Why Steven Spielberg got his roaring T-Rex all wrong

Telegraph

19-05-2025

The puddle-shaking thud of an approaching tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park is one of film's most famous moments.
But viewers tuning into the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs will be presented with an altogether different monster.
The T-Rex we meet in the rebooted series is quiet and stealthy, creeping up to its prey on shock-absorbent feet and using its exceptional eyesight to pick out victims, even at night time.
3D printing from its brain cavity shows the T-Rex had a huge olfactory system capable of sniffing out even the most well-hidden victims, meaning that crouching out of sight behind a log would no longer cut it for animals trying to avoid becoming lunch.
On the upside, the predator is far slower than its Steven Spielberg counterpart. In recent years, scientists have discovered that a T-Rex's heavy eight-tonne frame could only run around 16mph without breaking bones, meaning a fast human could out-sprint it.
'This really is as close as we can get to a real T-Rex,' said Dr Nizar Ibrahim, a palaeontologist and anatomist from the University of Portsmouth, who was an expert advisor on Walking With Dinosaurs.
'It's been done many, many times over, but it's still a very exciting dinosaur, it's Hollywood royalty, but this is the best, most accurate portrayal of T-Rex anywhere.'
The groundbreaking series is returning to the BBC some 25 years after it was first shown, and while the original relied heavily on animatronics, today's updated offering is largely computer-generated effects.
The dinosaurs are still built from the ground up, but digitally, with designers creating a skeleton, musculature, and finally skin in a process that took two-and-a-half years to complete.
Other on-the-hoof hacks were also employed by the team to make the series feel as lifelike as possible. A bright blue exercise ball was dragged through ferns to simulate the toddling path of a baby triceratops, before using computer effects to replace the ball with the dinosaur.
To create the footprints of the stalking Utahraptor in episode three, the team made plaster replicas of the soles of the animal's feet, based on a preserved trackway found in China.
In episode two, to accurately represent a spinosaurus moving through water, the team commissioned a six-and-a-half-foot long head which was pushed through the depths by the director wearing a wetsuit.
'There were some really silly moments,' said Kirsty Wilson, the series showrunner.
'The production team stomping around, running or even swimming through rivers on location, head-to-toe in blue suits, pretending to be dinosaurs.
'We walk about to create movement in the environment, as if we were dinosaurs brushing past ferns or creating ripples in the water, and then the visual effects company can remove us from the shot later.
'I wasn't immune myself, running through the bushes in the rain pretending to be a baby Triceratops.'
Rather than looking at a species, the new series follows the fates of six 'hero' dinosaurs, imagining what life might have been like for individuals based on their fossil remains.
Each story starts when their bones are dug up by palaeontologists. The first episode follows an orphaned baby triceratops, dubbed 'Clover' by the dig team, who struggles to survive without parents or a herd.
Jack Bootle, senior head of specialist factual commissioning at the BBC said: 'It's an exciting blend of science and storytelling. It first begins at a dig site. We tell a story about how that dinosaur might have lived.
'We may not have Hollywood budgets but we do have science upon our side. If you want to know how the creatures lived, this is the series for you, not Jurassic Park.'
The series will also introduce viewers to a young pachyrhinosaurus, nicknamed Albie, forced to make a 400-mile migration to find food, as well as Sobek, the Spinosaurus, envisaged as a new father looking after his young.
Just one skeleton of the sail-backed crocodile-snouted spinosaurus has ever been found in the Sahara desert.
'Most people are somewhat familiar with the dinosaurs we all grew up with. But in this spectacular Saharan adventure they are going to come face-to-face with a very different giant – longer than T-Rex – and a reminder that there is a lot we don't actually know about dinosaurs and that these creatures were a lot more diverse and adaptable than we previously gave them credit for,' Dr Ibrahim said.
The final episode, Island of Giants, tells the tale of one of the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the earth, a colossal, long-necked Lusotitan, known as Old Grande.
It is narrated by Bertie Carvel, the actor best known for playing Miss Trunchball in the Matilda the Musical and Jonathan Strange in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Sir David Attenborough was originally asked to narrate the first series, but turned it down because it was not representing real, live creatures.
Andrew Cohen, executive producer, said: 'It's always nerve wracking bringing a show this big back.
'We've thought about it for a very long time, about when the right moment was. And I think we've always been looking for a sweet spot, and there's now so much to say about dinosaurs that has transformed in the last 25 years.'