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Gurney, who also taught himself how to draw, also worked with animation icon Ralph Bakshi for a time, prior to writing Dinotopia. The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honour of Gurney in 2014. He also holds as BA in anthropology, and even has a dinosaur species named in his honor. and yet its illustrations, worldbuilding, and visuals have largely inspired both George Lucas's Star Wars (from the prequel trilogy to the present-day Disney helmship), and even James Cameron's Avatarįor those unaware, Dinotopia, or Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, was originally a book written, and illustrated, by James Gurney, an artist who also studied archaeology and anthropology. Some of these names came to be recycled as names for locations within Dinotopia, such as Volcaneum and Poseidos.It seems, to my knowledge, that the work Dinotopia is relatively obscure. When creating Dinotopia, James Gurney considered several different names, such as "Icland", "Volcanda", "Volcaneun", "Canyon Padulong", "Pantopia", "Dinotolia", "Belterra", "Saurotopia", "Poseidos", and "Pelagion", before settling on "Dinotopia". For example, Waterfall City had Aztec or Mayan architecture origins and Sauropolis had Roman architecture origins. Ever since there have been shipwrecks, there have been humans living on Dinotopia.ĭifferent areas of Dinotopia have been built by different cultures from the past. The Dinotopian culture is made up of many, many cultures from people of all corners of the globe. "Dinotopian" is the name given to a citizen of Dinotopia. Many, but not all, of these are dinosaurs and most are sapient. The only true cultural traditions and identity remaining other than "Dinotopian" is those of Chandara, which has remained intact as an Empire since the Age of Heroes.įauna Main Article: List of Dinotopian faunaĭinotopia is home to a vast array of animals from numerous different geological periods of the Earth. Modern timesīy the time Arthur Denison arrived in Dinotopia roughly 4000 years after the Age of Heroes, national identities such as "Pelledrine", "Armakian", and "Poseidian" had all but disappeared, replaced by the unifying identity of "Dinotopian". In the final days of the Age of Heroes, the city of Poseidos collapsed under its own weight and sank into Sapphire Bay. The Age of Heroes would see the Empire of Poseidos attempt to exert dominance over Dinotopia, warring against Pelledrine and the Saurian Knights. Ĥ000 years ago, during a period of time known as the Age of Heroes, four major civilizations had formed in Dinotopia the two Empires of Poseidos and Chandara and the tribal confederations of Pelledrine and Armakia. The first humans arrived on the island nearly 6000 years ago. During the Ice Ages, a land bridge formed that allowed a vast menagerie of large mammals to cross over and colonize the island, mainly the uplands and the Forbidden Mountains which were inhospitable to the dinosaurs. The dinosaur population of the island survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that ended the Mesozoic by seeking refuge in the World Beneath some 65 million years ago. Arthur Denison goes into the World Beneath through the Portal, in Red Rapid Canyon, which is near Canyon City.ĭinotopia originally broke away from Asia and was carried into isolation by continental drift millions of years ago during the Mesozoic era.
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The World Beneath is also where Sunstones are mined. The dinosaur citizens of Dinotopia used these to survive the world-wide extinction of the dinosaurs on the rest of the world. The World Beneath Main Article: World BeneathĪ vast collection of caverns lie beneath Dinotopia. It's built in the middle of the Polongo River, a large river which holds all the water from the Rainy Basin. A truly spectacular place is Waterfall City. These two regions are separated by the Forbidden Mountains, a huge range that intersects a smaller mountain range called the Backbone Mountains. In the center of the "main island" is the Rainy Basin, which with the Great Desert, made up most of the island. 240 miles (385 kilometers) in length, and approx. Dinotopia consists of a large main island, a smaller island called the Outer Island, and numerous smaller islets or reefs.