Dinosaurs Alive Roars At Chicago Museum

The film features spectacular animation and a live-action story that features renowned paleontologists in the field as they uncover new fossils—including the remarkable discovery of what may be the oldest dinosaur ever found in North America.

Dinosaurs Alive brings dinosaurs, their behaviors and their ancient environments to life on screen as never before seen—juxtaposing stunningly realistic and scientifically accurate computer generated imagery (CGI) with intriguing 1920s documentary footage, dramatic new scenes of real fossils and current dinosaur hunting expeditions. Using state-of-the-art techniques, the filmmakers have created an array of amazingly life-like creatures based on the latest fossil evidence so that audiences can experience these creatures on the giant screen.

Interwoven throughout the film’s storyline is a real-life scientific adventure that looks at the field of paleontology and the crucial finds made over the years that have revolutionized our understanding of the mysterious creatures that dominated the earth for 150 million years. The film reveals how paleontologists search for, discover and study fossils to determine different dinosaur species—how big they grew, how fast they moved, how they were related to other species, how they interacted with others, what they may have eaten, how they may have raised their young, what their surroundings looked like, and how they may have died.

Audiences will meet and learn about Tarbosaurus (a close relative to T.Rex), Velociraptors, Protoceratops, Seismosaurus and more. They will witness dinosaurs locked in mortal combat, nesting in colonies, protecting their young and facing catastrophic forces of nature. They will also learn which ones traveled in herds, which made nests, which were the predators, which were the hunted and other surprising behaviors.

The film takes visitors to Mongolia with mesmerizing 1920s archival footage of paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews—a larger-than-life adventurer believed to be the inspiration for the Indiana Jones character. Andrews led five expeditions to the Gobi Desert and discovered there one of the greatest repositories of dinosaur remains ever found. The film then returns to that same site today with paleontologists Mike Novacek and Mark Norell, who have been making annual expeditions to the desert every summer since 1990.

Dinosaurs Alive then heads to New Mexico, one of the few places in the world where rock layers preserve the whole age of dinosaurs and where breakthrough discoveries continue to be made in the high desert badlands. The film brings audiences to the fabled Ghost Ranch, where the number of fossils uncovered during the dig is staggering—revealing layers of dinosaurs and reptiles in concentrated deposits in a mass burial place. Here, the dinosaur hunters make a compelling find.

More fossils than ever are being found today. While there have been great discoveries throughtout the last century, and we know much more about these amazing creatures than ever before, the scientific quest to find and understand dinosaurs and the world they inhabited is ongoing. Dinosaurs Alive estimates that we’ve discovered less than two percent of all the dinosaur species that once lived. For young paleontologists, the adventure is just beginning, and this spellbinding new film is sure to spark imaginings of what mysteries still lie buried beneath our feet.

Dinosaurs Alive is a production of David Clark Inc., Giant Screen Films, the Maryland Science Center, and Stardust Blue, in association with the American Museum of Natural History. The film is written and directed by Bayley Silleck and David Clark, with cinematography by Bill Reeve. Dinosaur animation was created by Digital Artists Montreal Network (DamnFX). -- www.msichicago.org