The Animal World is a 1956 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 that was produced, written and directed by Irwin Allen

Irwin Allen

Irwin Allen was a television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series.- Biography :...

. The film includes live-action footage of animals throughout the world, along with a ten-minute stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

 animated sequence about dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

s.

Irwin's intention was to show the progression of life over time, although he told The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, "We don't use the word 'evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

.' We hope to walk a very thin line. On one hand we want the scientists to say this film is right and accurate, and yet we don't want to have the church picketing the film."

Dinosaur sequence

The special effects in the film's dinosaur sequence were produced by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...

 and Willis O'Brien

Willis O'Brien

Willis Harold O'Brien was an Irish American pioneering motion picture special effects artist who perfected and specialized in stop-motion animation. He was affectionately known to his family and close friends as "Obie"....

. Irwin originally planned to film the scenes as a series of static dioramas with plastic models, but Harryhausen suggested that the scenes would be more memorable if they were animated. The dinosaurs that appear include an Allosaurus

Allosaurus

Allosaurus is a genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic period . The name Allosaurus means "different lizard". It is derived from the Greek /allos and /sauros...

, a Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus is a genus of armored stegosaurid dinosaur. They lived during the Late Jurassic period , some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America. In 2006, a specimen of Stegosaurus was announced from Portugal, showing that they were present in Europe as well...

, a pair of Ceratosaurs

Ceratosaurus

Ceratosaurus meaning "horned lizard", in reference to the horn on its nose , was a large predatory theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period , found in the Morrison Formation of North America, in Tanzania and Portugal...

, a Triceratops

Triceratops

Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur which lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 65 million years ago in what is now North America. It was one of the last dinosaur genera to appear before the great Cretaceous–Paleogene...

, a Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...

, and a family of Brontosaurs.

For many years, still shots from the segment were included in View-Master

View-Master

View-Master is a device for viewing seven 3-D images on a paper disk. Although the View-Master is now considered a children's toy, it was originally marketed as a way for viewers to enjoy stereograms of colorful and picturesque tourist attractions.-1939–66: stereoscopic sightseeing:In 1911,...

 slide show reels. Some of the footage was reused for portions of the Night Gallery

Night Gallery

Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although...

season 2 episode "The Painted Mirror," as well as in the 1970 film Trog

Trog

Trog is a 1970 science fiction horror film starring Joan Crawford in a story about the discovery of a caveman. The screenplay was written by Peter Bryan, John Gilling, and Aben Kandel, and the film directed by Freddie Francis...

, and the entire sequence was released as an extra on the 2003 DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 release of The Black Scorpion

The Black Scorpion (film)

The Black Scorpion is a 1957 American horror film released by Warner Brothers, with stop motion special effects done by Willis O'Brien.-Plot:...

.