The time dinosaurs escaped from Jurassic Park set

The sun was just about to start rising over the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Breaking the peace of the new day was the sound of a jeep roaring through the jungle.

It screeched to a halt, Stephen Spielberg rushed to the fence that surrounded the Jurassic Park set and sure enough, there was a huge hole.

His worst fears had been confirmed; dinosaurs had escaped!

“Man, I was terrified,” said Spielberg in a 1998 Wogan interview.

“This wasn’t an uninhabited island, there were people out there, and now dinosaurs were loose and we didn’t know where.”

The director had made the controversial decision to use real dinosaurs in his new film after it became apparent that modern CGI just wasn’t up to the task of rendering convincing dinosaurs.

So, using dinosaur DNA that had been preserved in amber, special effects gurus set about recreating diplodocuses, velociraptors, and even a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The dinosaurs looked fantastic on camera, but little did anyone know, they had a sly intelligence that allowed them put in motion a convoluted escape plan.

“Well, they’d put up a poster for the classic 1974 movie The Land that Time Forgot on the fence. I mean, I thought it was cute, but I had no idea that they were using it as cover for them to make a hole.”

One night, while cast and crew were asleep, the dinosaurs finished their hole and broke through. Three velociraptors and the Tyrannosaur escaped.

Luckily, the crew had a secret weapon on their side – Bob Peck.

“Bob was a great actor and he took his role as Muldoon seriously so he’d done an awful lot of research into his onscreen job as game warden.”

He went to work immediately, using the tracking skills he’d learnt whilst researching the role. Within an hour he’d tracked down two of the raptors and the Tyrannosaur.

“The final raptor was a problem, but Bob was good. He caught up with it and subdued it just as it reached a small Hawaiian settlement.”

Happily, no one was hurt and the islanders weren’t even aware of the escape.

The dinosaurs were immediately destroyed and the film was completed with a combination of CGI and stop-motion special effects.

However, some footage of the real dinosaurs remains and if you look closely in the scene when Dr Alan Grant is stuck up a tree, you can see footage of a genuine dinosaur as it sneezes on him.