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When Dinosaurs Ruled The Web! Britannica Online Unveils Discovering Dinosaurs Spotlight
Feature Combines Magic of IMAX®, Advanced Animations, and Cutting-Edge Science, Offering the Web's Most Fascinating Chronicle of Jurassic World-walkers
CHICAGO,10.06.1998
As paleontologists continue to unravel the mystery of the dinosaurs' life and death, people thirsty for the most intriguing take on these thundering beasts can now turn to Britannica Online. Premiering today at http://dinosaurs.eb.com, Britannica Online's Discovering Dinosaurs feature explores how popular and scientific perceptions of these primordial creatures have changed over time. Through interactive content, animated images, photographs, drawings, and video clips, the site examines what dinosaurs looked like, how they stood, how they walked, what they ate, how they lived, and why they vanished.
Discovering Dinosaurs blends scholarly insight with a collection of new artwork and photographs of famous dinosaur reconstructions, on-site excavations, notable scholars, dinosaur hunters, and museum displays. It shows how dinosaurs have been represented over the years through a series of animations based on historical artwork. Site visitors can compare these images with state-of-the-art full-motion video clips from IMAX 3-D's new motion picture, T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous, which are also featured at the site.
"Discovering Dinosaurs offers a fresh perspective on these amazing creatures because it explores the perceptions and misperceptions of more than a century and a half of study," said Paul Hoffman, publisher of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. "Dinosaurs have captured the imagination of people at every level of our culture-from academe to Hollywood-and it's exhilarating and important to present them in a fun, informative, and interactive way that balances what we thought yesterday with what we know today."
Dinosaurs: Their Life and Our Times
Discovering Dinosaurs spans four historical periods that chronicle the study of dinosaurs: 1820-1860, 1860-1910, 1910-1960, and 1960-present. The material on each period follows four thematic threads reflecting the basic elements of dinosaurs and their existence. The themes are:
- Environment: how we imagine where dinosaurs lived and, ultimately, how they died
- Anatomy: an exploration of the evolutionary connection between long-dead dinosaurs and modern-day birds
- Behavior: our search for the way dinosaurs lived, bred, and socialized
- Physiology: a look at the age-old question: were they warm-blooded or cold-blooded?
Dinosaurs Move Through Cyberspace
Each thematic thread features a series of animations that reflect the current thinking of the day. The actual artwork of each time period comes alive as drawings of dinosaurs from the past morph into the accepted images of today. This "evolution of evolution" adds a visual strength to the site that reinforces the theme that dinosaurs change as we do because they exist as much in our science and imagination as they do in buried fossil remnants.
Leading science writer Dr. Steve Allison-Bunnell, faculty affiliate and scholar-in-residence at the University of Montana, wrote the text for Discovering Dinosaurs. Dr. Allison-Bunnell is the founding nature editor for Discovery Channel Online. His expertise includes a focus on how natural history museums shape our perceptions of nature.
Dinosaurs, eBLAST, and Britannica Online
Discovering Dinosaurs includes an extensive list of links to the Web's best dinosaur sites, courtesy of eBLAST, Britannica's Web navigation service (http://www.eBLAST.com). It also includes a list of recommended readings with links to Amazon.com's online bookstore. An activity guide for parents and educators, with playful exercises for grades 4-8, will be added to the site on October 12.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. publishes the most authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia in the English language in three forms: Britannica CD™(on CD-ROM); Britannica Online®(on the Internet); and the famous 32-volume Encyclopædia Britannica®. The company is headquartered in Chicago and is located on the World Wide Web at http://www.eb.com. The company also provides Web navigation and thoughtful commentary through eBLAST, available at http://www.eBLAST.com. The service features more than 125,000 high-quality Web sites chosen by Britannica editors, as well as daily features such as the "Site of the Day" and "Bookmarks of the Smart and Famous." To purchase or get more information about Britannica products, customers may call 1-800-747-8503. or visit the Britannica Bookstore at http://www.eb.com/bookstore/index.htm.
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