Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure

Synopsis: Brings to life some of the most bizarre, ferocious and fascinating creatures to ever inhabit the ocean. Combines animation with recreations in a prehistoric adventure. A journey to the bottom of the ancient oceans dramatizes awe-inspiring creatures.
Production: National Geographic
  3 wins.
 
IMDB:
7.1
Rotten Tomatoes:
100%
UNRATED
Year:
2007
40 min
$23,615,670
Website
175 Views


[Woman] The National Science Foundation,

where discoveries begin.

[Man Narrating]

Beneath the earth we know...

lie other worlds...

hidden from sight...

lost in time.

But sometimes we can

glimpse a lost world...

through remnants of the past.

We definitely got a skull.

Lower right. What do you think?

It's hard to say.

[Narrator] This story begins

with a discovery of unidentified bones.

Depositional environment?

A team of paleontologists will try

to figure out whose bones they are...

and what world they came from.

So we got a time frame.

That's a start.

[Narrator]

They were discovered in Kansas-

mostly farmland today.

But once, Kansas lay

beneath a vast sea.

It was 82 million years ago...

during the age of the dinosaurs.

[Roaring]

But there was another world

of giants on Earth...

a submerged world...

where enormous reptiles ruled seas

filled with incredible creatures.

These...

were the most dangerous seas

of all time.

No living thing was safe.

The great marine reptiles

disappeared long ago...

and time has buried their world.

But any of us might still

encounter a sea monster.

- [Dog Whining]

- Buddy!

[Whining Continues]

[Whining Continues]

[Narrator] As if from nowhere,

the distant past returns.

The scientists hope to find not just

the fossil of an ancient creature...

but a story recorded in its bones.

Grab your tools.

Rain washed some of the chalk away

and exposed it.

This is great.

Okay-

[Narrator]

They recognize it as something special...

a rare Dolichorhynchops-

a dolly, for short.

It was a marine reptile

of the late Cretaceous...

a little bigger than a dolphin...

and a fast swimmer.

To unravel any story

the bones may tell...

the investigators will draw on

everything they know about marine reptiles.

Yeah, it looks like Hesperornis.

[Narrator] Their fossils have been found

around the world over decades.

It could have been over 30 feet long.

The matrix materials we've got in the lab

seem to indicate-

[Narrator] These finds will help the team

piece together the story of the dolly...

and picture the moment in time

when it swam in the sea.

In many ways, the dolly's world

was far different from ours.

The climate was warmer.

Sea levels were higher,

and more of Earth was submerged.

This dolly would have lived

in a vast inland sea...

that cut North America in two.

Marine reptiles were also found

in the waters around Europe...

which was a scattering of islands...

and throughout the world's oceans.

In time they died out...

and sea levels retreated...

exposing vast areas of seabed.

Fossils from the ancient oceans

turned up on every continent.

A discovery in the Australian outback...

offers clues to how the dolly's life

may have begun.

It seems to be laying out in

a pretty consistent pattern.

are the bones of juveniles.

[Narrator]

So many small bones in one area...

suggests that marine reptiles

gathered in protected shallows to give birth.

And in North America,

that's how the story of this dolly...

begins to unfold.

Imagine that one of

the creatures in the shallows...

is a pregnant Dolichorhynchops.

She gives birth to a male...

and colored like his mother...

and a female...

darker in color

with light patches below her eyes.

And it's her life we begin to follow.

She and her brother

are air breathers.

Instinct tells them what they have to do

in their first minute alive.

From the beginning...

the little female and her brother practice

skills they'll need one day...

when they'll have to leave the safety of the shallows

for the dangerous seas beyond.

If she survives the perils to come...

she'll return here one day

and have young of her own.

Already she finds

competition for food.

There's the Hesperornis...

a bird that can't fly

and has a beak full of sharp teeth.

And the Styxosaurus...

a distant cousin of the dolly's...

with a supersized neck.

An adult can reach 35 feet in length...

more than half of it neck.

Its shape makes it

a slower swimmer...

but it's great for catching fish.

The little dolly soon comes across

creatures that move...

by pumping jets of water

from their shells.

They're called ammonites...

and they thrive in the ancient sea.

They have rock-hard armor

and perhaps another defense.

Swim too close,

like the little female...

and get a face full of ink.

But that doesn't stop

a young Platecarpus...

when it wants a snack.

Ammonites were once abundant.

Their fossils have been uncovered often...

even by a road crew in Texas.

Ammonites.

A lot of'em.

Ammonites.

A lot of'em.

[Narrator]

There were many kinds of ammonites...

and we know

when most of them lived...

so their fossils are like markers in time.

Identify an ammonite and you can date

other less common fossils nearby.

That helps place dollies

in the long history of marine reptiles.

It began some 250 million years ago...

in the Triassic period...

with land reptiles

that moved into the sea.

They developed webbed feet,

then flippers.

Some had elaborate armor.

Into the Jurassic,

they continued to evolve.

To see at great depths...

some had eyes

the size of dinner plates-

top predators

who grew immense and powerful...

reaching their peak

in the late Cretaceous...

near the end of the dinosaur age...

the very time

when the Dolichorhynchops lived.

Months have passed.

The female and her brother

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes

Mose Richards

All Mose Richards scripts | Mose Richards Scripts

0 fans

Submitted on August 05, 2018

Discuss this script with the community:

0 Comments

    Translation

    Translate and read this script in other languages:

    Select another language:

    • - Select -
    • 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
    • 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
    • Español (Spanish)
    • Esperanto (Esperanto)
    • 日本語 (Japanese)
    • Português (Portuguese)
    • Deutsch (German)
    • العربية (Arabic)
    • Français (French)
    • Русский (Russian)
    • ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
    • 한국어 (Korean)
    • עברית (Hebrew)
    • Gaeilge (Irish)
    • Українська (Ukrainian)
    • اردو (Urdu)
    • Magyar (Hungarian)
    • मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
    • Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Italiano (Italian)
    • தமிழ் (Tamil)
    • Türkçe (Turkish)
    • తెలుగు (Telugu)
    • ภาษาไทย (Thai)
    • Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
    • Čeština (Czech)
    • Polski (Polish)
    • Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
    • Românește (Romanian)
    • Nederlands (Dutch)
    • Ελληνικά (Greek)
    • Latinum (Latin)
    • Svenska (Swedish)
    • Dansk (Danish)
    • Suomi (Finnish)
    • فارسی (Persian)
    • ייִדיש (Yiddish)
    • հայերեն (Armenian)
    • Norsk (Norwegian)
    • English (English)

    Citation

    Use the citation below to add this screenplay to your bibliography:

    Style:MLAChicagoAPA

    "Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/sea_monsters:_a_prehistoric_adventure_17665>.

    We need you!

    Help us build the largest writers community and scripts collection on the web!

    Watch the movie trailer

    Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure

    Browse Scripts.com

    The Studio:

    ScreenWriting Tool

    Write your screenplay and focus on the story with many helpful features.