History Main / ExtinctAnimalPark

When an Extinct Animal Park is the focus of its story, the narrative will often focus on the science that created it, the varied and exotic beasts it contains, and the challenges of keeping it running properly -- which can range from the difficulties of caring from animals with largely unknown ecologies and native to long-vanished environments to dealing with ten-ton predators running loose amid the patrons. In other cases, these parks can feature as part of a story's background scenery, especially in far future or other high-tech settings. Here, they serve as a way to illustrate the increased technology level and the way in which what for us would be wondrous advances in science have become a commonplace part of civilization.

** ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In the two-part episode "[[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS1E9E10TheMainMan The Main Man]]", Superman is captured by the BountyHunter [[Characters/DCComicsLobo Lobo]] and delivered to the Preserver, a sinister alien being obsessed with collecting [[LastOfHisKind the last living specimens]] of species from across the universe. Since Superman -- and, indeed, Lobo -- are both the last of their respective peoples, they become the newest attractions at the Preserver's zoo. After the two of them [[EnemyMine reluctantly work together]] to escape and defeat the Preserver, Superman realizes that the other creatures in the zoo (mostly unintelligent alien animals) have nowhere else to go, and decides to build his own zoo at the Fortress of Solitude where they can live out the rest of their days in peace. Later episodes occasionally show him feeding or otherwise taking care of the animals.

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': There's a Dinosaur National Park full of cloned dinosaurs, twelve years before ''Literature/JurassicPark'' was written. Dredd runs into "Satanus", a particularly vicious ''T. rex'' that had escaped from the park, in several adventures. In a bit of CanonWelding, Satanus was later shown to be the offspring of Old One-Eye from ''ComicBook/{{Flesh}}''.

* ''Literature/JurassicPark'':
** In the first novel, a biotech corporation attempts to create a zoo/theme park featuring cloned dinosaurs. Prior to the park's opening, a group of people are invited to review it to ensure it is fit for this purpose. They get their answer when the dinosaurs break out of the enclosures due to a disgruntled employee shutting off the security system to steal embryos for a rival corporation, along with general poor management and cost-cutting measures. The park never officially opens to the public because [[spoiler:the army ends up firebombing the island to eradicate the threat, although several dinosaurs had already escaped to the mainland]].

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E19SweetSeymourSkinnersBaadasssssSong Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song]]": Principal Skinner wants to write the UsefulNotes/GreatAmericanNovel called ''Billy and the Cloneasaurus'' about [[Literature/JurassicPark a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques]]. A furious Apu then goes into a long rant explaining how [[ItsBeenDone it's already been done before]] and was so famous that there's no way Skinner shouldn't know that.

** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E4TheThiefOfBaghead The Thief of Baghead]]" features a "Jurassic Tank" at the Monsteray Bay Aquarium, hosted by a John Hammond lookalike and inhabited by prehistoric sea life.

** Both ''Film/JurassicWorldFallenKingdom'' and ''Film/JurassicWorldDominion'' revolve around plans to move the dinosaurs to reserves [[spoiler:after Jurassic Park is destroyed by the volcano within Isla Nublar and the dinosaurs that were sent loose in ''Fallen Kingdom'' become too much of a nuisance]] and both times this plan [[spoilers:turns out to be just a cover for the more insidious, [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil Umbrella]]/[[Film/{{Aliens}} Weyland-Yutani]]-style EvilPlan of the EvilInc-du-jour of the film]].

** ''Film/JurassicPark'': The titular park is designed as an open-space zoo stocked with genetically engineered dinosaurs created from samples of ancient blood (plus or minus varying amounts of frog DNA to fill in the gaps), mostly in the form of large Cretaceous species. It falls apart quickly and spectacularly through a combination of sabotage, poor planning and active mismanagement, and the island it was built on is eventually abandoned to its newly feral inhabitants.

Most modern examples are heavily influenced, directly or indirectly, by ''Franchise/JurassicPark'', although the trope as a whole predates the franchise, and consequently share a number of features derived from it. Most prominently, the animals in these zoos lean heavily towards dinosaurs, which may very well be the only creatures present; Cenozoic megafauna is less common but turns up from time to time, and Paleozoic creatures are fairly rare. Additionally, it's relatively common for such parks to share Jurassic Park's disastrous end and for some or all of the creatures to escape and rampage out of control.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' two-part episode "The Main Man", Superman is captured by the BountyHunter ComicBook/{{Lobo}} and delivered to the Preserver, a sinister alien being obsessed with collecting [[LastOfHisKind the last living specimens]] of species from across the universe. Since Superman - and indeed, Lobo - are both the last of their respective peoples, they become the newest attractions at the Preserver's zoo. After the two of them [[EnemyMine reluctantly work together]] to escape and defeat the Preserver, Superman realizes that the other creatures in the zoo (mostly unintelligent alien animals) have nowhere else to go, and decides to build his own zoo at the Fortress of Solitude where they can live out the rest of their days in peace. Later episodes occasionally show him feeding or otherwise taking care of the animals.
** Superman's zoo of extinct aliens makes a return in the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' two-parter "The Call", where one of the exhibits - an innocuous [[StarfishAliens starfish-like alien]] - turns out to be a PuppeteerParasite who possesses Superman and makes him [[NotHimself do evil]]. This is the Franchise/DCAnimatedUniverse's incarnation of Starro the Conqueror, an obscure villain from the comics who would later find fame as the villain of ''Film/TheSuicideSquad''.

Subtrope of FantasticNatureReserve. This often overlaps with FossilRevival. See also JurassicFarce, which it often overlaps with (but doesn't have to).

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'': In "Dinosaur Ducks", Scrooge plans on keeping one of the LivingDinosaurs in a LostWorld as a specimen for his zoo. He ultimately settles on turning the lost world into a safari park.

* ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries'': In "[[Recap/LiloAndStitchTheSeriesS2E11Retro Retro]]", the featured experiment to capture is Experiment 210, which can devolve creatures by wrapping them up with its tongue and spinning them around. After being reformed, he's sent to a zoo, where he uses his ability to turn the animals there into dinosaurs to attract visitors.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'': [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1265 The Mesozoic Preserve]] is about fifty square kilometers of Congolese jungle full of dinosaurs, all of them feathered, and a few non-dinosaurian prehistoric reptiles. An unknown force keeps the animals inside -- if they try to leave, they vanish and reappear sedated within the preserve. The dinosaurs are completely passive to humans, except for a few species that have not been discovered by science yet, which are highly aggressive. Apparently, this place is where African dinosaur cryptid legends originate from.

* ''Dinosaur Sanctuary'' follows the staff of a small struggling dinosaur zoo in a world where such things are relatively commonplace. The manga's chapters follow different episodes in work at the place, dealing with various issues for the animals much in the same way real-life zoos take care of modern animals.

* ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheIslandOfMiraclesAnimalAdventure'': The titular Miracle Island is a 22nd Century natural reserve and sanctuary housing various long-extinct animals, including dodos, glyptodons, wooly rhinoceroses, sabre-toothed tigers and SeldomSeenSpecies like ''Megatherium'', ''Chalicotherium'' and ''Ceratogaulus''. The adventure is kicked off when Doraemon and Nobita finds a stray moa and decide to travel to the future and find the reserve (while Nobita tries sneaking a giant prehistoric beetle out without Doraemon's permission), but then a group of evil poachers attack the island and strand the main characters on it.

** ''VideoGame/JurassicParkOperationGenesis'' focuses on you customizing your island, building a functioning park, and cloning dinosaurs from fossils and amber. There's also a Site B mode, where you can create a true Mesozoic ecosystem with no human interference beyond hatcheries.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The Silurian space-ark from " [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E2DinosaursOnASpaceship Dinosaurs on a Spaceship]] " has naturalistic compartments for the various Cretaceous-era wildlife that the ancient reptilians hoped to save from imminent mass extinction.

** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E4TheThiefOfBaghead The Thief of Baghead]]" features a "Jurassic Tank" at the Monsteray Bay Aquarium, hosted by a John Hammond lookalike and inhabited by prehistoric sea-life.

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E19SweetSeymourSkinnersBaadasssssSong Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song]]": Principal Skinner wants to write the UsefulNotes/GreatAmericanNovel called ''Billy and the Cloneasaurus'' about [[Literature/JurassicPark a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques]]. A furious Apu then goes into a long rant explaining how [[ItsBeenDone it's already been done before]].

* One of the more outlandish proposals to combat global warming is to clone woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave lions, and other Plistocene Eurasian megafauna and release them into parks in Siberia to restore the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem. Most scientists are highly dubious that this could even be done at all, much less on a large-enough scale to actually have any sort of meaningful impact on global temperature.

** ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'': The human antagonists aim to recreate Jurassic Park in San Francisco by capturing dinosaurs roaming free on Isla Sorna. They insist they will be better prepared with more secure facilities this time. The protagonists oppose this idea, both because the original park's creators said the same thing and look how that turned out, and because they believe the animals should be left in peace. [[spoiler:The antagonists do succeed in bringing a ''T. rex'' to San Diego (with heavy casualties) but it ends up breaking free and going on a rampage, after which Ingen finally gives up on the idea of a dinosaur theme park.]]

** ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'': The human antagonists aim to recreate Jurassic Park in San Francisco by capturing dinosaurs roaming free on Isla Sorna. They insist they will be better prepared with more secure facilities this time. The protagonists oppose this idea, both because the original park's creators said the same thing and look how that turned out, and because they believe the animals should be left in peace. [[spoiler:The antagonists do succeed in bringing a ''T. rex'' to San Francisco (with heavy casualties) but it ends up breaking free and going on a rampage, after which Ingen finally gives up on the idea of a dinosaur theme park.]]

* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': There's a Dinosaur National Park full of cloned dinosaurs, twelve years before ''Literature/JurassicPark'' was written. Dredd runs into "Satanus", a particularly vicious ''T. rex'' that had escaped from the park, in several adventures.

Subtrope of FantasticNatureReserve. This often overlaps with FossilRevival. See also JurassicFarce.

* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'': There's a Dinosaur National Park full of cloned dinosaurs, twelve years before ''Literature/JurassicPark'' was written. ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' runs into "Satanus", a particularly vicious ''T. rex'' that had escaped from the park, in several adventures.

* ''Franchise/JurassicPark'':

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': In "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E15IDatedARobot I Dated A Robot]]", Fry visits a "Jurassic Kiddie Park" where he rides a ''T. rex'' and feeds it a small pig, but unfortunately he forgets to hold his [[DismembermentIsCheap hands]] open.