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More than 40 individuals of Placerias were found in one place southeast of the Petrified Forest National Park in St. John, Arizona. Requested by ninjakingofhearts Walking with Dinosaurs is owned by BBC.

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Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) is a BBCSpeculative Documentary series focusing on... well... dinosaurs, using state-of-the-art CGI to recreate Mesozoic life. It was narrated by Kenneth Branagh, and is the first entry in the Walking with Dinosaurs franchise.

Six episodes present six different parts of the reign of the dinosaurs - from their birth in the Triassic Period, to their extinction. These episodes are:

• New Blood: (220 MYA, Arizona) The age of the mammal-like reptiles such as Placerias and Postosuchus is coming to an end. In their place, the dinosaurs have evolved. The episode focuses on a female Coelophysis who must endure a severe drought that tests who will remain to claim the Earth.
• Time of the Titans: (152 MYA, Colorado) The Jurassic plains of Colorado are teeming with giant sauropods and theropod dinosaurs. A female Diplodocus must struggle to survive the many dangers that plague her and her siblings as they mature to adulthood, where they are destined to join a herd of their own kind.

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• Cruel Sea: (149 MYA, Oxfordshire) In the Jurassic Period, much of Europe was reduced to an ocean with scattered islands. A new brood of Opthalmosaurus take refuge in a coral reef after their birth, but they must remain cautious, because a gigantic Liopleurodon is preying on predator and prey alike.
• Giant of the Skies: (127 MYA, the Americas and Europe) At the dawn of the Cretaceous Period, an elderly Ornithocheirus embarks on a world-spanning journey to his old breeding grounds in Europe for the annual courtship. On his way, he encounters massive herds of Iguanodon, hungry packs of Utahraptor, and an unforeseen adversary that is an omen of the all-too-rapidly approaching future.
• Spirits of the Ice Forest: (106 MYA, Antarctica) In the mid-Cretaceous, Antarctica was not the frozen hellhole we know it as today; dinosaurs survived there year-round. A clan of Leallynasaura spends the spring and summer breeding, until an unforeseen tragedy cripples them on the eve of the approaching Antarctic winter.

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• Death of a Dynasty: (65 MYA, Montana) It is the end of the Cretaceous Period, and while the dinosaurs are still around, they find themselves in decline as their planet begins to suffocate them to extinction. As their world is on the brink of collapse, a female Tyrannosaurus attempts to start a new clutch of eggs, but even her ferocity is no match for the dinosaurs' nemesis that arrives from space.

See also:

For the 2013 film that shares its' name with this series, please look here.

• Adaptation Expansion: The accompanying book Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History contains a lot of additional information about geography of the world dinosaurs lived in, elaborates on some speculative concepts only briefly mentioned in the TV series, and introduces new ones. The book even introduced some creatures that weren't shown in the TV series.
• Adapted Out: For obvious reasons, a lot of animals had to be adapted out of the arena spectacular, but it's noteworthy in that it cuts four of the eight protagonist animals out of the story: Coelophysis, Diplodocus, Liopleurodon and Leallynasaura. Coelophysis actually gets replaced by Liliensternus.
• All There in the Manual: More than a few species not named in the TV show appear in the aforementioned book.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Happens on several occasions. Perhaps the most memorable of which was the huge marine reptile Liopleurodon snatching the medium-sized carnivorous dinosaur Eustreptospondylus from the shore. Also an example of another trope since Liopleurodon was probably closer to 4.5-6.5 meters rather than the absurd 25 meters noted in the episode.
  • In the companion book, a lungfish eats a crayfish, only to be caught by a Coelophysis.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • In 'New Blood', the Plateosaurus is not only geographically displaced, but temporally as well, although minor, as it is known only from the late Norian while the episode is set during the mid Norian. The unnamed cynodont is identified in supplementary material as Thrinaxodon, but this genus is only known from the Early Triassic (of South Africa and Antarctica).
  • In 'Cruel Seas', Liopleurodon, Eustreptospondylus, Cryptoclidus, and Ophthalmosaurus had already become extinct by the time the episode is set (most of them lived during the Middle Jurassic or the very beginning of the Late Jurassic, while the episode is set near the end of the Late Jurassic).
  • In 'Giant of The Skies', both Ornithocheirus and Tapejara (or more accuratelyTropeognathus and Tupandactylus) lived several million years after the episode is set (the episode is set near the end of the Barremian stage, while the pterosaurs are known from the beginning of the Albian, about fifteen million years apart). The pliosaur that makes a cameo is also identified on the website as Plesiopleurodon, a genus which lived even later, during the start of the Late Cretaceous.
  • In 'Spirits of the Ice Forest', both Leaellynasaura and Koolasuchus lived before the episode is set. In the case of Leaellynasaura this is relatively minor, but for Koolasuchus this is a more major error, as by this time in Australia's history, crocodilians had arrived on the continent and probably driven them to extinction as is stated in the episode.
  • In 'Death of a Dynasty', the 'one-ton crocodile' is identified as Deinosuchus, the unnamed snake as Dinilysia, and the unnamed dromaeosaurid as Dromaeosaurus in supplementary material, all of which had become extinct several million years before the end of the Cretaceous. In the case of the dromaeosaurid, it became Accidentally Correct Zoology with the later discovery of Dakotaraptor, a very similar raptor to the one in the episode (but which had feathers) that did live at the end of the Cretaceous in that region.
• Animated Actors: During the behind the scenes segment, the dinosaurs are shown with Medium Awareness, with one short clip showing the T. rex having its colours painted on with mock paint buckets and 'spare parts', another with an animator sculpting a raptor from the living animal and asking it to stand still.
  Utahraptor: Hmm... Who did I find it most difficult to work with? Animators, definitely animators. You know, chase this dinosaur, chase that dinosaur, you'd swear we couldn't act. It's so degrading!
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Averted, quite a few species kill members of their own kind. The small carnivorous dinosaur Coelophysis is an excellent example. The cynodonts (the ancestors of mammals) make another example.
  • The Coelophysis example is due to the classic (but now mostly discredited) interpretation of what appeared to be remains of young Coelophysis in the ribcage of some adults of the same species; it's not an invention of the show, while the Cynodont one is invented.
• Apocalypse Wow: The meteor impact scene in 'Death of a Dynasty' is pretty awesome, and much more realistically shown than most other portraits in other documentaries, with the correct sequence of events: first the light, then the earth tremor, then the dust cloud and wind-storms, finally the melted rocks from the sky.
• Art Evolution: If you count the two shows as being related, then compare the T. rex in the original series◊ and the ones in Prehistoric Park◊ (the same thing about the 'sabretooth cat').
• Artistic License – Paleontology: There are plenty of mess-ups.
  • Apparently some paleontologists strongly criticized the scene from the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs where Postosuchus was shown urinating in a way more similar to that of mammals than that of reptiles and birds, despite it was an ancient relative of both crocs and dinos - so strongly in fact, that one of the series' scientific consultants, Prof. Michael Benton, decided to address their criticism. The relevant bit: 'Another category of WWD-haters, the fact checkers, began compiling lists of errors in the first week. These were gleefully circulated on the e-mail lists. For example, in the first programme, Postosuchus urinates copiously. There is no doubt that it does so in the programme, and this was a moment that my children relished. However, of course, birds and crocodiles, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, do not urinate; they shed their waste chemicals as more solid uric acid. Equally, though, we can’t prove that Postosuchus did not urinate like this: copious urination is the primitive state for tetrapods (seen in fishes, amphibians, turtles, and mammals), and it might have been retained by some basal archosaurs.'
  • Also, Dr. Darren Naish is known to stronglydislike the WWD reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus.
  • Scaly raptors weren't to the paleontologists' liking even back then.
  • Reusing models meant that some correct anatomical details that got carried over from one animal to the other suddenly turned erroneous. Case in point: the thumbs on hadrosaurs.
  • The book accompanying the series implies that birds are no more related to theropods than ceratopsians are to pachycephalosaurs.
  • The Complete Guide to Prehistoris Life claims that megalosaurs are carnosaurs, when they're more likely a more primitive branch.
  • Coelophysis and Plateosaurus never existed at the same time, but in this case it was truly an artistic decision, just to show how the former grew into the giant beast later in the Triassic.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Walking with Dinosaurs, the young Diplodocus is attacked by an Allosaurus and is saved when another Diplodocus knocks the Allosaurus down with its tail.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • 'Time of the Titans': The female Diplodocus has survived to maturity and is well on her way to growing too large to be preyed upon. However, only one of her many siblings has survived from birth alongside her, and the narrator notes that life on Earth will never again be as large as the sauropods once they go extinct.
  • 'Cruel Sea': The young Opthalmosaurus survive the odds and venture off into the ocean, but the old Liopleurodon has died a slow painful death from being beached.
  • 'Spirits of the Ice Forest': The Leallynasaura clan has survived the brutal winter and is finding a new alpha to replace the one that perished. The narrator notes that soon, Antarctica will become the icy hell it's known as year-round, dooming the local dinosaurs.
  • Ultimately the ending to the series with the K-Pg Extinction event—the prehistoric dinosaurs are gone for good, but their lineage lives on in the birds and their extinction paved the way for the mammals (and by extension humans) to take over in their stead.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Several scenes of mild or implied violence and death from the TV series were described in rather graphic detail in the accompanying book Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History. Compare, for example, the scene of fight between female Tyrannosaurus and the armoured herbivore Ankylosaurus from the TV series with their fight in the book. Meanwhile, the poor Ornithocheirus—as if he hadn't suffered enough—dies not just of exhaustion, but of more or less getting torn apart by the rival males!
• Book-Ends:
  • The ending to the last episode of Walking With Monsters, the last series entry in the franchise (since by now, all the major eras of Earth's history have been covered, so there's nothing left to tell) echoes the end of the first episode of Walking With Dinosaurs. It even has the same music.
  • The first dinosaur we see (during the scenes in the first episode which outline what the series is going to be about) is a Tyrannosaurus. The last dinosaurs to be shown (unless you count the shots of modern birds at the end) are two juvenile Tyrannosaurus, who get swept away by the blast wave from the comet strike.
• Colony Drop: At the end of 'Death of a Dynasty,' naturally.
• Darker and Edgier: The book is far more brutal than the television series.
• A Day in the Limelight: The Ballad of Big Al serves as this for Allosaurus, which originally only featured as an 'antagonist' in 'Time of the Titans'.
• Dying Alone: Poor Ornithocheirus.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Tupandactylus navigans (the pterosaur that the Tapejara was based on) was not formally described until several years after the series aired (it was described as a species of Tapejara in 2003 and moved to its own genus in 2007). The large Ornithocheirus (now Tropeognathus) specimen that provided the basis for the (still exaggerated) giant size stated in the show wasn't described until 2012.
• Eats Babies: The Coelophysis, cynodonts, Allosaurus, Didelphodon, andcHell Creek dromaeosaurids all get to feed on babies and juveniles. In some cases, those of their own kind. (Or even their own.)
  • Inverted with Ornithocheirus. The final scene in 'Giant of the Skies' shows a juvenile Ornithocheirus eating one of the adult males which died during the mating rituals.
    But nature is seldom wasteful. They have become food for the next generation.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: The developers originally wanted to do a show about prehistoric mammals. They only got money for one about dinosaurs. Once the dinosaurs series was finished (and a success) they could accomplish their original goal.
• Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: The ammonites from Cruel Sea.
• Feathered Fiend: The primitive bird Iberomesornis in Giant of the Skies fit the Zerg Rush type of this.
  • Technically also Ornitholestes, Utahraptor, and the Late Cretaceous dromaeosaurids, even though many of them were depicted as unfeathered or only sparsely feathered.
• Foregone Conclusion: The dinosaurs did go extinct and the episode is called 'Death of a Dynasty' after all.
  • The death of the old Ornithocheirus. The first thing we see is his body, and rest of the episode shows his last journey before he died.
• Gasshole: One of the Diplodocus is heard farting during the digestion of plant matter, while the narrator says 'The activity in its gut produces a lot of excess gas'.
• Giant Flyer: Several giant pterosaurs (the correct name instead of 'pterodactyl'). From the first series, both Ornithocheirus (oversized) and Quetzalcoatlus (not oversized) had a wingspan of 45 feet.
• Graceful in Their Element:
  • The Cryptoclidus is clumsy on land, but graceful in the water.
  • All of the featured pterosaurs (now debunked due to Science Marches On); cumbersome and ungainly on the ground, expert flyers in the air.
• Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: The meteor at the end of the Cretaceous. It explodes with a power of 300.000.000 Hiroshima bombs.
• How We Got Here: 'Giant of the Skies' opens on the corpse of the Ornithocheirus, and the rest of the episode shows us his last few weeks of life.
• I Am A Humanitarian: Several creatures throughout the series are either seen eating their own kind or are mentioned to do so.
  • When their burrow is besieged by the Coelophysis, the Cynodonts, having already lost one pup to the dinosaurs, are forced to eat the remaining two in order to both cheat the Coelophysis of their meal and give themselves the chance to escape.
  • The Coelophysis themselves also turn to cannibalism when the going gets tough, though the fossil evidence which inspired this scene was later found to have been misinterpreted.
  • The narration mentions that adult Opthalmosaurus will sometimes eat the offspring of others to increase their own young's chances of survival.
  • At the end of the Ornithocheirus mating season, the bodies of males who have 'lost out in the struggle to reproduce' are eaten by juvenile Ornithocheirus.
  • The mother Tyrannosaurus in the final episode will, according to the narration, quickly come to view her offspring as 'food', though this turns out to be a moot point as she is fatally injured by an Ankylosaurus's club-like tail. It is also implied that the weakest of the Tyrannosaurus babies was killed and eaten by its siblings.
• Infant Immortality: Averted on a grand scale.
  • New Blood contained the deaths of all the cynodont young (one by being eaten by the Coelophysis, the rest eaten by their own parents in the uncut UK Broadcast/DVD). The Coelophysis themselves are also cannibals.
  • 'Time of the Titans', obviously, with all the Diplodocus youngsters (called 'sauropodlets' in the show), very few of whom reach adulthood, the rest having either fallen victim to other dinosaurs (mostly predators, though one is killed when it gets in the way of a Stegosaurus's spiked tail) or died in a forest fire. Even more so in the book, where only one survives.
  • 'Cruel Sea' focuses on a generation of young Opthalmosaurus, a fish-like marine reptile belonging to the ichthyosaur group. The one we mostly follow manages to avoid death by storms, sharks, and drowning, but it's implied that most of his fellows aren't so lucky. There's also the very, very graphic instance of Death by Childbirth, in which neither mother nor baby Opthalmosaurus are left alive.
  • 'Spirits of the Ice Forest'. Although many of the Leaellynasaura clan mate and lay eggs, the only ones that survive long enough to hatch are those laid by the dominant female. Even then, two out of the three hatchlings are killed (offscreen) by predators.
  • 'Death of a Dynasty' has, (besides the orphaned Tyrannosaurus young killed by the meteor at the end) the Triceratops-like Torosaurus young killed by dromaeosaurids (commonly known as 'raptors') and an implied death of a picked on Tyrannosaurus. And if it counts: the small mammal Didelphodon eating the eggs.
    • In the original cut, the female tyrannosaur goes into heat because a leak of volcanic gas kills her first litter of eggs before they hatch. Then two Didelphodon come and try to eat the almost-formed tyrannosaur embryos.
• Just Before the End: The final episode begins a few months before the meteor arrives, but the narration makes clear that even without it, dinosaurs and their ilk are on the decline. The environment, turning sparse and poisonous, is killing them faster than they can reproduce.
• Kill 'Em All: The series ends with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, killing 75% of life on Earth.
• Land Down Under: Cretaceous Australia spends half the year frozen solid, with no sunlight whatsoever during that period.
• Leitmotif: The Utahraptor pack is accompanied by tribal drums during their ambush on the Iguanodon herd.
• The Magic Goes Away: Death of a Dynasty.
• Mama Bear: The female Tyrannosaurus. Deconstructed, as her valiant attempt to scare an Ankylosaurus away from her infants ends up killing her, and it's implied that her babies would have starved to death without her to protect them. Only implied, because they're soon killed by the meteorite anyway.
  • The female Tyrannosaurus also displays the trait in the live arena show, when she scares away a Torosaurus and an Ankylosaurus that are harassing her baby.
• Misplaced Wildlife: European dinosaurs Plateosaurus, and Polacanthus and the equally European pterosaurs Peteinosaurus and Anurognathus, all placed in North America in the show, not to mention Utahraptor, of all things, in Europe. The Peteinosaurus and Plateosaurus examples may be justified, since they lived at the time of Pangaea. They could easily have migrated from Europe into North America or vice versa, although no fossil evidence of this has been found. Polacanthus in North America may be based on the genus Hoplitosaurus, an ankylosaur often referred to by the European genus. The American narration refers to the ankylosaur as Gastonia, a similar animal from the proper time and place.
• Mood Whiplash: In the arena show, the mother Tyrannosaurus scares away the Torosaurus and Ankylosaurus harassing her baby. The mother and her baby then share a cute little moment where she goes around roaring at the audience and he tries to mimic her, with underwhelming results. They nuzzle a bit, and then the comet hits.
• Narrator: Kenneth Branagh. He was dubbed over for some releases. In the American dub, Avery Brooks takes over.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: In 'Death of a Dynasty', a large crocodile eagerly eyes a Quetzalcoatlus that comes to take a drink, but the pterosaur leaves well before he gets into any real danger.
• No Fourth Wall: Nigel Marven repeatedly addresses the audience.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The fight between female Tyrannosaurus' and 'Ankylosaurus ends up this way in the book that accompanied the TV series.
• Nobody Poops: Averted in 'Time of the Titans'. Not only do they show a full view of a Diplodocus defecating twice, but they also show the pile of shit and the dung beetles crawling all over it.
• Outside-Context Villain: Several episodes feature a natural disaster that comes late and puts at risk both prey and predator - a drought in 'New Blood', a tropical storm in 'Cruel Sea', the polar winter in 'Spirits of the Ice Forest', and the volcanic activity and meteor strike in 'Death of a Dynasty'.
• Palette Swap: Similar looking animals (like Utahraptor and Dromaeosaurus, Allosaurus and Australovenator, various ornithopods) were just these. Certain animals (like large theropods and ornithopods) only got new heads. You can tell, because many creatures have the exact same folds and blood vessels on their skin. Then, there is Plesiopleurodon, which is just Stock Footage of Liopleurodon from the previous episode, only tinted lighter.
  • Quetzalcoatlus is the worst offender, as in its case it's obvious that the animators didn't have much time; it's just the Ornithocheirus from 'Giant of the Skies' with a few minor tweaks. They didn't even edit out the teeth!
• Papa Wolf: The male cynodont. Until the Coelophysis discover the burrow and he decides that the young aren't worth defending anymore, at least...
• Please Wake Up: The baby T-Rexes continue to hang around their dead mother, waiting for the corpse to get up. Averted in the book, where they begin to feed on the body, showing that they are aware that their mother has died.
• Raptor Attack: Scaly raptors appear.
• Real Is Brown: Averted. Much like modern fauna, these dinos are pretty vibrant-looking.
• Red Herring: Eustreptospondylus being shown during the opening narration of Cruel Sea, with Kenneth Branagh talking about 'the most fearsome predator of the Jurassic' that 'is watching his prey'. Only a few moments later it becomes obvious that this narration wasn't about Eustreptospondylus, but instead about Liopleurodon
• Sea Monster: The entire third episode, Cruel Sea, though a giant Plesiopleurodon also appears in Giant of the Skies for one shot.
• Secondary Sexual Characteristics: A few examples occur here and there. For instance:
  • Female T. rexes are portrayed as being larger and more aggressive than their male counterparts. Do note that there's very little support for this nowadays.
  • Female Ornithocheirus are depicted as lacking the keel-like crests that the males have on their beaks, while female Tapejaras have smaller head crests than their male counterparts.
• Seldom-Seen Species:
  • New Blood:Postosuchus, Plateosaurus, Placerias', 'Peteinosaurus, Coelophysis
  • Time of the Titans:Ornitholestes, Anurognathus
  • Cruel Sea:Ophthalmosaurus', 'Liopleurodon, Eustreptospondylus, Cryptoclidus, Hybodus', 'Perisphinctes
  • Giant of the Skies:Ornithocheirus', 'Tupandactylus' (still called 'Tapejara' here), Polacanthus, Iberomesornis'
  • Spirits of the Ice Forest:Leaellynasaura', 'Muttaburrasaurus, Koolasuchus, Steropodon
  • Death of a Dynasty:Torosaurus, Dromaeosaurus, Didelphodon, Deinosuchus, Dinilysia
  • Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular:Liliensternus, Ornithocheirus, Plateosaurus, Torosaurus
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The episode 'Giant of the Skies' was about an Ornithocheirus traveling halfway across the globe enduring various hardships in order to reach the mating grounds only to have it driven away and eventually dying from starvation and exhaustion, and it never got to mate a single time.
  • The Mother Tyrannosaurus rex in 'Death Of A Dynasty'. After a nest she built prior to the start of the episode fails, she mates again and lays a fresh clutch of eggs. Unfortunately, however, out of the twelve eggs that she lays, nine of them fail to hatch, of the three that do, the youngest one doesn't last long and is implied to have been killed by its own siblings. Shortly afterwards, the mother herself is fatally injured while defending her last two young from an Ankylosaurus and suffers a slow agonising death shortly afterwards. And, the very next day, the asteroid impact that caused the K-T Mass Extinction kills both of her only surviving offspring. As the book puts it, 'Her long struggle to reproduce has come to nothing.'
• Shown Their Work: The production team went on great lengths to avoid grasses during the shooting of Walking with Dinosaurs. Then we found out it first appeared in the Cretaceous, though it was confined to India at the time, so its absence is still justified.
• Special Effects Evolution: When comparing the original series with The Ballad of Big Al special. The dinosaur models are more detailed, the puppets are more convincing, and most notably the shots are far more dynamic with a lot of camera movement, something the original series was keen to avoid. There's also a lot less use of composited bushes and shrubs to hide foot contacts.
• Sterility Plague: In 'Death of a Dynasty', the atmospheric pollution caused by the increase in volcanic activity at the end of the Cretaceous means dinosaur eggs are not forming properly, leading to clutches either failing completely or producing only a handful of viable eggs. This, along with everything else that was going on in the world, is taken to imply that, even if the comet strike hadn't happened, the dinosaurs were dying out anyway.
• Tail Slap: An adult Diplodocus saves a younger one from an Allosaurus this way.
• Taxonomic Term Confusion: Branagh refers to the sauropods as 'a great family of dinosaurs' in the original WWD. 'Infraorder' would be more appropriate.
  • Still better than in some of the dubbed versions, which call sauropods a species.
• Tyrannosaurus rex: The main character of the final episode.
• The Worf Effect: A good way to show that an animal is a badass is have it drive off, beat up, or kill the top predator of the episode, as was the case with Stegosaurus (to Allosaurus) and Ankylosaurus (to Tyrannosaurus).
  • If the animal is another predator, another way is to have it prey on or scare away another stereotypically dangerous predator such as a theropod or shark. Most famously done with Liopleurodon; and then the several Threatening Shark examples of course (see above).
• Zerg Rush: The Coelophysis against the dying Postosuchus.
  • A defensive variant is used by on the old Ornithocheirus.

Walking With Dinosaurs Placerias Free

Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries created by Tim Haines and produced by BBC Natural History Unit.^[1] The series first aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom in 1999 with narration by Kenneth Branagh.^[2] The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Avery Brooks replacing Branagh. The programme explores ancient life of the Mesozoic Era, portraying dinosaurs and their contemporaries in the style of a traditional nature documentary.

Developed by Haines and producer Jasper James, Walking with Dinosaurs recreated extinct species through the combined use of computer-generated imagery and animatronics that were incorporated with live action footage shot at various locations. The Guinness Book of World Records reported that the series was the most expensive documentary series per minute ever produced.^[3] A re-edited version of Walking with Dinosaurs aired on Discovery Kids for the first season of Prehistoric Planet. It was made more appropriate for children by removing most of the graphic content and trimming down some footage to fit the run time.

The series received critical acclaim, winning two BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award in 2000.^[2][4]Walking with Dinosaurs began a franchise that was followed by two additional miniseries, several television specials, spin-offs, a live-theatrical show, and a feature film of the same name.^[5]

• 1Production
  • 1.1Scientific accuracy
• 3Music
• 5In other media

Production[edit]

Creator Tim Haines contemplated the idea of a dinosaur-centric documentary in 1996, spurred by the resurgence of public interest in prehistoric life following the release of Jurassic Park (1993).^[6] Together, with producer Jasper James and effects specialist Mike Milne, Haines shot a six-minute pilot in Cyprus as a proof-of-concept to BBC Worldwide and Discovery Channel for financing.^[7]Principal photography took place at a variety of global locations, including Conguillío National Park in Chile, the Redwood National and State Parks in California, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and the Bahamas. Filming consisted of wide landscape shots devoid of any live-action creatures and close-up shots with animatronics. The only creatures in the pilot that are not shown in the series are Cetiosaurus and Scaphognathus.

Since an extensive amount of computer-generated imagery would be necessary in creating the numerous full-size dinosaurs that the project demanded, Haines initially approached Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the company responsible for creating the visual effects in Jurassic Park. ILM projected a cost of $10,000 per every second of footage featuring a CGI shot, an estimate which BBC deemed too expensive for a television budget. Instead, Haines contracted Framestore, a local British visual effects company to create the CGI elements. Maquettes were built and then scanned, with the resulting 3D models animated in Softimage 3D and added to the live-action backgrounds. Framestore consulted several palaeontologists in assisting them with developing natural movements and appearances for the dinosaurs.^[8]Michael Benton, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., Peter Dodson, Peter Larson, Dave Martill, and James Farlow, served as consultants; their influence in the filming process was documented in the companion piece, The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs. The CG work was created over the course of two years.

Scientific accuracy[edit]

Behaviour[edit]

Michael J. Benton, a consultant to the making of the series and professor of vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Bristol, notes that a group of critics gleefully pointed out that birds and crocodiles, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, do not urinate; they shed waste chemicals as more solid uric acid. In the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, a male Postosuchus urinates copiously to mark a female's territory as his own after she is driven away from it. However, Benton notes that nobody can prove this was a real mistake: copious urination is the primitive state for tetrapods (seen in fish, amphibians, turtles, and mammals), and perhaps basal archosaurs did the same. He believes many other claims of 'errors' identified in the first weeks fizzled out, as the critics had found points about which they disagreed, but they could not prove that their views were correct.^[9]

Anatomy[edit]

Ornitholestes, a theropod dinosaur of the Late Jurassic, is shown with a small crest atop its head. However, subsequent studies have concluded that it most likely did not have such a crest, and that the misconception that it did came as a result of broken nasal bones in the holotype.^[10]

Size[edit]

Tropeognathus is depicted as far larger than it actually was. In the book based on the series, it was claimed that several large bone fragments from the Romualdo Formation of Brazil possibly indicate that Tropeognathus may have had a wingspan reaching almost 12 metres and a weight of a hundred kilograms, making it one of the largest known pterosaurs.^[11] However, these specimens have not been formally described. The largest definite Tropeognathus specimens known measure 6 metres in wingspan. The specimens which the producers of the program used to justify such a large size estimate are currently undescribed, and are being studied by Dave Martill and David Unwin. Unwin stated that he does not believe this highest estimate is likely, and that the producers likely chose the highest possible estimate because it was more 'spectacular.'^[12] However, no other Early Cretaceous pterosaurs reached its size. Similarly, Liopleurodon is depicted as being 25 m (82 ft) long in the series, whereas the adult size known to have been reached by Liopleurodon is around 7 m (23 ft).^[13] This was also based on very fragmentary remains of which the 20 metre measurement given have been considered dubious, and it is unlikely that these remains belong to Liopleurodon.

List of episodes[edit]

BBC One aired the series weekly on Monday nights, with a regular repeats the following Sunday. In 2010, the series was repeated on BBC Three in omnibus format, as three hour-long episodes.^[14]

Music[edit]

Ben Bartlett composed the score for Walking with Dinosaurs. Bartlett was encouraged to accept the duties of composing the series' music at the behest of Haines and James. Bartlett wrote different leitmotifs in separate styles for each episode, citing the different themes and settings presented in each episode as inspiration, elaborating, 'I tried to create a different sound world for each episode of Walking With Dinosaurs. That was easy, as they all had different moods. The first episode is all about heat and bloodlust, parched deserts and so on, while the second one was pastoral, peaceful, and beautiful, about dinosaurs living in symbiosis with the forests. And so on.'^[6]

The recording process took place at Angel Recording Studios in Islington, with four sessions scattered over the early months of 1999. The score was recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra. During these sessions, Bartlett admitted to being enriched with experience by the task, stating, 'It was the biggest orchestral endeavour I've ever undertaken, and I learnt so much from the first session. Practical things, like handing out the parts to the players before the session, numbering pages... tiny logistical things that can really screw up a session.'^[6]

Soundtrack[edit]

Ben Bartlett's original score for Walking with Dinosaurs was released by BBC Music on CD on 11 April 2000.^[23]

All music composed by Ben Bartlett.

Reception[edit]

Walking with Dinosaurs received critical acclaim following its initial broadcast. The series won two BAFTAs for Innovation and Best Original Television Music and earned six Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning for Outstanding Animated Program, Outstanding Special Visual Effects and Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Programming – Sound Editing. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 1999, voted on by industry professionals, Walking with Dinosaurs was placed 72nd.

Common Sense Media praised the program, giving it five stars out of five and saying that, 'Somebody had a great idea, which was to make a documentary series about dinosaurs, but with a twist. The ageing Tropeognathus on a desperate final flight to his mating grounds, the sauropod hatchlings struggling for survival in the late Jurassic, the migrating herds and the undersea life of 150 million years ago would all seem as real as a nature program about polar bears or snow monkeys.'^[24] This technique of narrating the prehistoric life as though it were current has been used several times since, for example in the BBC's 2011 Planet Dinosaur series.

In other media[edit]

Companion book[edit]

A companion 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, and 'Cruel Sea' is set at or near Solnhofen in Germany near what then were the Vindelicisch Islands. The book elaborated on the background for each story, went further in explaining the science on which much of the program is based, and included descriptions of several animals not identified or featured in the series.^[25]

A companion volume to the first book 'Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence' by David Martill and Darren Nash was published in 2000. It went into more detail about the research and suppositions that went into making the series.

Walking With Dinosaurs Usa Tour

Live theatrical show[edit]

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular is a live theatrical show adaptation and travelling exhibition of the series that originated in Australia in January 2007 (as Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience), and toured North America in 2007–10, Europe in 2010, and returned to North America until 2011. It also toured Asia beginning in December 2010. In 2011 the show came to its final destination of its first tour, New Zealand. In 2012, the show toured the UK, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands.^[26] For 2018, the show again toured various European cities.

Film adaptation[edit]

Released in 2013, Walking with Dinosaurs is a feature-length film about dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous period 70 million years ago. The production features computer-animated dinosaurs in live-action settings with actors John Leguizamo, Justin Long, Tiya Sircar, and Skyler Stone providing voiceovers for the main characters. It was directed by Neil Nightingale and Barry Cook from a screenplay by John Collee.

The film was produced by BBC Earth and Evergreen Films and was named after the original BBC miniseries. The film, with a budget of US$80 million, was one of the largest independent productions to date; it was financed by Reliance Entertainment and IM Global, with 20th Century Fox handling distribution.^[27] The crew filmed footage on location in the U.S. state of Alaska and in New Zealand, which were chosen for their similarities to the dinosaurs' surroundings millions of years ago, and on locations in Humboldt County, California.^[28]Animal Logic designed computer-animated dinosaurs and added them to the live-action backdrop. Though the film was originally going to have a narrator like in the miniseries, Fox executives wanted to add voiceovers to connect audiences to the characters.

Walking with Dinosaurs premiered on 14 December 2013 at the Dubai International Film Festival. It was released in cinemas in 2D and 3D on 20 December 2013. Critics commended the film's visual effects but found its storytelling to be sub-par and derided the voiceovers as juvenile. The film grossed US$34.4 million in the United States and Canada and US$71.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of US$106 million. The Hollywood Reporter said the film's global box office performance was disappointing in context of the production budget and marketing spend.

Notes[edit]

1. ^7 day data, including the original Monday broadcast and Sunday repeat for all six episodes.

Walking With Dinosaurs Placerias Kids

References[edit]

1. ^'Walking with Dinosaurs The Origins'. Archived from the original on 23 April 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
2. ^ ^abMcClintock, Pamela (15 January 2014). 'T-Wreck: Why Fox's 'Walking With Dinosaurs' Went Extinct'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
3. ^'Most expensive television documentary series per minute'. Guinness World Records. 14 June 2015.
4. ^60th Annual Peabody Awards, May 2001.
5. ^McClintock, Pamela (2 August 2011). 'Fox Sets 'Walking With Dinosaurs' for Christmas 2013 Release'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 13 August 2011.
6. ^ ^abcBell, Matt (February 2000). 'Ben Bartlett: Music For Walking With Dinosaurs'. Sound on Sound. SOS Publications Group. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
7. ^Haines, Tim. 'The Making of…Walking with Dinosaurs'. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
8. ^Huelsman, Eric (1 March 2000). 'Walking With Dinosaurs'. Animation World Network. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
9. ^'birds and crocodiles, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, do not urinate'. Benton, M. J. 2001. 'The science of 'Walking with Dinosaurs'. Teaching Earth Sciences, 24, 371–400.
10. ^OrnitholestesPrehistoric Wildlife. Web. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
11. ^Haines, T., 1999, 'Walking with Dinosaurs': A Natural History, BBC Books, p. 158
12. ^Bredow, H.P. (2000). 'Re: WWD non-dino questions.' Message to the Dinosaur Mailing List, 18 April 2000. Retrieved 20 January 2011: http://dml.cmnh.org/2000Apr/msg00446.html
13. ^Smith, Adam. 'Liopleurodon'. The Plesiosaur Directory. Retrieved 11 March 2012.
14. ^Walking With Dinosaurs - Compilations - Episode 1bbc.co.uk Retrieved 19 September 2018.
15. ^New Blood: Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 1 of 6bbc.co.uk. Web. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
16. ^https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/weekly-top-30/ Weekly top 30 programmes BARB Web. Retrieved 19 September 2018.
17. ^'Time of the Titans - Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 2 of 6'.
18. ^'Cruel Sea - Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 3 of 6'. bbc.co.uk.
19. ^'Giant of the Skies - Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 4 of 6'. bbc.co.uk.
20. ^'Spirits of the Ice Forest - Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 5 of 6'. bbc.co.uk.
21. ^'Death of a Dynasty - Walking with Dinosaurs, Original series Episode 6 of 6'. bbc.co.uk.
22. ^'The Making of Walking With Dinosaurs - BBC One'. bbc.co.uk.
23. ^Wilson, MacKenzie. 'Walking with Dinosaurs: Original TV Soundtrack'. AllMusic. All Media Network. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
24. ^'Walking with Dinosaurs review'. Commonsensemedia.com. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
25. ^Martill, Dave; Naish, Darren (2000). Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence. London: BBC Books. ISBN0-563-53743-4.
26. ^Amar Singh. 'T-Rex comes to town'. The Mail Online. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
27. ^Pomerantz, Dorothy (8 November 2013). ''Walking With Dinosaurs' Is A T-Rex Sized Independent Film'. Forbes. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
28. ^Hesseltine, Cassandra. 'Complete Filmography of Humboldt County'. Humboldt Del Norte Film Commission. Humboldt Del Norte Film Commission. Retrieved 12 October 2017.

External links[edit]

• Walking with Dinosaurs at BBC Programmes
• Walking with Dinosaurs at BBC Earth
• Walking with Dinosaurs on IMDb
• 'Walking With Dinosaurs: The Origins'. Archived from the original on 23 April 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2012.