Dinosapien

Lore & Background

The series focuses on Lauren Slayton, a teenage girl living at Dinosaur Explorer Camp with her mother Dr. Hillary Slayton. Lauren's father Alan mysteriously disappeared on a fossil expedition into the Badlands, and Lauren is the first human to encounter one of the evolved dinosaurs, which she eventually befriends. Dr. Slayton befriends Dr. Aikens, who later plans to destroy the evolved dinosaurs out of fear they would try to eliminate humanity and reclaim Earth.

Reader's Guide

Dinosapien is notable as a children's television program that combined live-action with approximately six minutes of CGI per episode. The series was directed by sci-fi veteran David Winning (pilot and first three episodes) and Brendan Sheppard (five episodes), with CG animation directed by Marc Lougee, a veteran of award-winning animated series. The show aired in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and briefly aired in reruns on The Hub until March 24, 2012. Its premise of intelligent, evolved dinosaurs offered a unique take on the dinosaur genre for young audiences.

Did You Know?

• The series was filmed in Bragg Creek, Alberta.
• Each episode contains around six minutes of CGI.
• The evolved dinosaur Eno is a 6-foot-tall theropod with pheasant-like feathers and a short snout.

Production & Creative Team

Dinosapien was a collaborative co-production between BBC Worldwide and CCI Entertainment, with involvement from BBC Kids, Discovery Kids, and CBBC. The entire fifteen-episode run was shot on location in Bragg Creek, Alberta, giving the series a distinctly Canadian outdoor feel. Each episode ran twenty-one and a half minutes of actual content, stretching to a full half-hour slot once commercial breaks were factored in. Roughly six minutes of every installment was dedicated to computer-generated imagery, a notable component of the production for a children's show of that era. Behind the camera, the project attracted directors with strong genre credentials. Sci-fi veteran David Winning helmed the pilot and the first three episodes, while Brendan Sheppard, recognized for his work on Doctor Who DVD releases, directed five additional episodes. The visual effects and CG animation pipeline was overseen by Marc Lougee, whose résumé included MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch and the CBC series What It's Like Being Alone. On screen, Brittney Wilson carried the lead as Lauren Slayton, supported by Suzanna Hamilton as her mother Dr. Slayton and James Coombes as the antagonistic scientist Dr. Aikens.

Premise & Story

At its core, Dinosapien asks a playful speculative question: what if the dinosaurs never went extinct and instead continued evolving into more intelligent, sapient beings? The series is anchored at Dinosaur Explorer Camp, a dinosaur-themed summer camp in Canada, where the story unfolds across its fifteen episodes. The emotional heart of the show belongs to Dr. Hillary Slayton, whose husband Alan vanished without a trace during a fossil expedition deep in the Badlands. Their teenage daughter Lauren, played by Brittney Wilson, has never fully processed her father's disappearance, and much of the narrative drives toward uncovering what really happened to him. Lauren becomes the first human to make contact with one of these evolved dinosaurs, forming a bond that gradually opens her eyes to a hidden world. Her mother, meanwhile, forges a working relationship with Dr. Clive Aikens, a fellow scientist whose growing fear that the evolved dinosaurs intend to wipe out humanity and reclaim the planet sets the stage for the series' central conflict. As Lauren befriends other campers and learns more about the dinosaurs, the mystery of her father's fate tightens around her.

The Dinosaurs

The show's memorable characters include its evolved dinosaurs, led by Eno, a six-foot-tall theropod teenager. His body is pale green with red and yellow stripes along his back and a grey underbelly, while pheasant-like feathers sprout from his head and tail resembling human hair. His forward-facing yellow eyes are hawk-like, his feet mirror those of a dromaeosaur, and his snout is short. Lauren confirms that Eno's kind descended from Dromaeosaurus. Despite his intelligence, his speech carries the grammar of a four-year-old, and he mimics words almost contextually, much like a parrot. He squawks like a bird, is startled by high-pitched sounds, and climbs trees only to hide or escape. His diet appears omnivorous, as he was seen eating hot dogs and leaves. Eno's pursuers are the Diggers, a pair of goofy bipedal creatures described as a cross between Prenocephale and Pinacosaurus with long grasping arms. Classified as Ornithosapiens and insectivorous, they can build and use tools, yet bright light temporarily blinds them through nictitating eyelids. Lauren dubs the male Green Eyes and the female Cerepta, with the latter leading. In the finale, a Thunderbird cloud ignites Aikens' dynamite stash in the Badlands, killing the Diggers, though their survival is unconfirmed.

Broadcast & Distribution

Dinosapien's original run was brief, spanning just over three months from its March 24, 2007 debut to its June 30, 2007 finale. In Canada, the series aired weekly on Saturdays on BBC Kids, establishing the baseline schedule for the show. The United Kingdom received the series on CBBC Channel starting May 10, 2007, with the first two episodes broadcast back-to-back before settling into a weekly Thursday slot; the finale aired on August 9, 2007, and the series remained available on the network until October 14, 2010. The United States took a different approach, presenting Dinosapien as a miniseries event on Discovery Kids from July 7 to August 11, 2007. The premiere night featured the first four episodes in a two-hour Saturday block, followed by four subsequent one-hour blocks of two episodes each. The final three episodes were packaged into a ninety-minute block. After its initial run, the series found a second life in reruns on The Hub, where it aired until March 24, 2012. This staggered, multi-market rollout gave the show a longer broadcast life than its original fifteen-episode count might suggest.