The "Animal World" Spoilers!

["TIMOTHY BRIDGEMAN" <timlee3005@earthlink.net>]

Hello,
   For those who wish to know how the prehistoric sequence of  Irwin Allen's
documentary "The Animal World" played out:
A narrator gives brief discriptions of dinosaurs represented by skeletons in
the American Museun of Natural
History,(Tyrannosaurus,Allosaurus,Stegosaurus,Triceratops,and
Brontosaurus,whom we all know now as Apatosaurus,but since this IS the
50's,I'll call it Brontosaurus here) then stating that the earth in the
Mezozoic era was a time of violent volcanic upheaval.He mentions that man
hadn't appeared yet,but if he had...(A Brontosaurus eats a clay caveman for
humor)Then the sequence starts:
A Brontosaurus is seen feeding from leaves at the top of a tree,then moving
to a space to crouch down and lay it's eggs.Then, a Tyrannosaurus* shows
up,disturbing the sauropod.The Brontosaurus abandons it's nest and makes
it's escape by going deep into a river,where the tyrannosaur cannot swim
after it (Remember,we're in the 50's here).The narrator states that
Brontosaurus needed to spend most of it's time submerged in water to support
it's massive weight.(Again we're in the 50's)
Later,we see one the Brontosaurus' eggs hatch,(with the hatchling making a
similar sound to a baby alligator.)Next we see a raging river and
waterfall,and a Stegosaurus grazing at the top of a nearby cliff.It is soon
attacked by a Ceratosaurus(which the narrator described as 20 ' tall and 8
tons,perhaps having confused it with Tyrannosaurus).After the battle,the
Stegosaurus is killed,but before the Ceratosaurus has a chance to eat it's
kill,it is attacked by another Ceratosaurus,intent on stealing a free
meal.At the end of this battle,the defending ceratosaur manages to clamp
it's jaws around it's opponent's throat,but in the process of killing it's
opponent however,it causes it's own death as well by inadvertently running
both itself AND it's already doomed opponent off the edge of the high cliff
into the river below.Next,a Triceratops looking for food pushes a tree
down,then after hearing the roar of a carnivorous dinosaur,prepares to face
the said approaching dinosaur,Tyrannosaurus.
But the sudden explosion of a nearby volcano  is enough to halt the two
dinosaurs,who both run for their lives as the eruption gets worse.The
Triceratops ends up getting stuck in a tar pit,where it sinks to it's
death.Meanwhile,other dinosaurs,(Stegosaurus,Brontosaurus,and later
Ceratosaurus)are flushed out from the forest as well.The ground under a
Brontosaurus' feet shakes apart from earthquakes during the eruption.The
Tyrannosaurus suffers the same fate as it too,falls into a crevice that is
soon filled with lava.After the eruption is over,no living dinosaur (or any
living thing,for that matter) is seen anywhere in sight.(This is what the
narrator has been hinting at through the entire sequence as the cause of the
dinosaur extinction).

*(It should be noted that the narrator called it Allosaurus,which the
close-up puppet clearly WAS,reflecting original plans for the scene,but
during production,the Tyrannosaurus stop motion model was used in place of
the originally planned allosaur model for both this scene and the
Triceratops fight scene later on.Incidentally,there was also a Tyrannosaurus
close-up puppet that wasn't used.)
John Bridgman