Roar! Planet Dinosaur by Cavan Scott, the official tie in to the landmark BBC Natural History series is out today.
Make sure that you’re watching BBC One tonight at 8.30pm to see Planet Dinosaur, an amazing new natural history series from good old Auntie. If you thought Walking With Dinosaurs was great you’ve not seen anything yet. The CGI, created by Jellyfish Pictures, is absolutely outstanding and cretaceous carnage is narrated by none other than John Hirt.
Recently, for an interview in Focus magazine, I asked Phil Dobree, Creative Director of Planet Dinosaur if the series was a daunting project to take on. This was his response:
The equivalent of two full-length CG movies on 1/50th of the budget? Definitely! It’s the most ambitious project we’ve ever attempted: 2,500 shots, 24 individual sequences – and all with a team of only 40 to 50 people at a time.
Of course, if you want to find out more about the story behind the biggest dino-discoveries and paleontological puzzles of the last 20 years, then rush out and buy the book that accompanies the series, written by some chap called Cavan Scott.
This assignment was a bit of a dream come true. I’ve loved dinosaurs since I was a kid – well, what boy doesn’t – and being given the chance to delve deeper into the science behind some of the most amazing creatures ever to walk the Earth was phenomenal. The guys at BBC Books have done a fantastic job on the book and, if I say so myself, it is absolutely bursting with information about the creatures themselves and also the arguments that rage through the scientific community 65.5 million years after a rather big rock brought dinosaur dominion to an end.
Planet Dinosaur is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.
Focus on Dinosaurs
You might also want to check out the latest issue of Focus, the BBC’s science and technology mag. As I mentioned above, I’ve written a feature that reveals how luck has played a major part in the discovery of so many dinosaurs over the years. You can also find out how the Second World War almost put pay to Spinosaurus, how birds managed to survive the apocalypse that wiped out non-avian dinos and the biggest challenge the team at Jellyfish faced when breathing life into prehistoric monsters.
