Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia is a
2007 film about life in the
Early Cretaceous,
Patagonia. It features
paleontologist Rodolfo Coria and his work, with
Donald Sutherland acting as main
narrator.
Story
The movie opens on a scene from approximately 65 million years ago,
in the
Late Cretaceous. The narrator
explains that a massive
comet will arrive to
mark the end of dinosaurs, before taking us back to the
Late Jurassic, circa 150 million years ago.
From the announced end of the dinosaurs, this time travel serves
the purpose of introducing us the biggest creatures to have ever
lived on
Earth.
We are first introduced to the ocean life of the
Late Jurassic period. The first of these is an
ichthyosaur, a prehistoric creature
resembling a dolphin, with several individuals shown hunting,
before one is shown escaping from a
Liopleurodon. The movie then takes us to the
Early Cretaceous, approximately 80
million years ago.
From this point on, the narrative alternatingly takes us between
the work of
Rodolfo Coria and the
Early Cretaceous. Of all the
species of
dinosaurs featured, two receive
the most focus: the
Argentinosaurus and the
Giganotosaurus. The reason for this
focus is easily explained by the fact that those two species are
Coria's most important discovery. Of these species, the narrator
presents two individuals
Strong One (an
Argentinosaurus) and
Long Tooth (a
Giganotosaurus).
Strong One is first shown among an
Argentinosaurus nest with
hatchlings venturing out. The narrator announces
that if
Strong One survives, he will grow to become one of
the largest creatures the Earth has ever known. Then, depicting
just how precarious life was, an
Unenlagia arrives and steals an egg, which it
runs off with to feast on elsewhere. At this point, we travel back
to the present day in order to witness Rodolfo Coria's discovery of
Argentinosaurus.
The narrator explains that Coria owns his own
museum, the Museo Carmen Funes
(the museum is featured in the movie as we see
Rodolfo Coria in his museum with one of his daughters, as he shows
her casts of Argentinosaurus and Giganotosaurus
skeletons). We see Coria as he arrives at a digging site
with his daughters, where he and his team work on digging out an
enormous
backbone, which one scientist
declares larger than any other bone he had seen. They discover that
the bone belonged to a large
sauropod. They
named it
Argentinosaurus, meaning "Argentinian
Lizard".
Following this, we are shown the discovery of a large
theropod. Coria emerges from his car and takes a
picture of a dinosaur
footprint, then he
explains that they found more giant bones first thought to belong
to another sauropod, but they were later found out to belong to a
new theropod dinosaur they named
Giganotosaurus, meaning "Giant Southern
Lizard". This leads to a new narrative jump through time, bringing
us back to the
Early Cretaceous.
Unlike the previously featured
Argentinosaurus nest, which
was left unprotected, a
female giganotosaur
is shown guarding its nest from a
Unenlagia. The narrator
announces that this parental care was only common to
theropods. The female manages to drive the threat
away, but only one hatchling giganotosaur hatches: "Long
Tooth".
The story features both individuals as they grown, highlighting the
differences and similarities between both.
Strong One as a
juvenile is already able to eat from the tops of the trees.
Meanwhile, Long Tooth hasn't had much of a
growth spurt and is hunting
insects. She even eats some vegetation at this age,
but as she develops into an
adult,
plants will be wiped out from the menu. A familiar
face by now, an
Unenlagia the narrator calls
Sharp
Feather, appears to devour an insect
Long Tooth had
been chasing and she drives it off a cliff. The narrator then
explains that even though
Sharp Feather had
feathers and resembled a
bird,
it could not fly.
Rodolfo Coria also intervenes to answer a number of questions about
the two species, among which weither the
Giganotosaurus
hunted in packs (yes, they did). The narrator explains that they
came to this conclusion from research around the site where the
Giganotosaurus was discovered, where several
Mapusaurus were also found. The viewers are then
witness to one of these hunting parties, as we go back to 80
million B.C. to see
Long Tooth fully-grown. She now lives
in a pack and is stalking the
Argentinosaurus herd. The
victim chosen is
Strong One and he gets wounded, but
stands back and stops the
Giganotosaurus pack from
hunting.
Long Tooth gets killed in the process and,
displaying the cruelty of life, is eaten by the rest of her
pack.
The movie then comes full circle, as it goes back to the
Late Cretaceous we were shown in the
introduction, more precisely in
North
America where we are introduced to the
Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur capable of
flight with wings of a diameter of over 12 meters. As announced,
the end of the dinosaurs comes to be and the comet crashes on
Earth, killing a
Tyrannosaurus
rex on screen. The after effects of the crash are
explained through a scene featuring the changing scenery as a small
pack of sauropods progresses through the land. Eventually, as snow
starts to fall and the trees are shown to be bear, one individual
collapses and the viewer understands that this is the end of all
dinosaurs.
...Or is it? The movie covers various theories regarding the
Origin of Birds, explaining that
some dinosaurs have evolved to become the birds that we know
today.
Featured Dinosaur Species
Popular Culture
In 2009,
the Quebec
City
museum Maison
Hamel-Bruneau featured an exhibition displaying models created
for the purpose of the movie, several fossils (including dinosaur
cranium molds) and clips from the movie. The exhibition
served to display the bridge between the work of paleontologists
and the creation of a 3D movie featuring digitally created
dinosaurs.
Crew
Notes
- [1]
External links
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