Customer Reviews

Prehistoric Earth: A Natural History (Before the Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters / Walking With Dinosaurs / Allosaurus / Walking With Prehistoric Beasts / Walking With Cavemen)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Reading Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" parallel with watching episodes of this awesome vdieo series (not intentionally) really was a moving experience. I knew halfway through TSG I would never look at humans the same way again, and was awstruck by the awesome power of evolution in relation to the age of the earth. I was curious how accurate this video series would be, but it is very accurate. It covers almost all aspects of evolutionary theory including animal aggression, kin altruism and of course the evolutionary adaptations that various species have gone through in their millions of years of existence. This is worth the money you pay because there are plenty of hours of video and each "period" is covered from the earliest sea animals through the dinosaurs to land animals and humans. The video is all computer generated, obviously, since no video footage could possibly exist for our ancestors (did I even need to say that? haha), but it's well made. It isn't very cheesy at all. I highly recommend this video series for anyone interested in the theory of evolution and behavior of these fascinating animals...our distant relatives! (creationist nutcases: save yourself the time and money).

I purchased Prehistoric Earth, a Natural History, which is a 6 disc set, a "Walking With" Collection because it contained all of the really important discs in the evolutionary series from the beginning of life to man. Disc 1 is Before the Dinosaurs; Disc 2 is Walking with Dinosaurs; Disc 3 is Allosaurus plus extras; Disc 4 is Prehistoric Earth; Disc 5 is Walking with Prehistoric Beasts; Disc 5 is the Making of Walking with Prehistoric Beasts; and Disc 6 is Walking with Cavemen.

There were other collections entitled Walking With, but they were incomplete. Prehsitoric Earth is the only collection that gives you the whole big picture.

The series was well done, and the recreations were based on scientific and physical evidence.

I recommend this collection to those who want to see the whole big picture.

This is an excellent series for introducing people to prehistoric life, and is beautiful in the way it envisions what life may once have been like.

Be forewarned that there are numerous artistic liberties taken with the facts in this film. It frequently shows animals interacting that never lived together, though most of the time animals LIKE those pictured lived together.

So, it's not a hyper-accurate scientific documentary, but it's illuminating, and gives people a lot to think about. I find that, for my schoolkids, the information is "accurate enough" and that many times they become interested in the material and learn more deeply about the information in the film on their own.

This was a amazing series! So much information and so many hours of high end computer generated creatures. For anyone that thought our world went from one celled creatures to T-rex to woolly mammoths, this is an eye opener. It really fills in the gaps and helps make sense of evolution.

Excellent Video. I highly recommend these videos to any Dinosaur enthusiast or to any Science teacher out there. It is worth watching these videos with your entire class. Great Educational tool.

Contains a wealth of a DVD collection with episodes spanning the beginning of life on Earth through the rise of the cavemen. CGI is nicely done mixing in with real locations. Stories are well told, plenty of beasties, and it keeps my 4-year-old's rapt attention. I've seen the episodes a dozen times, but I still look up from my book during certain segments.

I think we've burned out the "Big Al" DVD...an entire disc/episode devoted to the birth, life and death of an allosaurus.

The Walking With Dinosaurs DVD is far and away his favorite, featuring several 30-40 minute episodes spanning the Triassic to late Cretaceous interactions of dinosaurs, insects, plantlife and early mammals.

Walking with Pre-historic beasts is just excellent as well, these critters don't get as much attention as the dinos, but each episode is very well done.

My only complaint would be the audio...it's 2-channel stereo, not Dolby 5.1. Small complaint for an otherwise excellent collection.

This dvd is perfect because I love learning about what lived before humans. I've been looking for Walking for Dinosaurs of dvd for years. Thankfully I found this. It's worth the price.

If you find your self as one of those people that flip through the channels and stumble across something that is on discovery channel, history channel, or animal planet and starting watching an educational program about something that you would never of thought of watching because your caught up in the interesting subject matter than this is for you. There is of coarse a lot of people that are going to have there own opinions on what happened at the beginning of time and how earth shaped out to be what it is today but when it comes down to it nobody is ever going to know for sure 100%. Although this colaboration of videos is amazing and takes you on a ride through history. Its not just a lot of well educated people speaking into a camera about what they think happened but a bunch of excellect CG reanactment of what creature and enviorments may have been like and looked like why back when. It catches your attention and keeps it. Reasons are given how people came across why they think this is what happened and how everything just kept changing and changing. Creatures that could be looked on as true monster roaming our earth and ones that are still around today. There is so much to see the best thing to do is just to watch it yourself. I highly recommend this series not just for adults but children will be caught up into it as well.

I'm a huge fan of Walking With Dinosaurs and all the other movies of the series (Walking With Monsters, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, Allosaurus, and Walking With Cavemen). Most people who would be looking at this collection would already know what the series is about, but I'll speak briefly on it for newcomers. Basically, all these films are faux nature documentaries. When I say "faux" I mean to say that the narrative follows various extinct creatures around and describes them in a style similar to live action nature documentaries (such as the videos done by David Attenborough). Obviously, they couldn't really follow a real dinosaur around, so the series does include some speculation that is presented as fact (because it would sound really awkward with their premise if we were watching "real" dinosaurs and they starting saying things like "we think they may have done this"). Still, the films do include a lot of good information and are highly entertaining. This is a great series for either kids who are interested in dinosaurs or adults who still love watching dinosaur themed nature documentaries. Anyway, Walking With Monsters covers the period of time before dinosaurs evolved, Walking With Dinosaurs covers the beginning and end of the dinosaur periods, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts covers the mammals that came after the dinosaurs, and Walking With Caveman covers the early human ancestors. I'm less fond of Walking with Cavemen (just because it interests me less, but it's still good).

Anyway, since I love this series, I've been looking for ages for a Walking With... Collection that actually includes ALL of the materials from the series. I've found several in the past (The Ultimate Walking With... Collection, The Complete Walking With... Collection) and despite their impressive names (such as having the word "complete" in their title), none of them actually included all the special features or even all of the series. Prehistoric Earth: A Natural History is the first collection to actually include everything - all the episodes and all the special features. The only thing that isn't included in this collection is the Nigel Marvin spinoff series Chased By Dinosaurs.

Lastly, let's talk about the actual packaging. I'm very pleased to say that the dvd box is very nicely designed. It's surprisingly thin and space efficient for a collection that has so many DVDs. I'm also pleased to say that the dvd holding cases are arranged a lot like a book - you can just flip through the plastic "pages" that each hold a conveniently labeled DVD. The holders work well and are simple to use. The flip out front cover also has all the DVDs listed with a description of what's in each one, including listing the special features. Overall, I'm thoroughly pleased with the design. So, if you are interested in getting this whole series, you'd do well to ignore all those other collections and just go straight for this one. Also, you may be interested in checking out Chased by Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Park (Nigel Marvin's spin-off series based on the Chased By Dinosaurs spinoff show).

I feel that the education provided in the public school system (at least in my experience) with regard to the history of life on Earth is entirely inadequate, and is often flagrantly absent. These videos are captivating. This is an area of learning where seeing images can really be helpful. Now, when I read about a given prehistoric time period, I am able to catalog the information efficiently and understand it in a broader context. I can't recommend these videos enough. I want more quality documentaries like these produced!!