Prehistoric Park
| Prehistoric Park | |
|---|---|
| Starring | Nigel Marven |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Production | |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | ITV1 |
| Release | 2006 |
Prehistoric Park is a 6-part television series 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 theme is 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.
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)
There are various other staff members too, but so far, none of their names have been given.
Episode 1 (Montana, 65 million years ago, very end of Cretaceous)
- Tyrannosaurus rex (2 young brought back)
- Triceratops horridus (1 brought back)
- Ornithomimus velox (a flock brought back)
- Nyctosaurus (pterosaur)
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 bak 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 sends the Triceratops through, but the Tyrannosaurus does not follow. The juvenile 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. Another Tyrannosaurus then attacks the female Tyrannosaurus for her kill - it kills her, and takes the Ornithomimus away.
At this point, an asteroid strikes the Earth, leaving Nigel with just a few minutes until 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. Also set up in the park, they are named Terence and Matilda. 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 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 (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, at the time when they were almost extinct. Exploring a cave, he comes across a cave bear, which chases him - he escapes by climbing a tree, regretfully he didn't get a chance to save it. Afterwards, Nigel successfully finds a female mammoth: she is standing over another female which has been killed by human hunters, and has been wounded herself. When she collapses, Nigel brings in helpers who give her antibiotics. They then stand guard over her through the night, protecting her from wolves.
In the morning, the mammoth is strong enough to stand up, and Nigel successfully brings her through the time portal. With treatment, the mammoth - which is named 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 Nigel finds that Martha still won't eat the Ice Age grass, he 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 (northeast China, 125 million years ago, mid Cretaceous)
- Microraptor gui (4 brought back)
- Titanosaurus (9 brought back)
- Incisivosaurus gautheri
- Mei long
- Pterosaurs
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 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 men 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 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.
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 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 Titanosaurus 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 Titanosaurus, and it turns out that they are looking for somewhere to lay eggs. 12 Microraptors come: they were after insects disturbed by the Titanosauruses 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 men 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 Titanosaurus 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: it does not wake, and 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 pens while a partition is built dividing their enclosure.
On site, Nigel and his party finds the Titanosauruses 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 Titanosauruses 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 men put their gasmasks on and quickly set up the time portal in the falling volcanic ash. It comes active just in time, and nine Titanosaurus come through it, surprising the men in the park, who have to find somewhere to put them.
In the park:-
- The broody Ornithomimus lays four pairs of eggs (one pair per day) in a part circle and starts to incubate them.
- The injured Microraptor's arm is splinted under anaesthetic.
Episode 4 (South America, 3 million years ago, mid Pliocene)
- Smilodon populator (Saber-Toothed Cat)
- Toxodon platensis
- Phorusrhacos
Episode 5 (Scotland, 300 million years ago, Upper Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian)
Episode 6 (Texas, 75 million years ago, Upper Cretaceous)
Trivia
- In both of the first two episodes, Nigel says, "No sudden movements" to the cameramen when confronted by a fearsome creature.