My son has been asking to watch dinosaurs at the dinner table and on the potty. I say no, eat your food. He says, “I wanna watch dinosaurs on your iPad daddy.” So what can I do? The cool thing is that either I can find great dinosaur programs on Netflix from PBS or BBC or I can find them on YouTube. Even full length shows. Below are some of out favorites, but first…
Wacky 1938 Dinosaur Cosplay
I don’t like the word cosplay cause a giant dinosaur made of car parts is hardly a costume. But this isn’t all historical re-enactment, perhaps it’s creative anachronism. Either way, here’s a video of a 1938 Birmingham England pageant in which many historical events of the city were re enacted including some kind of pre-historic dinosaur hunt. The thing to notice is how campy and fake the dinosaurs look.
Still a fire breathing dinosaur is pretty rad… More info about the pageant at Birmingham at The Iron Room and Connecting Histories. source: io9.
5 Great Dinosaur Videos for the iPad
In a lot of ways, having an iPad is like having a second TV. I know what you’re thinking, but we only have one “television” in the house, and it almost never shows over the air TV, so for us, an iPad is the same functionality as the 46 inch LCD playing the Apple TV. Except I can play netflix for my son while he sits on the potty trying to poop…
Life After Dinosaurs, National Geographic
This show delves into the history of Mammals and how they (we) took over the world after the extinction of the big lizards. It’s a high quality National Geographic TV program. It is really quite fascinating and talks about the evolutionary advantages of marsupials vs. placental mammals.
The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs, BBC
This is a great program in which scientists and engineers figure out how a tyrannosaur killed and ate a triceratops. In it they build a steel model of a T Rex skull and jaw with sharp steel teeth. They they hook it up to a skid steer and let it tear apart a car and a pig. Pretty cool…
Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia, Netflix
We started this one this morning. There’s a warning up front about big scary realistic dinosaurs. My boy can’t get enough of this stuff. Though he did wake up last night telling me he didn’t like the zoo…
Walking With Dinosaurs, Netflix
This 6 part BBC series narrated by Kenneth Branagh has cutting edge computer generated imagery from 1999. But we’re talking about kids here. It’s pretty good and as a nature show it’s very watchable. Plus 6 episode will last you and your kid a while.
Jack Horner: Shape-Shifting Dinosaurs, TED
This is a great talk in which Monantana State University paleontologist Jack Horner completes the ontology of several common dinosaur species by using bone density measurements to determine that what we once though were different species, are actually different ages of the same species. The interesting thing is that young triceratops, look similar, but not exactly like adults.
Where are the baby dinosaurs? In a spellbinding talk from TEDxVancouver paleontologist Jack Horner describes how slicing open fossil skulls revealed a shocking secret about some of our most beloved dinosaurs.
I’m always on the lookout for more dinosaur programming for my son, so if you know of other dino movies or documentaries please let me know in the comments.
-Mike
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