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Prehistoric Park

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Prehistoric Park
File:ITVPrehistoricPark.png
StarringNigel Marven
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Production
Running time60 minutes
Original release
NetworkITV1
Release22 July 2006 –
26 August 2006
Related
Walking with Dinosaurs,
Walking with Beasts,
Walking with Monsters,
Sea Monsters

Prehistoric Park is a 6-part television series in documentary style, from Impossible Pictures Limited, (the makers of Walking with Dinosaurs) which premiered on ITV1 on 22 July 2006. It is in 6 episodes, each an hour long including commercial breaks.

The programme is narrated by David Jason and presented by Nigel Marven. The fictional component is the theme that Nigel goes back to various geological time periods through a time portal, and brings back live specimens of extinct animals back to the present day, where they are exhibited in a wildlife park named Prehistoric Park.

The time portal is two thick metal-cased poles about 3 feet tall; when switched on, the gate field develops between them. It is probable that when switched on the poles exist at once at both times.

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Characters

  • Nigel Marven - responsible for travelling back in time to collect the animals
  • Bob - the head keeper at Prehistoric Park (played by Rod Arthur)
  • Susanne - the head vet at Prehistoric Park (played by Suzanne McNab)
  • Saba Douglas-Hamilton - a big cat specialist who Nigel invites back to catch sabre-tooth cats in episode 4
  • Bill - a crew member who travels back with Nigel (introduced in episode 5)
  • Jim - an accomplice of Nigel who travels with him through time (introduced in episode 5)

There are various other staff members, but so far none of their names have been given. One of the more prominent is the blonde assistant of Suzanne.

Episode 1: Dinosaur (Montana, 65 million years ago, very end of Cretaceous)

Nigel goes through the time portal, aiming to bring back a Tyrannosaurus. He finds a herd of Ornithomimus, narrowly escapes from three Tyrannosaurus, then the following day encounters a herd of Triceratops. He also finds some Tyrannosaurus eggs, hoping to bring some back for hatching, but they are all broken and empty, either predated or already hatched. Nigel then watches as a group of Tyrannosaurus attack the Triceratops herd. A female Tyrannosaurus catches a baby Triceratops, but its mother comes to its defence and gores the Tyrannosaurus in a thigh. When the wounded Tyrannosaurus goes after a young male Triceratops, Nigel opens the time portal and the Triceratops, perhaps desperate for any refuge, runs through, but the Tyrannosaurus sees the Triceratops disappear and does not follow. The Triceratops is named Theo and becomes the park's first exhibit.

Nigel sees that the Tyrannosaurus is walking alongside a river following a drifting Triceratops carcass. Nigel builds a crude stockade wall alongside the river, out of local Cretaceous fallen timber, trying to get the Tyrannosaurus to follow between the river and the stockade and thus through the time portal. A flock of Ornithomimus appear and run ahead, and the Tyrannosaurus chases them through the time portal into the park, where they cause surprise, but a paddock is found for them and they become a breeding colony; but the Tyrannosaurus catches a straggler young Ornithomimus and turns back from the chase and does not reach the time portal. Instead of eating it there, she carries it a long distance despite her injured thigh. Nigel follows her until he discovers she has two babies needing feeding. A male Tyrannosaurus then attacks the female Tyrannosaurus for her kill - it kills her, and takes the dead Ornithomimus away.

At this point, an asteroid strikes the Earth, leaving Nigel with just a few minutes while the blast front travels from Chicxulub to Montana and reaches him. With a second to spare, he successfully brings the two baby Tyrannosaurus through the time portal. In the park, they are put in an enclosure and named Terence and Matilda, as they are one male and one female.

Theo starts becoming aggressive, and his neck frill changes colour, and he continually charges at the same tree. The park's vet believes he has reached sexual maturity and that he has high levels of testosterone. The head keeper creates a "rival" for Theo by using old tyres and oddments to build a crude mock Triceratops head and neck on the front of a tractor, providing something for Theo to take his aggression out on.

Episode 2: A Mammoth Undertaking (Siberia, 10,000 years ago, near Pleistocene-Holocene boundary)

Nigel travels to the end of the last Ice Age, hoping to rescue a woolly mammoth, from 8000 BC, when they were almost extinct. Exploring a cave, he comes across a cave bear, which chases him - he escapes by climbing a tree, and regrets that he did not get a chance to bring it back. Afterwards, Nigel finds a female mammoth with an infected spear wound inflicted by Palaeolithic human hunters who had killed another female mammoth which she is standing over. When she collapses, Nigel brings in helpers who give her antibiotics. They then stand guard over her through the night, protecting her from wolves and hyenas.

In the morning, the mammoth is strong enough to stand up, and Nigel brings her through the time portal. With treatment, the mammoth (which they name Martha) recovers from her infected injury, but then refuses to eat. Suzanne, the head vet, suggests a problem with the food, so Nigel travels back to 150,000 years ago, when mammoths were still common, to research their feeding habits. He comes across large herds of mammoths, as well as a male Elasmotherium, and collects some grass samples. However, he has to drop the samples to escape from a bull mammoth in musth. When Nigel goes back and retrieves the samples, he also gets the Elasmotherium to chase him through the time portal, bringing it back to the park.

When Martha refuses to eat the Ice Age grass, Nigel believes her problem is loneliness. In a meeting with the head keeper and vet, they decide to try and introduce Martha into a herd of African elephants already at the park. The matriarch of the herd accepts Martha, who successfully integrates herself into the herd and starts eating again.

The episode also looks at the animals already in the park from the previous episode. The Ornithomimus are not eating the grass and plants in their enclosure because Bob, the head keeper, treated them like ostriches. So he moved them into a new enclosure with a pond and fed them duck food. It turned out that treating them like ducks worked much better.

Episode 3: Dinobirds (northeast China, 125 million years ago, mid Cretaceous)

This is a rescue mission just before the site area's dinosaurs were wiped out by a volcano. It is aimed at getting specimens of Microraptor, which is threatened by volcanoes and with being out-competed by the coming birds.

In the park, there are now more than 24 animals. The two young T.rexes often threaten each other. There is a heat wave and Martha the mammoth with her small ears and long hair and blubber is affected by the heat, as she had been brought from an Ice Age winter.

Nigel and four other people go through the time portal to the site. A large threatening volcano stands over the area. There are hot springs, and a risk of natural carbon dioxide seepage. There is a small earthquake. They get away onto higher ground.

They come to an apparently non-volcanic lake. Pterosaurs fly in and fly with their lower jaws skimming in the surface of the lake for fish.

When they get back to camp they find that something (later found to be a pack of Mei long) had raided their camp and torn much of their equipment everything apart looking for the meat that was part of their rations. This loss of food supplies causes a crisis.

They walk through a forest. Something follows them through the fern undergrowth, then goes away.

In the park, Martha the mammoth is led to stand between two jeeps, and someone stands on one of them to clip her hair short to avoid the overheating.

On site, they find two Incisivosaurus, which eat fern, and display at each other spreading their arms, which have short "flight feathers", too short for flight, and also quill feathers on the sides of the ends of their tails. It was thought that dinosaur / bird feathers first arose for insulation for warmth, then the quill feathers arose for displaying and later got big enough for gliding.

Four Mei long attack one of the party, who gets them off him by jettisoning his pack, which contains the meat which they were after.

In the park, one of the Ornithomimus starts to go off by itself looking in undergrowth, and there are fears about its health.

On site, Nigel using binoculars sees some Microraptors going in the same direction, and follows them. This brings him to a herd of titanosaurs pushing through the dense forest making a trampled track as if a convoy of trucks had gone that way. That is not a usual habitat for titanosaurs, and it turns out that they are looking for somewhere to lay eggs. 12 Microraptors come: they were after insects disturbed by the titanosaurs tearing up the ground and treading on insect-ridden rotten logs. Nigel tried to catch some Microraptors, but they are all too quick for him.

Nigel makes an enclosure of net, with inside it a hollow baited with insects, as Microraptor can only glide and cannot take off from flat ground. The Microraptors see the insects but mistrust the net. Two Incisivosaurus running and displaying at each other run into the net and flatten it and get away. Then the Microraptors land and eat the insects. Nothing is caught. The men go back through the time portal to the park.

In the park the one Ornithomimus has started lying about in the shade. Someone has seen this behavior in birds, and guesses that the Ornithomimus is broody.

Nigel and at least 4 others go back through the time portal to the site. Nigel now has a net gun, and a carbon dioxide detector. Each man has a gasmask in his pack, as volcanic ash in the air damages the lungs.

In the park, the Ornithomimus is taken into the vet's examination room. A bag is put over its head, to quieten it. Medical ultrasound shows that it has two fully-developed functioning oviducts, each containing an egg. (Modern birds only have a left oviduct.)

On site Nigel sees that the titanosaur trail goes downhill towards the volcano, but he must follow it. They find several Mei long which had gone to sleep in a flat-bottomed hollow. He pokes one with a stick, but it does not wake. He realizes that the Mei longs are dead from gassing by carbon dioxide of volcanic origin. He looks at his carbon dioxide detector, which gives a reading. He calls out "carbon dioxide!" and orders everybody to go to higher ground.

In the park the T.rexes start to fight. They are separated by water blast from a watercannon mounted on a large water tanker truck and put in separate small pens while a partition is built dividing their enclosure.

On site, Nigel and his party finds the titanosaurs laying eggs in ground warmed by underground volcanic heat, a good place for incubation. He picks up one of the eggs and puts it back in the nest. Unlike with a hen's egg, it must always be the same way up, to avoid damage to the embryo. He reflects that the hatchling would grow to 30,000 times the weight to become adult. The Microraptors arrive, and with his netgun Nigel catches 4 of them. The strongest quake yet happens. Some titanosaurs are coming straight at Nigel, who curls up on the ground wrapped around the Microraptor until they pass. He is uninjured and the Microraptor has a simple broken left radius or ulna. The volcano erupts, blasting out a huge ash cloud. The dinosaurs stampede. Nigel and his team put their gasmasks on and quickly set up the time portal in the falling volcanic ash. It comes active just in time, and nine titanosaurs come through it, surprising the men in the park, who have to find somewhere to put them.

In the park:-

  • The broody Ornithomimus starts to lay eggs: it has laid four pairs of eggs (one pair per day) in a part circle when the episode ends.
  • The injured Microraptor's arm is splinted under anaesthetic.

Episode 4: Saving the Sabretooth (South America, 1 million years ago, late Pliocene)

  • Smilodon populator (Sabre Toothed Cat) (2 brought back: one male, one female)
  • Toxodon platensis
  • Phorusrhacos (Terror Bird) (1 brought back)
  • Prehistoric deer
  • Prehistoric armadillo (live-acted by a modern armadilo)

Nigel is shown walking with a tame cheetah. He comments that specialization has threatened the cheetah, and later that it may have wiped out the sabertooth. In the park the titanosaurs break their fence and have to be let wander around the park. They go towards the park's main gates. Bob follows one in a tractor. To his disgust it discharges runny smelly faeces in front of him: its gut clearly does not like some of the modern vegetation. At the same time, Nigel radios to Bob that he will need a birdcage for a bird standing 3 metres high, but due to tractor engine and titanosaur noise, Bob only hears part of the message, and provides an ordinary parakeet-sized birdcage. Nigel explains to Bob what is needed.

Nigel goes through the time portal to South America 1 million years ago when the sabre-tooths were in their prime (having recently entered South America after the Panama land-bridge formed), but the terror birds (Phorusrhachids) were dying out; before that South America had been cut off from the other continents for 30 million years. He drives through a moving herd of Toxodons; he follows them to find where they were going, and he sees that they were going to water to swim or wallow in: he sees that they lived like modern hippos, and thus may be dangerous like hippos. A Toxodon chases Nigel's jeep, and he has to drive fast and far before it gives up the chase.

In the park the female Ornithomimus had laid more eggs. Two of them have rolled out of the nest and she leaves them there, so Suzanne must rescue them for artificial incubation, as all those eggs are precious. Suzanne stalks up to them and picks up them; the 0rnithomimus demonstrates but does not chase. Some egrets fly up. Bob puts the 2 eggs in an incubator at 33°C, as this is best temperature for crocodile and ostrich eggs.

On site Nigel sees a female sabertooth stalk a Toxodon and then after a short chase jump on its head and neck and bite its throat and kill it. More sabertooths come, including some 6 to 8 week old cubs. They eat their fill and go away. A terror bird starts to eat from the carcass. A sabertooth comes back and chases it away, forcing it to drop a lump of meat which it had pulled off. That sort of pressure is why the terror birds were dying out. Nigel stalks up to that dropped piece of meat and picks it up. The sabertooth on the kill demonstrates at him but does not charge at him. Nigel tows the piece of meat behind his jeep and entices the terror bird to chase it through the time portal into the park.

In rhe park the eggs incubated by the Ornithomimus hatch and the resulting young run about (the first baby dinosaurs for 65 million years), but the two eggs in the incubator do not hatch. The young Ornithomimus are covered in downy feathers.

Accompanied by big cat expert Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Nigel goes through the time portal to South America in 8000BC when the sabertooths were dying out. They find a drier climate and no big game. Nigel and Saba separate, on foot. Saba hears animals' alarm cries, but Nigel finds nothing.

Saba finds a deposit of fresh sabertooth faeces. She pulls it apart with two small sticks and finds that it is full of hair and bone and bits of animal hide, as if hunger had forced the sabertooth to scavenge old remains of carcasses.

Nigel hears vegetation noise from an animal near him. He finds and catches and releases an ordinary modern-type armadillo and remarks that a million years earlier there were giant armadillos about.

Saba finds a 2-month-old sabertooth cub starved to death because its mother was not eating enough to make enough milk for it.

Nigel has a videocamera with a movement detector: he leaves it overnight watching over a trail. In the morning he plays it back and finds that a sabertooth had investigated it and knocked it over and left a musky mammal smell.

Saba watches the female sabertooth hunting. It sees her and confronts her. She backs off. Nigel meets Saba. Due to lack of prey the female sabertooth is hunting unsuitably light fast prey, a deer: when she charges, the deer runs away easily. Later they see her suckling a live cub, but she is making little or no milk for it. A male sabertooth turns up: there is risk that it will kill the cub to bring its mother into oestrus sooner. In the jeep they chase the male sabertooth and anaesthetic-dart it and load it up. Then they go for the female, planning to anaesthetic-dart her and load her and her cub. When they reach her, the cub has starved to death. Nigel anaesthetic darts the female sabertooth. They load it in the back of the jeep. Saba is sad that they could not save the cub. The female sabertooth was badly underweight from trying to lactate on too little food.

In the park the men have finished building a partition across the Tyrannosaurus enclosure, and put one of the Tyrannosauri in each part. Matilda keeps threatening Terence but now cannot reach him.

The two Ornithomimus eggs in the incubator hatch, late but successfully: Bob guesses that the incubator's temperature had been set a little too low. The two resulting hatchlings see Bob and imprint to him and think that he is their mother and follow him about. They eat some sort of food pellets out of his hand.

With good food and no need to lactate, the two sabertooths and the terror bird recover from their hunger over the next fortnight.

Episode 5: The Bug House (Isle of Arran in Scotland, 300 million years ago, Upper Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian)

In the park, the sabertooths are in adjacent enclosures. The male wants the female, but the more mature female is not interested, either ignoring him or acting aggressively towards him.

Nigel goes to modern Arran and sees a fossil Arthropleura track in rock.

He goes back to the park to serious trouble among the T.rexes: Matilda has broken into Terence's enclosure and the two are seriously fighting. Terence has been badly bitten about the face. A staff member has drug-darted Matilda, but these drugs take time to act on reptiles. Nigel arrives and encourages her to chase his jeep. When he comes to woodland, he can drive no further and climbs a tree. Matilda pulls the cloth cover off the top of the jeep, and then collapses due to the tranquiliser.

Nigel, with assistants, drives in the jeep through the time portal to Upper Carboniferous Arran, where the land is covered with coal forest. He had aimed at an island of dry land, but after driving a few yards ended in a swamp. The jeep's engine gets wet and will not start. A Meganeura flies over.

In the park, Terence is in the animal clinic, anaesthetized, and Suzanne is operating on the wounds. She prefers absorbable sutures to surgical clips, since Terence would need to be anaethetised again for the clips to be removed.

On site, Upper Carboniferous air is 35% oxygen, not 20% as now. Nigel climbs a 150-foot-tall tree (Sigillaria or Lepidodendron or similar): it has no branches until near its top, and he must use a loop of strap around himself and the tree, to climb. He reaches its top and sees a wide view, and patches of open water: the place to look for Meganeura.

In the park, an enclosed bulding to contain a 35% nitrox atmophere for the coal forest wildlife is being built. A titanosaur goes past, knocks a partly-built wall down, then goes away. Bob says that the titanosaurs cannot seem to settle in one area.

On site, something big moves about underwater and makes bubbles. Nigel hears something big moving about in undergrowth on land, and chases it, and finds an Arthropleura. It rears and confronts him. It is 10 feet long and has big dangerous-looking mandibles. It smells of almonds, a smell that makes Nigel fear that it can squirt cyanide.

In the park, Suzanne has put climbing poles in the sabertooths' enclosures: this is environmental enrichment, which will hopefully make them happier so she will be more accepting of the male. Bob offers a titanosaur a cycad leaf, but it does not eat; he suspects that the titanosaurs are looking for stomach stones, and collects stones for them.

On site, the Arthropleura has gone, leaving a track. Nigel says that that may be the same track that he saw fossilized on modern Arran. He sees two male Meganeura have a dogfight. One flies away and the other looks for food. Nigel has a butterfly net, but such a net big enough to catch a Meganeura is cumbersome. As Nigel makes a move to catch a Meganeura, something in the water bites his right ankle. Evening is coming, and the crew find dry land and camp for the night. Nigel warns them never to walk without boots on in case of stinging animals. Someone by force of habit puts mosquito net up, and Nigel tells him to take it down, as mosquitoes have not evolved yet. Nigel sleeps in a hammock slung between two giant lycopsid trees in the coal forest. There is a thunderstorm in the night.

In the park, Bob brings a wheelbarrow full of the stones to some titanosaurs; one of them investigates. In the animal clinic, Suzanna finds that Terence has septicaemia and gives him antibiotic.

On site, the thunderstorm stops, and it is still night, and animals tend to become active after rain. Nigel goes about with a large ultraviolet light. He finds a Pulmonoscorpius a meter long, by its shell fluorescing. He films it, but his camera work is shaky and he would need the team's cameraman to take good footage. The Pulmonoscorpius then begins crawling onto a team member's bed, and looks as if it may sting him when he twitches in his sleep. Nigel grabs it by the tail end, and lets it go away from the camp.

In the park the female sabertooth seems happier, and as if she will accept the male. Susanne wonders whether to raise the door between their enclosures.

On site, Nigel tries to catch a Meganeura by a technique known for modern dragonflies, by filling a long two-handed hand-pumped water-gun with detergent solution to squirt on a Meganeura so that it will fall in the water and become wet, so it can be caught easily. The Meganeuras are very fast and agile, but after many failed attempts, he hits one, and it falls in the water. Nigel gets his net and scoops the Meganeura out of the water. In the water he sees a big amphibian. He passes the net with the Meganeura in to a companion and swims underwater (without a diving mask) and catches the amphibian after a struggle, as it is very strong and slippery. He shows that it an underwater ambush predator. He sees that it is a Crassigyrinus scoticus, whose fossils have only been found in Scotland; he nicknames it a "swamp monster" as it has no common name. That is what bit his ankle earlier. He has to let it go, as he had no way to transport it safely. He holds the Meganeura vertically by its thorax so its wings fan his face, as the forest is very hot and damp, then puts the Meganeura in a net cage.

In the park Suzanne lifts the door between the sabertooths' enclosures. The male goes into the female's enclosure. They growl somewhat at each other, but do not fight.

On site, Nigel finds a Pulmonoscorpius nearly a meter long under a half casing of a rotted-out fallen lycopsid log. He holds its attention with a thin stick and works his a hand behind it and grabs its telson just in front of its sting. As he puts it in a dog carrier, it stings his hand as he lets it go.

The lightning storm has started a forest fire, and in the 35%-oxygen air vegetation is much more inflammable than in modern air. They run towards the jeep. Nigel trips over a big Arthropleura hidden in ground litter. It rears to confront him, and Nigel says he must rescue it, otherwise it will be burned alive. After a struggle, he and another man wrap it in plastic sheet and tie red cord around it. They load everything on the jeep and set up the Time Portal just in front of the jeep, whose engine still will not start. Nigel runs through the Time Portal, comes back with the end of a tow rope, and ties it to the jeep, which is towed out of the coal forest swamp back into the modern age. They see that the tow rope was being towed not by a towtruck or other vehicle, but by a titanosaur, which Bob was enticing with the wheelbarrowful of gastrolith stones.

The Arthropleura, the Meganeura, and the Pulmonoscorpius are put in the high-oxygen building. Terence is recovering well from his injury and infection but destroys Suzanne's surgery once it wakes up from anesthetic (Suzanne had not restrained him, not realising he would come round so fast). On Nigel the sting site has swollen but still shows no serious symptoms, so either the Pulmonoscorpius's venom does not effect mammals, or it did not inject any venom.

Episode 5 production

Many of the coal forest trees seem to be CGI.

For ground shots real backgrounds in a modern swamp forest in Florida were used: that is why the bases of the lycopsid tree trunks often do not have the correct shape splitting into four equal main roots (Stigmaria).

Episode 6 (Texas, 75 million years ago, Upper Cretaceous)

Nigel is hunting down history's biggest crocodile. Back in the park, in a trailer at the end of episode 5 the titanosaurs seem to be knocking down all the fences and setting the other animals free. According to a TV guide, Nigel also rescues a baby elephant. Obviously this takes at the park, and it may be related to the titanosaur incident.

List of creatures in the park

BR = "the park's population of this species seems to be able to breed".
NT = "not brought through the time portal".

Mammals

Birds

Reptiles

Dinosaurs

Other reptiles

  • A pet chameleon seen briefly in Nigel's office NT
  • A small python seen briefly in Nigel's office NT
  • A group of crocodiles seen briefly being fed NT

Arthropods

Animals needing treatment

ep animal symptom diagnosis cause treatment result
1 male Triceratops (Theo) kept charging a tree aggressiveness rutting made an artificial opponent good
2 female mammoth (Martha) injury, later collapsed infected spear wound Palaeolithic hunters before capture (they killed her companion) antibiotic. (Vet went through time portal.) good
2 not eating injury shock, bereavement introduced to a herd of African elephants good
3 overheating Montana summer weather after Siberian winter fur clipped good
3 female Ornithomimus isolating herself ultrasound showed eggs inside broody, looking for safely hidden nest site allowed to nest; she laid and sat eggs later hatched young
3 Microraptor left arm injury simple fracture of left ulna near brush with Titanosaurus stampede after capture splinted good
4 male Smilodon underweight and low condition chronic shortage of prey before capture big game dying out food and rest good
4 female Smilodon severe underweight and starvation trying to lactate to feed cubs during chronic shortage of prey before capture big game dying out food and rest good
5 male Tyrannosaurus (Terence) bite wounds on face and resulting septacaemia fight with Matilda dart tranquiliser on Matilda took time to work operation and antibiotics good
5 Titanosaurs kept walking around looking uneasy would not eat when given food undigested food in stomach feed stones to grind the food in stomach good

List of paleontological faults and inaccuracies

  • Some scientists theorise that a Smilodon could not use its sabre-teeth to take down its prey, in case of damaging them, as was said in Walking with Beasts

Other errors

  • Nigel's jeep's driver's seat switches between left and right in different shots, causing problems with continuity.

Trivia

  • In episodes 1 and 2, Nigel says, "No sudden movements" to the cameramen when confronted by a fearsome creature. In episode 4, Saba says something similar when confronted by a sabre-toothed cat. This is somewhat reminiscent of remarks made by characters in the Jurassic Park films, notably in the first movie, wherein the Tyrannosaurus cannot perceive static prey.
  • As of episode 5, the Elasmotherium has not been mentioned since it was taken to the park.

DVD

The Region 2 DVD is to be released for £19.99 on 28 August 2006 by Fremantle Media. [1]

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