Massive Dinosaur Murals Hype Apple TV+'s Prehistoric Planet
Can you make the dino bigger?
Apple TV+'s impressive promo for the second season of its Prehistoric Planet series is all about scale (and scales!).
The platform tapped acclaimed artist David Popa to create huge murals of three saurians—Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and Hatzegopteryx—in locations where the raptors actually lived millions of years ago.
Popa used organic pigments, grounds shells, charcoal and chalk to craft the artworks in Utah's Moab Desert (T. rex), along England's Dorset coast (Triceratops) and on a tiny, ridiculously remote island near Finland (Hatz).
It’s been an exciting past month collaborating with @AppleTV for Prehistoric Planet season 2 starting today on Apple TV+. I will be sharing all about the project this week 🙌Stay tuned!
— David Popa (@davidpopaart) May 22, 2023
New episodes of #PrehistoricPlanet are streaming every day this week on Apple TV@MTArtAgency pic.twitter.com/xZRsloXo8F
"My goal was to bring the dinosaurs back to life by portraying them within landscapes that are indicative of their natural habitats millions of years ago and showing them as transitioning back from a fossilized state," Popa says. "As an artist with a passion for nature and anthropology, it was a really exciting challenge to step into the realm of paleontology too."
Beyond promoting the series, Popa's work puts dinosaurs themselves into a relatable context. These monsters aren't just the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters. They rocked this planet as surely as we do today, inhabiting familiar regions people now call home.
In a sense, these amazing murals help folks feel the beasts' fierce footsteps thundering down the eons to once more tread the planet they ruled for a staggering 165 million years. (Homo sapiens have only existed for about 300,000 years all told.)
