant apex predators and diversified very rapidly across North America,' Voris says, the first of what Zelenitsky calls 'two explosions of tyrannosaurs.' Some of the predators remained slender and chased smaller prey while others became bulkier and hunted larger dinosaurs, and they roamed habitats from southern California to New Jersey. (See how these fierce dinos evolved in our pages over 100 years.) The new study suggests, however, that the direct ancestors of T. rex, did not evolve in North America. Voris and colleagues propose that around 79 and 78 million years ago at least one lineage of tyrannosaurs ventured back into Asia. The researchers know this because of the close relationship of two tyrannosaur groups that at a glance might seem very different. When tyrannosaurs returned to Asia during this period and underwent their second explosion, one group was relatively slender and had long snouts decorated with small horns, like the 'Pinocchio' dinosaur Qianzhousaurus. The other group began to grow larger, with deep skulls adept at crushing bones, like Tarbosaurus. T. rex evolved from ancestors in the second group, a lineage of bone-crushers that once again crossed the land bridge back into North America between 73 and 67 million years ago—making T. rex a new form of predator that arrived from another continent. 'The new analysis provides strong support that the ancestors of T. rex evolved from a group of tyrannosaurs that ventured back to Asia after they had undergone an evolutionary radiation in North America,' Morrison says. Ultimately, the study suggests that the rise of one of Earth's largest carnivores was due to a back-and-forth between North America and Asia that took place over a period of 20 million years. 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