Land of the Lost

Pompous paleontologist Rick Marshall has a low-level job at the La Brea Tar Pits, three years after a disastrous interview with Matt Lauer on Today went viral and ruined his career. Doctoral candidate Holly Cantrell tells him that his controversial theories combining time warps and paleontology inspired her.

She shows him a fossil with an imprint of a cigarette lighter that he recognizes as his own, along with a crystal made into a necklace that gives off strong tachyon energy. She convinces him to finish his tachyon amplifier and go on a expedition to the cave where Holly found the fossil, in the desert.