Found out Jurassic Park ripped off a little known 80s dinosaur thriller

I was browsing a used bookstore last Saturday and picked up a paperback called 'Carnosaur' from 1984. I figured it was just some random dino pulp, but the plot is almost identical to Jurassic Park - dinosaur DNA from blood in prehistoric insects, a theme park, the whole deal. It came out 6 years before Crichton's book. Has anyone else stumbled on an old novel that made you side-eye a huge movie franchise?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana88123d ago

Yeah "Carnosaur" is basically Jurassic Park with less CGI and more gore. Crichton definitely read that book.

lily_torres3122d ago

Honestly, I've seen this take a million times and I'm not totally convinced. Ngl, people love to claim every dinosaur story rips off some obscure 80s novel. Tbh, the gore in Carnosaur is so over the top it's more like a horror movie than a science thriller anyway. Maybe Crichton knew about it, maybe he didn't, but Jurassic Park is way more about theme park management gone wrong than just monster mayhem. It's probably not that deep.