One of the biggest issues for deciding the direction the plot of a Jurassic Park related story is which dinosaurs are going to play leading roles. I knew I had to have the classic Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, but I wanted to add some things of my own as well. One of my all time favorite dinosaurs is the Carnotaurus, so that had to go in, but I didn’t think the Carnotaurus was going to be a good lead character. I couldn’t come up with enough scenes that would define it as different then the Tyrannosaurus, and it would end up being a been there/done that character. One day back in October of 2001, I was surfing on the internet and I came across a painting by Luis Rey, who is currently my favorite Paleo artist. The painting showed Therizinosaurus, standing upright and towering over a Tarbosaurus.

I was already familiar with how bizarre and cool Therizinosaurus and its relatives were, but this depiction was far beyond anything I had ever seen before. The image of these crazy looking creatures with pot bellies, long necks, short legs, and huge claws kicking the crap out of a giant predetor like Tarbosaurus was really inspirational. I began toying around with the idea of Therizinosaurus being the lead in Jurassic Park: Evolution. I wrote up a summery that revolved around the animal, but it wasn’t that great of a story. It seemed hollow, lacking drama. As I went back through it, it turned out that the Therizinosaurus was the reason for this dilemma. You simply couldn’t have a herbivore as a lead character, and I knew everyone would hate me for it. So I went back to the drawing board, so to speak. The next draft of Jurassic Park: Evolution had much less time with the Therizinosaurus, but it did have a lot of tension leading up to it, and it also had a scene that resembles Luis Rey’s painting. That scene is in the final version of the story. Then, a week before I released the first chapter of the story, I reworked it yet again. This time, there was no Therizinosaurus, but a fictional dinosaur called Titanonychus, which is essentially the same animal, only somewhat larger. The reason for this change is that I wanted the dig scene at the beginning of the story with Tom Frost to have something to do with the rest of the story. Sure, we get introduced to Frost’s character, but I felt that it needed more. So I had him uncover the Titanonychus. With that new plot twist, I was able to make the ending even better. With a fictional animal, I could get away with making it really big, which added believability to the Titanonychus scaring of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Also, I could slip in some stuff with Frost meeting an animal he discovered in the flesh, which was a lot of fun.