In Popular Culture
Along with Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus has come to represent the quintessential large, carnivorous dinosaur in popular culture. It is a common dinosaur in museums, due in particular to the excavations at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry; by 1976, as a result of cooperative operations, 38 museums in eight countries on three continents had Cleveland-Lloyd allosaur material or casts. Allosaurus is the official state fossil of Utah.
Allosaurus has been depicted in popular culture since the early years of the 20th century. It is top predator in both Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel, The Lost World, and its 1925 film adaptation, the first full-length motion picture to feature dinosaurs. Allosaurus was used as the starring dinosaur of the 1956 film The Beast of Hollow Mountain, and the 1969 film The Valley of Gwangi, two genre combinations of living dinosaurs with Westerns. In The Valley of Gwangi, Gwangi is billed as an Allosaurus, although Ray Harryhausen based his model for the creature on Charles R. Knight's depiction of a Tyrannosaurus. Harryhausen sometimes confuses the two, stating in a DVD interview "They're both meat eaters, they're both tyrants... one was just a bit larger than the other." Allosaurus appeared in the second episode of the 1999 BBC television series Walking with Dinosaurs and the follow-up special The Ballad of Big Al, which speculated on the life of the "Big Al" specimen, based on scientific evidence from the numerous injuries and pathologies in its skeleton. Allosaurus also made an appearance in the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Revolution. Its depiction in this series was based upon a specimen with a smashed lower jaw that was uncovered by paleontologist Thomas Holtz.
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