Isla Sorna

Isla Sorna Map by Jurassic Park Legacy

Isla Sorna (Sarcasm Island in English), also known as Site B, is the second island containing dinosaurs owned by InGen, featured in the novel and film The Lost World and in the movie Jurassic Park III. Isla Sorna is part of a group of five islands collectively referred to as Las Cinco Muertes, or, The Five Deaths.

In the Jurassic Park series, it is seen as the opposite of Isla Nublar, where the Jurassic Park theme park exists and the animals within are en-caged. On Isla Sorna, the dinosaurs are able to roam free around the island.

Film

Isla Sorna is located approximately 207 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, in the Pacific Ocean. It is eighty-seven miles from Isla Nublar, the island of the Jurassic Park theme park.

When John Hammond planned for Jurassic Park in San Diego, he created Site B as the main factory in which to produce the animals. Any small attempt would have been impossible as yields would have been too low (less than 1%), so a large scale facility had to be made.

When plans changed, the now matured animals were transferred to Isla Nublar, rather than the San Diego facility which was now abandoned. The animals were cloned and raised until a certain age/size when they were to be transferred into the park. It was not intended as a tourist destination, but as a research facility.

However, as John Hammond explains in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, less than a year after the incident at Isla Nublar, Hurricane Clarissa wiped out the facilities on the island--which had been evacuated. The animals were then left to mature on their own. The island, and dream, was fully abandoned until nearly four years later, Peter Ludlow finally took the company from John Hammond and made an expedition to the island (one that had been in the works but had been thwarted by John Hammond, for years).

In the film version of The Lost World, John Hammond tells Ian Malcolm about Site B; he asks him to document the island before it is "found and pillaged". As Malcolm arrives, so does InGen, now under the guidance of Hammond's nephew, seeking to steal the animals for research and a new park. The DX disease is not mentioned in the film version, although the letters 'DX' are featured on much of the movie's merchandise. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the island was turned into a dinosaur preserve, thus making it illegal to disturb the island itself or the prehistoric wildlife.

However, it is shown that not all people obeyed this new law. In Jurassic Park III, Alan Grant is tricked into going to Site B to help two estranged parents find their son, who had been lost during a parasailing accident run by an illegal organization. The couple believe that Grant has visited the island previously; Grant explains to them he had been on Isla Nublar, not Isla Sorna. Eventually he managed to find their son and lead the surviving group out to the coast, where the U.S. Navy and Marines arrived to rescue them.

Novel

Isla Sorna in the novel is quite different than the film. The island is much smaller (possiblily, 50 or 55 square kilometers in size) and is said to have been originally a large volcano that blew its top. Access to the island was restricted to only a few tunnels that the water had bored into the sides of the large mountain sides that protected the island.

The island was originally owned by a German mining company and was then developed by InGen. The company took the island and created facilities on it in which to experiment and create the animals for their parks.

However, due to an unknown prion called DX (similar to mad cow disease, though DX was transferred through sheep extracts fed to the carnivores) the animal production was reduced severely; newborns died in a matter of days. Sarah Harding mentions in the novel how surprised she is to find out that InGen fed its carnivores with this material as it is commonly known throughout the naturalist community that no carnivore should be fed this in captivity.

The disease would act as any prion based disease and would build a large chemical chain within the brain fluid. This chain would become so large, that it would eventually burrow through the brain material, causing insanity in most cases--hence the name mad cow disease.

This disease would prove devastating to any genetics company as any bio-engineered animal already has very little chance of surviving to adulthood. A large batch must be made in order to preserve even a 1% yield rate. A disease such as this could wipe out the entire population within a matter of weeks.

In order to overcome the possibility that diseases were being transmitted through workers at the plant, they tagged the animals with radio transmitters and released them to the habitat. Following the collapse of Isla Nublar, several accidents on Isla Sorna forced InGen to evacuate Site B and leave the animals to fend for themselves. Forgotten, dinosaurs take over the island and turn it into a real Jurassic Park. Some animals go extinct while others begins to exhibit strange behaviors. It is later discovered that the island has reached its equilibrium but because of an explosion in the raptor population, the animals are under increasing stress.

In the novel of The Lost World, Ian Malcolm learns of this island from palaeontologist Richard Levine, and he sets off to investigate the newfound "Lost World." However, Lewis Dodgson of the Biosyn corporation also learns of Isla Sorna and seeks to steal dinosaur eggs for genetic research. However, Dodgson and his team are killed and Malcolm and most of his team escape the island.

Surprisingly, Sorna, which ran on geo-thermal energy, had many still functioning systems including the mainframe and surveillance. The trailers used in the novel--similar to the film versions--connected to the mainframe and were able to use the mostly functioning mainframe to its advantage--that is until the Tyrannosaurus attack severely damaged the trailers.

Dinosaurs and other Reptiles Featured

Film

These are dinosaurs and other reptiles confirmed to be on Isla Sorna in the films.

• Apatosaurus (The Lost World: Jurassic Park Official Souvenir Magazine identified the bones in the town as belonging to an Apatosaurus)
• Ankylosaurus
• Brachiosaurus
• Ceratosaurus
• Compsognathus
• Corythosaurus
• Dilophosaurus (seen on the mobile lab computer screens. Also, a picture of it is painted on the wall.)
• Gallimimus
• Hadrosaurus (This is according to what would be identified as a Jurassic Park III prop)
• Leptoceratops (A logo on various promotional material points to this dinosaur)
• Maiasaura (This is according to the Jurassic Park III Trading Cards Made by Inkworks)
• Mamenchisaurus
• Muttaburrasaurus (This is according to the Jurassic Park III Trading Cards Made by Inkworks)
• Pachycephalosaurus
• Parasaurolophus
• Pteranodon
• Spinosaurus (was not made to be transported to Isla Nublar. Its creation was apparently a secret venture or an accident.)
• Stegosaurus
• Triceratops
• Tyrannosaurus
• Velociraptor

It's believed that Isla Sorna may have most of Isla Nublar's animals still like Metriacanthosaurus, Proceratosaurus, Baryonyx, and Segisaurus. The reason for this claim is that Isla Sorna was the factory floor for the entire Jurassic Park project according to John Hammond in the beginning of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Novel

Dinosaurs featured in the novel

• Apatosaurus
• Carnotaurus
• Gallimimus
• Hypsilophodon
• Maiasaura
• Mussaurus
• Pachycephalosaurus
• Parasaurolophus
• Procompsognathus
• Stegosaurus
• Triceratops
• Tyrannosaurus
• Velociraptor antirrhopus
• Unknown Tree Herbivore: Possibly Othnielia or Microceratops
• Levine examined a beached specimen, his best guess was a Ornitholestes. He was not able to make a precise identification, but the lab discovered chromatophores in the tissue sample he sent to Malcolm, possibly suggesting the Carnotaurus.

External links

• Jurassic Park Legacy

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