BBC Television Series to be Shown Next Month

The wait for the new BBC documentary series “Planet Dinosaur” is nearly over with team members at Everything Dinosaur being informed that this six-part television series is scheduled to be shown next month, with a date and time yet to be confirmed.

Countdon to “Planet Dinosaur”

The BBC’s dinosaur portfolio consists of a number of web based activities and complimentary dinosaur themed programmes that will air on the other BBC channels whilst the main series is broadcast on BBC1.  With more dinosaurs having been discovered in the last thirty years or so compared to the preceding one hundred and fifty years, the BBC and their production partners have a lot of new dinosaur material to cover.  Planet dinosaur uses the latest CGI and cutting-edge research to reveal the deadly secrets of these new prehistoric creatures.

For the first time on British television, the very latest dinosaur discoveries have been brought together and brought to life in this ground-breaking series. Featuring a cast of new dinosaurs that will feed the nation’s nightmares, the next generation of children aren’t going to be talking about Tyrannosaurus rex – they are about to meet far bigger, badder, more vicious characters that roamed the Earth 95 million years ago – or so the BBC publicity material goes, although we doubt whether a single television series is going to shake T. rex from the number one dinosaur position.

Carcharodontosaurus Features

A replica of a Carcharodontosaurus dinosaur model.  Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The series starts in North Africa, where two of the world’s biggest predators once battled for supremacy.  At 13 metres in length and weighing 7 tonnes, Carcharodontosaurus was a huge beast, a gigantic lizard-like carnivore with shark-like teeth more than 6 inches long.  It was an efficient hunter that would slash at its prey until it bled to death.

But the discovery of an upper jaw in Morocco revealed an even bigger carnivorous killer – Spinosaurus.  Four metres longer than Tyrannosaurus rex, Spinosaurus is thought to have been one of the biggest killers to ever walk the Earth.  But unlike the meat-eating Carcharodontosaurus, Spinosaurus mainly ate fish, living and hunting almost exclusively in the water.  Team members at Everything Dinosaur provided data and advised the CGI team on how to go about bringing Spinosaurus back to life.

For models of prehistoric animals that feature in the television series: Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures (CollectA).

Like all predators that share an environment, the two may once have had to compete for food.  Planet Dinosaur takes a look at what one such deadly battle may have looked like and finds out which giant beast would have been most likely to survive a fight to the death, although no evidence of any conflict between these two apex predators has been preserved in the fossil record.

Looks like the autumn schedule is going to be exciting.