Jurassic Park (1993)
Historically inaccurate or not (the real creatures are thought to have been feathery things), the velociraptors conjured by Steven Spielberg and his team for 1993’s Jurassic Park rule as the screen dinosaur. A centrepiece scene in which JP’s raptors terrorise a pair of under-12s in a kitchen is rightly lauded, but the creatures’ best moment comes earlier in the film, when a big-game hunter is trapped by one of them in a patch of tropical undergrowth. “Clever girl,” he trills approvingly, before being noisily eaten alive
Photograph: Allstar Photograph: Allstar
Toy Story 1-3 (1995-2010)
There are no dud characters in Pixar’s brilliant Toy Story series (maybe one: sorry Bo Peep) and perhaps that’s why Rex, the plastic dinosaur with esteem issues, doesn’t often get singled out for attention. But he had some of the best lines in the first film (“I’m going for fearsome here, but I just don’t feel it... I’m think I’m just coming off as annoying”) and Pixar always made great play of his absurdly shaped body. “I can’t look,” squealed Rex as a rare-toy collector sought to kidnap his cowboy pal Woody in Toy Story 2. “Could somebody please cover my eyes?” Photograph: PR
King Kong (1933)
Fay Wray, by her own account, didn’t much enjoy the epic cinematic battle between a giant gorilla and a tyrannosaurus rex in the original King Kong – she had to sit in an artificial tree for most of a day, screaming. “Took 22 hours,” she later complained. Well, it was worth it; the scene lodged in screen legend: a three-minute stop-motion gem during which the tyrannosaurus rex bites and grapples and even manages a commando-like forward roll, before being wrestled to submission by Kong. See it at tinyurl.com/kongtrex Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive
Denver the Last Dinosaur (1988-90)
As the central character of this long-gone kids cartoon, Denber only appeared on UK screens for a sadly brief period. The show had an irresistible premise: a bunch of kids found a prehistoric egg in the tar pits of Los Angeles and out of it hatched Denver, a green dinosaur. He quickly took to modern-day Californian life, donning pink DayGlo shades and playing guitar in a rock band and, together with the kids who found him, shared 30-minute adventures every week. It was great! Hear the madly catchy theme tune at tinyurl.com/denverlast Photograph: PR
Calvin and Hobbes
Fans of Bill Watterson’s peerless Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip knew to look forward to the instalments featuring dinosaurs. Always an expert when it came to visualising the imaginative fancies of his six-year-old character, Calvin, Watterson seemed to put a little extra oomph behind his pen when it came to drawing prehistoric beasts. Over the years, he gave us gorgeous, inky diplodocuses, super-detailed triceratops and tyrannosaurs that were very often, in Calvin’s make-believe world, piloting F14 fighter jets Photograph: Bill Watterson
Tree of Life (2011)
Reviewers drooled over Terrence Malick’s latest film, Tree of Life, especially its extended CGI interlude about the creation of the universe (no, really). It’s hard to explain, exactly, how this bizarre vignette fits into a period drama starring Brad Pitt – but it works, in particular a moving meeting between two raptor-like dinosaurs. One of them, injured, lies on the bank of a stream. Another approaches, as if to feast – before pausing to reconsider and then bounding away again. Critics proposed this was Malick visualising the birth of compassion. So there Photograph: PR
The Flintstones (1960)
It was a joke the creators never tired of. The Flintstone family, stars of the 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, enjoyed prehistoric equivalents of modern conveniences: they ate brontosaurus ribs at a drive-in movie, read stone tablets like newspapers and instead of a family dog they kept a gangly, grinning purple “snorkasaurus”. Dino never spoke but, like the rest of the characters, had his own running gag: whenever the family patriarch Fred came home from work, Dino would charge in, yapping and excitedly bowl him over, then lick his face. Arf Photograph: Allstar
Basketball mascot
You’ve probably never heard of him or his team, but it’s well worth watching footage of this Canadian basketball mascot in action, particularly if your idea of a hard-working sports mascot is man in a cheap animal suit, mugging on the sidelines of a football pitch. The red velociraptor who gees up fans at NBA games in Toronto has an intricately choreographed half-time routine during which he gobbles up a real-life cheerleader. Impressive stuff, all happening thanks to deft acrobatic work and a clever plastic costume. See a video of the skit at tinyurl.com/torontoraptor Photograph: Internet
Natural History Museum
Few other museum exhibits lodge as indelibly in the mind as the giant diplodocus in the Natural History Museum’s vast central hall. Installed in 1905, following a bit of matey collaboration between Edward VII and the Scottish-born millionaire Andrew Carnegie (whose Pittsburgh museum houses the original bones), the 26 metre-long plastercast replica has survived two world wars and two scientific reinterpretations of its proper posture. Staff – who have to put aside two days if they want to clean the 292 individual bones – refer to it as Dippy Photograph: Andy Lane /Alamy
Super Mario World (1990)
Mario, the deathless computer game character created by Nintendo, was already an implausibly squat plumber with a liking for itinerant mushrooms and the ability to conjure fireballs. So nobody batted an eyelid when it was revealed, in a 1990 console game, that he also had a bootie-wearing pet dinosaur called Yoshi. Controlling Yoshi, players could jump supremely high, lay weaponised eggs and lash out at baddies with a giant tongue. The character was so popular he went on to appear in several more games, including one in which he showed an unexpected talent for golf Photograph: PR
