Watch Walking with Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs was a documentary mini television series produced by BBC that is seperated into six parts or episodes. It originally aired in 1999 in the UK, but was brought over to the US in 2000, letting Americans have the experience on the Discovery channel. The Uk version was narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who is famous for starring in adaptions of William Shakespeare's plays. When brought overseas, Branagh's voice was replaced by Avery Brooks, best known for his role as Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Television series was followed by a companion book, a live action show, and a wonderbook, with a film to follow in late 2013.

The show focuses on the Mesozoic time period, also known as the age of reptiles. The goal of the show was to create a television show skin to a nature documentary that focused on dinosaurs as the stars. Filming took place all over the world ,from New Zealand, Chile, and The Bahamas to state parks in California. Obviously dinosaurs are extinct, so BBC hired artists and engineers to produce the film with computer-generated imagery and animatronics. Walking with Dinosaurs is listed the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most expensive television show to produce per minute.

Critics attempted to find scientific inaccuracies in the series, such as the dinosaurs seen urinating, instead of shedding waste. Their claims were argued against by the show's consultant, as there is no prove as to how dinosaurs rid themselves of waste, only theories.

Each episode followed a different group of dinosaurs with the first second and fifth episodes focusing on herbivores and omnivores on land. The third episode explored the sea life during the time period, while episode four took viewers to the skies, where pterodactyls and other airborne dinosaurs lived. Episode six explained the end of the reign of the dinosaurs, how they spent their last days, and eventually perished.

2 Seasons, 11 Episodes
October 4, 1999
Documentary & Biography, Science & Technology
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Walking with Dinosaurs Full Episode Guide

  • After 160 million years of dominating life on earth the dinosaurs appear as vigorous as ever. Yet closer study reveals there are hidden stresses and the rich ecosystem hides problems. Volcanic activity is high and disease and sterile eggs common. The central character in the program is a female Tyrannosaur that is trying to raise a new brood of chicks. As the program starts, small mammals are already swarming over one nest that she has abandoned and she is looking to mate again. She lives at the base of an active volcano and the migration of local herds has been disrupted by lava flow. She finds a mate and starts a second nest but it needs constant attention, as mammal populations are unusually high. After several months she successfully hatches some of her eggs, but in an attempt to protect the young chicks, an Ankylosaurus kills her.

  • On a deserted beach lies the dead body of a giant pterosaur, an Ornithocheirus. With wingspans of up to 13 meters, these were the largest flying creatures ever. There is no sign of why this one died but over the course of the program, it is revealed how this King of the Sky met his end after undertaking an epic flight to find a mate. The program picks up several months earlier on a windy cliff edge on the coast of Brazil where the mating season has begun for a bizarre-looking pterosaur, Tapejara, is in full swing. On every ledge the males duck and bob their fantastic red crests to attract a mate. The solitary Ornithocheirus is here too, dwarfing the local inhabitants. He has ended up in Brazil after wandering thousands of miles in search of food but now he has to return home to his own mating ground in southern Europe. His flight takes him up the coast of Northern America.

  • For all the successes of dinosaurs on land, they never made it into the sea; that is the realm of an entirely different group of reptiles, no less successful and no less awesome. The Jurassic sea boasted the largest carnivore on the planet, Liopleurodon. At 25 metres, this monster was the same size as a blue whale but armed with teeth that were a quarter of a metre long. Ophthalmosaurus, the fastest animal in the sea, was also frightening and used his large eyes for nighttime hunting. The program follows the dramatic conflicts of nature that are an annual event in the waters around the small group of islands in the Jurassic sea. It starts with the invasion of hundreds of pregnant Ophthalmosaurus who have come to give birth in the shallow protected waters. The young pups learn to fend for themselves in seas where they are prey for the sharks and even for their own parents.

  • By the late Jurassic period, dinosaurs dominated the globe and the most widespread group of all was the sauropods. These long-necked herbivores were giants even among dinosaurs, weighing between 20 and 70 tons. This single program spans 12 years, following the hatching of a tiny Diplodocus through her struggle for survival until she reaches maturity and mates for the first time, completing the circle of life. The action opens with a huge mother laying her eggs on the edge of a vast forest. She then abandons them and when they hatch they have to run the gauntlet of every predator in the area as they make their own way deep into the woods and seek the protection of dense vegetation. We follow one female over the years as she gradually piles on the tons, avoiding dangers from hungry carnivores and fire.

  • Set in the mid-Triassic period, when the world was still recovering from a massive extinction that millions of years before wiped out 95 per cent of life. Across most of the Earth lie vast deserts but near the poles the weather in monsoonal. Here life is rebuilding the diversity that once existed. The program follows a small group of animals in a river valley through the dry season. Large herds of the Placerias, an ancient, bulky reptile, feed off the fern prairies. Primitive mammals dig burrows beneath them, small pterosaurs chase insects in the air and an agile little dinosaur called Coelophysis lives on its wits among them. Terrorizing all these creatures is the giant predator Postosuchus, a fearsome land crocodile with a head like a Tyrannosaurus. As the drought drags on, all the creatures are affected by it. The herds dwindle and the mammals lose their offspring.

  • Voyage into the Jurassic period, 155 million years ago, a marine world full of giants including Leedsichthys, the largest known fish, and Liopleurodon, the biggest predator of all time. Also in the seas, encounter the marine crocodile Metriorhynchus and the shark Hybodus. In the final stage, trek 75 million years back to the late Cretaceous period and discover a giant toothed Hesperornis seabird.

  • Travel on to the Eocene epoch, 36 million years ago, and meet the rhino-like Arsinoitherium, a pod of small and nippy whales called Dorudon as well as the primitive Basilosaurus whale. Then arrive in the Pliocene epoch of 4 million years ago, a world on the edge of an ice age. Find the strange tusked-mammal known as Odobenocetops which is prey to the juvenile Megalodon sharks.

  • From the creators of the ground-breaking Walking with Beasts, this Walking with Dinosaurs special, propels you back to wander amongst the biggest creatures of all time. In a time when monstrous creatures ruled the earth, South America was the land of the giants. Discover the sense of enormity walking among these gigantic creatures!

  • The creators of the ground-breaking Walking with Beasts bring to life one of the most bizarre creatures ever to walk the earth in this special. Journey back to the sand dunes of Mesozoic Mongolia and track the owner of the largest claws of all time - Therizinosaurus. Following the adventure, we must negotiate vast nesting sites, see off curious Velociraptors and avoid the terrifying Tarbosaurus.

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