What was this dinosaur documentary? (80s-90s, ended with rodent peaking from dino skull)

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile–kind of a long shot, but this is the place for it.

There was a dinosaur documentary I remember seeing, as a youngin’—I think between about 1988 and 1992, and I’m leaning towards '88-89—with the subject of at least the end of it being about the extinction of the dinosaurs. I don’t even recall if the asteroid impact theory was even commonly agreed upon at that point, or if it was just presented as one of many possibilities.

In any case, the end scene: the narrator mentions that, with the dinosaurs wiped out, it gave a chance for other, more adaptable forms of life to rise to prominence, overlaid over this great shot:

Camera low to the ground, bright blue sky, dull wasteland of ground. It pans over slightly to show a dinosaur skull laying half-buried in the dirt.

Then, out of the eye socket, the head of a tiny rodent peeks out (a real one, not a puppet), squeaking, as it examines it’s surroundings. And, by extension, the world it had inherited. Roll credits.

Fine filmmaking! I just have no Earthly idea what documentary that would have been. And if it’s even available online, it’d mean sorting through I don’t know how many dinosaur documentaries produced anywhere in a ~15 year period, not all of them dated or titled correctly.

So I thought I’d roll the dice and see if anyone here, the grand bastion of the erudite and obscure, happens to remember this, too, and could point me in the right direction. So…does it ring any dino-skull bells to any fellow descendant of an asteroid-dodging marmot?

2

Sounds like the shot used in the Christopher-Reeve-hosted Dinosaur!

3

Hot damn! I think that’s it—according to wiki, it even aired on the Disney Channel, which I faintly suspected, and in the right time period.

You, sir, rock.

4

Aw, shucks; when this aired, I had the unfair advantage of being an elementary-school kid who both entered the science fair and dressed up as Superman for Halloween, so there was no way this wasn’t going to burn itself into my brain. :wink:

5

If it was towards the end of your range, I’d tend towards the PBS series The Dinosaurs! which I want to say had an ending shot much like that. But that’s also because I would have been too young for a 1985 documentary and just the right age for something on PBS in 1992. And I had parents who were perfectly willing to record the whole thing, so I watched that one several times.

6

Pretty sure it was a (Virginia) possum.

ETA: yep, at 43:32.

7

Heh! I just checked—it does INDEED have a shot like that at the end of episode 4…

In fact, it’s the exact same footage used in the Reeve documentary!

That little hatchling-eater was really in high demand back in the day, it seems.

8

The '80s were a big period for paleontology. There was a lot of revisionism going on because of the mounting evidence of the asteroid collision, that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded, and that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

I remember watching the Christopher Reeve documentary. I also remember that many primary schools had units on dinosaurs even in the late '70s (kids loved them!), and dinosaur exhibits were making the rounds at science museums. (An animatronic exhibit I saw in St Paul in the '80s turned up in Moscow in the '90s It had not aged well. :frowning: )

9

It was the climax of the doc, but they also show that Bob Bakker certainly wasn’t convinced then. Don’t know if he’s come around since.

10

Since we’re talking about dinosaur documentaries I rented one VHS from the local library in the mid-90s where basically it was of the presenter walking through a museum and talking about the various dinosaurs. There was a gag at the very end of the documentary where the presenter suddenly hears a T-Rex roar in real life, gets scared, and runs into a random door. Upon closing the door you see him in complete darkness and then he says “Wait, is this room supposed to be so wet?” And then you see a Claymation dinosaur walk away from the building (the final joke being he walked into the dinosaurs mouth)