[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/prehistoric_park_1.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Extinction doesn't have to be forever...]]

->"''There is something missing from our world. The amazing animals that time has left behind. But what if we could bring them back? What if extinction... ''didn't have to be forever?"
--> '''Opening Intro of each episode'''

''Prehistoric Park'' (2006) is a 6 episode {{Science Fiction}} {{Mockumentary}} MiniSeries from Creator/{{ITV}}, created by the same company (Impossible Pictures Ltd.) that produced the famous ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' franchise, to which this show can either be seen as a SpiritualSuccessor or a SpinOff. In turn, the hit ScienceFiction series ''Series/{{Primeval}}'' can be viewed as a very loose successor to ''Prehistoric Park''. Creator/DavidJason narrates.

The basic premise is simple: RealLife zoologist and adventurer Nigel Marven [[TimeTravel travels back in time]] to [[BringItBackAlive bring back]] various creatures from prehistoric eras, whom he and his team then place in the titular park. While episodic in nature, the series did have an overarching plot, as the issues of many animals took several episodes to resolve.

Although the show was filmed as if it told the story of a real park, it contained many obviously sci-fi inspired elements, such as the mysterious time portal, the workings of which were never explained.

The show is, in essence, similar to Creator/DiscoveryChannel's much less famous ''Series/DinoLab''.

The video game ''VideoGame/PrehistoricKingdom'', although not directly based on the show, is something of a spiritual adaptation, with Nigel Marven as the narrator.
----
!! The work provides examples of:
* AccidentalHero: The ''Deinosuchus'' unintentionally saves Nigel's life as he's being chased by Matilda. The ''Deinosuchus'' attacks the tyrannosaur, surprising her and slowing her down for a few precious seconds, allowing Nigel to escape.
* AdamAndEvePlot: A more realistic example than most. Saba and Nigel are able to rescue two of the last living ''Smilodon'' in existence, an adult male and female (the female had a cub, but it died of starvation before they were able to capture it). A later subplot involves the park's vet Suzanne attempting to get the two to mate, which is of course risky because the two animals could easily kill each other.
* AdvancingWallOfDoom: The typical example for a dinosaur documentary, the blast front of the asteroid impact. In this case, it's pretty obvious no one's outrunning something moving a hundred times faster than sound waves, the challenge is for Nigel to lure two young ''Tyrannosaurus'' into a time portal before the rapidly approaching ash cloud reaches them in a few moments.
* AllAnimalsAreDomesticated: Many of the rescued prehistoric animals tend to play this trope straight, even though all of them were only recently plucked out of the wild. Martha, the ''Ornithomimus'' flock, the titanosaurs, the ''Arthropleura'', and even the carnivorous terror bird all act surprisingly docile once they are brought to the park and can be safely handled by the people working there. Martha is a particularly notable example, as she had prior and ''bad'' experiences with humans (who killed her sister), and as any elephant handler will tell you, even elephants raised in captivity are, at best, highly unpredictable, never mind a wild one. Out of the herbivorous residents, only Theo and the ''Elasmotherium'' avoid this trope, [[TemperCeratops mainly due to]] [[RhinoRampage certain stereotypes]].
* AnachronismStew:
** A common mistake: including the Chinese dino-bird ''[[UsefulNotes/PrehistoricLife Microraptor]]'' among the Yixian fauna when it was really from the slightly later Jiufotang Formation. That said, several other taxa of microraptorines did live at Yixian.
** ''Nyctosaurus'' went extinct before ''Deinosuchus'', which in turn went extinct before ''Albertosaurus''; however, nyctosaurids as a whole were doing really fine in the Late Cretaceous, so at least the former is not inconceivable. While ''Albertosaurus sarcophagus'' was not a contemporary of ''Deinosuchus'', the one in the show is likely meant to be ''Albertosaurus libratus'', more commonly known as ''Gorgosaurus libratus''.
** The last giant terror birds died out 2 million years ago, a million years after its appearance in "Saving the Sabretooth".
*** Oddly [[InvertedTrope inverted]] during Nigel's return trip to save a ''Smilodon'' (which involves a TimeSkip to 10,000 years ago). The conflict largely hinges on the notion that much of the ancient South American megafauna (such as glyptodonts, giant ground sloths, and the ''Toxodon'' from the previous segment) have gone extinct and so the surviving ''Smilodon'' population (which were specialized to prey on such large, bulky herbivores) are slowly starving to death. In reality, most of these taxa were still doing just fine right up until the end of the Pleistocene, with ample evidence that several of them were even hunted by ''Homo sapiens''.
** A rather [[JustForFun/{{Egregious}} egregious]] example, ''Pulmonoscorpius'' and ''Crassigyrinus'' lived in the Middle Carboniferous, while ''Meganeura'' is only known from the very end Carboniferous, separated by over 25 million years. Just for comparison, that would be the equivalent of entelodonts rubbing shoulders with modern humans.
** The ice age episode features a cave bear, which should've been extinct for well over 10,000 years by the time Nigel arrives, something which he lampshades. Cave hyenas are another threat briefly encountered, but they should've died out about one-thousand years prior.
** A [[ScienceMarchesOn retroactive]] example; it's now known that ''Triceratops horridus'' technically did not make it to the very end of the Cretaceous, because it had evolved into ''Triceratops prorsus'' by then.
* AndTheAdventureContinues: The series ends with Nigel heading back through the time portal to who knows when to capture some new prehistoric creature.
* ArtisticLicenseAnimalCare:
** Every enclosure in the park (with the sole exception of the bug house) is made up of flimsy, wood post fences that wouldn't even be able to hold back an elephant in real life, and yet the show portrays them as being strong enough to contain enormous dinosaurs like ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Triceratops''. The titanosaurs are the only animals in the show that are consistently able to knock the fences down.
** Downplayed in regards to the bug house, which Nigel explicitly says needs to be an enclosed space to give the Carboniferous animals the proper oxygen levels. Even then, however, the building itself is mostly comprised of bricks -- which, unlike stone, metal, plastic or concrete, are porous. Points for trying, at least.
* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Inevitably, there some examples.
** The show's ''Deinosuchus'' is at least a third larger than the largest known real life specimen, and appears even bigger than that in the scene where it eats a ''Nyctosaurus''. On the flipside, the ''Tyrannosaurus'' are significantly more slender than they were in real life (this is because the adults use the same models as the juveniles, only with different heads).
** Terror birds were extinct by the time ''Smilodon'' entered South America, ''Phorusrhacos'' in particular died out 13 million years ago (the only terror bird known to have coexisted with ''Smilodon'' was ''Titanis'', but this was in North America, not South America, and the ''Smilodon'' species was the smallest and earliest). Like ''Walking with Beasts'', this is based on a minority scientific opinion that its close relative ''Titanis'' lived until 10 thousand years ago and is the same creature. From the same episode, ''Toxodon'' are shown as hippo-like water-dwellers instead of terrestrial rhino-like animals. This was once considered true, but that theory had been discarded by the time of the series.
** The sabre teeth of ''Smilodon'' are stated to be incisors - they are actually canines.
** The troodonts don't have enough feathers, ''Ornithomimus'' lacks feathers altogether, and the show implies that dinosaurs were cold-blooded.
** The ''Triceratops'' is depicted as living in huge herds like wildebeests or bison. While this is plausible for many other ceratopsid species like ''Centrosaurus'' or ''Styracosaurus'', which are known from dense bonebeds suggestive of large herds, ''Triceratops'' was probably a much more solitary animal. Despite being one of the most common North American dinosaurs from the end of the Cretaceous, ''Triceratops'' fossils are almost all found singly or in very small groups. Also, baby and juvenile ''Triceratops'' had drastically different proportions from full-grown animals, and did not resemble miniature adults.
** Nigel refers to ''Thylacoleo'' as a cat, when it was actually a marsupial (and thus no relation to cats).
** Eurypterids are stated by Nigel to be the ancestors of scorpions, but sea scorpions were not actually close relatives of true scorpions (the eurypterids' relationship among arthropod groups is debated, but they seem to be sister taxon to arachnids), although scorpions did probably evolve from marine ancestors.
** [[Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs Once again]], this is another Impossible Pictures series that portrays Hell Creek as an ashy, volcanic wasteland, rather than the lush, fluvial swampland that it really was. At least no one calls attention to it this time...
* ArtisticLicenseSpace: When the K-Pg asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere, its arrival casts a vast creeping shadow on the landscape. However, a meteor would not cast a shadow because friction would almost instantly turn its surface molten, causing it to glow incredibly brightly. For a meteor of ''this'' size, one would not even be able to see the classic streaking comet tail because of how utterly huge and luminescent it would be; the entire sky would just be instantaneously blinding white.
* BadassBookworm: Downplayed with zoologist Nigel Marven. He can't actually fight off any of the dangerous prehistoric animals he encounters, but he does prove lucky enough to be able to evade them long enough to avoid getting eaten by carnivores or beaten up by antagonistic herbivores.
* BaitAndSwitchCredits: In the opening sequence, a flock of ''Nyctosaurus'' are seen in the titular park. While Nigel does encounter the strange-looking pterosaurs on his travels, he never brings them back to the park.
* BearsAreBadNews: The [[UsefulNotes/StockDinosaursNonDinosaurs cave bear]] that immediately chases Nigel just after the latter enters in his refuge.
* BigCreepyCrawlies: A scorpion the size of a cat, a dragonfly with the wingspan of an eagle, and a millipede about two meters long. Notably, the ''Arthropleura'' manages to win the sympathy of the insectophobic Bob simply because it was just that big that it loses its creepy factor.
* BigDamnHeroes: Happens several times in the last episode. Martha the mammoth saves the young elephant from Matilda the ''T. rex''. Nigel leads Matilda away before the fight escalates. Then, just as Matilda is about to catch up with Nigel, the ''Deinosuchus'' lunges out of the water at Matilda, barely missing, giving Nigel enough time to reach safety and lock Matilda into a paddock.
* ButtMonkey: Head-keeper Bob often ends up the butt of the joke for a lot of things that go wrong at the park.
* BookEnds: The first mission shown in the United States goes to the Cretaceous, as does the last. Just separated by ten million years.
* CainAndAbel: A fight between the ''T. rex'' siblings ends with Matilda nearly killing Terrance. Nigel separates them afterward.
* ChekhovsVolcano: The episode "Dino Birds" has Nigel and his crew travel to the Early Cretaceous of China to capture ''Microraptor''. It's noted very early this is an extremely volcanic region, and immediately upon arrival a large volcanic mountain looms in the background. Sure enough, it ends up erupting.
* ClosestThingWeGot: With only three minutes until the blast wave from the K-T meteor impact reaches their location, Nigel needs something meaty to try and lure the infant ''Tyrannosaurus'' through the time portal. He's next seen trying to entice them with what looks like a ham sandwich. Surprisingly it works (though he does note the hatchlings could be more interested in eating ''him'' than the sandwich).
* CoolVsAwesome: In the series finale we have a standoff between a ''Tyrannosaurus'' and a woolly mammoth, although it's cut short before any actual fighting happens (which is also fortunate for any animal-lovers who can enjoy the spectacle without seeing either creature get hurt).
* CoolGate: The time portal, a glowing vortex of light formed from two technological poles placed in the ground. Through this vortex is a path to various different points in time.
* CreepyCentipedes: Subverted with the ''Arthropleura''. It's initially seen as menacing, as a millipede more than two metres long capable of rearing up to nearly look a man in the eye. However, it's later indicated to be a peaceful herbivore and Bob is of the opinion that it's simply so big that it loses its "creepiness" factor, because it no longer seems like a "bug" anymore.
* CripplingOverspecialization: Discussed involving sabre-tooth cats and cheetahs. Cheetahs are built to be extremely lightweight in order to run exceptionally fast, but it means it can't defend its kills from other predators like lions or hyenas. ''Smilodon'' has the opposite problem, it's robustly built for hunting big game, but once the big game dies out, it can't catch the smaller, faster prey left over and died out.
* TheDayTheDinosaursDied: The first episode has Nigel going back to the late Maastrichtian epoch, only a few days before the asteroid is about to strike, because he wants to capture one of the very last ''Tyrannosaurus'' to roam the Earth. Because of RuleOfDrama, he succeeds in rescuing two juveniles just seconds before the asteroid's blast wipes out the entire region.
* DeadlyGas: One of the major threats of Early Cretaceous China are the releases of toxic gas from volcanic activity. Nigel comes across what initially appear to be a sleeping pack of ''Mei long'', only to discover they're actually ''dead'' from carbon dioxide suffocation, and he and his crew immediately flee the area, narrowly avoiding the same fate.
* DeathOfAChild: A juvenile ''Ornithomimus'' is killed by a ''Tyrannosaurus'' and a juvenile ''Parasaurolophus'' is killed by a ''Deinosuchus''. There's also the ''Smilodon'' cub that Nigel and Saba are unable to save.
* DontAskJustRun: A stampede crashes through a wall, releasing the animals as Nigel watches from the control room:
-->'''Nigel''': Bob, do you read, over? Matilda's behind you. Don't look, just run!
* DoomedHurtGuy: The mother ''Tyrannosaurus'' is gored by a ''Triceratops'' during a hunt. Her injury makes her easy for Nigel to track, since her stride is clearly that of a limping animal, and she is killed at the end of the episode by another ''Tyrannosaurus''.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: The K-T asteroid impact 65 million years, which hits earth with an explosive force a billion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. A literal example too, as Nigel is forced to cover his ears from the sonic boom (noted by the narrator to have been one of the loudest noises the world has ever known) created as the asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere.
* EatsBabies: ''Tyrannosaurus'' (or at least adult males) are shown in this series to be willing to snack on baby ''Tyrannosaurus'' that aren't directly related to them. This gets PlayedForDrama in that the mother of Terrence and Matilda ends up getting killed by an adult male that she fights precisely for the sake of preventing said male from eating her young.
* EscapedAnimalRampage: In the last episode, one of the titanosaurs gets spooked and stampedes through the park, busting through several pens. The terror bird, the ''Elasmotherium'', and the ''Ornithomimus'' getting loose are only minor nuisances, but Matilda the ''Tyrannosaurus'' getting loose is a much bigger problem. Fortunately, the incident is resolved without any fatalities, but there are numerous close calls.
* ExactTimeToFailure: In the first episode, Nigel has precisely three minutes to get the ''Tyrannosaurus'' hatchlings back to the present day before the blast wave from the Chicxulub meteor impact reaches their location.
* ExtinctAnimalPark: The show's premise is built around the use of time travel to bring extinct animals -- various types of dinosaurs, wooly mammoths and other Ice Age megafauna, giant Carboniferous arthropods, etc. -- to the present in a zoo in Africa. The episodes' stories alternate between the retrieval of new residents and the zookeepers' attempts at keeping the already-obtained ones fed, healthy, stimulated, and under control -- which, given that knowledge of the behaviors and ecologies of extinct animals is by necessity speculative at best, requires a lot of trial, error, and creative thinking. Notable incidents include multiple failed attempts at building sauropod-proof enclosures, dressing up a tractor to resemble a ''Triceratops'' in order to give an adolescent male trike something to blow off steam against by fighting, and dealing with a solitary mammoth's depression by convincing a herd of elephants to take her in.
* FeatheredFiend:
** ''Troodon'', ''Incisivosaurus'', and ''Mei'', though [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology the troodonts are depicted with only a thin feather coat]].
** From the true birds' side, ''Phorusrhacos'', as a giant predatory avian that was once the apex predator of South America, before sabre-tooth cats arrived from the north. However, once it's at the park, it's fairly docile, aside from periodically escaping its pen by digging under the fence.
* FixFic: In a sense, the premiere can be understood as the ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' crew going back in time to rescue ''the'' pair of ''UsefulNotes/TyrannosaurusRex'' chicks that were killed by the meteor strike in the finale of that series. It also allows them to portray animals that were left out from that series and the follow up ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', like ''Triceratops'' and ''Ornithomimus'' in late Cretaceous North America. "A Mammoth Undertaking" features mammoths in Pleistocene Eurasia, of course, but also mammoth-hunting ''Homo sapiens'' (only Neanderthals hunted mammoths in ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'' and ''Beasts''), wolves and hyenas (which were alluded to in ''Beasts'' but not featured, or were reduced to a cameo), and cave bears and ''Elasmotherium'' (which didn't appear at all).
* FluffyTheTerrible:
** The park's ''T. rex'' twins have the truly terrifying names of... Terrence and Matilda!
** Supplementary material suggests they named the female ''Smilodon'' Sabrina.
* FromBadToWorse: Nigel's hope of rescuing a ''Tyrannosaurus'' family gets dashed when the female gets killed by a male in a fight over a kill... [[ShadowOfImpendingDoom and then the sky darkens]] as the K-T asteroid enters the atmosphere and passes overhead.
* FunnyPhoneMisunderstanding: In the fourth episode, Nigel asks Bob over the walkie-talkie to build a pen to house a giant bird, but the message ends up garbled and Bob returns with a small hanging bird cage. Nigel has to explain the bird he's going to capture is much, ''much'' bigger than that.
* GentleGiantSauropod: {{Subverted|Trope}} with the titanosaurs. They're never shown as the least bit malicious and the staff deem them inoffensive enough to be allowed free roam of the park, but they can be unwittingly dangerous purely on account of their sheer size and strength [[spoiler:(a panicked individual causes a mass breakout in the final episode by toppling every barrier in its path)]].
* GiantFlyer: Pterosaurs, though these aren't technically of the giant variant. Despite this, the show didn't miss the opportunity to play out the classic scene of a sea monster lunging out of the water and dragging one down. This paleoart-trope is played straight ''and'' subverted at the same time in the Supercroc episode: the giant sea reptile is not the classic ichthyosaur/elasmosaur/mosasaur/pliosaur but the giant alligator ''[[UsefulNotes/PrehistoricLife Deinosuchus]]'' (note that this may be TruthInTelevision, since modern saltwater crocodiles ''do'' live in the sea as well).
* GreenAesop: The main story of the series is Nigel time traveling so he can rescue prehistoric species on the edge of extinction in the past in order to give them a second chance at Prehistoric Park.
%%* HospitalHottie: Head-vet Suzanne.
* {{Imprinting}}: Bob decides to try and incubate two ''Ornithomimus'' eggs that had been knocked out of the nest. He's ultimately successful, but because he was the first living thing they saw when they hatched, they consider him their mother and follow him around like big ducklings.
* InstantSedation: Averted. Matilda breaks into Terrance's side of their enclosure and starts fighting her brother for the territory, and starts savagely biting him. Bob darts her with a tranquilizer, but as the narration notes, it takes time for the narcotic to take effect, giving Matilda the opportunity to nearly kill her brother before Nigel can distract her, allowing the tranquilizer to finally start working.
* TheJuggernaut: The titanosaurs. They're so big that they can easily plow down any fence in their path, which they do repeatedly when searching for food, making the job of containing them rather difficult. A single stampeding titanosaur ends up causing a mass breakout in the last episode as it tramples every fence in its path.
* TheMagicComesBack: The whole point of the series is to showcase Nigel and his team at the titular park going back in time and bringing creatures that [[TheMagicGoesAway have sadly gone extinct]] into the safety of the present where they may have a second chance at life. The series shows the preliminary stages, first bringing back a handful of different animals to test the waters before establishing breeding populations.
* MammothsMeanIceAge: The second episode -- "A Mammoth Undertaking" -- sees Nigel Marven travel back to the Ice Age to rescue its megafauna. His original intent is specifically to rescue a mammoth, and it is on these creatures, their lifestyle, their diet, their impact on their environment and the causes for their extinction that most of the segment is spent, with other animals largely restricted to very brief one-off appearances. The one exception to this is ''Elasmotherium'', a one-horned woolly rhino the size of an elephant, that Nigel runs into by accident and also brings to the future. A later episode shows that the shaggy, tundra-adapted woolly mammoth is coping poorly to the much warmer climate of present day Prehistoric Park, and needs to be clipped to avoid overheating.
* MeanwhileInTheFuture: The format of the episodes. While Nigel is millions of years in the past trying to catch a prehistoric creature, the park crews in the present are trying to put together and suitable habitat for the creatures he had captured.
* MisplacedWildlife: "Super Croc" takes place in Texas but ''Albertosaurus'' and ''Troodon'' (or rather ''Stenonychosaurus'') are only known from much further north in Alberta and Montana. ''Teratophoneus'' or ''Bistahieversor'' and ''Talos'' would be better fits respectively, but none of them were described yet in 2006. Averted with ''Parasaurlophus'', who isn't known from Texas specifically, but has been found in the neighboring state of New Mexico.
* MeaningfulName: A meta example. Theo the ''Triceratops'' was named after Nigel Marven's RealLife son.
* MundaneUtility: Have a titanosaur you can bribe with grindstones? Have it tow your stalled truck through the time portal. After all, who needs a tow truck when you have a dinosaur?
* NeverSmileAtACrocodile: ''Deinosuchus'', the giant Cretaceous crocodilian, proves a fairly dangerous and difficult creature to rescue, with Nigel and his assistants very narrowly avoiding getting chomped up in the creatures' jaws more than once.
* NoBiochemicalBarriers:
** Discussed and subverted. Nigel is stung by ''Pulmonoscorpio'', and is worried about what the venom of such a huge scorpion could do to him. Fortunately, the venom doesn't really affect him, because it never evolved the ability to damage mammalian tissue (because mammals did not appear for roughly another hundred million years after ''Pulmonoscorpio'' died out).
** In the episode it's discussed and double subverted regarding medication for Terrance the ''Tyrannosaurus''. Suzanne is cautious about giving him antibiotics to treat an infected wound because she has no idea how it might negatively affect him, but she is forced to do so when she sees his wound has become septic. Fortunately, he survives the experience. Then he wakes up from the sedatives given to him much more quickly than expected and starts trashing the vet clinic.
* NonMaliciousMonster: The show features a few carnivorous species including a pair of ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' and a ''Deinosuchus'' which are portrayed as animals that are simply hunting to survive.
* NoNameGiven: The titanosaurs are the only park animal not referred to by a specific name, presumably because at the time of the show's production, the Yixian Formation sauropods had not been formally described. The terror bird is also never identified as anything more than a phorusrhacid. [[note]] Its counterpart from ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'' is identified as ''Phorusrhacos'' but that's because that show went with a fringe theory suggesting that the younger ''Titanis'' was a synonym of ''Phorusrhacos'' [[/note]]
* NothingIsScarier: While watching over the injured mammoth, Nigel notes that he can spot two possible attackers -- hyenas and wolves -- by the shine of their eyes. The third and most dangerous attacker has no eye shine at all -- humans.
* NotSoExtinct: Nigel is so surprised to find a cave bear alive 10,000 years ago that he ''apologizes'' to the camera crewman it chased, reassuring that he thought they were extinct by then.
* RaceAgainstTheClock: The very first episode has Nigel and the crew travel back to only a few days before the K-Pg extinction event to capture a ''Tyrannosaurus rex''. Although there's no physical clock, they know time is dwindling when shooting stars begin to light up the night skies, the harbingers of [[ColonyDrop you know what]]. Nigel just ''barely'' makes it in time, managing to lure two ''T. rex'' adolescents through the time portal just seconds before the meteor's blast wipes out the entire region.
* RaptorAttack: Although the only dromaeosaur that appears in the series is the obviously harmless ''Microraptor'', troodontids, in the form of ''Mei'' and ''Troodon'', appear in two episodes as major hinderances and aggressive pack-hunters all the same, and featherless on top of that.
* ReCut: A couple of scenes in the American version were removed to fit into the hour long broadcasting space each episode had. Examples include a scene in Episode 1 where Nigel follows the mother ''Tyrannosaurus'' as she tries to collect a ''Triceratops'' carcass from a rapidly flowing river and one in Episode 6 which further emphasizes Bob's issues with the titanosaurs by having one knock down a sapling he planted as future food for them.
* RhinoRampage: Twice Nigel finds himself narrowly avoiding getting trampled or gored by a territorial ''Elasmotherium'', which gets subsequently sent to the park.
* RippedFromTheHeadlines: One of the locales visited is the Early Cretaceous of China, likely because many major discoveries of feathered dinosaurs had emerged from the region (at the time) very recently. Taxa featured like ''Microraptor'', ''Mei'', and ''Incisivosaurus'' had only been described a few years prior to the show's production (''Mei'' in particular was only described in late 2004, while the show ran in mid 2006).
* RogerRabbitEffect: Both humans and animals are filmed interacting with puppets, animatronics, and CG models of long-extinct prehistoric animals. In particular, Martha the woolly mammoth's integration with a herd of elephants was filmed with an animatronic mammoth head in front of a real elephant herd, and the interactions were real.
* RuleOfCool:
** The purpose of the keepers is just to "resurrect" the coolest animals, something made quite clear immediately when the very first animal picked is ''Tyrannosaurus rex''. One of the most remembered scenes is, obviously, the two most iconic prehistoric giants (''T. rex'' and the woolly mammoth) ''fighting each other''. This time ItMakesSenseInContext.
** A woolly mammoth that was recovered from near the time of its extinction, but was somehow coexisting with a [[UsefulNotes/StockDinosaursNonDinosaurs cave bear]] which was extinct way before mammoths. However, this is {{lampshade}}d by Nigel who says to the cameraman "I'm sorry, I believed cave bears were already extinct... this is an exciting discovery!"
** This is [[Series/WalkingWithMonsters yet another]] Impossible Pictures production which shows ''Arthropleura'' being able to rear up as a threat display like a cobra. It looks cool and emphasizes how big it is, but there's no evidence it did this.
** ''Mei'' and ''Troodon'' being portrayed as vicious pack-hunting animals. It makes them threatening, but there's zero evidence of troodontid pack-hunting (indeed, later research supports the hypothesis that, unlike dromaeosaurs, they hunted much smaller animals), or even that ''Mei'' was big enough to be a threat to an adult human.
%%** The main example has to be, however, the ''Triceratops'' vs. ''Tyrannosaurus'' fight in the first episode.%%How?
* SavageWolves: In the same episode as the cave bear incident, when Nigel tries to keep the weakened mammoth Martha alive, a pack of wolves turn up out of freaking nowhere in the night, with green eyes of doom, shouting and barking, hoping to kill her. Nigel chases them away.
* ScaryScorpions: ''Pulmonoscorpius'', when first introduced, is played for suspense in how very swift it is to act to defend itself with its large claws and [[BewareMyStingerTail intimidating stinger tail]].
* SitcomArchNemesis: One way of looking at the relationship between head keeper Bob and the titanosaurs. It probably is not an exaggeration to say that they cause half of his stress, even if they are generally not malicious or intentionally dangerous.
* SpannerInTheWorks: Occasionally, Nigel's attempts to capture an animal are hampered by other wildlife getting in the way.
** His expedition is capture ''Microraptor'' is quickly sabotaged by ''Mei'', which raid the backpacks for the food inside them, and then a trap is trampled by a pair of fighting ''Incisivosaurus''.
** His initial attempt to net a ''Meganeura'' is ruined when he's attacked by the predatory amphibian ''Crassigyrinus'' lurking in the swamp water, giving him a nasty bite wound on his leg. Although even when he's not interrupted, he has very little luck with the net either way.
** The meat meant to lure the ''Deinosuchus'' is repeatedly stolen by ''Troodon'', forcing Nigel to use himself as bait, and even worse, one of them manages to sneak back to the present day and ends up unintentionally causing a mass breakout.
* TemperCeratops: Played realistically. The first animal brought back is a sub-adult male ''Triceratops''. He's soon getting aggressive in his pen, and Bob figures out it's because he's becoming sexually mature. He modifies a tractor into an armoured fighting vehicle and helps the dinosaur work off some steam with some jousting matches.
* TerrifyingPetStoreRat: The "wolves" that threaten Marthra the mammoth when Nigel is caring for her through the night are clearly just huskies. The camerawork does its best to hide this by being extremely unfocused and blurry, but it's still obvious.
* ThatsNoMoon: While transporting the Carboniferous mega-arthropods back to camp, Nigel trips over what appears to be a fallen log. It's actually an ''Arthropleura'' resting beneath the leaf litter. Nigel then makes it his mission to rescue the gigantic millipede from the incoming forest fire.
* TimeTravelersDinosaur: The premise of the show involves [[MainCharacter Nigel Marven]] going back in time to [[BringItBackAlive bring back]] various creatures from prehistoric eras, whom he and his team then place in the titular park. Provides the Trope image.
* TooUnhappyToBeHungry: Martha the mammoth loses her appetite after she's brought to the park. The zookeepers first assume they're feeding her the wrong kind of plants, but then they realize she's sad because she's a herd animal kept in solitary confinement. They introduce her to a herd of African elephants, which brings her appetite back.
* ToServeMan: The ''T. rex'' immediately choose to chase Nigel just after seeing him, despite all the ''Ornithomimus'' available in that moment... (to be fair, Nigel would've been easier to catch than an ''Ornithomimus'', although a ''Tyrannosaurus'' probably wouldn't know that and, in any case, he wouldn't have provided as substantial a meal.)
* TimeTravel: This is how the prehistoric animals are obtained. It's done with a pair of poles that create a portal between them; the animal is then lured into the portal, or carried if it's small enough or knocked out.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Nigel has a whole team and base camp with him back in the Cretaceous, but we only see his last-minute rescue of the ''T. rex'' chicks. We can only assume everyone else got back safely off-camera.
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