Distributed Mind

From the makers of the excellent BBC series "Walking With Dinosaurs" and "Walking With Prehistoric Beasts", comes another FX-heavy trip through prehistory, "Chased By Dinosaurs", now out on DVD. This time, there is a host (Nigel Marven) who walks us through a variety of ancient worlds. Having a human among these huge beasts gives us a better sense of scale than the previous series could do. You can also imagine that a human among the monsters of Earth's past presents many opportunities for danger, which the show joyfully exploits. Basically the result is a fun and even humorous cross between "Walking With Dinosaurs" and "Crocodile Hunter", complete with Australian accent. Marven is surprisingly convincing as an enthusiastic and daring explorer. His exploits are almost always foolish (e.g. prodding a 40-foot prehistoric gator) but of course in the spirit of "Crocodile Hunter", it makes for some exciting entertainment and more importantly, a lot of humor. Lest you think its all entertainment, there is a fair amount to learn. Though certainly much of the series relies on speculation, not all does and the speculative portions are generally based on science, not the producer's musings.

The series includes 5 episodes. The first one tackles the largest land animals ever, including the largest land carnivore, Giganotosaurus (larger than even T-rex) and the largest land animal Argentinosaurus (large does not do this beast justice, its skull is about jeep size). This episode entertains the hypothesis that packs of Giganotosaurs hunted Argentinosaurs. An excellent 50-minute documentary included on the disc explores these two dinosaurs and their possible relationship in more detail. The second episode has Marven searching for Therizinosaurus. In reality, we only have a few bones of its arm, most notably a truly massive claw (the size of a man's arm). The episode's conclusions (which I will not reveal) about Therizinosaurus' habits are science-based, though I don't believe its quite as settled as presented. The final three episodes take place at sea and therefore do not deal with dinosaurs at all. Instead, we are treated to a countdown of the top seven most dangerous seas of all time. This refreshingly involves moving throughout time from as early as the Ordovician (some 250 million years before the first dinos) up to the Pleistocene (about 2-3 million years ago). We meet a variety of nasty creatures including the largest shark ever (Megalodon), the Giant Orthocone (a truly alien beast), Dunkleosteus (a heavily armored fish), and my fave, Liopleurodon (the massive carnivorous marine reptile featured in one of the "Walking With Dinosaurs" episodes). Many other marine creatures are visited as well. I think what I like most about these latter episodes is the exploration of times earlier than the dinosaurs which are unfortunately not tackled often in science shows.

I highly recommend this DVD, especially to fans of the "Walking With..." series. To my eye, the special effects are improved. In particular, they have finally actually animated to some degree scars as they are inflicted in fights (in earlier shows there was always cutting away or other hokey ways to avoid this). Also, the music in these episodes is done by Ben Bartlett who also did "Walking With Dinosaurs". As with the previous music score, this one is excellent and carries over many of the same themes.

So...get this DVD now! Here are some select screenshots from the first episode which hilight the humor and pretty beasts: