Within days of being released on Netflix, nature documentary series The Dinosaurs racked up an impressive 10,000,000 views and was praised for ‘bringing a lost world back to life’.
While the show became an overnight phenomenon (it became the most-watched TV series in over 70 countries), creating it was a huge undertaking that took over three years and involved more than 700 people from 18 countries, including 58 different scientific consultants.
‘This was an opportunity to go into a lot more depth,’ the series’ director Nick Shoolingin-Jordan told Metro.
Executive produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman, the four-part series charts the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, and ‘where they came from, why they mattered, how they evolved, and how they met their ultimate fate’.
Nick, who previously worked on the 2023 Netflix documentary Life on Our Planet, explained that once they started conducting fresh research into dinosaurs for this new series, they were taken aback by the ‘brilliant’ characters and stories that they uncovered.
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‘They are so popular and have stood the test of time. We wanted to tell their whole story – this was an opportunity to go into a lot more depth,’ he explained.
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‘Once we started researching, the characters and stories we discovered weren’t just surprising, they were brilliant.’
The dinosaurs featured in the episodes range from tiny proto‑dinosaurs like Marasuchus to giants like Plateosaurus and Mamenchisaurus. Meanwhile armoured icons such as Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus square off against apex predators like Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex, while leviathans from Pliosaurus to Mosasaurus prowl the oceans, and Spinosaurus traverse both land and sea.
Early feathered fliers, including Anchiornis and Longipteryx, also highlight the dinosaurs still living today: birds.
As Nick explained, the process of deciding which dinosaurs to feature saw them weighing up impressive species with stories about how each lived.
‘When we started researching the show we wanted to interrogate all the potential characters and dinosaurs to include, but we picked stories that had an important point to make – from the underdog to the dominant dynasty on the planet,’ he explained.
‘It was also important the series wasn’t just scientifically accurate but was also emotionally compelling. We wanted to make sure viewers cared for these characters. At the end of each episode, we wanted to make sure the cliffhangers kept people coming back for more.’
How was The Dinosaurs created?
The Dinosaurs has been described as ‘one of the most accurate depictions of prehistoric life ever put to screen’.
Soon after its release, showrunner Dan Tapster of Silverback Films and senior science researcher Dr. Tom Fletcher held an Ask Me Anything on Reddit with the dinosaur enthusiasts of r/Paleontology, which is available to read here.
Asked about the process of bringing the extinct reptiles to life, Tapster explained what information they were able to draw upon.
‘Sometimes behavior does fossilize,’ he explained, citing examples like a Hesperornis skeleton found inside a mosasaur, or Allosaurus bones bearing Stegosaurus tail-spike wounds. ‘There’s also trace fossil evidence — scratch markings made by theropods, most likely during courtship displays.’
The second line of evidence is phylogenetic bracketing — looking at the closest living relatives of dinosaurs (birds and crocodilians) to infer likely behaviors, while always ‘veering toward the mean’ rather than highlighting outlier behaviours.
Finally, the team also relied on decades of wildlife observation. ‘We’ve spent much of our adult lives observing wild animals,’ Tapster said. ‘So we have a very strong intuition about what animals can and can’t do.’
The creation of the series took over three years – with Nick explaining how each dinosaur they chose to focus on also coming with a ‘bible of information’ that they wanted to draw upon in detail.
‘It’s really important to make sure the characters are based on true science, and the events are as accurate as can be. It gives it credibility to know the creatures lived and looked like this,’ he said.
There was also the added challenge of bring creatures to life on screen that no person living today had ever actually seen.
‘For some dinosaurs there is more information than others, but you can gain a lot from phylogenetic bracketing and birds too. The team then have to animate and make sure the walk cycle and how they move is as accurate as possible. It’s a huge project,’ he explained.
When creating the series, the team wanted to make sure dinophiles of all ages could tune in. As Nick put it: ‘We definitely made sure the series was accessible and wasn’t too gory or bloody to make sure kids could watch it.’
In the weeks since the show hit screens, Nick has received an influx of feedback from fans – including families who have all sat down to watch it together.
He also revealed: ‘I’ve even had some feedback from people who have taken in the vastness of the reign of the dinosaurs and made people reflect how short humans have been around and it’s sparked a subtle self-reflection on conservation.
‘In that sense, that’s quite nice that it’s made people think about our short tenure on Earth.’
When asked why he thinks it’s important for people to have a detailed understanding of dinosaurs and the way they lived, he explained: ‘I think it gives us a fantastic perspective that life on our planet has been going on for a really long time and we are just a very short chapter in this extraordinary journey.
‘It also gives us perspective that the planet has had a huge journey. The mind boggles almost. The thing I love about the dinosaurs is that you look at the size of them and the size of their teeth and the speeds they could run and the lengths of their neck – they are almost mythical creatures, but they actually lived. They were flesh and blood.
‘That’s why they capture people’s attentions – because they did actually live on the same planet we walk on now. Indirectly we can also respect our planet and how precious everything on it is.’
The Dinosaurs is streaming on Netflix.
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