Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Jurᴀssic World RebirthGareth Edwards’ Jurᴀssic World Rebirth brought the long-running dinosaur franchise back to its roots with an important pivot away from the other Jurᴀssic World movies, by effectively killing off most of the Earth’s dinosaurs that remained after Jurᴀssic World Dominion. While the previous trilogy saw dinosaurs spread across the globe, Rebirth opened with the population limited to just a few parts of the globe.
After Jurᴀssic World breathed new life back into the Jurᴀssic Park franchise, its sequels, subтιтled Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, found narrative reasons to unleash dinosaurs upon the world at large. By the beginning of Jurᴀssic World Dominion, dinosaurs had been introduced into most regions on the planet, with different species thriving in different portions of the world depending on the nature of their genetics.
Jurᴀssic World Rebirth essentially retconned this development, as the opening of that movie saw the world’s dinosaur population all but depleted, with the survivors isolated to just a few specific environments. The narrative reason why so many dinosaurs died is given rather quickly in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, and could require some explanation given its impact on the franchise.
Why Dinosaurs Are Dying Off In Jurᴀssic World Rebirth
Modern Environments And Pathogens Have Taken Their Toll
Regardless of how mᴀssive, lethal, or adaptable dinosaurs are, they could never be a match for our modern ecosystem. Despite being products of the modern era, all Jurᴀssic World dinosaurs were crafted from original ancient DNA. Most of the qualities of their ancient ancestors are very much intact, leaving them made for a completely different world than the one they were hatched into.
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In Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, it’s revealed that most of the dinosaurs across the world have died off in the five years since the events of Jurᴀssic World Dominion thanks almost entirely to natural causes. Their bodies are not designed to survive in the current climate-change-impacted ecosystem in which we live, complete with a litany of new diseases and ever-changing weather.
Why Dinosaurs Can Only Survive In Locations Near The Equator In Jurᴀssic World Rebirth
The Oxygen-rich Climate Most Closely Correlates With The Ancient World
The only regions on Earth that dinosaurs are reported to still be not only alive, but thriving, are around the equator. The island of Ile Saint Hubert, Ingen’s laboratory-loaded “site C” where Jurᴀssic World Rebirth takes place, is noted as being located off the coast of French Guiana, which is on the northeastern part of South America right near the equator.
The tropical locations around the equator are the only places that dinosaurs can thrive due to their more consistent climates (they are consistently warm and wet) and how oxygen-rich their forests are. Ile Saint Hubert is depicted as a diverse geographic landscape, but from the swampiest jungle to the misty cliffs where the Quetzalcoatluses nest, there is oxygen, water, and heat.
In Ancient Times, Dinosaurs Were Rarely Found Near The Equator
The Equator Probably Became More Hospitable For Dinosaurs As Climate Evolved
Stepping away from cinema and into science, there aren’t very many dinosaur fossils found near the modern-day equator. While it’s true that much of the equator became much closer to what it is today by the end of the Cretaceous Period when T-rex roamed the land, early dinosaurs were subjected to wild fluctuations in weather, among other dangers.
According to data from the University of Utah via Phys.org, dinosaurs were unable to settle at the equator due to constant fluctuations between scorching droughts, sudden extreme flooding, constant wildfires, and volcanic activity. The vegetation was in constant flux, making it inhospitable for herbivores, which made it inhospitable for the carnivores that fed on them.
Is Ile Saint-Hubert The Only Island Inhabited By Dinosaurs In Jurᴀssic World Rebirth?
Chances Are Good It Isn’t, Based On The Franchise’s History
Jurᴀssic World Rebirth mimicked a 28-year-old franchise twist: just as The Lost World: Jurᴀssic Park revealed the existence of a second Ingen island, Rebirth revealed the existence of a third. Ile Saint Hubert was billed as a collection of the “worst of the worst” mutant variations that resulted from Ingen’s darkest experiments, and is the only island named or explored in the movie.
However, it seems very likely that some of the dinosaurs that survived and escaped from Biosyn’s preserve in Italy’s Dolomite mountains would have settled in other oxygen-rich areas of the planet near the equator. While they’re obviously far from identical from an ecological standpoint, it seems reasonable to expect that dinosaurs would survive in the jungles of Africa or Asia as easily as the jungles of the Caribbean.
How Will Jurᴀssic World Rebirth Sequels Showcase More Dinosaurs?
Rebirth Built In A Ready-Made Solution
Image via Universal Pictures
While Gareth Edwards has said that Jurᴀssic World Rebirth’s ending was written so that it would be a stand-alone movie, that’s never stopped the writing minds of Hollywood from finding a way to throw people and dinosaurs back together again. The box office return for Jurᴀssic World Rebirth likely won’t live up to its predecessors, but it still seems on pace to clear a pretty good profit.
ᴀssuming either a direct sequel or another stand-alone entry takes place, Jurᴀssic World Rebirth built in an explanation for how to showcase more dinosaurs. The entire point of the mission that drives the action in Rebirth is to capture life-saving dinosaur DNA, with the purpose of crafting a drug that could essentially eliminate heart disease.
If Zora Bennett and Dr. Loomis do share the DNA with the world, as they intended to at the end of the movie, then they could kick off a new wave of people interested in dinosaur products for both beneficial and more nefarious reasons. That would give plenty of people a reason to search the globe for new oxygen-rich pockets that can support dinosaurs, and could be the plot to a Jurᴀssic World Rebirth sequel.
Source: University of Utah via Phys.org
