Dinosaur!

Not to be confused with Dinosaurs! or Dinosaur.

Dinosaur!'s opening credits

Dinosaur! is an American television documentary about dinosaurs. It was first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985.^[1] Years later, in 1991, another documentary entitled Dinosaur!, not related with that one, was hosted on A&E by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite.^[2]

Content

Directed by Robert Guenette and written by Steven Paul Mark Dinosaur! was hosted by American actor Christopher Reeve, who became famous some years sooner thanks to his leading role of Superman. Jointly with Reeve's narration the documentary shows special effects scenes (which reconstruct dinosaurs and their era) all along with paleontologists interviews, the most famous at the time of the documentary shooting. Some of those paleontologists were Jack Horner and Robert Bakker (Americans) and Dale Russell (Canadian). The show starts with the mating of Hadrosaurus. The female soon lays a clutch of eggs that are eaten by a Struthiomimus, except for one. When the Struthiomimus eats the egg it stole, it is then hunted and killed by a pair of Deinonychus. The remaining Hadrosaurus egg hatches and grows into a teenage dinosaur. While it is out grazing with its parents, it wanders off and almost gets killed by a Tyrannosaurus rex. But the parents hear its cries and knock the Tyrannosaurus over with their strong tails. That night, the T-Rex manages to kill a Hadrosaurus and obtain a meal. Next morning, a herd of Monoclonius is seen grazing. One member wanders off into the forest in search of flowers. The T-Rex shows up and starts to stalk it. It steps on a stick, making the Monoclonius wary. Soon night falls, and it tries to find the herd. It soon stumbles upon the remains of the eaten Hadrosaurus and becomes scared. The Tyrannosaurus then ambushes it and bites hard on its back. The Monoclonius breaks free and stabs the Tyrannosaurus in the shin. But all that does is anger the predator. The Monoclonius becomes cornered and is killed by one deadly bite. Next day, a herd of Apatosaurus are busy eating from trees. They use their long necks to reach the branches. The next morning, all seems calm. Suddenly, a huge meteorite crashes into Earth and kills the dinosaurs. After that, a small mouse-like mammal is seen climbing out of a dead Tyrannosaurus skull, signaling the start of mammals ruling the Earth.

Origins of the project

Before becoming a full length television documentary Dinosaur! was a 1984 ten minutes long experimental sequence.^[3] Entirely conceived and created by Phil Tippett the sequence was titled Prehistoric Beast and tried to improve go motion animation special effects techniques. The story of the short was simple : the chase and predation of a Monoclonius by a Tyrannosaurus. This short animated movie was only released in specialized animation festivals, but it convinced Robert Guenette and Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order to transform it in a full length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realise new sequences with other dinosaur species, like Hadrosaurus, Deinonychus, Struthiomimus, Brontosaurus (this genus is called Brontosaurus in the documentary although the nowadays scientific consensus name it Apatosaurus) and also additional images of an asteroid, the one supposed to have crashed into the Earth, causing the dinosaur's extinction. Adding all this new material to the material from Prehistoric Beast the editing resulted in the 1985 Dinosaur! documentary. Tippett had yet participated in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) animating the tauntauns seen in the movie, and his experimental work on Prehistoric Beast and Dinosaur! served to the animated dinosaurs sequences he made some years later for Jurassic Park (1993).

Shooting, airings and VHS releases

Dinosaur! was mainly shot in New York City and Los Angeles, and in some fossiliferous locations of the United States as well. Christopher Reeve was a dino fan and demonstrated his enthusiasm for the shooting by flying with his own plane to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and requesting himself the re-shooting of several scenes.

Some excerpts from old movies were shown in Dinosaur! in order to explain how popular were dinosaurs in cinema. One of those excerpts came from the movie King Kong (1933). On this King Kong scene a character pronounces the words "prehistoric beast", which is the title chosen by Phil Tippett for his experimental short, before becoming a full length documentary. Titled Dinosaur!, that documentary was finally aired on CBS on November 5, 1985.

Dinosaur! aired again on the Disney Channel during the 1990s before it went from being a premium pay channel on cable to a standard channel. It had a VHS release on May 5, 1993 by Lionsgate Entertainment.

Legacy

Some footage of Dinosaur! would be re-dubbed with different sound effects and music in the Original 3-D Dinosaur Adventure for MS-DOS operating systems by Knowledge Adventure. It was used in again the 1995 and 1996 Windows remake of the game.

Awards

• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects (1986)

See also

• Prehistoric Beast
• Dinosaur

Notes and references

1. ^ 1980s section from Primeval Time, a dinosaurs documentaries specialised website
2. ^ 'Dinosaur!', with Walter Cronkite, on Youtube
3. ^ Prehistoric Beast digital restoration, as published on April 6 2011 by the Phil Tippett Studio's official channel in Youtube

External links

• Dinosaur! at the Internet Movie Database
• Prehistoric Beast at the Internet Movie Database
• Overview of the Dinosaur Documentary