Smithsonian.com

Nagi says:

After the last few paleontological debacles Discovery’s thrown at us (Jurassic Fight Club, Clash of the Dinosaurs), I don’t trust them as far as I can throw my TV. Which after I watched Clash of the Dinosaurs, I found wasn’t very far (kidding, of course). I DO, however, trust Pixar, as they have yet to make a bad movie and their attention to detail in all of their work is astounding.

In short, I’m conflicted. An “educational” network with a tarnished reputation teaming up with an animation studio that has yet to do any wrong, I have no idea which way to lean on this one.

Davor says:

Cautiously optimistic. Of course, I don’t have cable at home, so it’s kind of a moot point. Waiting for the day everything just happens on the webs…

jurassiraptor says:

If it’s goofy, plastic-looking, cartoon characters like everything else Pixar has done, then NO. If they make realistic looking characters, dinosaurs and environments, then perhaps.

LN Jeff says:

I’m a bit discouraged that the “latest in understanding of dinosaur behaviors” is a list of stuff that is mostly made up.

Sean Craven says:

Somewhere around a year and a half, two years ago, I got into a very brief internet exchange with an artist working on a dinosaur documentary. He asked a group of people what they wanted in such a work; here’s my reply.

“I ran across your request for suggestions regarding the upcoming documentary you’re working on. (Just as an aside? I feel absolutely no sense of CG dinosaur fatigue at all…)

Animals should only vocalize when animals actually do vocalize. Roaring at prey right before attacking and so on really gets on my nerves. If you want to dramatize the moment with sound, that’s what the background music is for.

I’d like to see predators eating smaller prey than is typically shown. Rather than exclusively showing the big battles, it would be refreshing to see some of these critters digging grubs out of rotting logs, or munching baby turtles off a beach. Perhaps you could show a Tyrannosaur taking little runs into a hadrosaur nesting ground, grabbing a few babies here and there before the hadrosaurs chase him off.

I don’t have to tell you this, but just because it can never be said often enough, if you can’t afford to animate feathers, don’t use feathered dinosaurs and render them with scales. And given some of the integument they’ve found, you might want to get a little creative in your decoration of ornithischians.

Migrating herds are always nice. Styracosaurs might be a good way to go — haven’t seen them in CG yet.

I wish there was more material on the marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Walking With touched on this a few times, but they went light on the Cretaceous. Some good Mosasaur action would rock — which might link up to the herd idea above. You could have a sequence where a herd of ceratopsians gets hit by a flood while fording a river, then segue to the ocean as some of the bodies are carried out to sea, where they’re scavenged by marine predators.

Unless part of your approach features fictional time-traveling documentarians, no bullet time, no mud or slobber splashing camera lenses, etc. These tricks intrude on the sense of reality you’re working for. (But I think using a fictional documentary crew would be good for a number of different reasons — having humans in the environment could provide a sense of scale, and by having some sort of human drama running in the background, you wouldn’t have to dramatize the animal stories. Rather, the focus could be on simply observing their behavior, allowing you to use Planet Earth-style documentaries for your model rather than those Disney nature dramas that everyone else uses, where the animals are given an obligatory story arc.)

Big polar dinosaurs would be fun — I know WWD already hit up the South pole, but there are some great fossils in Canada and Alaska. Come on, don’t you want a big white feathered polar Tyrannosaur?

I can’t believe no one’s tackled any spinosaurids. It would be nice to see some early sauropodmorphs as well.

I think there are a number of unexploited locations that could be investigated. The Wealden deposits would be excellent, for instance, or the Saharan swamps of Suchomimus.

Hmm. Now that I’m thinking about it, some swimming dinosaurs would be slick.

I would absolutely love to see some ground-hunting Azhdarchids (You probably know about this already, but if not see here — http://pterosaurs.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/azhdarchid-paleobiology-part-ii/).

Aside from five seconds in The Lost World, I don’t remember having seen any pachycephalosaurs.”

His response was good-natured, but along the lines of, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

I’ve been looking forward to that special ever since. I have a suspicion that this might be the one.