Star Rating:

Dinosaur 13

Director: Todd Douglas Miller

Actors: Lanice Archer, Stan Adelstein, Robert Bakker

Release Date: Saturday 30th November 2013

Genre(s): Documentary

Running time: 113 minutes

Prior to 1990, only twelve partially recovered remains of Tyrannosaurus Rex were ever found, with none ever amounting to more than 40% of a complete skeleton. While digging in the Badlands of South Dakota, a group of paleontologists happened across the 13th T-Rex skeleton, found it to be over 80% intact, and to this day still one of the greatest scientific finds. Over the next few years, the palaeontologists work tirelessly to prep the skeleton to be the centerpiece of their new small-town museum, when suddenly the government arrives to take it away.

Turns out that the T-Rex was buried in property that, due to some legal technicalities, may belong to any number of potential parties, least of whom are the paleontologists themselves. Focusing on some of the members of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Dinosaur 13 manages to tell a story about old bones and complicated legalities and somehow make it all quite interesting.It helps that the landscape of South Dakota is always visually arresting, and that the interviewees such as Black Hills co-founder Peter and Neal Larson are obviously so enthusiastic and passionate about their work, as well as very intellectually and emotionally involved in the story.

The level of emotion can at times get a little suffocating though, from the overbearing, on-the-nose score to cutaways to the T-Rex remains in a shipping container, reminded us how many days it’s been under lock and key, like we should relate it to a person being kept in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. Also, the government first seize the skeleton right around the time of Jurassic Park, and then Black Hills gets taken to court right around the release of The Lost World, but somehow nobody in the movie managed to make that popularity connection?

As the story progresses, and the tangled web of land laws and potential crimes broken gets more and more intricate, director Todd Douglas Miller never once lets things get too incomprehensible to follow, allowing the natural so-weird-it-HAS-to-be-true elements of the story shine through by themselves. Entertaining and informative, just like a documentary should be, only faulting when it tries to be so obviously emotionally manipulative.