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Prehistoric Park

2006 UK docu-fiction television mini-series

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ431555
Source-derived summary

Prehistoric Park is a six-part nature documentary television series that premiered on ITV on 22 July 2006 and on Animal Planet on 29 October 2006. The program was produced by Impossible Pictures, who also created Walking with Dinosaurs. Jasper James, who coproduced the Walking with... series, served as an executive producer. Each episode is an hour long including commercial breaks. Repeats of the show are broadcast in the UK on Watch.

The program is narrated by David Jason and presented and hosted by Nigel Marven. The fictional component is the theme that Nigel goes back to various geological time periods through a space-time portal, and brings live specimens of extinct animals back to the present day, where they are exhibited in a wildlife park named Prehistoric Park, which is a big area between high steep mountains and ocean, with varied environments, in what looks like KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa.

Story

The story, which is told in the style of a documentary, focuses on naturalist Nigel Marven leading missions to find and collect extinct animals from the distant past by use of a time machine. The animals are then placed in the confines of Prehistoric Park, a private wildlife park that is situated in a dry, mountainous region of an unspecified part of the world.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Prehistoric Park” is 2006 UK docu-fiction television mini-series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Prehistoric, Park and docu-fiction, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Prehistoric, Park and docu-fiction is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2006 UK docu-fiction television mini-series” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q431555. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Prehistoric Park”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Prehistoric Park primary sources, Prehistoric Park archive and Prehistoric research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Prehistoric Park”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Prehistoric Park” 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.