Last Dinosaur

[Socorro Henson]

Ateam of scientists has discovered the youngest dinosaur preserved in the fossil record before the catastrophic meteor impact 65 million years ago. The finding indicates that dinosaurs did not go extinct prior to the impact and provides further evidence as to whether the impact was in fact the cause of their extinction.

The team is now examining other fossil specimens that appear to be buried close to the K-T boundary and expect to find more, Lyson said. He suspects that other fossils discovered in the past may have been closer to the boundary than originally thought and that the so-called three-meter gap never existed.

Other authors of the paper include Eric Sargis and Stephen Chester (Yale University); Antoine Bercovici (China University of Geosciences); Dean Pearson (Pioneer Trails Regional Museum) and Walter Joyce (University of Tbingen).

The film stars Richard Boone and Joan Van Ark. William Overgard wrote the screenplay. The score was composed, as was most of the music for all Rankin/Bass specials and series, by Maury Laws, while the title song "He's the Last Dinosaur", with lyrics by Jules Bass, was sung by Nancy Wilson, and arranged and conducted by Bernard Hoffer.

Wealthy big-game hunter Maston Thrust jr. has a multimillion-dollar company, Thrust Inc., which drills for oil under the polar caps with a manned laser drill called the "Polar Borer". Following one expedition, only one man, geologist Chuck Wade, returns; he explains that the drill was going through a routine check in the icecaps when it surfaced into a valley super-heated by a volcano. When the crew, except for Wade, began exploring the area, they were killed by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Thrust decides to go there himself to study the creature. He brings with him Chuck Wade, Bunta a Maasai tracker, Dr. Kawamoto and Frankie Banks a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer selected by the press pool. Matson is initially unwilling to let Frankie join the crew, but she manages to convince him to allow her on the expedition by seducing him.

Upon arriving at the isolated valley using the Polar Borer, the group notices Pteranodons. Once they raft to shore,, they narrowly avoid being trampled by a Uintatherium. After setting up camp, Maston, Chuck, Bunta, and Frankie go out looking for the T. rex, while Kawamoto remains at the camp. The party encounters the T. rex and narrowly escapes from it. Later, the T. rex find the camp, destroying it and kills Kawamoto. It then takes the Polar Borer and throws it into a canyon full of bones. He uses the Borer to dig a canyon wall and releases a Triceratops and the two dinosaurs clash. After a fierce battle, the T. rex kills the Triceratops.

The group returns to the destroyed camp and notice Kawamoto is disappeared as well as the Polar Borer. Enraged, Thrust vows to kill the dinosaur. After a few months pass, the group is now living in a cave and has a number of encounters with cavemen in the area, but are able to turn them away with a handmade crossbow. They also befriend a cavewoman, who they name Hazel. While Hazel helps Frankie wash her hair, the T. rex returns. Frankie takes refuge in a cave, with the T. rex trying to get in. Matson, Bunta and Chuck are able to turn it away with a large boulder tied to its tail. Thrust decides to kill the T. rex once and for all with a catapult.

After building the catapult, they wait for the dinosaur. Out hunting, Chuck finds the Polar Borer and realizes it is still operable. However, Matson refuses to leave, wanting to kill the T. rex. Chuck and Frankie leave the camp to get the Borer fixed and then leave, while Matson and Bunta remain. Once the Borer is launched back in the water, Frankie goes back to convince the others to leave with them one last time. Bunta is killed by the T. rex while stalking him.. Frankie reunites with Matson and helps him use the catapult on the T. rex. But the dinosaur soon gets back to its feet and destroys the catapult.

In the wake of the destruction, Wade arrives and states that they have to leave now or they will be trapped in the valley. Frankie pleads with Matson to go with them and to leave the T. rex as it is the "last one", Matson replies "So am I". Wade and Frankie then leave aboard the Polar Borer, leaving Matson in the valley with Hazel.

The film was intended for a US theatrical release, but failed to find a distributor and ended up as a television film. Screenwriter William Overgard pitched to ABC a TV movie about a hunter who travels back in time to kill a dinosaur. ABC rejected the idea in favor of a rock musical remake of King Kong. When that fell though, they came back to Overgard to develop his idea.

While the film featured mostly an English-speaking cast, a Japanese dub was created for the television release in Japan. The Japanese theatrical release, as well as the Japanese laserdisc release, used the English voice cast with Japanese subtitles.

On May 22, 2009, Toho Video released the movie on DVD for the first time anywhere in the world. The DVD contains both English and Japanese audio tracks as well as an audio commentary in Japanese. This release uses an anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen transfer of the unedited 106-minute theatrical release prepared by U.S. rights holder Warner Bros., and also contains a 13-minute interview with visual effects director Kazuo Sagawa, a photo gallery (which includes storyboards, production designs, and behind-the-scenes photos), a 15-minute behind-the-scenes production reel narrated by Sagawa, and the original Japanese theatrical release trailer.

On March 22, 2011, Warner Home Video released the movie on DVD in the U.S. through their Warner Archive Collection as a "made to order" DVD. This release uses the same widescreen transfer of the 106-minute unedited version as the Japanese Toho release, but lacks the supplemental materials.

Sequels and remakes have been the name of the game for Hollywood during the past few years. Every summer sees re-imaginings of television shows or movies I saw as a kid, but there is one that is probably better left alone: Denver, the Last Dinosaur.

The basic plot of Denver is pretty standard (and would later be echoed by the movie Encino Man). A group of kids finds an unattended dinosaur egg in a pit. The egg promptly hatches, revealing a green dinosaur with a mohawk-like spike on its head. As per convention, the dinosaur (named Denver, of course) is not only friendly but pretty darned smart, and together he and the kids have lots of wacky adventures.

Maybe this general storyline could be resuscitated, but Denver was the kind of show that could have only existed in the 1980s. Pink sunglasses, spandex-wearing metal bands, big hair, skateboarding, and garishly colored clothes made up much of the background of the show. As painful as it would be to watch, if Denver were brought back without these little touches it just wouldn't be the same.

I don't think anyone is thinking of bringing Denver back to life, though. The show attempted to capitalize on the dino-mania sparked by the animated film The Land Before Time, but by the end of the second season the dinosaur craze had ebbed. The producers let the show go extinct. While it might be fun to go back and watch the cheesy original episodes, I think Denver has had enough adventures.

"[Mitchell's] comprehensive study of the 'most publicized animal image on the planet' spans history, culture, politics, science, literature and art--from Thomas Jefferson and Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould and Jurassic Park, even Barney. . . . With this singular, humorous, intelligent and well-researched study, Mitchell offers more to think about than the usual thump, thump, chomp, chomp."--Publishers Weekly

Although our history of the dinosaur is over, it isn't the end of the story. Throughout the history of the dinosaur image there has been one figure whose role we have so far taken for granted. Children are probably the principal audience for dinosaur images. Every day of the school year, busloads of children are herded into natural history museums in major cities, and in elementary schools throughout the United States, paleontology has become a semi-official fixture of the curriculum. "Dinosaur units" are now standard fare in "the majority of California school districts." With the reinforcement of the toy industry, children's television shows, advertising, and roadside attractions, the dinosaur may be the most publicized animal in children's lives.

There is a widespread assumption that all children love dinosaurs, that they find them automatically fascinating, interesting, marvelous, wonderful, and irresistible. I do not have any sociological studies or statistics to prove that this assumption is wrong, nor do I need any. The claim that all children love dinosaurs simply cannot, on the face of it, be true. If only one child in the world were to express indifference or ambivalence, let alone hostility, then the claim that all children love dinosaurs would be proved false. Since I have certain knowledge of one child who did not love dinosaurs (namely, myself), the common wisdom has to be wrong.

That's right. I was not one of those children who love dinosaurs. To me they always seemed a crashing bore compared with the medieval dragons, whose images were accompanied by wonderful romantic stories of courageous knights and beautiful ladies. My first introduction to dinosaurs was accompanied by a stern admonition: no stories, no fantasies; this is science. These creatures are (were) real. They existed a long time ago, so long ago that there were no people around to have any adventures with them, much less make up stories about them. So I tuned out of the dinosaur lessons, concentrated on King Arthur, and grew up to be an iconologist, a historian of cultural images, instead of a paleontologist. The only interesting question about dinosaurs to me was why other kids thought they were so wonderful. Did this mean that there was something wrong with me? What was I missing?

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