PREHISTORIC PARK

21 July, 2006 by The_Boss

ITV1 Saturday 22nd July 2006 6:50pm to 7:50pm

There is something missing from our world – the extraordinary creatures that time has left behind. But what if we could bring them back? What if extinction didn’t have to be forever...

Adventurer Nigel Marven travels back millions of years to track down creatures on the brink of extinction and bring them back to the 21st Century.

Prehistoric Park uses the latest CGI technology to give viewers an up-close-and -personal encounter with magnificent animals from the past.

In a bid to save the animals from being wiped out Marven takes them to his Prehistoric Park - the ultimate wildlife sanctuary - to look after them, find out what they eat and in what conditions they will thrive, as well as trying to discover if it’s possible to breed another generation.

In the six part ITV1 series real animals, including an entire herd of African elephants, star alongside their computerised ancestors to create an even greater sense of reality.

In episode one viewers travel back 65 million years to encounter one of the most dangerous animals of all time - the fearsome T Rex.

Marven takes a trip 10,000 years back in time in episode two when he returns to the Ice Age to see woolly mammoths, giants of the cold whose lives were threatened when the earth started to heat up and humans started to hunt them down.

In episode three he travels back in time to the Early Cretaceous period on the trail of some bizarre feathered dinosaurs.

Episode four sees him facing a struggle to save the sabre tooth cats that are facing extinction when their usual prey die out and they are left with nothing to hunt.

Nigel has to go back to the most hostile of worlds 300 million years ago in episode five when creepy crawlies were enormous.

Finally, in episode six he’s on his most dangerous mission of all as he comes faces to face with a 50-foot long Deinosuchus, a super croc that could eat dinosaurs.

Filming for the series took a year and involved travelling to Chile, Canada, Florida, Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia to recreate landscapes from the past.


Prehistoric Park is an Impossible Pictures production for ITV1. The executive producer is Jasper James.