Museum of Science and Industry

Michael Douglas Narrates a Real-Life Scientific Adventure Featuring the World’s Top Dinosaur Hunters.

Dinosaurs Alive brings dinosaurs, their behaviors and their ancient environments to life on screen as never before seen—juxtaposing stunningly realistic and scientifically accurate computer-generated imagery (CGI) with intriguing documentary footage, dramatic new scenes of real fossils and current dinosaur hunting expeditions. Using state-of-the-art techniques, the filmmakers have created an array of amazingly lifelike creatures based on the latest fossil evidence.

The film takes visitors to Mongolia with mesmerizing 1920s archival footage of paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews—a larger-than-life adventurer believed to be the inspiration for the Indiana Jones character. Andrews led five American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) expeditions to the Gobi Desert and discovered there one of the greatest repositories of dinosaur remains ever found. The film then returns to that same site today with leading AMNH paleontologists Mike Novacek and Mark Norell, who have been making annual summer expeditions to the desert since 1990.

Dinosaurs Alive then heads to New Mexico, one of the few places in the world where rock layers preserve the whole age of dinosaurs—from the Cretaceous, Jurassic and Triassic Periods—and where breakthrough discoveries continue to be made in the high desert badlands. The film shows the rich history of life stretching back 220 million years and brings audiences to the fabled Ghost Ranch, where the number of fossils uncovered during the dig is staggering—revealing layers of dinosaurs and reptiles in concentrated deposits in a mass burial place. Here, the dinosaur hunters make a compelling find.