When Trevor opens the box of stuff belonging to his lost brother, he pulls out an odd wooden item, says he doesn't know what it is, and sets it aside. The item is a Holmes Stereoscope, designed in 1861 by Oliver Wendell Holmes to look at stereocards. Similar to postcards, they show a left-view and right-view photograph mounted next to each other. When viewed through a stereoscope, the photographs merge into one 3-D image. The Holmes Stereoscope was a great source of entertainment in the Victorian era. The same process was later adopted for ViewMaster viewers and cards.
It was shot in only 48 days.
(at around 4 mins) When Trevor cleans his house to prepare for the arrival of his nephew, he places some plates on top of a book titled "Exploring the Deep Frontier: The Adventure of Man in the Sea" written by Dr. Sylvia Earle. Dr. Earle holds the record for the deepest untethered dive to the bottom of the ocean (1250 feet).
The dinosaur saliva was made from a mixture of hair gel, 7 up, and peat moss
Independent film maker Paul Chart was originally signed to write and direct the picture and penned the original script. Chart left the project after a decision was made to shoot the film in 3-D, uncomfortable with the possibility it would become more 'theme park ride' than the epic action-adventure film he envisioned. The Jules Verne novel was apparently one of his favorite pieces of literature. Chart was ultimately replaced with effects specialist Eric Brevig and the script was heavily retooled to emphasize the new 3-D format.