''Dinosaur!'' is a 1985 American television documentary film about

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

s. It was first broadcast in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

on November 5, 1985, on CBS. Directed by Robert Guenette and written by Steven Paul Mark, ''Dinosaur!'' was hosted by American actor

Christopher Reeve Christopher D'Olier Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, activist, director, and author. He amassed Christopher Reeve on stage and screen, several stage and screen credits in his 34-year career, including playin ...

, who some years before had played the leading role in ''

Superman Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...

''. In 1991, another documentary, also titled ''Dinosaur!'' though not related, was hosted on A&E by the CBS anchorman

Walter Cronkite Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trust ...

Content

Jointly with Reeve's narration, the documentary shows special effects scenes which reconstruct dinosaurs and their era, along with interviews with the most famous paleontologists at the time of the documentary shooting, including Jack Horner, Robert Bakker, Phil Currie, and

Dale Russell Dale Alan Russell (27 December 1937 – 21 December 2019) was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Research Professor at ...

. After a short introductory sequence and the subsequent opening credits the film starts with the mating of Hadrosaurus, a species which in the documentary is identified as "hadrosaur", "the duck-billed dinosaur" or "duck-bill". The female soon lays a clutch of eggs that are eaten by a '' Struthiomimus'', except for one. When the ''Struthiomimus'' eats the last egg it stole, it is then hunted and killed by a pair of ''

Deinonychus ''Deinonychus'' ( ; ) is a genus of Dromaeosauridae, dromaeosaurid Theropoda, theropod dinosaur with one described species, ''Deinonychus antirrhopus''. This species, which could grow up to long, lived during the early Cretaceous Period (ge ...

''. The remaining hadrosaur egg hatches and grows into a juvenile. While it is out grazing with its parents, it wanders off and it almost gets killed by a ''

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' () is a genus of large theropoda, theropod dinosaur. The type species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' ( meaning 'king' in Latin), often shortened to ''T. rex'' or colloquially t-rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It live ...

'', but the parents hear its cries and come to the rescue. While one of the parents looks after the juvenile, the other one faces the theropod and knocks it over with its strong, 2,000-pound tail. Once down, the ''Tyrannosaurus'' could not get up easily, so the herbivore is given a chance to escape. Once all three hadrosaurs are happily back together and the ''Tyrannosaurus'' is back on its feet, the latter defeatedly walks back into the forest. Next, a herd of ''

Brontosaurus ''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from the Ancient Greek, Greek words , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. It was describe ...

'' is shown, busy eating leaves from tall trees. They use their long necks to reach high branches. Next, a herd of '' Monoclonius'' is seen grazing. One member wanders off into the forest in search of flowers. Night falls and it tries to find the herd. It soon stumbles upon the remains of a killed hadrosaur and becomes wary. The ''Tyrannosaurus'' then ambushes it and bites hard on its back. The ''Monoclonius'' breaks free and stabs the ''Tyrannosaurus'' in the shin, which only infuriates the predator. The ''Monoclonius'' becomes cornered and is killed. That night, all seems calm. Suddenly, an asteroid crashes into Earth and kills the dinosaurs. After that, a small mouse-like mammal (live-acted by an

opossum Opossums () are members of the marsupial order Didelphimorphia () endemic to the Americas. The largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, it comprises 126 species in 18 genera. Opossums originated in South America and entered North A ...

) is seen climbing out of a hole in the ground, among the bones of a dead hadrosaur, signaling the start of mammals ruling the Earth. The documentary also discusses the overgrowing popularity of dinosaurs, as well as the possibility of living

cryptids Cryptids are animals or other beings whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated by science. Cryptozoology, the study of cryptids, is a pseudoscience claiming that such beings may exist somewhere in the wild; it has been widely cri ...

such as the

Loch Ness Monster The Loch Ness Monster (), known affectionately as Nessie, is a mythical creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or more humps protrud ...

and Mokele-mbembe.

Origins of the project

Immediately before working in the full length television documentary ''Dinosaur!'', Phil Tippett had been working in an experimental sequence lasting ten minutes. Conceived and created by Tippett with the help of

Industrial Light & Magic Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American Film, motion picture visual effects, computer animation and stereo conversion digital studio founded by George Lucas on May 26, 1975. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lu ...

stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs), this original sequence was titled '' Prehistoric Beast'' and tried to improve

go motion Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation which incorporates motion blur into each frame involving motion. It was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett. Stop motion animation can create a distinctive and disorienting sta ...

animation special effects techniques. The story of the short was simple: the chase and predation of a '' Monoclonius'' by a ''

Tyrannosaurus ''Tyrannosaurus'' () is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The type species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' ( meaning 'king' in Latin), often shortened to ''T. rex'' or colloquially t-rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It lived througho ...

''. This short animated film was only released in specialized animation festivals in 1984, but it convinced Robert Guenette and Steven Paul Mark to request Tippett's skills in order to transform it into a full-length documentary. They then asked Tippett to realise new sequences with other dinosaur species, like Hadrosaurus, ''

'', '' Struthiomimus'' and ''

'', while stock footage from the 1979 film ''

Meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

'' was used to depict an

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

, the one supposed to have crashed into the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

, causing the dinosaur's extinction. Adding all this new material to the material from ''Prehistoric Beast'' resulted in the 1985 ''Dinosaur!'' documentary. The go motion animation technique was first used by Tippett in the ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

'' original trilogy of films (1977, 1980, 1983), especially in the second installment, ''

The Empire Strikes Back ''The Empire Strikes Back'' (also known as ''Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back'') is a 1980 American epic film, epic space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner from a screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, based o ...

'' (1980), animating the tauntauns and the AT-ATs seen in the film. In 1983, when his work with the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy was finished, Tippett went on to improve his animation technique by means of ''Prehistoric Beast'' (1984). He further improved the technique when his Tippet Studio was appointed for the special effects of ''Dinosaur!'' (first aired in 1985). Tippet's experimental work on those two films about dinosaurs helped with the animatics and CGI animated dinosaur sequences he made later for ''

Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton, centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of De-extinction#Cloning, cloned dinosaurs. It bega ...

'' (1993).

Production

''Dinosaur!'' was primarily shot in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, and in some fossiliferous locations of the United States. Reeve was a "Dino fan" and demonstrated his enthusiasm by flying his own airplane to the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

in New York and requesting himself reshoots of several scenes. Special effects were mainly made in Phil Tippett's garage. Tippett received assistance from

stop-motion animators Randy Dutra (who made the dinosaur molds and skins) and Tom St. Amand (who made the inner articulated metallic skeletons of the dinosaurs). Some excerpts from old films are utilized in ''Dinosaur!'' in order to explain how popular dinosaurs were in cinema. One of those excerpts was a scene from ''

King Kong King Kong, also referred to simply as Kong, is a fictional giant monster resembling a gorilla, who has appeared in various media since 1933. The character has since become an international pop culture icon,Erb, Cynthia, 1998, ''Tracking Kin ...

'' (1933), in which a character pronounces the words "prehistoric beast", which is the title chosen by Tippett for his experimental short.

Release

Following its initial airing, ''Dinosaur!'' was shown on the

Disney Channel Disney Channel is an American pay television television channel, channel that serves as the flagship (broadcasting), flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company ...

throughout 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 Family Home Entertainment.

Legacy

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

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

remake of the game. They appeared in the 1993 PC-video game called '' Microsoft Dinosaurs''. They appeared in the 1998 ABC World Reference game called ''Wide World of Dinosaurs'' for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

operating systems by Creative Wonders. Footage of ''Dinosaur!'' was also used in '' Really Wild Animals'' for the episode "Dinosaurs and Other Creature Features".

Awards

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects This is a list of the winning and nominated programs of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Serial (radio and television), series, miniseries, television film, film, or television special, special. Since the aw ...

(1986)

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0439543, Dinosaur! 1985 television specials 1985 documentary films 1985 television films 1985 films Films about dinosaurs American documentary television films Films using stop-motion animation Documentary films about dinosaurs Television shows directed by Robert Guenette CBS television specials 1980s American films Mokele-mbembe Loch Ness Monster 1980s English-language films English-language documentary films