Walking with Dinosaurs: Encyclopedia - Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs is a 1999 six-part television series produced by the BBC and narrated by Kenneth Branagh (UK version, BBC) and Avery Brooks (US version, Discovery Channel). The series used computer-generated imagery and animatronics to recreate the life in the Mesozoic, and showed dinosaurs in a way that was only shown before in Jurassic Park, six years earlier. The series was a commercial and scientific success. Dinosaur paleontologists, like Peter Dodson, Peter Larson and James Farlow were scientific advisors. Their influence in the filming process is shown in Walking with Dinosaurs - The Making Of.

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

In 2000 series was supplemented by a special episode Allosaurus: A Walking With Dinosaurs Special which takes place in the Jurassic period. In the same vein, a 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. The third installment was Walking with Cavemen, a documentary about our ancestors. In 2005 Walking with Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs was produced. When Dinosaurs Roamed America (produced by Discovery Channel) is yet another dinosaur CGI documentary.

Also in the same vein, a spin-off three-part series was made, known as "Sea Monsters", in which it revolves around Nigel Marvin travelling back in time to the world's seven deadliest seas.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Episodes

Walking with Dinosaurs - New Blood

The first episode filmed and broadcasted. 220 Million Years Ago - Upper Triassic — Arizona

The episode mainly focuses on the Coelophysis, Cynodont and Postosuchus, and the fight for suvrvival during the dry season. The Postosuchus is beaten out of her territory by a male Postosuchus and then dies from hunger and a flesh wound. The Cynodont's home is invaded by Coelophysis and they have to eat their own young, before fleeing to find a new home. The Placerias are slowly dying out due to droughts and the remainder wander off into the desert and into extinction.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Time of the Titans

The second episode to be filmed and broadcasted. 152 Million Years Ago - Upper Jurassic — Colorado

This episode focuses on a female Diplodocus and her siblings as they grow throughout the years. But some are eaten by predators, and burned by a forest fire, and speared by a Stegosaurus's tail-spikes. By the end of the episode, only the female Diplodocus and one of her brothers remain and they join a herd of adult Diplodocus. The episode ends with the female Diplodocus mating and breeding.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Cruel Sea

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

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 Cryptocleidus survive and manage to make it back into the ocean.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Giant of the Skies

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

It stars an elderly male Ornitheocheirus, 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 netting 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 bernissartensis, 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 and exhaustion and old age.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Spirits of the Ice Forest

The fifth episode filmed and broadcasted. 106 Million Years Ago - Early Cretaceous — "Antarctica" (Antarctica, South America and Australia)

This episode focuses on Leaellynasaura who are trying to survive in their freezing habitat. But a polar Allosaur hunts the Leaellynasaura and eats their female leader; it also hunts the Muttaburrasaurus. Other predators like Koolasuchus are in the hunt for the Leaellynasaura.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Land of Giants

100 Million Years Ago - Middle Cretaceous — Argentina

Conditions: volcanic ash fields and conifer forest

Filming Locations: the Canary Islands

The first of two new episodes; featuring Nigel Marven. It screenplayed Nigel travelling back in time along with his film crew. In Land of the Giants, Nigel 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. It includes getting an Argentinosaurus to walk onto an array of heavy-duty weighing scales intended for weighing lorries, hidden under leaf-litter: the resulting weight was 92 tons.

Walking with Dinosaurs - The Giant Claw

75 Million Years Ago - Late Cretaceous — Mongolia

Conditions: vast desert and lush forest

Filming locations: Egypt, Fraser Island, Australia

The second of two new episodes; featuring Nigel Marven. This was actually the first of the new two episodes that was filmed. 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, before discovering that Therizinosaurus is a herbivore and used its sickle-claws to hook tree and bush branches towards its mouth.

Walking with Dinosaurs - Death of a Dynasty

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

This episode starts several months before the extinction of the dinosaurs. Arcoding 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 rex seen is male. The main character is a female Tyrannosaurus rex, who abandons a nest because all the eggs in it were infertile or dead-in-shell, mates and nests again, lays 12 eggs, of which 3 hatch. One of the babies dies because the other two bully it. She 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Walking with Dinosaurs", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki