Monsters make a big splash on big screen

9:50pm Thursday 25th October 2007

Sea Monsters 3D: A Prehistoric Adventure
National Media Museum

This thrilling adventure blends high-resolution 3D graphics with real-life finds from palaeontological digs, creating amazingly life-like marine reptiles making their way across the Imax screen.

From the Dolichorhynchops to the terrifying T Rex of the ocean, it's as if these creatures really exist. They're right there in front of us - floating over us, brushing past us and splashing towards us.

There are lizard-like reptiles that swallow their prey whole like snakes - one of them has eyes bigger than his belly, as the palaeontologists discover when they unearth his skeleton with the bones of a huge fish stuck inside it. At the top of the food chain is the mighty Tylosaurus who emerges from the water with a roar, his snapping 3D jaws coming right at us.

The film cuts from reconstructed fossil digs to computer-generated flashbacks of predatory chases through ancient waters. There's a feelgood factor when we meet a young Dolichorhynchops, called Dollie,' who we follow from birth to death. Somehow she manages to dodge the ocean's predators and dies of old age, although an encounter with a shark leaves her with its tooth embedded in her fin. Millions of years later her skeleton, complete with tooth, is discovered, preserved in mud.

Fascinating, thrilling and a timely reminder that we're just passing through the world we've inherited.

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