His colleagues call him crazy, mad, insane.  Others call him arrogant.  Whatever he is called, you can be sure that George Challenger is a man passionate about science.  So passionate, in fact, that he tends to ignore everything and everyone around him, including his wife Jessie.  Challenger was on an expedition when he was brought to a injured, dying explorer.  This explorer was William Maple White.  It was Maple White's journals that inspired Challenger to return to England and mount an expedition to search for dinosaurs.  He was in the process of being laughed out of the Royal Zoological Society over his idea that dinosaurs still roamed the earth somewhere in South America when Marguerite Krux walked in and offered to fund the entire expedition.  The rest, as they say, is history.