Escape from Jurassic Planet

- Seas are made of lava, so initially you will need to go underground to move continents: the underground is hugely different from what you might expect.

- You will need a sleeping bag and backpack to get through the nights. Sleeping in the bag will set a spawn like a regular bed, and is retained once the bag is removed.

- Dinosaurs drop useful items, and they spawn in plausible biomes for the species' concerned.

- Analyse fossils and culture the DNA into eggs to create more dinosaurs (or just go hunting for them - but not all dinosaurs spawn naturally).

- You will need to eventually kill these specific dinosaurs with the looting enchantment: spinosaurus, mosasaurus, sarcosuchus.

- You will need to visit other planets and the End. The End is also different from vanilla: go exploring.

- You will need to do some chemistry.

- Protect yourself from weather, meteorites and volcanos.

- Steel has a short tech-tree specific to this pack: be quick about it so the hot metal doesn't cool down!

- Objects can be "un-defiled" by using a fungicide.

- Fossil-processing machines require redstone flux, so you need to generate some (try the Botania route early-game, but other routes exist).

- There are no strongholds so to get to the End you will need craft your own End Portal.

- The ancient skeletal warrior can help you.

- You need a few time machines and ancient clocks to escape: you may need to use duplication methods to get them.

- To escape back to earth, place two Dreambreaker Crystal blocks under a bed, surround the bed with Skulls of Gaia, and sleep in it.

The major mods are these, which you can familiarise yourself with via their own Wikis or pages (though they have all been adjusted to fit this pack so not all elements may be identical):
Fossils and Archeology Revival

Alchemistry

Botania

Galacticraft

Tinkers Construction

Animania

Defiled Lands

Traveler's Backpack

Everything else is hopefully findable from the JEI interface, and I'll eventually get round to a guidebook development.

Also, the updated java arguments below (with 8GB assigned as an example) are worth a shot:

-Xmx8G -Xms4G -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseNUMA -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=15 -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=30 -XX:GCPauseIntervalMillis=150 -XX:+UseAdaptiveGCBoundary -XX:-UseGCOverheadLimit -XX:+UseBiasedLocking -XX:SurvivorRatio=8 -XX:TargetSurvivorRatio=90 -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=15 -Dfml.ignorePatchDiscrepancies=true -Dfml.ignoreInvalidMinecraftCertificates=true -XX:+UseFastAccessorMethods -XX:+UseCompressedOops -XX:+OptimizeStringConcat -XX:+AggressiveOpts -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=2048m -XX:+UseCodeCacheFlushing -XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=10000 -XX:ParallelGCThreads=2

This pack is also CPU-heavy, as there are lots of block updates to calculate and trace. In a single-player or server-client setup make sure the server is fairly quick and robust in terms of CPU. Of course clients in a server-client setup don't need to worry about the CPU so much.

Non-Curseforge mods:
GalacticraftCore-1.12.2-4.0.2.281: https://micdoodle8.com/mods/galacticraft
Galacticraft-Planets-1.12.2-4.0.2.281: https://micdoodle8.com/mods/galacticraft
MicdoodleCore-1.12.2-4.0.2.281: https://micdoodle8.com/mods/galacticraft
Sound Physics 1.12.2: https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/2771480-sound-physics-realistic-sound-reverberation
 
Recommended Optifine version: OptiFine_1.12.2_HD_U_G5
 
Recommended settings:
These are shipped with the pack via a mod and config. Feel free to adjust if you like.