My Pet Dinosaur

What if the Cretaceous-Tertiary impact that ended the reign of the Dinosaurs never occurred? Would these magnificent creatures, which could only be described by superlatives, still be walking the Earth? Would these creatures have gone on to evolve intelligence and perhaps a technological civilization? It is perhaps the greatest question concerning an alternative evolutionary history of life on Earth. 

Today on Far Future Horizons we explore this alternative evolutionary history with the BBC Horizon documentary – My Pet Dinosaur.

It's a palaeontologist's dream: the chance to live in a world where dinosaurs are not something to be dug out of the ground but are living among us. It may sound far-fetched but dinosaurs were actually rather unlucky. The meteorite impact that doomed them to extinction was an event with a probability of millions to one. What if the meteorite had missed?

 In the early 1980s, paleontologist Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museums of Canada, in Ottowa, explored this possibility of Intelligent Dinosaurs.

Had dinosaurs survived, the world today would be very different. If humans managed to survive alongside them (very unlikely), we wouldn't have the company of most, if not all, of the mammals with which we are familiar today. Giraffes, elephants and other mammals wouldn't have had space to evolve.

Evolution of Intelligent Dinosaurs

Would we be hunting Hadrosaurs instead of elk? Or farming Protoceratops instead of pigs? Would dinosaurs be kept as pets? And could the brighter dinosaurs have evolved into something humanoid?

How Dinosaurs Could Have Evolved 

My Pet Dinosaur (Direct Link To Video)

BBC: Dinosaurs on the news - Horizon - My Pet Dinosaur


A satirical news report featuring dinosaurs nosing through rubbish bins on a residential London street. Great short video from BBC show Horizon - My Pet Dinosaur. Watch more high quality videos on the BBC Worldwide YouTube channel here: BBC World Wide On YouTube.

Copyright Disclaimer

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.