Dinosaurs Alive will also introduce audiences to the breakthrough discoveries taking place under the towering red sandstone buttes and rock chimneys in northern New Mexico. Since the 1940s, AMNH scientists have uncovered excellent specimens at the mysterious Ghost Ranch, where erosion has cut down through the many levels of sediment to expose fossils of the earliest dinosaurs from the Triassic Period, some 230 million years ago. At that time reptiles still ruled the earth and dinosaurs were actually modest in size — no larger than a cat, dog, or human. Dinosaurs exploded in diversity and size during the later Jurassic Period. Scientists have recently discovered a “monster” buried near Ghost Ranch. It was a long-necked sauropod called Seismosaurus — meaning ‘thunder lizard’ — that was a massive 121 feet long. In the film, audiences will witness this behemoth thundering about on screen, in stark contrast to the more diminutive Triassic dinosaurs.

Finally, in an exciting development captured by our cameras, Novacek and Norell, travel to the site and inspect an extraordinary discovery made by AMNH graduate students — one of the oldest dinosaurs ever found in North America. The film will show how the fossil was discovered, protected in a plaster jacket, carefully removed from the rock, and studied at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Dinosaurs Alive shows how new scientific insights are sometimes built from previous discoveries, and each new generation of paleontologists continues the legacy of people like Roy Chapman Andrews.

Dinosaurs Alive is a production of David Clark Inc., Giant Screen Films, the Maryland Science Center, and Stardust Blue, LLC, in association with the American Museum of Natural History. The film is directed and written by large-format veterans Bayley Silleck and David Clark with cinematography by Bill Reeve. Major funding has been provided by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the Museum Film Network and the 3D Film Interest Group. The film is being released to IMAX® and other giant-screen theaters in March 2007, and will be available in both 2D and 3D.