The Lost World is a 1995 science fiction action novel written by Michael Crichton, and the sequel to his 1990 novel Jurassic Park. It is his tenth novel under his own name and his twentieth overall, and it was published by Knopf. A paperback edition followed in 1996. In 1997, both novels were re-published as a single book titled Michael Crichton's Jurassic World, which is unrelated to the 2015 film of the same name.
Plot[]
In August 1993, four years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm - who is revealed to have survived the events of the previous novel - encounters and reluctantly agrees to team up with wealthy paleontologist Richard Levine. The two men attempt to search for a "lost world" of dinosaurs following rumors of strange animal corpses washing up on the shores of Costa Rica. They learn of Site B on Isla Sorna, the "production facility" where the now-defunct company InGen hatched and grew the dinosaurs for their Jurassic Park theme park on nearby Isla Nublar.
Eighteen months later, afraid that the Costa Rican government will find Isla Sorna and destroy the dinosaurs, Levine hastily embarks on an expedition to the island without Malcolm. He arrives with a Costa Rican guide named Diego, but shortly after arriving, the two are attacked by two mysterious creatures later identified as a pair of Carnotaurus who kill Diego. Eventually, Malcolm learns that Levine has gone missing there. Malcolm then goes to the island with a rescue team consisting of Jack "Doc" Thorne, an engineer and retired university professor; Eddie Carr, Thorne's assistant; and two stowaway children, R. B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis, who were working as Levine's research assistants. Dr. Sarah Harding, an ethologist and close friend of Malcolm, is also approached to join the expedition. Though she is initially unsure, she ultimately decides to meet them there.
The group arrives on the island with weapons and a conjoined pair of heavily modified, specially equipped RV trailers that serve as a mobile laboratory. They find and explore a geothermal powered complex of abandoned InGen buildings, including a worker village and a laboratory. They also eventually find Levine, who is overjoyed at the trove of information he can glean from this "lost world" and is ungrateful for being rescued. Benton wakes up first and manages to gain access to the old InGen LAN network, allowing them to view the island by built-in cameras.
Simultaneously, another group - consisting of geneticist Lewis Dodgson and his assistant Howard King, and "celebrity" biologist George Baselton - learns of Levine's expedition and travels to Isla Sorna independently. The new group plans to steal dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of InGen responsible for the sabotage that led to the Jurassic Park disaster. As they are about to leave, they encounter Harding and offer to give her a boat ride to Isla Sorna. However, just as they approach the island, Dodgson attempts to kill her by shoving her off the boat. She survives, though, and manages to meet up with Malcolm's group on the island.
Levine and Malcolm make many observations of the dinosaurs' behavior from the "high hide", an enclosed blind that is set above the ground on scaffolding. They soon learn that Dodgson's group has arrived on the island. Meanwhile, Dodgson's group is attacked by a pair of Tyrannosaurus as they try to steal eggs from the animals' nest, resulting in Baselton's death due to him giving inaccurate information regarding a Tyrannosaurus' vision. Dodgson and King become separated after the attack.
Later, while inspecting the T. rex nest, Malcolm finds that one of the infants had been injured and has a broken leg. He instructs Eddie to kill it because it has no chance of surviving in the wild. Unbeknownst to the group, Eddie refuses to kill the injured animal and brings it back to the trailers. When the group discovers the animal, Malcolm and Harding begrudgingly agree to set a cast around its leg while the rest of the group returns to the high hide. As night approaches, the nocturnal Velociraptors emerge from the jungle and kill King as he tries to escape. As Malcolm and Harding finish setting the T. rex's leg, the parents come looking for their infant and attack the trailers, pushing one of them over a cliff and injuring Malcolm. Thorne rescues Malcolm and Harding, while the raptors attack the high hide and kill Eddie, despite Levine's assurance. Malcolm is injected with a high dosage of morphine which relaxes him, though not without causing him to hallucinate as he had in the first novel. Arby, trapped in a survival cage, is kidnapped by the raptors but is later rescued by Thorne, Kelly and Harding retrieving the key to the cage.
The group later takes refuge from the raptors in the general store of the old InGen worker village. The group attempts to formulate a plan to reach the landing site where the helicopter is set to meet them in the morning. When Thorne ventures out into the village to search for fuel, he survives an encounter with the pair of chameleon-like Carnotaurus. Levine and Harding drive the Carnotaurus away by shining their lights on them and making them change their skin patterns too fast. Levine becomes irrational and Harding and Thorne have to talk him down.
The next morning, Harding heads out to recover one of the team's vehicles that Thorne had left behind while saving her and Malcolm from the trailer, as it may be the only vehicle large enough to carry everyone to the rendezvous point. Upon finding it, she encounters Dodgson attempting to steal the vehicle for himself. Suddenly, an adult T. rex approaches them, and they both hide under the car. Harding pushes Dodgson back out, and the T. rex picks him up, carries him to its nest, and feeds him to her offspring. Harding sets out to reach the helicopter before it can take off without the group, but she finds she is too late. Eventually, Kelly discovers a boat docked on the island, and she finds a tunnel, allowing the group to reach it just as the raptors finally break into the general store.
As the group sails away, Malcolm and Harding reveal information that he discovered in the laboratory: during Site B's active years, InGen fed the young carnivorous dinosaurs sheep extract infected with prions, which cause a disease that shortens the dinosaurs' lifespans and infect their brains. Although the scientists contained the disease, it began to spread once again after they abandoned the island. Malcolm and Harding say that the disease will lead to the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna. Despite this, Thorne declares that the fact that they are all alive and that they are returning home is really all that matters. Malcolm notes mankind's destructive habits are far more destructive to the earth than nature's.