Walking with Dinosaurs
Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries created by Tim Haines and produced by BBC Natural History Unit. The series first aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom in 1999 with narration by Kenneth Branagh. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Avery Brooks replacing Branagh. The program explores ancient life of the Mesozoic Era, portraying dinosaurs and their contemporaries in the style of a traditional nature documentary.
Episodes
[edit]New Blood [1.1]
[edit]- Narrator: Imagine you could travel back in time, to a time long before man. Back across 65 million years. As you travel, you would see huge changes in the vegetation and the climate. Even the surface of the Earth itself would move, as mountain ranges are pushed up by colliding continents. Now you've reached a remarkable period in Earth's history known as the Cretaceous. It is a very different world. The Himalayas do not yet exist, and the Atlantic is only half as wide. There is no grass, only conifer forests and fern prairies. This is a world ruled by dinosaurs. Giant reptiles like Tyrannosaurus, a five-tonne predator, stalk the landscape. In Walking With Dinosaurs, we will show you how these magnificent creatures live. How they eat, fight and reproduce. And you will witness how the forces of nature conspire to drive these animals to extinction.
- Narrator: First light across the western hills of Earth's only continent, Pangaea. This world has been ruled by one group of giant reptiles for over 50 million years. But these ancient creatures have had their day. All over these lush fern prairies, a grim evolutionary battle has broken out among the newer types of reptile, for supremacy of this strange world. On these Triassic proving grounds, dinosaurs are still comparatively rare. But they are beginning to show the first signs of their future success.
- Narrator: [about the mammal-like reptiles] One day in the future, this strategy of investing in their young will pay off for their mammalian descendants. But as mammals evolve over the next 160 million years, they will only survive as a few small species, clinging on at the edge of a world dominated by dinosaurs.
- Narrator: 20 million years later, a massive extinction wiped out thousands of species of reptile. But the dinosaurs went from strength to strength. Carnivores grew to enormous sizes, but their prey got even bigger. In the next program, we meet the giants of the Jurassic.
Time of the Titans [1.2]
[edit]- Narrator: This is the Jurassic period, and the giant continent of Pangea that use to stretch from pole to pole is now breaking up. It is much wetter than the earlier Triassic period, and where there were once deserts, there are now vast forests of conifer trees.
- Narrator: There are vast open fern prairies, and this is were the titans of the Jurassic roam. Dinosaurs like Stegosaurus, with its distinctive row of spinal plates. These prairies are kept clear of trees by the constant grazing of such giant herbivorous. And none have a larger impact on this environment than the biggest dinosaurs of them all, the sauropods. There are many different types of these gigantic, long-necked creatures. These are Diplodocus, the longest of them all.
- Narrator: [about the Allosaurus] These are the lions of the Jurassic. The top predators of their age.
- Narrator: This is Brachiosaurus, a 13 meter high sauropod that specialises in grazing on the tree tops. His kind can effortlessly harvest cones and fresh leaves no other dinosaur can reach, and they have grown enormous on it. These adults weigh 70 tons, making them the largest animals that have ever existed.
- Narrator: Sauropods dominate the late Jurassic, and it will be millions of years before new dinosaur herbivores evolve to replace them. With their passing, life will never again be this large.
- Narrator: Eventually the mighty sauropods went into decline, and their lowland prairies became flooded, because the sea levels began to rise. This created vast inland seas, and in the next program, we will meet the giant carnivorous reptiles that patrolled them.
Cruel Sea [1.3]
[edit]- [A Eustreptospondylus is shown on a shore]
- Narrator: The most fearsome predator of the Jurassic is watching his prey. Peering through the water, the carnivore fixes on his unwary victim, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
- [The massive jaws of a Liopleurodon emerge behind the dinosaur, clamping onto its tail and dragging it, screaming, into the sea]
- Narrator: Under these azure waters lies the future continent of Europe. But now, in the Late Jurassic period, all that exists here are a few scattered islands. The breakup of the old continents has broken up the ocean floor and raised sea levels, flooding the lowlands and creating vast shallow seas. Here, dinosaurs do not rule. Instead, giant marine reptiles have evolved, perfectly adapted to life in these beautiful waters.
- Narrator: These rich sunlit waters are on the northern end of the ancient Tethys Ocean, the sea that separates the Earth's two continents: one in the north and one in the south. Once a year, they are the stage for a remarkable natural drama.
- Narrator: The newborn pups have just a few seconds to reach the surface and take their first breath. From the moment they are born, the little pups are vulnerable. These waters are full of predators. Even adult Ophthalmosaurus will eat the offspring of others to increase the chance of survival of their own pups. The only real safety is among the crags of coral.
- Narrator: Liopleurodon. At 150 tons, it is the largest and most powerful carnivore ever to live on the planet. This male weighs a colossal 25 meters, and is big even for his kind. His size means he is probably over a hundred years old. Liopleurodon has a directional sense of smell, two separate chambers in his nose work in the same way as a pair of ears, pinpointing where a smell is coming from. A sophisticated tracking device, steering the largest carnivorous jaws ever known.
- Narrator: [about the sharks] One day these will be the most feared predators in the sea, but in these Jurassic waters, they themselves are prey.
- Narrator: These islands are regularly ravaged by violent tropical storms from the east, that are strong enough to tear up the shallow seabeds, smash corals, and kill thousands of marine animals.
- Narrator: The Jurassic is a golden period for giant marine reptiles. It will be another 90 million years before they disappear from the oceans, along with the extinction of the dinosaurs on land.
- Narrator: Marine reptiles were one of the glories of this ancient time, even though turtles are the only ones left today. But there was another major group of reptiles that shared the dinosaurs world: the flying pterosaurs. And as we shall see in the next episode, they were just as spectacular.
Giant of the Skies [1.4]
[edit]- Narrator: It is the beginning of a period in Earth's history known as the Cretaceous. And the movement of the continents is not only breaking up the giant northern and southern landmasses, but it continues to push up sea levels. This has opened new seaways and coastlines.
- Narrator: Next to the Ornithocheirus, the birds look no bigger than insects. However, their tiny feathered wings are more resistant to damage than the skin membrane of the pterosaur, especially among the branches and twigs of dense forests. In the far future, the pterosaurs will surrender the skies to the birds.
- Narrator: Our Ornithocheirus has yet to mate. Worse still, his fruitless exertions under the blazing sun have taken a heavy toll. Heat stress and lack of food have all but killed him. The king of the skies has lost his majesty.
- [Later, the old male lies dead on the shore]
- Narrator: His life has run full circle. In his time he travelled the globe, but death finds him here, in the very same place where he first mated, some 40 years ago. On the beach around him are others who lost out in this struggle to reproduce.
- [A young Ornithocheirus feeds on the old male's carcass]
- Narrator: But nature is seldom wasteful. They have become food for the next generation.
- Narrator: The pterosaurs continued to rule the skies for millions of years, while on land, the dinosaurs spread to every part of the globe. In the next episode, we will see how they even conquered the most extraordinary environment of all: the dark forests of the South Pole.
Spirits of the Ice Forest [1.5]
[edit]- Narrator: Dawn, over a silent forest a few hundred miles from the South Pole. It is the end of months of total darkness, and as the sun's rays filter down through the trees, they reveal a cold, harsh world. Here there are polar dinosaurs, adapted to cope with extreme conditions. But even they struggle to stay alive.
- Narrator: It is the mid-Cretaceous period, and dinosaurs are now more widespread than ever, reaching every part of the globe. But one place is a special challenge: the South Pole. Here, a giant continent made up of South America, Australia and Antarctica is kept warm by ocean currents that are forced down from the equator to encircle it. Instead of ice caps, there are lush forests. But unlike the unchanging tropical climate elsewhere, Antarctica has seasons, from hot summers under midnight sun to cold winters of total darkness.
- Narrator: Leaellynasaura is a dinosaur that is adapted to this extreme climate. Throughout the winter they survive in the warm sheltered heart of the thick forest. But now in spring they emerge to feed on the fresh plant growth. They are just two meters long and their most distinctive feature is their large eyes, which help them find food in the dark winter.
- Narrator: [about the Koolasuchus] This bizarre looking creature is a relic from a time before dinosaurs. In most parts of the world, competition from crocodiles has driven these magnificent amphibians to extinction. But here the waters get too cold for crocodiles, and the world's last Koolasuchus survive, still patrolling the waterways, just as their ancestors did 150 million years before them.
- Narrator: The polar allosaur is a smaller descendant of the great carnivores of the Jurassic, 50 million years before. His type are rare in the Cretaceous, but they survive here at the South Pole.
- Narrator: The giant carnivore has killed the dominant female. It is a bitter blow. Winter is coming, and without a lead female there will be tension in the clan.
- Narrator: Life on the Poles is a remarkable evolutionary achievement for the dinosaurs. But eventually, a slight cooling in the world's climates will spell doom to these lush Antarctic forests. And without them, all these unique dinosaurs will also disappear.
- Narrator: Away from the Poles, the dinosaurs continued to thrive for another 40 million years before extinction. In the final program, we will see how just before the end of their reign, they evolved the most terrifying predator that has ever walked the Earth.
Death of a Dynasty [1.6]
[edit]- Narrator: It is the end of the Cretaceous period and the continents are taking on their modern forms. But this ceaseless movement of the Earth's crust has also produced a surge of volcanic activity across the globe. Massive eruptions that have lasted for centuries have laid waste to landscapes and have filled the atmosphere with poisonous gases and debris. This desolate world is still ruled by dinosaurs, as it has been for 160 million years, but they are nearing the end of their reign. Life on Earth is choking to death. Yet in the last two million years, the dinosaurs' most infamous predator has appeared: Tyrannosaurus, a five-tonne 13 metre long carnivore, specifically evolved to kill other giant dinosaurs.
- Narrator: There are still islands of greenery between the barren lava flows. In the warm moist climate of the late Cretaceous period, the vegetation has transformed.
- Narrator: Millions of years of evolution has also created intimate relationships among different types of dinosaurs. Especially the delicate balance between predator... and prey.
- Narrator: [about the Ankylosaurus] But sadly, not even these magnificent creatures have any defence against the natural forces that are suffocating their world.
- Narrator: Soon the age of the mammals will dawn, and they will grow to massive sizes. But at ten kilograms, this is about as big as Cretaceous mammals can get.
- Narrator: Many dinosaur embryos are not surviving in this volcanic environment, because acidic pollution is preventing their egg shells from forming properly.
- Narrator: During their long reign, the dinosaurs have adapted to many huge changes. But now they are facing a combination of events that will spell their doom.
- [After the asteroid hits the Earth, devastating the Cretaceous landscape and sweeping away the Tyrannosaurus family]
- Narrator: Finally a rain of molten rocks starts to fall out of the darkening sky. This is the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The comet struck the Gulf of Mexico with the force of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs. In the catastrophic climate changes that followed, 65% of life died out. It took millions of years for Earth to recover, and when it did, the giant dinosaurs were gone, never to return.
- [Time accelerates until it reaches modern Africa, filled with its familiar animals]
- Narrator: In their place have emerged other powerful and beautiful creatures. And we now know that one small group of dinosaurs did survive the extinction, and they are all around us today: the birds.
Cast
[edit]- Kenneth Branagh as Narrator. (UK version)
- Avery Brooks as Narrator. (US version)
