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Walking with Dinosaurs

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Walking with Dinosaurs is a 1999 six-part television series produced by the BBC, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. In North America, the series was screened on the Discovery Channel, with Branagh's voice replaced with that of Avery Brooks.

The series uses computer-generated imagery and animatronics to recreate the life of the Mesozoic, showing dinosaurs in a way that previously had only been seen in the feature film Jurassic Park, six years earlier. The series was a commercial success and was praised by scientists [citation needed], having used paleontologists such as Peter Dodson, Peter Larson and James Farlow as advisors (their influence in the filming process can be seen in the documentary Walking with Dinosaurs - The Making Of).

The Guinness Book of World Records reports that the series was the most expensive documentary series per minute ever made [1]

Contents

[edit] Episodes

[edit] "New Blood"

The first episode filmed and broadcast. 220 Million Years Ago — Late Triassic; Arizona

Head of a wounded Postosuchus
Filming location: New Caledonia
Conditions: semi-desert with short rainy season. In the year of the episode, the rains are late.

This episode follows a female Coelophysis as she tries to survive in the dry season. She trails a herd of Placerias, looking for weak members of the herd. Pterosaurs known as Peteinosaurus splash in the little water that is left. A female Postosuchus also follows the Placerias, and the Coelophysis finds a burrow of Thrinaxodon, trying to get at the young. At night, the pair of Thrinaxodon eat their remaining young, then move away. If the Coelophysis keep on disturbing them, they will not be at peace for a long time. The Postosuchus is slashed by a Placeras's tusks, and is later beaten out of her territory by a male Postosuchus. Wounded, sick and without a territory, she is feasted on by a pack of Coelophysis, unable to defend herself. Finally, the wet season comes again, and the Coelophysis have survived, along with the Thrinaxodon pair. A herd of huge Plateosaurus arrive scaring the female Coelophysis.

[edit] "Time of the Titans"

The second episode to be filmed and broadcast. 152 Million Years Ago — Late Jurassic — Colorado

Image:Allosaurus wwd.jpg
Filming locations: Redwood National Park, Chile, Tasmania, New Zealand
Conditions: warm with mixture of forest and fern-prairies.

This episode follows a young female Diplodocus as she grows up. Her siblings are burnt in a forest fire, eaten by two Allosaurus and an Ornitholestes and accidentally speared by a Stegosaurus tail spikes. She, in time, along with her only surviving sibling, finds a herd and joins it. The plains are also home to other herbivores, like Brachiosaurus, Dryosaurus, while small pterosaurs called Anurognathus feast on their parasites. At the end, an Allosaurus attacks the Diplodocus, but she is saved when a larger Diplodocus tail lashes the Allosaurus.

[edit] "Cruel Sea"

The third episode filmed and broadcast. 149 Million Years Ago — Late Jurassic — Oxfordshire

Two Ophthalmosaurus
Filming locations: Bahamas, New Caledonia
Conditions: shallow tropical sea with small islands.

The Ophthalmosaurus breeding ceremony is the main event of the episode, but sharks and other predators, including Liopleurodon are on the hunt. In the end of the episode, a typhoon kills many Rhamphorhynchus, and washes the Liopleurodon ashore and it dies suffocated by its weight. Most of the Cryptoclidus survive and manage to make it back into the ocean.

An artistic touch in this episode is that when the Liopleurodon rips a rival female's rear left flipper, one of his own flippers tilts the camera upwards.

[edit] "Giant of the Skies"

The fourth episode filmed and broadcast. 127 Million Years Ago — Early Cretaceous — Young Atlantic Ocean (Brazil, Cantabria)

Image:Giantoftheskies.jpg
Filming locations: New Zealand, Tasmania
Conditions: Sea and coastlands.

It stars an elderly male Ornithocheirus, a big pterosaur like a Pteranodon, who is on his way back from South America to the island of Cantabria in Europe to mate. He passes a nesting colony of Tapejara. He reaches the north tip of South America and crosses sea to North America. He passes a herd of Iguanodon who were migrating along a beach. He travels from America to Europe across the young Atlantic Ocean. He reaches a European island, which in the book of the series is named Cornubia. He passes a herd of Iguanodon, who are being preyed on by a pack of Utahraptor. Eventually, the Ornithocheirus reaches his breeding site, but fails to get a mate as he cannot land in the best place in the middle of the breeding site, because on the way he had been delayed (by having to shelter from a storm under a cliff overhang) and the site was taken. In the end, he perishes on a beach of hunger, exhaustion, heat stress and old age.

[edit] "Spirits of the Ice Forest"

The fifth episode filmed and broadcast. 106 Million Years Ago — Middle Cretaceous, in the rift valley where Australia is beginning to separate from Antarctica.

Conditions: Forest dominated by podocarps, very near South Pole (the sun did not rise for 5 months in the winter). The lopsided arrangement of the continents keeps ocean currents and strong monsoon winds blowing across the polar area, keeping it free of icecap and warm enough for forests to grow.
Head of Steropodon
Filming location: New Zealand

This episode focuses on a flock of Leaellynasaura who are trying to survive the freezing winter and breed in the summer. The episode runs from end of winter to the next end of winter. At the beginning a Koolasuchus eats a Leaellynosaura which had died in the winter. During the summer an Allosaur hunts the Leaellynasaura and the Muttaburrasaurus. The Leaellynasaura usually escape, but during the noise and trampling and confusion caused by the Muttaburrasaurus migrating away north for the winter, the Allosaur catches and eats the female of the Leaellynasauras' alpha pair. Other predators like Koolasuchus are on the hunt for the Leaellynasaura.

[edit] "Death of a Dynasty"

The sixth episode filmed and broadcast. 65.5 Million Years Ago — Late Cretaceous — Montana

Conditions: Areas of low herbaceous plant cover, and forest, affected by volcanism. The episode shows some effects of the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid impact.
Filming locations: Chile, New Zealand

This episode starts several months before the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to the book, the forests were shrinking and the Pierre Seaway between Laramidia and Appalachia was slowly drying up from the north. The first Tyrannosaurus seen is male. The main character is a female Tyrannosaurus, who abandons her nest because all the eggs in it were infertile or dead-in-shell. She mates and nests again, lays 12 eggs, of which 3 hatch. One of the babies disappears, most likely eaten by the other two. The mother is wounded by a blow from an Ankylosaurus's tail-club and dies later of internal injuries and a broken femur. Her babies die when all the dinosaurs are destroyed by the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

Another artistic touch was shown here. Near the beginning, after the female Tyrannosaurus catches the Didelphodon, she turns towards the camera and roars at it, getting steam on the lens.

[edit] Walking With... Specials

Several specials were created in the wake of the original series' popularity.

[edit] The Ballad of Big Al

Image:Allo.JPG

Produced in 2000, this two-part documentary follows the life of a 145 million year old Allosaurus, called Big Al, a dinosaur who "lived fast and died young" because he only lived for six years. The first episode covers the 6 years of Al's life from Birth to death during the late Jurassic period, and sees the possible events that happened while he was young, while the later years of his life covers the events which led to his death. The second episode covers the science involved that brought Big Al to life. It is also known as Allosaurus: a Walking with Dinosaurs Special.

Conditions: conifer and Cycad forest and dry, shrubby fields Film locations: Utah and Arizona

  • There was an artistic touch shown here. A baby Allosaurus bumps the camera.

[edit] Chased by Dinosaurs

This program features Nigel Marven as a time-traveller who encounters dinosaurs in the wild. The three-part series featured Nigel and his "team of fellow explorers" encountering dinosaurs over a large range of time, and seeing creatures not featured in the original series.

[edit] "Land of Giants"

Nigel travels back in time with his film crew. He sees a herd of Argentinosaurus crossing a salt flat to get to a vegetated area round a lake where they will breed, but predators are obstacles on the way, including Giganotosaurus. At one point, an Argentinosaurus is persuaded to walk onto an array of heavy-duty weighing scales intended for weighing lorries, hidden under leaf-litter: the resulting weight is 92 tons.

100 Million Years Ago — Middle Cretaceous — Argentina

Conditions: volcanic ash fields and conifer forest

Filming Locations: Tenerife, Canary Islands

[edit] "The Giant Claw"

Nigel searches the early Mongolia deserts and forests for Therizinosaurus, who has massive and very long claws. On his journey, Nigel dashes across a nesting ground of Protoceratops into a forest ruled by Velociraptor and then into the path of a Tarbosaurus. Nigel then finds that Theirizinosaurus is a herbivore that uses its sickle-claws to hook tree and bush branches towards its mouth. He then finds a Therizinosaurus caught in a duel with Tarbosaurus (the Therizinosaurus wins)

75 Million Years Ago — Late Cretaceous — Mongolia

Conditions: Desert, and dense forest growing on the sand dunes.

Filming locations: Egypt, Fraser Island, Australia

[edit] Other titles in the series

[edit] Acclaim

In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted on by industry professionals, Walking With Dinosaurs was placed 72nd.

The series won three Emmy Awards, including Best Animated Program (For More Than One Hour). <ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214382/awards</ref>

[edit] Criticism

Critics of the series have claimed that some of the episodes tend to be overly gory, and to rely on shock and horror at the expence of factual accuracy, citing many examples of predation, defenses against predation and even cannibalism as examples of violence in the series [citation needed]. However, such examples of violence are seen in the natural world as well as other nature documentaries (carnivores eat other animals, several species engage in acts of cannibalism, other species defend themselves with clubs, spikes and spines, etc), and none are depicted with any of the gore beyond what is found in nature. In the initial U.S. broadcasts of the series, a few questionably graphic scenes were omitted from some of the episodes. The most notable deletions were a shot of the Cynodont pair devouring their offspring, and a scene where a dead-in-shell Tyrannosaurus embryo is preyed upon by a pair of Didelphodon. These scenes were probably removed from the U.S. broadcast as to not offend families with children (Discovery Channel was promoting Walking With Dinosaurs alongside Disney's Dinosaur at the time). The DVD contains the original UK broadcast, so the omitted scenes were restored.

[edit] Spin-offs

The popularity of Walking With Dinosaurs led to numerous spin-offs in various media.

[edit] Book

A book was written by Tim Haines to accompany the first screening of the series in 1999. The settings of some of the six episodes were changed between the time the book was written and the screening of the television series, and some of their names were changed: 'New Blood' is set at Ghost Ranch; 'Cruel Sea' is set at or near Solnhofen in Germany near what then were the Vindelicisch Islands [2].

[edit] Encyclopedia

Tim Haines has also written a Walking With... encyclopedia known as The Complete Guide To Prehistoric Life, featuring most animals from the series, including the specials, and accompanies Walking with Monsters.

[edit] Prehistoric Planet

A child-oriented reversion of this series was released in America under the title Prehistoric Planet for the Discovery Kids Saturday morning line-up on NBC, with new naration read by Ben Stiller and Christian Slater over the same visuals. This version cut out the majority of the "violence" of the original.

[edit] The Walking With series

Tim Haines's direct follow-up to the series was Walking with Beasts, set in the Cenozoic era. This series featured extinct mammals and birds like Indricotherium and Gastornis. In 2005 the prequel Walking with Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs was produced.

[edit] Specials

Chased By Dinosaurs, featuring Nigel Marven, stars Argentinosaurus and Therizinosaurus in two episodes in which Nigel tries to track down the biggest dinosaurs and the longest claws. The Ballad Of Big Al follows the life of an Allosaurus. Nigel returns in Sea Monsters Trilogy, trying to survive the seven most dangerous seas of all time and meet the dangerous sea predators of the past -- Cameroceras, Cymbospondylus, Dunkleosteus , Basilosaurus, Megalodon, Liopleurodon and Tylosaurus. Nigel also stars in the latest special: Prehistoric Park, six episodes in which Nigel tries to collect Tyrannosaurus, mammoths, Smilodon, Microraptor, Arthropleura and Deinosuchus for a prehistoric animal zoo known as Prehistoric Park.

[edit] The Lost World

Main article: The Lost World (2001 film)

For Christmas, 2001, the BBC produced a two-part dramatization of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, starring Bob Hoskins as Professor Challenger, and using several of the computer models used in the Walking With Dinosaurs series to create the dinosaurs.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

es:Walking with Dinosaurs he:ללכת עם דינוזאורים (סדרה דוקומנטרית) hu:Dinoszauruszok, a Föld urai nl:Walking with Dinosaurs fi:Matkalla dinosaurusten kanssa pt:Walking with Dinosaurs

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