Dinosaur (1980 film)
1980 short film
Dinosaur is an animated short film directed and produced by Will Vinton.
In 1987, the film was edited into Festival of Claymation as the sixth segment, and then later extended and released on video under the title Dinosaurs!. The new footage stars Fred Savage playing a grade school student named Philip who gives a class report on dinosaurs, with the help of an animated chalkboard and Will Vinton's claymation dinosaurs.
Plot
The video - with beginning scenes filmed in 1987 - begins with a young boy named Phillip (played by Fred Savage) sitting in his bedroom, listening to loud music, and struggling to find an idea for a class report on a science topic. While struggling to find some ideas, and irking his mother (who threatens to call his father if he does not turn off the music and go to bed) with his loud music, he plays a song on his boombox (titled "Mesozoic Mind"), and the song provides him with an inspiration for his report: DINOSAURS!
Philip then goes to sleep and has a dream, where he discovers that the search for the truth about these magnificent animals and their astonishing 160-million-year success on Earth is probably the most fascinating speculation there is. Phillip then finishes his report and presents it to the class. The class report is then covered through the 1980 claymation short Dinosaur by Will Vinton Productions.
Background
Originally created in 1980, when it was known more simply as Dinosaur, the 17-minute claymation short by Vinton Productions would later be used for this 1987 video. The popular short is also played at the Smithsonian Museum and has won numerous awards.
The public source identifies “Dinosaur (1980 film)” as 1980 short film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dinosaur, film and short.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5278682. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dinosaur (1980 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.