The Ballad of Big Al

"Big Al" at Museum of the Rockies

The special begins at the University of Wyoming, showing the bones of a sauropod followed by an Allosaurus named Big Al. After the ghost of Big Al wanders the museum passing by his own skeleton and a nest of fossilized eggs, the film then travels back in time to 145 Mya showing a similar nest. Al and his siblings hatch and are helped out of the nest by their mother. She brings them to a river bank and the hatchlings start to hunt for insects. When the mother leaves the hatchlings temporarily, a year-old Allosaurus comes out of hiding and kills one of them (luckily, the victim was not Al).

Al is then shown at the age of two years. He tries to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. He has not yet learned how to ambush so he fails to kill one of the swifter, smaller dinosaurs. Later, he snatches a lizard from a branch to keep him satisfied. Al comes across a dead Stegosaurus and an Allosaurus waiting for death in a pit of sticky mud, which forms a predator trap. Meanwhile, a female Allosaurus, attracted to the Stegosaurus carcass, also gets stuck. She struggles to free herself, but fails. Al luckily avoids the same fate as he had learnt to avoid carrion and the large carnivores that it usually attracts. Unable to escape, the trapped Allosaurus pair die of exhaustion, their corpses left to Anurognathus.

Three years pass, and a herd of Diplodocus are migrating across the prehistoric salt lake. Al, now 30 feet (9 meters) long, is joined by several other Allosaurus and they manage to panic the herd into leaving a weakened sick individual behind. But as the Allosaurus gather for the kill, Al is struck down by the neck of the Diplodocus. The pack decides wait for a few hours until the Diplodocus is brought down by heat exhaustion and his illness. Though they feed, within the hour an adult female Allosaurus scavenges the kill. Al takes some remnants of the carcass for himself and leaves, trying to find a safer place to eat.

A year passes by, and Al, now 33 feet (10 metres) long with the crests over his eyes reddening, is shown drinking at a pond. His presence however makes other dinosaurs around the pond nervous and the smell of blood he brings with him puts off a pair of Stegosaurus that were attempting to mate. Away from the pond, he discovers the scent of a nearby female Allosaurus and issues a mating call. She is not interested, but Al's inexperience shows, and the female turns hostile when he gets too close. Al is lucky enough to escape from the ensuing fight with his life, although he sustains injuries to his right arm as well as smashed ribs. Later the dry season comes, and Al is attempting to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. Whilst ambushing them however, a log falls in his path which he trips over and ends up breaking something in his right foot. As the dry season turns to a drought, Al's limp from the fall gets worse and his right middle toe -which he broke in the fall- has become badly infected. Soon, unable to hunt, he dies in a dried-up riverbed, where two hatchling Allosaurus are hunting for bugs and come across his emaciated carcass. He is said not to have reached full size, dying as a mature adolescent and that the process of his fossilisation was so perfect it preserved even the injuries and diseases he sustained in his lifetime including -amongst others- lumps where his ribs healed after their break and the raging infection on his middle toe.

The Ballad Of Big Al won two 2001 Emmy Awards, including Adelphoi Music Ltd's Andrew Sherriff and Ashley Bates for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Non-Fiction Program.

• Paleoworld
• Dinosaur Planet (TV series)
• When Dinosaurs Roamed America

The Ballad of Big Al is part of a series of BBC documentaries that also include:

• Walking with Dinosaurs (1999), depicting life during the age of dinosaurs
• Walking with Beasts (2001), depicting life after the dinosaurs
• Walking with Cavemen (2003) depicting early men struggling for survival
• Walking with Monsters (2005), depicting life before the dinosaurs

The following are Walking With... series specials:

• Sea Monsters (2003)
• Chased by Dinosaurs (2002)
• Prehistoric Park (2006)

The following are similar programs, produced by the BBC:

• Prehistoric America (2003)
• Monsters We Met (2004)

• The Ballad of Big Al at BBC Programmes