The main character in the book is Ian Malcolm, a middle aged mathematician and a little bit of an explorer. The man who set up the exploration, Richard Levine, is a rich and reckless yet well known adventurer who spends a lot of his time and money exploring different places around the world and helps at a middle school to give students of ideas of careers in science. Sarah Harding is a zoologist who was hired to possibly deal with some of the animals. Jack Thorne is the man who made all of the special equipment the group is taking with them and he went along to help and show everyone how to and operate most of the vehicles.