Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs (clade Dinosauria), or more specifically non-avian dinosaurs, are a group of reptiles that lived between approximately 243 million and 66 million years ago. So far, scientists have discovered around 1,000 species of dinosaur from every continent. While their extinction made them a popular term for something obsolete, dinosaurs were actually highly adaptable animals that had active lifestyles and many social adaptations. All dinosaurs were egg-laying. The modern birds are the last surviving branch of the dinosaur lineage, and are called avian dinosaurs to differentiate them from their extinct cousins.

## Appearances in Dorling Kindersley Vision media

### Eyewitness

While dinosaurs are often mentioned in Eyewitness programmes, often as a point in time (Dog, Shark, Reptile and Butterfly and Moth all mention dinosaurs when talking about when a subject animal of each episode evolved), a much smaller number have them appear physically within an episode – one in the first season, two in the second and three in the third season.

* **SEASON ONE**: Dinosaur
* **SEASON TWO**: Mammal, Prehistoric Life
* **SEASON THREE**: Survival, Monster, Life

The episode Dinosaur in the first season includes the most footage of dinosaurs, as can be expected. Almost all of the named dinosaur species that appear in any Dorling Kindersley Vision programme appeared in this episode. The dinosaurs are represented with stock footage of animatronic models, movie clips, stationary models, toys, a few stop-motion models based on models made especially for the Dorling Kindersley books (including Corythosaurus, Iguanodon, Baryonyx, Brachiosaurus and Tyrannosaurus) and a plasticine dinosaur that served as the episode’s hero, named Legs.

In Mammal, the CGI Tyrannosaurus skeleton appears in a segment about the earliest mammals, represented by a shrew. The shrew is seen sitting on top of a dinosaur’s egg (represented by an ostrich egg), before it later appears on top of the dinosaur’s skull.

In Prehistoric Life, the Tyrannosaurus is briefly shown and mentioned as the mascot of the age of the dinosaurs, represented by footage from Prehistoric Beast, a short film by Phil Tippett (who later went on to work on the Jurassic Park movies).

Both Survival and Life only mention dinosaurs briefly with regards to their extinction – Survival used a clay model of a Brachiosaurus with a cockroach crawling over it to represent this. In one shot, two wall pictures show similar models of a Parasaurolophus and a Dimetrodon (not a dinosaur, rather an unrelated reptile-like mammal, albeit often mistakenly called a dinosaur). Life by contrast only briefly uses footage from The Lost World (1925) to showcase the dinosaurs.

In Monster, the dinosaurs are said to be a popular monster of the modern world and their remains were once mistaken for dragons. The dinosaurs are shown both with footage from The Lost World (1925) and with a stop-motion version of Dorling Kindersley’s Tyrannosaurus model, which breathes fire like a dragon to frighten away a bearded dragon, one of the episode’s heroes.

The CGI Tyrannosaurus skeleton also appears in the opening sequences of both seasons one and two of Eyewitness.

Dinosaur was one of three official Eyewitness episodes that was turned into an interactive game, Eyewitness Dinosaur Hunter. This was linked closely to the official episode, with the same introduction.

### Amazing Animals

As with Eyewitness, dinosaurs are often mentioned in Amazing Animals episodes as a point of reference, either of size (in Giant Animals, some whales are described as larger than any dinosaur) or time (for example, in Creepy Crawly Animals the dragonfly is described as preceding the dinosaur). Only two episodes feature dinosaurs on-screen, one in season two and one in season three.

* **SEASON TWO**: Prehistoric Animals
* **SEASON THREE**: Extinct Animals

In Prehistoric Animals, the dinosaurs make a couple of appearances. First, they appear in Henry’s Report, where Henry is trying to explain what happened to the dinosaurs. The report uses the Dorling Kindersley Tyrannosaurus model, plus a couple of in-house models and some rubber toy dinosaurs. Later in the episode, Henry time-travels to the age of the dinosaurs. While he mainly encounters modern-day living fossils such as salamanders, lizards and alligators, there is a brief moment when a Triceratops (the CGI model from Eyewitness Dinosaur Hunter) bursts through the white background behind him; Henry misses it, even though the Narrator tries to warn him. The Triceratops is also preceded by ripples on a small pond, similar to the ripples preceding the Tyrannosaurus in the Jurassic Park films. This section also mentions how the dinosaurs may still survive today as birds. After Henry returns to the modern-day, a dinosaur fossil appears and just before the credits play, a stop-motion version of Dorling Kindersley’s Tyrannosaurus model runs across the screen.

Extinct Animals briefly mentions dinosaurs in a segment in which Henry is creating a cast of his own footprint. Henry describes the Mesozoic as the good old days for reptiles. The dinosaurs are represented by paleoart and stock footage of fossilised skeletons.

As well as the factual information about dinosaurs, Amazing Animals also features a dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus, as a cartoon character.

### Creatures Fantastic

A couple of episodes of Creatures Fantastic have made very brief references to dinosaurs – in the opening of the Dragons episode, a question is posed suggesting that dinosaur fossils may have inspired tales of dragons, represented by the Royal Tyrell Museum's *Gorgosaurus*. However, the theory is not mentioned anywhere in the episode subsequently.

The Apocalypse opens by describing the meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs as being a kind of apocalypse comparable to those in human mythology. This segment only shows snatches of supposed dinosaurs, created with close-up footage of the eye of a Komodo dragon and the feet of a cassowary. The episode closes by looking again at the meteorite and how likely it is that we may suffer a similar fate. It is also stated that the extinction of the dinosaurs provided some evolutionary benefit, by allowing mammals to step into the niche.

## Total species

This list only includes dinosaurs either named within Dorling Kindersley Vision programmes or, in some cases (represented by a \*) obviously identifiable by appearance alone:

* *Tyrannosaurus*
* *Albertosaurus*
* *Baryonyx*
* *Deinonychus*
* *Compsognathus*
* *Coelophysis*
* *Oviraptor*
* *Brachiosaurus*
* *Diplodocus*
* *Triceratops*
* *Stegosaurus*
* *Iguanodon*
* *Tenontosaurus*
* *Edmontosaurus*
* *Maiasaura*
* *Parasaurolophus* \*
* *Corythosaurus* \*