The decision was also made to include the giant titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus. The remarkable giant azhdarchid pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus became part of the project, this being a good excuse to reconstruct it as per the terrestrial stalking model published by Mark Witton and I back in 2008 ( Witton & Naish 2008, 2015, Witton 2013). Western North America’s Maastrichtian superstars had to be included in addition to a ‘background cast’ of small animals, like mammals, lizards, turtles and salamanders. We began by selecting an area of the world we could film in (always a problem when you need photo-real footage due to the ubiquity of grasses and difficulty of getting an appropriately Mesozoic flora), and by compiling a list of appropriate animals. The process of bringing our dinosaurs (and other animals) to life was a fairly slow one. The big open area has been created and maintained by giant dinosaurs in an otherwise heavily wooded region. Scenes from the on-site remote field cameras at Dinosaurs in the Wild provide some indication of the flora in the region.

Indeed, our animals incorporate the most modern ideas on life appearance, ecology and biology and are not those of your parent’s or grandparent’s books, nor are they the antiquated scaly monsters of a certain recent cinematic endeavour. It provides its visitors with the palaeogeographical background to the world they’re visiting, takes them to a research base (TimeBase 67) that mostly consists of laboratories and study areas, and shows them animals quite different from the renditions they might be more familiar with. Credit: Darren Naishĭinosaurs in the Wild is science-led, in great contrast to virtually all other dinosaur-led attractions the world over. Among the several of our main characters is the (controversial) big dromaeosaur Dakotaraptor: and this is our life-sized model, Siouxsie.

Dinosaurs in the Wild is open throughout the summer, its doors currently being set to close on September 2nd, so for booking and more information go here. All you have to do – it’s easiest if you live in southern England, sorry everyone else – is travel to the Greenwich Peninsula, London, and visit Dinosaurs in the Wild, an immersive, interactive family experience that takes visitors back to Late Cretaceous western North America, back to the time of Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Ankylosaurus. Right now, you can travel back in time 67 million years and see live dinosaurs, pterosaurs and mosasaurs.

Ankylosaurus walking with dinosaurs