8 hours ago
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Stunning Scottish isle used as setting for BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs
The isle stands in for prehistoric Alberta in Walking With Dinosaurs, home to deadly predators from 71 million years ago.
Scotland's Isle of Skye, best known for its dramatic cliffs, medieval castles and fishing villages, has taken on a more ferocious role, as the ancient hunting ground of a pack of deadly predators from 71 million years ago.
The rugged Hebridean landscape stands in for prehistoric Alberta, Canada in an episode of BBC One's recent hit series Walking With Dinosaurs .
In episode four, titled The Pack, viewers met Rose, a young Albertosaurus brought to life using cutting-edge CGI, forensic science and some surprisingly low-tech tools.
Albertosaurus, a distant and faster relative of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, is believed to have hunted in packs, making it one of the most formidable carnivores of the late Cretaceous period, Express reports.
Palaeontologists uncovered Rose's fossilised remains in Drumheller, Alberta, and CT scanning was used to digitally reconstruct her brain and build a scientifically accurate model.
But not all the production magic happened in high-tech labs.
Behind the scenes, Skye stood in as the dramatic backdrop for Rose's on-screen adventures, offering terrain strikingly similar to that of ancient Alberta.
'There's a 'making-of' chapter in the book and what may be of interest is a lot of the background in what is shown as Alberta, Canada, was actually filmed on the Isle of Skye,' said Helen Thomas, senior executive producer of the series and co-author of the official companion book.
Filming prehistoric giants amid Scotland's raw and windswept scenery came with its own challenges, not least the unusual sight of crew members wielding tennis balls and broomsticks to help visualise the dinosaurs.
'You take blue cut-outs of the heads of these creatures, which are quite large, and then a member of the production team will have a tennis ball or something representing the other end,' Helen explained.
She added: 'You have people dressed all in blue and you've got them holding blue heads, and then you get somebody else with a broom pole with a blue tennis ball on top, that's there for the tip of the tail.
"And the director of photography and the cameraman have to imagine what's in between and how that's moving.'
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This inventive mix of imagination and science is at the heart of the BBC's ground-breaking series. Every detail is crafted to bring viewers as close as possible to the prehistoric world, while remaining rooted in scientific evidence.
'They have to have the most amazing imaginations and we have to make sure it's scientifically accurate,' said Helen.
In the third episode, Band of Brothers, audiences met George, a heavily armoured juvenile Gastonia, who forms a herd with fellow youngsters in a bid to survive the looming threat of Utahraptor attacks.
The companion book, Walking With Dinosaurs: Uncovering the Secret Stories of Prehistoric Life by Andrew Cohen, Helen Thomas and Kirsty Wilson (DK, £25), is available now.
