Walking with Dinosaurs

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Disputed
The factual accuracy of part of this article is disputed.
The dispute is about the imposition of information from the Walking with Dinosaurs book on descriptions of the program, which, in general, should align to what is shown/said, with, at most, footnotes referring to the book.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.

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

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

Head of a wounded Postosuchus
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.

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

An Ornitholestes
An Ornitholestes
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.

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

Two Ophthalmosaurus
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. The opening portrays a Liopleurodon snatching a Eustreptospondylus from the land, but there is no evidence of this ever occurring. (According to the producers, they were influenced by similar attacks Killer Whales do on land creatures.) 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.

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

Ornithocheirus
Ornithocheirus
Filming locations: New Zealand, Tasmania
Conditions: Sea and coastlands.

It stars an elderly male Ornithocheirus, a large pterosaur, 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.

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
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 Leaellynasaura which had died in the winter. During the summer a dwarf 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.

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.

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

Big Al.
Big Al.

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

Main article: Prehistoric Park

Main article: Chased By dinosaurs

Main article: Sea Monsters

  • A Liopleurodon tilts the camera with its flipper.
  • A Tyrannosaurus roars at the camera, which completely covers it with its saliva.

  • A baby Allosaurus bumps the camera.

  • At the end of the episode, a Plateosaurus frightens away a Coelophysis. In the book, a Postosuchus attacks the herd and loses.
  • Near the end of the episode, the Coelophysis gather around a waterhole. In the book, this happens earlier.
  • In the book, the first thing to happen is the Postosuchus attack.

  • In the programme, the female Diplodocus's lifespan shown was: 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. In the book, it was: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, 12 years.
  • The Diplodocus age faster in the book.
  • In the series, the Allosaurus attack occurs on the 3rd year. In the book, it occurs on the 4th year.
  • The Stegosaurus kills nothing in the book.

  • In the book, the Liopleurodon attack occurs much later.
  • In the book, the Cryptoclidus catches a pterosaur. In the episode, instead, it catches fish.
  • In the book, the female Liopleurodon does not appear.

  • Ornithocheirus cannibalism doesn't exist in the book.
  • In the episode, the lead female Utahraptor attacks the Iguanodon with no injury. In the book, she is injured by the thumb spike.
  • In the episode, the Tapejara ignore the Ornithocherius. In the book, they try to drive him off.

  • In the episode, the lead female Leaellynasaura is killed by the allosaur. In the book, she dies of frostbite.
  • In the book, all the Leaellynasaura chicks survive.
  • In the book, the Muttaburrasaurus don't get lost.

  • Dromaeosaurus and Parksosaurus are not in the book.
  • The Quetzalcoatlus gets eaten by a group of Deinosuchus in the book after a futile struggle. In the program there's only one Deinosuchus and the Quetzalcoatlus escapes without fighting back at all.

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). [1]

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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 expense of factual accuracy, citing many examples of predation, defenses against predation and even cannibalism as examples of violence in the series[citation needed]. In the initial U.S. broadcasts of the series, a few 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. The DVD contains the original UK broadcast, so the omitted scenes were restored.

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

A live theatrical adaptation was created and began touring around Australia in early 2007 (starting in Sydney's Acer Arena). The show itself features life size mechanical dinosaurs operated by teams of puppeteers and drivers as well as music by James Brett.

It was produced by Malcolm Cooke & Jill Bryant and directed by Scott Faris. The leading role of the palentologist (Huxley) was played by both Bruce Spence & Felix Nobis.

The dinosaurs featured were:

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].

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 the accompanies Walking with Monsters and Walking with Beasts.

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.

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.

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, Mammuthus, Smilodon, Microraptor, Arthropleura and Deinosuchus for a prehistoric animal zoo known as Prehistoric Park.

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.

There is a free downloadable game available at the bbc website. It is called Dinosaur World.


Impossible Pictures Productions
Land of Giants • Ocean Odyssey • Perfect Disaster • Pickles: The Dog who Won the World Cup • Prehistoric Park • Primeval • Sea Monsters
Space Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets • The Ballad of Big Al • The Giant Claw • The Lost World • The Legend of the Tamworth Two
The Story of One • T. rex - 100 Years in Pictures • Walking with Beasts • Walking with Dinosaurs • Walking with Monsters
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