A Little Lost Tyrannosaur

Life for Tyrannosaurus was undoubtedly tough at the start. Not only were there huge, ornery Triceratops to worry about, but the young tyrants also had to watch out for bigger members of their own kind. (As the fossil record has shown, Tyrannosaurus weren’t above eating their own when the opportunity came up.) But it’s still fun to imagine big-eyed little tyrants running around the Cretaceous world, taking in the sights, sounds and smells of all around them. And while it’s definitely on the sillier side, that’s just what the animation trailer for Pangea – The Neverending World envisions.

I haven’t seen Pangea in its entirety. Until this morning, I didn’t even know the movie existed. The film’s official page describes it as a story within a story—a plastic Tyrannosaurus puppet a little girl receives from an old museum caretaker fires her imagination, and so little “Rexy” comes to life. (The style and tone remind me of a Stanley and the Dinosaurs, a claymation short film I saw as a kid.) As the trailer shows, Rexy wanders away from the nest to enthusiastically investigate everything from butterflies to pterosaurs and sauropods. Rexy is definitely a troublemaking little tyrant.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.