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It's one thing to see lifelike dinosaurs on screen but how would it feel to watch them feed, fight and forage in front of you?
Next year it will be possible, when the BBC television show Walking with Dinosaurs comes to life as a $12 million stage production
in Auckland.
A team of designers and scientists worked together to build 15 life-sized dinosaurs that will roam around a specially built set in an 80-minute show.
Walking with Dinosaurs will be staged at the Vector Arena in April after its world premiere in Sydney on January 10.
A stadium is required because the dinosaurs need a space of 35m by 65m to move around in. It's the first time anything like it has been attempted.
"If I stand next to the tyrannosaurus I am up to its ankle, and I'm not short," says Walking with Dinosaurs producer Jill Bryant. "It's extraordinary. They just look so real, it's incredible how lifelike they are.
"They blink their eyes, they roar, you really feel as though you're seeing a dinosaur."
In order to make them as realistic as possible, designers studied elephants' skin, muscles and movement and applied that to the dinosaurs' aluminium framework.
Smaller dinosaurs such as the utahraptor are human puppets operated from within so they can dart quickly around the stage.
"We looked around for the best technology but soon discovered the best movement was the human body," says Bryant.
The larger creatures, such as the brachiosaurus (at 13m tall, 23m long, 70-plus tonnes) and the tyrannosaurus rex, (6m tall, 14m long, up to 5 tonnes), are manipulated by remote control, animatronics and complicated hydraulic systems. The torosaurus is so big it is driven by a puppeteer sitting beneath it in a special kart.
Viewers will get an insight into how these creatures lived 160 million years ago - how they hunted their prey, what they ate and how they got on with fellow dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs will roam around a set that replicates Pangea, the ancient land mass that broke up to form the earth's continents. With help from projection screens, it will change from barren land to lush green earth.
The show has an original score recorded by an 80-piece orchestra.
An actor playing a palaeontologist will explain their 200-million-year domination of Earth, from their beginnings to the moment they were wiped out.
Tickets to Walking with Dinosaurs go on sale next month.
