The prologue also includes a modern-day sequence – filmed in England and set in California – in which a Tyrannosaurus rex terrorizes a drive-in theater while evading capture.

Director Colin Trevorrow had shot the footage to serve as the first five minutes of Jurassic World Dominion, before cutting it from the final film due to time constraints.

It introduces several new creatures to the Jurassic Park film series, and depicts them in their natural habitats: Dreadnoughtus trudging through and around a lake, a Quetzalcoatlus and Pteranodons scavenging on corpses and diving into an entrenched river, Ankylosaurus drinking from a watering hole, an Oviraptor stealing eggs in a cave, a herd of Nasutoceratops wading across a river,[a] and a Moros and a Giganotosaurus in a symbiotic relationship.

The segment was storyboarded by Glen McIntosh, who had worked on the previous Jurassic World films through Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

[8] Trevorrow found it challenging to create the Cretaceous segment "in a way that feels tactile and alive and present, and not just like a bunch of computers rendering as quickly as they can".

Earlier films depicted genetically engineered dinosaurs whose genomes were completed with frog DNA, explaining any inaccuracies in their appearance and behavior.

[15] The prologue footage was originally meant to serve as the first five minutes of Jurassic World Dominion,[17] and was initially released as a five-minute preview of the film.

[5] The footage was ultimately excluded from the main film due to time constraints,[7][17] although Trevorrow still considered it beneficial from a storytelling perspective and wanted it to receive a wide release.

[6] The prologue was eventually added back into the main film in an extended edition, released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on August 16, 2022.

[3] Although Simon Gallagher of Screen Rant was impressed with the CGI, he opined that the prologue tried and failed to recapture the "magic" of the original Jurassic Park film.

The climactic battle between the Giganotosaurus and T. rex was one such example as it could not happen in real life since the two animals lived on separate continents and existed millions of years apart from each other.

[25][26] Science writer Riley Black of Slate was dismayed by the level of criticism and noted that various interpretations of extinct animals exist, writing: "For all we've come to learn about dinosaurs, we still know vanishingly little".