Prehistoric America

Starring:Prehistoric America
Studio: BBC
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Functioning as a natural-history time machine, Prehistoric America follows the successful example of the BBC's previous documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, employing digital imagery to explore North America's distant past. Each 50-minute episode focuses on a specific region of the continent: the northern "Land of the Mammoth" once known as Beringia (including the Canadian Yukon and Alaska); the southwestern "Canyonlands," including what is now Las Vegas; the "Ice Age Oasis" of Florida; and the "Edge of the Ice" in the Pacific Northwest. Bones and fossils are revived by the magic of CGI, illuminating the lives and behaviors of mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed cats, and other unusual wildlife that flourished in these regions 14,000 years ago, just as humans were making their first footprints on the continent. While the CGI creatures become slightly redundant and fall short of Hollywood quality, they're still convincing enough to transport viewers into a richly informative and visually captivating journey to the end of Earth's final Ice Age. Matching the high standards of all BBC documentaries, Prehistoric America builds a digital bridge to this most remarkable epoch, never compromising its fascinating scientific inquiry. --Jeff Shannon
Description
Prehistoric America takes us on a journey through the prehistory of North America - beginning 14,000 years ago when people were first entering this vast and beautiful continent. Witness ancient beasts, mammoths, mastodons, giant bears and sabre-toothed cats, and see how their successors - modern animals and beasts - carry on their legacy.

When Dinosaurs Roamed America
Average customer rating:

very entertaining

IT'S A SERIOUS EFFORT TO TELL A STORY ABOUT DINOSAURS

Could Have Been Better, But Not Much

Dinos American Style

Inane and Sometimes Cartoonish but Otherwise Inoffensive

When Dinosaurs Roamed America
Starring: John Goodman
Manufacturer: Family Home Ent
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Prehistoric Planet - Complete Set

Walking with Dinosaurs

ASIN: B00005MKL5
Release Date: 2001-08-15

Amazon.con

For dino lovers of all stripes, this Discovery Channel special delivers an entertaining documentary about what it was like to live in the land of giants. Combining nature photography and computer graphics, the program brings the dinosaurs--all of which lived on the North American continent of yore--to life. The 90-minute showcase explores dinosaurs with a narrative-story style similar to that used in BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs. The program includes quick, informative bits by paleontologists in the field, and shows nifty 3-D cross-sections of a dinosaur muscle and skeleton structures. Although it's quite fun to see what prehistoric America may have looked like (a typical opening slide: "Philadelphia, 300 million years ago"), the film doesn't have the technical expertise or fluidity of its BBC successor. Due to some dinosaur chomping, this program is not suited for children younger than 8. --Doug Thomas

Description

Take a journey back to prehistoric America when mighty dinosaurs ruled the continent. From New York to New Mexico, these powerful animals lived, hunted and died in the very place you call home. Watch millions of years of violent evolution unfold before your eyes. By combining state-of-the-art computer animation with beautiful live-action landscapes, you'll witness these fearsome creatures roar to life. Faster, stronger and fiercer than ever, these dinosaurs are based on the most recent and scientifically accurate research ever assembled. Faithfully recreated, these dinosaurs move, look and sound like you've gone back in time. You'll meet the never-before-seen Zuniceratops, a uniquely North American creature that was first of its kind to have horns over its eyes. You'll also visit all your favorites including the T-Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and the ferocious Raptor, with a startling new appearance that' ll surprise you. You won't see more authentic and terrifying dinosaurs anywhere...except buried in your own backyard.

Customer Reviews:

very entertaining.......2007-03-25

i enjoyed this DVD very much. i have been watching dinosaur productions over forty years now and i find that this new batch is absolutely amazing. had they been around when i was a kid i most likely would have become a paleontologist.

the CG is good, but there are some scenes that children under 6 or 8 may find scary.

IT'S A SERIOUS EFFORT TO TELL A STORY ABOUT DINOSAURS.......2006-05-10

AND ALL SERIOUS EFFORTS TO TELL STORIES ABOUT DINOSAURS ARE GOOD!

FIRST THOUGHTS: OKAY - IT'S NOT CHASED BY DINOSAURS - BUT!

Having said the above, this is NOT "WALKING WITH DINOSAURS" or "CHASED BY DINOSAURS" but "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" does have a great deal of solid educational content while being both fun to watch and location specific to the United States, which is my backyard too.

IN A NUTSHELL: A DIFFERENT FORMAT FEATURING SOME NEW DISCOVERIES

With John Goodman narrating, this 90 minute fictionalization covers dinosaur natural history in linear fashion from the Triassic Period until the terminal Cretaceaous. Everything they show about dinosaurs is both general [in that it happens everywhere] and specific to various identified locations within the lower 48 states.

Within the story context, detours are taken and explainations regarding some of what we are seeing [like raptors with feathers] are explained by several leading paleontologists. Also, from the field, we are shown fossilized deposits which suggest strikes by Comets [eg. at the end of the Triassic period] and footprints that show the growth in size of dinosaurs between the Triassic and Jurassic Periods. We also see the anatomy of different dinosaurs to illustrate their evolutionary features. Very good stuff and very well done.

Just bear in mind that unlike the BBC's "WALKING WITH" series, this was basically all digital effects WITHOUT the animatronics.

ABOUT THE DVD:

Wonderful digital effects are very well transferred to this DVD in letterbox format.

* -- SPECIAL FEATURES -- *

2 Behind-The-Scenes Shorts [about 4 minutes each - too little]
Dinosaur Facts [interesting read]
Dinosaur Quiz [very short with answers under each question]
Photo Gallery [nice photos - more would have been better]

INTERVIEWS WITH PALEONTOLOGISTS- in print form, 2 of the contributors are asked questions pertaining to the authenticity of the dinosaurs movements and appearances.

BOTTOM LINE: VERY GOOD IF NOT EXCELLENT FICTIONALIZED STORY

Could Have Been Better, But Not Much .......2006-04-22

This was an exellent movie though it could have been better. Some people say that John Goodman sounds really bored, but I just care about the facts. John Goodman mispronounced two dinosaur names. He said anatototitan instead of anatotitan. He also mispronounced Quedzelquatlus. Istead of Kwed-zel-koe-at-lus, he pronounced it Kwed-zell-kwad-elus. Apart from his mispronounciations, it was very good. I liked the fact that it included some new dinosaurs, like dilophosaurus, apatosaurus and ziniceratops. I also noticed the fact that they put feathers on th raptors. Overall, it was very, very good.

Dinos American Style.......2006-04-09

I thought this was better than Walking With Dinosaurs for the following reasons: 1: All CG Dinos of reasonable quality as opposed to fantastic CG dinos and TERRIBLE hand puppets, 2: Animals behave more naturally, more believable, 3: REALLY nice extinction sequence as opposes to just glossing over it, 4: Portraying the animals as SUCCESSFUL as opposed to failures. 5: Claws and talons are SHARP as opposed to blunt.
However, the CG dinos are clearly that - CG, but their attributes (acting, voices, etc) make up for it. Also, in WWD, some of the animals (T-rex especially) did not match up with skeletal data (if you put WWD dino and skeleton next to each other they would not match), but in WDRA, the dinos did. I did like Goodman's narration more than Branaugh. WWD is much more Brittish in style (laid back, "proper", etc) than this (you see more gore/blood, ASTEROID IMPACT!). This and WWD allows the viewer to critically asses what data contradicts the other and make their own vision of Prehistoric Life. Which is the whole point.

Inane and Sometimes Cartoonish but Otherwise Inoffensive.......2006-03-02

The subject of this program is a shallow survey of the great age of dinosaurs in North America. It begins with the Triassic and proceeds through the Cretaceous and a few types are examined in each period. Nothing is presented with much depth and the narration is the type expected of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. You merely follow the critters around and see what they are doing.

Compared to the state of the art when I was a kid, the dinosaurs depicted in this program are a miracle. Compared to recent programs, however, they are somewhat lacking. This is not the high budget animation of Jurassic Park or some of the higher end documentaries but it is still a miracle compared to the Claymation things I saw as a kid. Along with the quality of the animation, I had a few problems with some of the depictions of the creatures themselves. Late in the Cretaceous, some are shown with primordial feathers. That makes sense but the furry looking dinosaurs from early in the Cretaceous do not. Hair is a trait of mammals, not raptors. Furry raptors indeed!

The narration is provided by John Goodman whose voice was pleasant in that role. Unfortunately, his script was rather inane and rarely added anything worthwhile to the program. Most of the statements presented as wonderful revelations are merely common sense. "Plant eating dinosaurs have learned to get along with their environment by eating plants." One would suppose that meat eating dinosaurs learned to get along with their environment by eating meat.

It may seem that I have panned this program but that is not my intention. It is shallow compared to many others and the presentation was lacking but that did not detract from the wonder of seeing the dinosaurs roam the earth. To me, it was worth it.

Average customer rating:

DANGER: Hunams Kill Animals
Deceptive Cover Art, but still a decent documentary
A Great Dissapointment.
Repetitive and tedious.

Prehistoric America
Starring: Prehistoric America
Manufacturer: BBC
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Walking with Monsters - Life Before Dinosaurs
What Killed the Mega-Beasts
Chased By Dinosaurs
Walking With Cavemen
The Future Is Wild

ASIN: B00008YLVA
Release Date: 2003-07-15

Amazon.com

Functioning as a natural-history time machine, Prehistoric America follows the successful example of the BBC's previous documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs, employing digital imagery to explore North America's distant past. Each 50-minute episode focuses on a specific region of the continent: the northern "Land of the Mammoth" once known as Beringia (including the Canadian Yukon and Alaska); the southwestern "Canyonlands," including what is now Las Vegas; the "Ice Age Oasis" of Florida; and the "Edge of the Ice" in the Pacific Northwest. Bones and fossils are revived by the magic of CGI, illuminating the lives and behaviors of mammoths, mastodons, sabre-toothed cats, and other unusual wildlife that flourished in these regions 14,000 years ago, just as humans were making their first footprints on the continent. While the CGI creatures become slightly redundant and fall short of Hollywood quality, they're still convincing enough to transport viewers into a richly informative and visually captivating journey to the end of Earth's final Ice Age. Matching the high standards of all BBC documentaries, Prehistoric America builds a digital bridge to this most remarkable epoch, never compromising its fascinating scientific inquiry. --Jeff Shannon

Description

Prehistoric America takes us on a journey through the prehistory of North America - beginning 14,000 years ago when people were first entering this vast and beautiful continent. Witness ancient beasts, mammoths, mastodons, giant bears and sabre-toothed cats, and see how their successors - modern animals and beasts - carry on their legacy.

Customer Reviews:

DANGER: Hunams Kill Animals.......2006-03-31

There is an undisguised environmentalist streak running through this series but it is still quite good. The major focus, except for the last episode, is the fauna of North America during the last ice age.

The general pattern is as follows: an area is chosen and its climate is explained. Fossil evidence is examined as are the analogs provided by species which are still alive. From that, "a typical day" is constructed from the evidence.

Episode Synopses follow:

Land of the Mammoth - This episode concentrates on the animals of Beringia, the land mass exposed between Alaska and Siberia about 14,000 years ago. It is a harsh, northern climate, cold and dry. The star of the show is the wooly mammoth but there are other beasts examined as well. Some are still alive today and some are extinct. All are part of the eat or be eaten web of life. Only the very briefest mention is made of the top predator, man.

Canyonlands - This episode still takes place during the Pleistocene ice age but the environment is much different. It focuses on the region around the Grand Canyon. It was still magnificent back then and a harsh environment but it was moister too. Many of the animals in this one are familiar but there is a survey of extinct varieties as well. These include saber toothed cats, giant sloths and another variety of mammoth. The predation of man plays a bigger role in this episode.

Ice Age Oasis - This episode looks at the area of Florida which had quite a different climate at the time of the ice age. Mastodon, a relative of the mammoth, roamed the land as did giant armadillos and saber tooth cats. A sloth the height of a giraffe is another spectacular example. Along with these now extinct species were some that are still extant. The most dangerous of these was man.

Edge of the Ice - I think this is probably the best episode on the first disk. It does not spend as much time dealing with novel animals but the ones it does examine are covered in a bit more depth. It takes place in the Pacific Northwest. Instead of being covered by glaciers, it is depicted here as being on the edge of the ice and having grasslands and forests. The fauna, primarily mammoths, mastodons and scimitar toothed cats have been encountered in previous episodes but more time is devoted to their natural history. More time is spent with man as well. Instead of positing the first people arriving by the Beringia land bridge, it posits island hoping nomads in boats. It is well done.

American Serengeti - In this look at the Great Plains during the ice age, we are introduced to more mastodons, the short faced bear and a variety of animals that have close relatives in Africa. These include lions, cheetahs, camels, zebras a few who are still around in America like prairie dogs and bison.

Mammoths to Manhattan - The title of this episode is misleading. While it does, indeed, deal a bit with "Manhattan", the main subject is the extinction of the Ice Age creatures, the adaptation of others and the introduction from Europe of still more. The general thrust is that no species has survived the introduction of man to the environment without some changes. This is most true with Europeans.

Deceptive Cover Art, but still a decent documentary.......2004-05-05

Go in knowing what to expect and this DVD is a rewarding experience. If (like the cover art would make you believe) you approach this DVD thinking that it will be a "CG-documentary" that imagines it is taking place in the Ice Age, replete with 100% CG and animatronics, then you will be sorely disappointed. About 10% of the footage is of CG creatures (Mastodons, Mammoths, Sabre-Tooth Lions, etc.). Most of this documentary concentrates on the living Ice Age relic species (Musk Ox, Arctic Ground Squirrel) or the living relatives of extinct species (African elephant substitutes for Mammoth; Prewalski's horse substitutes for ancient horse; modern bison substitute for Long-horned Bison, etc.)

The three documentaries on this DVD are intended to depict what this continent's flora & fauna were like prior to the widespread changes brought about by the Homo-Sapien arrival. In this respect, it is interesting and fairly well-done. Since the CG is not very good (on par with "Walking With Dinosaurs" but nowhere near as realistic as feature films such as "Jurassic Park") I was pleased that the vast majority of footage was of living species. I suspect I will be in the minority.

A Great Dissapointment........2003-11-16

Obviously Computer Generated. Fades from modern to ancient times to increase length without having to computer generate animals, which I found exceptionally anoying. Limited on the number of animals shown over and over again. They even used animals that died out here but not in other places of the world. That was fine with me. At least those looked real. Don't waste your time or money on this one. I expected something more like "Walking with Dinosaurs". Boy was I wrong.

Discovery channel made this longer version. They sell a shorter version for almost twice the price with half the footage. I unfortunately purchased both. I won't buy anything from the Discovery Channel any more. No way. I was extremely dissapointed. Especially with the more expensive but shorter version they sell. They are the same program. I expected much more from them. This was a waste of time and money. You would never guess they are the same program. This version comes in a case and contains 2 DVDs with two, 50 minute programs each. The other has 3 DVDs with about 1 hour each and has a case for each DVD. Who would have guessed they were the same program. Even the covers and titles of the programs are different. Never again. Even if they are able to make real looking animals in the future.

Repetitive and tedious........2003-09-19

I loved the Walking With Dinosaurs/Allosarus/Prehistoric Beasts series so I ordered this based on the Amazon Editorial Review.It does not compare favorably.

It appears there wasn't enough animal diversity in America to do a six part series so this series chose to come up with variations on a formula script set in different locals featuring basically the same animals over and over again. Making it even worse is that CGI budget must have been very limited. Shots are reused so often that by the mid point of episode two you are expiriencing deja vue. After that it's like watching stock footage.And speaking of stock footage, there's way too much footage of modern day counterparts to the prehistoric animals.

I found my self fast fowarding through the last three episodes looking for something interesting.There wasn't much!

Product Description

From the icy, arctic wastes of Alaska and Canada to the steamy, tropical swamps of Florida North America is a vast and mysterious terrain. But 14,000 years ago when the first humans set foot on the continent the land was foreign to the way we see it today. Travel back in time to the end of the last ice age and see for yourself what this strange landscape looked like and which creatures called it home. Using clues from the present and artifacts from the past, scientists reconstruct prehistoric North America and document its wildlife as experienced by the earliest human colonizers. Part One: The Frozen North Alaska is one of America's last great wilderness areas, a region dominated by breathtaking landscapes and spectacular wildlife. Preserved in the frozen soil are clues to a very different land. Visit a place where herds of muskoxen and caribou roamed alongside majestic woolly mammoths, food for the first North American hunters. Then, travel south to the towering rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, where elephant-like mastodons struggled to elude the deadly scimitar-toothed cat. And as they do today, salmon spawned in the rivers, attracting bears and other scavengers but in prehistoric America, these waters welcomed creatures like the fierce teratorn, a giant, predatory bird that dwarfed its modern relatives.

Average customer rating:

Prehistoric America ~ The Wild West

Manufacturer: Discovery Channel
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Special Interests | Genres | DVD | Video

Product Description

From the icy, arctic wastes of Alaska and Canada to the steamy, tropical swamps of Florida North America is a vast and mysterious terrain. But 14,000 years ago when the first humans set foot on the continent the land was foreign to the way we see it today. Travel back in time to the end of the last ice age and see for yourself what this strange landscape looked like and which creatures called it home. Using clues from the present and artifacts from the past, scientists reconstruct prehistoric North America and document its wildlife as experienced by the earliest human colonizers. The Wild West ~ Today, North America's southwest is a dusty, arid terrain. When the first humans arrived thousands of years ago, however, the land was green, rich and filled with an amazing assortment of creatures. Ancient, oversized mountain goats patrolled the rocky mountain slopes, while bizarre ground sloths browsed in the sheltered canyons below. As the grip of the Ice Age lessened, the continent began to clear, providing homes for even more animals bison, pronghorns, prairie dogs and coyotes. But when humans first stepped onto the Great Plains, they encountered an abundance of wildlife rivaled only by the plains of East Africa. Watch as mammoths, horses, peccaries and even camels graze on prehistoric grasses, ever watchful of the land's most-feared predator the North American lion!

Prehistoric America ~ From the Ice Age to Manhattan

Average customer rating:

Prehistoric America ~ From the Ice Age to Manhattan

Manufacturer: Discovery Channel
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

Product Description

From the icy, arctic wastes of Alaska and Canada to the steamy, tropical swamps of Florida North America is a vast and mysterious terrain. But 14,000 years ago when the first humans set foot on the continent the land was foreign to the way we see it today. Travel back in time to the end of the last ice age and see for yourself what this strange landscape looked like and which creatures called it home. Using clues from the present and artifacts from the past, scientists reconstruct prehistoric North America and document its wildlife as experienced by the earliest human colonizers. While the Ice Age strangled much of North America, the deep South offered a refuge for an extraordinary diversity of wildlife. Observe the hunting techniques of a pack of jaguars, as they stalk tapirs and Capybaras in the ancient Cypress swamps. And, watch fur fly as one mighty Saber-toothed cat is humbled before a giant, armored Glyptodont. As time went on, the meeting between the first human hunters and the megafauna proved deadly it wasn't long before most of the large animals disappeared. Many of the smaller species, however, survived and even flourished alongside people. As the tale of prehistoric wildlife winds down, scientists explore the current state of the modern relatives of these ancient creatures. Alligators are now at home on the golf courses of Florida, while Peregrine Falcons nest on the city skyscrapers of Manhattan each a distant reminder of the world that once was.

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