World of Dinosaurs
World of Dinosaurs is the most ambitious project Earthsim has taken on to date. As the technologies required will be under development for a number of years we have decided to roll out World Of Dinosaurs in stages. These stages will show progressively more and more of the final world until the final stage integrates all previous stages into one consistent experience.
The first stage to be made available will be a fully 3D interactive dinosaur encyclopaedia. Like all Earthsim content the encyclopaedia will be constantly growing, with more and more dinosaurs added as we create them.
Please visit our World of Dinosaurs Image Gallery to see what's coming soon to the World of Dinosaurs.
Featured Dinosaurs
"Since it's discovery, Iguanodon has, perhaps more than any other dinosaur, undergone a remarkable change of appearance" - Darren Naish and Dave Martill.
Acrocanthosaurus currently holds the record as the 4th largest land predator of all time.
"If you were to mate a horny toad with a crocodile, then blow it up so that it stands four feet tall and 17 feet long, you've got it" - Don Burge
"It would create a little seismic activity when it walked... It's truly astonishing. It's arguably the largest creature ever to walk the earth." - Richard Cifelli, Sauroposeidon excavation leader
World of Dinosaurs breaks new ground both technically and scientifically. A complete dinosaur ecosystem is being simulated on the Earthsim server, and the struggle for survival of the world will be played out over real time. All Earthsim viewers will be able to watch the progress of the dinosaurs in the world over the following years.
In-Development Screenshots
The final World Of Dinosaurs will present a complete set of ecosystems chosen from key evolutionary stages spanning the lifetime of dinosaurs on Earth.
The first ecosystem is a 200km x 200km slice of landscape set in the Early Cretaceous period in North America. The world is already under development at Earthsim, and information and progress about the development of the world will be made available on this website.
The Earthsim encyclopaedia index will be extended and will enable viewers to access content living in the dinosaur ecosystem. Looking up a Deinonychus will take you into the ecosystem and run a documentary sequence about the creature. Moving near other creatures can also trigger micro documentary footage as in the rest of Earthsim.
Within each ecosystem there are a number of designed documentary adventures where the viewer is taken through a set of experiences and creature events that form a complete story.
Art Development Images
Research Team
The Earthsim WOD program gave everyone working on it a chance to read up on dinosaurs and do their own research to meet their needs. Soon enough, expert help was needed. We contacted the best palaeontology departments in the country to see if they had any willing postgraduate students who were free to work on a project basis.
We found three researchers, all with distinct specialities:
Adam Stuart Smith
Adam is a demonstrator at University College Dublin, Ireland, where he is also studying for a Ph.D. He specialises in Jurassic plesiosaurs - see his website The Plesiosaur Directory. Adam also worked as a researcher for a joint earth-science initiative between the BBC, the Open University, and the University of Bristol. After graduating in palaeobiology and evolution (University of Portsmouth) he completed a Masters degree in palaeontology (University of Bristol). Adam has worked for the Bristol Dinosaur Project, Rockwatch and various museums, teaching about palaeontology and helping kids draw accurate dinosaurs. He is a palaeo-artist and has painted prehistoric animals for many exhibitions, articles and websites.
For Earthsim Adam specialises in helping us with the visual reconstructions of all the dinosaurs and is responsible for the visual reconstruction sections on the website.
Susannah Maidment
Susannah is reading a Ph.D. in Vertebrate Palaeontology at Cambridge University. She is specializing in the study of the stegosaurian dinosaurs. Susannah has a first class MSci degree in Geological Sciences from Imperial College, London, where she took every opportunity to visit the dinosaur galleries of the Natural History Museum!
Simon Clabby
Simon has degrees in Palaeobiology at both Undergraduate (Portsmouth) and Postgraduate (Bristol) levels. He specialises in the palaeobiology and ecology of the Early Cretaceous Wealden group of The United Kingdom. He also runs the website Dinowight - The Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight.
Evolutionary Timeline:
Prehistoric reptiles, including dinosaurs, were the most powerful animals for about 160 million years. These years are divided into two sections, called eras. Each of these eras is then divided up into sections called periods. The first Ecosystem for the Earthsim World of Dinosaurs will be set in the Early Cretacious period show below.
Palaeozoic era (pall-ay-oh-zoh-ick) 570 million to 245 million years ago
- Cambrian period (570 million years ago) The first fishes, corals, trilobites and shellfish appeared.
- Ordovician period: (505 million years ago). The first nautiloids appeared. Corals and trilobites were common.
- Silurian period: (438 million years ago). The first land plants and giant sea scorpions called Eurypterids appeared.
- Carboniferous period: (360 million years ago). The first reptiles appeared. Great swamp forests covered the land.
- Permian period: (286 million years ago). The first sailback reptiles such as Dimetrodon appeared.
Mesozoic era (mezo-zoh-ick ) 245 million to 65 million years ago.
- Triassic period: (245 million years ago). The first dinosaurs such as Coelophisis and Euskelosaurus appeared, as well as mammals, turtles, crocodiles and frogs. All the continents were joined together in one huge landmass. Climate was hot and dry but with rain seasons. The first tree ferns and coniferous trees were starting to appear.
- Jurassic period: (208 million years ago). The first birds appeared (e.g. Archaeopteryx). Dinosaurs included Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus. The climate changed as the huge continent was breaking up. There were now forests of cycads, conifers and gingko, all plants that still exist today.
- Cretaceous period: (144 million years ago). Dinosaurs during this time included Tyrannosaurus, Utahraptor and Ankylosaurus. The dinosaurs died out towards the end of this period. The first snakes and modern mammals appeared. The continents had now separated and each had its own flora and fauna. However, Australia and Antarctica were still joined together. There were now flowering plants such as magnolias and water lilies. .
Following the Mesozoic era was the Cenozoic (sen-oh-zoh-ick) era, 65 million to 0 million years ago, during which many different species of animals appeared. This era ended with the Great Ice Age and the appearance of the first humans.