Walking with Monsters/Dinosaurs/Beasts

[kg redhead]

possibly the most unique natural history programme ever created, as its about long extinct creatures and their environments...

[kg redhead]

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 deadly seas.

"New Blood"
220 Million Years Ago - Upper Triassic — Arizona
Filming location: New Caledonia
Conditions: semi-desert with short rainy season. In the year of the episode, the rains are late.
Coelophysis (theropod)
Peteinosaurus (pterosaur)
Placerias (dicynodont)
Plateosaurus (prosauropod)
Postosuchus (basal archosaur)
Thrinaxodon (cynodont)

"Time of the Titans"
152 Million Years Ago - Upper Jurassic — Colorado
Filming locations: Redwood National Park, Chile, Tasmania, New Zealand
Conditions: warm with mixture of forest and grassland.
Allosaurus (theropod)
Anurognathus (pterosaur)
Brachiosaurus (sauropod)
Diplodocus (sauropod)
Ornitholestes (theropod)
Stegosaurus (ornithischian)

"Cruel Sea"
149 Million Years Ago - Upper Jurassic — Oxfordshire
Filming locations: Bahamas, New Caledonia
Conditions: shallow tropical sea with small islands.
Cryptoclidus (plesiosaur)
Eustreptospondylus (theropod)
Hybodus (shark)
Liopleurodon (pliosaur)
Ophthalmosaurus (ichthyosaur)
Rhamphorhynchus (pterosaur)

"Giant of the Skies"
127 MIllion Years Ago - Lower Cretaceous — Young Atlantic Ocean (Brazil, Cantabria)
Filming locations: New Zealand, Tasmania
Conditions: Sea and coastlands.
Iberomesornis (primitive bird)
Iguanodon (ornithischian)
Ornithocheirus (pterosaur)
Polacanthus (ornithischian)
Tapejara (pterosaur)
Utahraptor (theropod)

"Spirits of the Ice Forest"
106 Million Years Ago - Lower Cretaceous — "Antarctica" (Antarctica, South America and Australia)
Conditions: Forest dominated by Nothofagus and podocarps, very near South Pole (the sun did not rise for 5 months in the winter).
Filming location: New Zealand
Allosaurus
Koolasuchus (temnospondyl amphibian)
Leaellynasaura (ornithischian)
Muttaburrasaurus (ornithischian)
Steropodon (monotreme)

"Death of a Dynasty"
65 Million Years Ago - Upper Cretaceous — Montana
Conditions: Grassland and forest, affected by volcanism. The episode shows some effects of the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid impact.
Filming locations: Chile, New Zealand
Anatotitan (ornithischian)
Ankylosaurus (ornithischian)
Didelphodon (marsupial)
Dromaeosaurus (theropod)
Quetzalcoatlus (pterosaur)
Torosaurus (ornithischian)
Tyrannosaurus (theropod)

[kg redhead]

Walking with Beasts is a six-part television documentary about extinct cenozoic mammals and birds produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom. It was released in Britain in 2001. In the United States it was retitled Walking with Prehistoric Beasts. Like its predecessor, Walking with Dinosaurs, it recreates extinct animals using CGI and animatronics.

"New Dawn"
49 Million Years Ago - Lower Eocene — Germany
Episode 1 depicts the warm Eocene, 16 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. It takes place in a tropical environment and shows a world in which birds rule the earth, and most mammals are still very small. Sudden bulk escapes of volcanic carbon dioxide are a hazard. The episode is centered around on a family of Leptictidium (small shrew-like animals). The setting is near the Messel Pit.
Gastornis
Godinotia
Propalaeotherium
Ambulocetus

"Whale Killer"
36 Million Years Ago - Upper Eocene — Pakistan moving to Egypt
Episode 2 takes place in mangroves and the open Tethys Ocean, and its central protagonist is a female Basilosaurus (a large early whale) who is forced into the dangerous mangove in search for food.
Andrewsarchus
Dorudon
Embolotherium
Moeritherium
Apidium

"Land of the Giants"
25 Million Years Ago - Upper Oligocene — Mongolia
Episode 3 takes place in the Oligocene epoch, a drier period. It tells the story of the childhood of a male indricothere (a tall rhino-like animal that is the largest land mammal ever to have lived).
Entelodont
Hyaenodon
Chalicotherium
A Bear-dog species, based on Cynodictis

"Next of Kin"
3.2 Million Years Ago - Pliocene — Ethiopia
Episode 4 depicts a family of Australopithecus, an early ancestor of humanity. Grey is the lead male, and is confronted by another male, Bruiser.
Ancylotherium
Deinotherium
Dinofelis

"Sabre-tooth"
1 Million Years Ago - Pleistocene — Paraguay
Episode 5 shows the strange fauna of the isolated continent of South America and explores the effects of the Great American Interchange, 1.5 million years earlier. It focuses on a male Smilodon (a sabre-toothed cat), named Half Tooth, whose leadership of a pride is threatened by two rival males.
Macrauchenia
Megatherium
Phorusrhacos
Doedicurus

"Mammoth Journey"
10,000 Years Ago - Holocene — dry bed of the North Sea, moving to Switzerland
Episode 6 is set on the North Sea (then a grassy plain) during the last Ice Age. The central focus is on a group of mammoths migrating.
European lion
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens
Megaloceros
Woolly rhinoceros

[kg redhead]

Walking with Cavemen is a four-part television documentary about human evolution produced by BBC in the United Kingdom. It was originally released in April of 2003 and presented in the United States by the Discovery Channel and its affiliates.

The documentary was produced largely by the same team who produced the award-winning documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts. In the previous documentaries, extinct animals were recreated with CGI and animatronics. For Walking with Cavemen, a slightly different approach was taken. While most of the animals depicted were still computer generated or animatronic, the human ancestors were portrayed by actors wearing makeup and prosthetics, giving them a more realistic look and permitting the actors to give the creatures a human quality.

Like its predecessors, Walking with Cavemen is made in the style of a wildlife documentary, featuring a voice-over narrator who describes the recreations of the prehistoric past as if they are real. As with the predecessors, this approach necessitated the presentation of speculation as if it is fact, and some of the statements made about the behaviour of the creatures are more open to question than the documentary may indicate.

In the first episode, we see Australopithecus afarensis.

In the second episode the story leaps forward to a time when Paranthropus boisei, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis co-exist. Homo habilis is depicted as an intelligent omnivore that is more adaptable than its herbivorous neighbours.

In the third episode, Homo ergaster is depicted as the first creature to master the art of tracking, and Homo erectus is shown spreading into Asia and encountering the enormous Gigantopithecus.

In the final episode we leap forward to a time when Homo heidelbergensis is living in Britain. Heidelbergensis is depicted as intelligent and sensitive but lacking in the ability to comprehend an afterlife. Next, we see Homo neanderthalensis hunting mammoth during the Ice Age, and learn that they are intelligent but lack the imagination of modern humans. Finally, we see modern Homo sapiens (represented by Bushmen) in Africa, and glimpse the cave painters of Europe.

Each species segment takes the form of a short drama featuring a group of the particular ape in question going about their daily lives (the search for food, protecting territory, and caring for the sick and injured). The intent is to get the human viewer to feel for the creatures being examined, almost to imagine being one of them (a trait that the documentary links to the modern human brain).