First Trailer for New Dinosaur Movie

Scheduled for a cinematic debut this Christmas, the first trailer has been released for the eagerly awaited new dinosaur film – “Walking with Dinosaurs in 3-D”.  This beautifully crafted film takes viewers to the Late Cretaceous of North America and tells the story of a Pachyrhinosaurus and its fight for survival, it being the runt of the litter and its ultimate triumph against the odds.

Walking with Dinosaurs

This film has divided the scientific community somewhat, the computer graphics are excellent and there are some lovely details shown and it will no doubt prove to be very popular with cinema audiences.  However, the anthropomorphising (giving human characteristics to animals) as led to some commentators describing this film as “Bambi meets the Land Before Time”.

Pachyrhinosaurus was a member of the centrosaurine group of horned dinosaurs.  The presence of fenestrae in the neck frill was a surprise to us, perhaps it is an old injury that never healed properly, and the lack of feathered, shaggy looking dinosaurs in the scenes filmed during the migration could perhaps be challenged, especially as the herd of herbivores are moving into northern latitudes.

Lots of Dinosaurs are Featured

Expect lots of tyrannosaurids, hadrosaurs and providing the threat to the young pachyrhinosaurs – plenty of dromaeosaurids.  Should be a visual treat.

At Everything Dinosaur we are expecting Pachyrhinosaurus to have a surge in popularity as a result of this movie.  There are a number of excellent models available at the moment, a number of interpretations of this seven-metre-long plant-eater.  For example, both CollectA and Papo have introduced a Pachyrhinosaurus model, part of a great expansion in the number of ceratopsian dinosaur models available as a number of new genera have been named and described over the last five years or so.

Pachyrhinosaurus Compared – Papo and CollectA Models

Papo and CollectA Pachyrhinosaurs are compared.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture above shows the Papo Pachyrhinosaurus model on the left compared to the CollectA model on the right.  Both these model makers have chosen to give this dinosaur a solid neck frill although the pair of fenestrae (holes in the bone but covered with skin), can be clearly seen on both replicas.

To view Everything Dinosaur’s model range: Dinosaur Models and Prehistoric Animal Figures.

Three Species of Pachyrhinosaur

Three species of pachyrhinosaur are currently known, the third species to be named and described was Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum.  The fossils of this dinosaur were discovered in the far north of Alaska (dinosaurs living at high latitudes is explored in the movie), the fossils were found in 2006 and this new species named and described back in 2011.

To read an article on the discovery of P. perotorum:  Discovering a New Species of Pachyrhinosaurus.

The film has been estimated to have cost somewhere around $80 million USD (£51 million GBP) to make, the original estimates were around £40 million GBP.  This is still relatively small compared to the budgets of other films, or indeed when compared to the cost of the BBC’s original Walking with Dinosaurs six part television series first aired in 1999, which for the number of minutes of actual footage shown, represents one of the most expensive projects in the BBC’s history.