When Dinosaurs Roamed America Review-spective

It is in this very week/on this very day that one of the finest documentaries about dinosaurs and put out by the Discovery Channel premiered.

For those not in the know, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a 2001 documentary special depicting a certain country during the Mesozoic era. Much like a certain BBC documentary from two years prior with the initials WWD, its shot as though it were an actual nature doc, focusing on following dinosaurs' daily lives. Its interspersed with cutaways to talking heads discussing crucial context and fossil finds about american dinosaurs and palaeontology.

I have many fond memories of the show, seeing it first on Youtube back when you could and not get copyright claimed, whether its the musical score, the memorable and unique sounds, or hilarious .

There are five total segments in the show across its 91-minute runtime. There are in order:

• Triassic New York, where we follow a Coelophysis as it looks for food and nearly avoids becoming food for a rutiodon.
• Early Jurassic Pennsylvania, where a group of Anchisaurus is menaced by two theropods, both a pack of theropods with the species name kayentakatae and the crested Dilophosaurus.
• Late Jurassic Utah, where we follow both a family of dryosaurus, a hungry ceratosaurus, and herds of both Camarasaurus and Apatosaurus in both the dry and wet seasons.
• Mid-Cretaceous New Mexico, where we follow dromaeosaurs, as well as other strange dinosaurs of the age and period.
• Late Cretaceous South Dakota, where we follow both Triceratops and T. rex in the last days of the Mesozoic before a certain rock drops in.

So, now for how it holds up after twenty years: The answer? Very good. The show has some very good visuals and eye-catching designs that are all excellent even for their time, the music is decent, the cinematography is lush and the narration courtesy of John Goodman (no stranger to dinosaurs, as he himself jokes by mentioning a certain pet dinosaur) is quite memorable thanks to his signature baritone voice. 

In my opinion, the Triassic New York segment fares as the weakest of the show's segments, mostly due to how uneventful it is compared to others: at most we get a neat interaction between desmatosuchus and rutiodon, where the former frightens off the latter. Nevertheless, I still like it for its rather relaxed tone that helps viewers settle into the show before getting to the big stuff. Still, I do think it could use a few tweaks. For instance, I think it would be interesting to include a small basal ornithischian in the mix, to help show the two main clades of dinosaurs and how each of them were diverging.

At the other end of the scale, the show, my favourite segment is the Early Jurassic Pennsylvania segment. All of the animals are presented well and used to great extent. The Dilophosaurus in particular stands out thanks to the incredible, metallic roar introducing it and doing both hunting and fighting that really show off how theropods are settling into apex role, and this after the first real action sequence that was the chase between Syntarsus and Anchisaurus.

In between you have the Morrison, Moreno, and Hell Creek Formation segments. I rank out of them the Morrison as the best of those three personally and the Moreno my favourite.

The designs of the dinosaurs, courtesy of meteor Studios, are all excellent, accurate (for their time at least), and vibrant. While admittedly they don't have the bulk and quality of Walking With's models from the same time, they're all quite good regardless. They were so good they'd be used in stock footage for many other Discovery documentaries, and in one case, even reused for one of them, Dino Lab. My five most favourites would have to be the Nothronychus, Coelophysis, Apatosaurus, T. rex, and Dilophosaurus.

Meanwhile, the show marks some of the first time non-avian dinosaurs were portrayed with feathers in the form of both its coelurosaurs, like dromaeosaurs, Nothronychus, Ornithomimus, and a generic coelurosaur (more on it later). While not perfect as we shall see, it was the first step palaeo-media (outside of books) took to having more up to date designs.

The show also uses cutaways to talking head portions wit actual scientists to give crucial context for each segment. For instance, University of Colarado's Karen Chin highlights charred fossil trees to explain evidence of wildfires for the Moreno segment, where sure enough there is one. Similarly, the show has these X-Ray scenes that highlight certain traits of dinosaurs (and in one case the Quetzalcoatlus), which is a nice touch. heck, actual fossil mounts are used for it, like the American Museum of Natural History's apatosaurus and the Royal Tyrrell Museum's tyrannosaurus for their respective species.

The sound design meanwhile, is also quite good. Like its brethren, it uses a mix of animal sounds and modified ones for vocalisations. On one hand some of them are a bit too obviously animal and feel generic, or sound way too metallic and artificial, but other times it works. The Dilophosaurus is an example, as many have heard its terrifying yet awesome roar many know of. Take a listen for yourself:

The dinosaurs for the most part all act like animals as they should and not like stupid monsters as in other documentaries that would come (looks at you Monsters Resurrected).

While I can't recall any specific music at the moment besides its intro, its undoubtedly still quite good and atmospheric.

Nevertheless, the show does have its downsides. While few and in between, they range from science marching on, creatures getting the shaft more then others, and a few other minor stuff.

Perhaps the biggest inaccuracy is your standard lipless theropods and pronated hands, and in particular, especially on the allosaurus they seem to be twisted from accurate inwards-facing ones.

Science has marched on on other things. One of the biggest ones is that the show's raptors, during production now less, were discovered to be a separate creature entirely, now known to be the basal tyrannosaur Suskityrannus. To When Dinosaurs' credit, they did have the first talking head of James Kirkland and another guy explain this, and included a generic coelurosaur in the final cut. That fact that it only has two scenes where they do show how last minute they were.

Speaking of them, the feathers of all the dinosaurs are very simple and hairlike, when we now know they were the complex, veined kind which birds share.

Other inaccuracies of note are:

• The show has the Permian Extinction and Triassic-Jurassic Extinction events be caused by meteor impact a la the big one at the end of the cretaceous period. While it does make for some nice continuity book ends, its quit evident that these were both caused by volcanic activity as Pangaea moved and broke apart.
• There are some anachronisms: Dilophosaurus and Syntarsus are in 200 million years ago when those specific taxa came from at least 10 million years later, or having 
• Speaking of those two, it is said both are related as ceratosaurs and ceratosaurus was the last one. Nope, those were all distant relatives, and ceratosaurs kept on being successful throughout the Mesozoic.
• John  Goodman mispronounces Dasmatosuchus and Anatotitan with respectively an extra s and pretty much mangles the latter.

When it comes to shafted creatures that I don't like or stick out in being below average, there is Allosaurus, who despite being hyped up by Goodman as the Jurassic's greatest predator, is in the show depicted as only able to take down an aopatosaurus when its injured and fallen and all too easily subdues a ceratosaurus, in real life basically a miniature T. rex in frame. The Moreno Coelurosaurs are tellingly last-minute additions, while the raptors ocassionally act a bit dumber then they should, taking on a creature (The nothronychus) too big for it and ignoring a wildfire to eat. Meanwhile, Ornithomimus... yeah, you've forgotten it was in this, with a brief unnamed "cameo" next to the Triceratops?

Overall, I think the biggest problem in my book is that as a single special, the whole thing feels more compressed and incomplete then other documentaries, a common problem with ambitious specials like these.

Otherwise, I wholeheartedly recommend When Dinosaurs Roamed America, both as a nature documentary, a snapshot of 90's and 2000's palaeontology and depictions, and as a general overview of American palaeontology.