Meet Tarbosaurus.
A top predator in prehistoric Mongolia, the 30-foot-long carnivore uses its six-inch teeth and massive bone-crushing jaws to tear through the flesh and bone of its prey. This king of the cretaceous period likely chased down prey at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour more than 65 million years ago in what is now the Gobi desert in Mongolia.
Similar to its North American cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex, the slightly smaller Tarbosaurus used its agility and sharp claws to hunt and kill slower prehistoric animals.
A computer-generated animation of this prehistoric killing machine coaxes the audience’s imagination back to an ancient world in the new Imax film “Dinosaurs Alive!”
Written and directed by filmmakers Bayley Silleck and David Clark, the film is playing at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park through September.
Narrated by Michael Douglas, the film documents the journeys of paleontologists Mark Norrell and Mike Novacek and Columbia University graduate students Alan Turner and Sterling Nesbitt as they and other fossil-finding aficionados travel around the globe on their quest for dinosaur fossils.
As they uncover the fossils, the film cuts away to Computer-Generated Images (CGI) of semi-realistic looking animations of what life for the ancient thunder-lizards must have been like.
The re-creations are projected onto the huge Science Center Space-Dome and produce a mind-bending, as well as neck-bending, effect for the audience. Each research team’s discoveries bring a new dinosaur to life, each excavation site a new tale of the past vividly brought alive.
The researchers spent about five weeks searching for fossils. They focused on excavating each of the two most fossil-rich sites in the world: the desolate Gobi Desert and the hot sands of Flaming Cliffs in New Mexico.
The paleontologists traverse treacherous trails tracking their treasure while spending as much as eight to 10 hours a day in the blistering sun.
They use pencil-thin brushes to gently move bits of rock from around the bones while lying under the sun’s beating rays. They uncover a chunk of rock, which promises to reveal great discoveries.
As the team preserves their find in a mixture of plaster and toilet paper, one question arises: just where does one go to the restroom when hours away from civilization?
“Dig a hole,” said Turner.
Turner took questions from curious children and parents after the private screening. He is currently pursuing his doctorate at Columbia University and said that although going out in the field looks arduous, it’s what the teams look forward to after spending nine months in the lab.
“I’m lucky because of where I get to do research. I get to travel to places that I otherwise would never have the opportunity to go to,” he said.
Turner’s hard work is starting to pay off. He and the rest of the team have discovered new species during their travels. Their work, however, has yet to be published, he said.
Although Turner has been making new discoveries in the field, he faced harsh criticism from the audience.
After the film, a 7-year-old boy said that Turner forgot to mention that turtles and alligators lived back then and survived dinosaur extinction. Turner explained to the boy that turtles and alligators were reptiles and not dinosaurs.
The boy walked away, unimpressed by Turner’s answer as much as he was unshaken by the family-friendly Imax film, which suggests the film is not too scary for children.
Although the dinosaurs don’t look as realistic as some of the more famous Hollywood renditions, the R.H. Fleet website posts a disclaimer warning that images may not be suitable for very young children.
The Science Center plays “Dinosaurs Alive!” about three times a day in rotation with other films.
For more information on times and ticket prices visit www.rhfleet.org.