So this is what technology is for. Next summer, in arenas across Britain, 15 life-size dinosaurs will stalk the Earth, looming over their audiences and roaring, snorting, hunting and fighting.

Walking With Dinosaurs - the Arena Spectacular is based on the award-winning 1999 BBC television series. The £10 million show has already been seen by almost two million people in the US and Australia. Cameron Wenn, associate director of the production, said that his giant cast “does all the things that you would expect dinosaurs to do, except eat the audience”. The largest is a brachiosaurus that measures 56ft from nose to tail and is 36ft high.

The action spans 200 million years of history from the Triassic period, through the Jurassic to the Cretaceous.Tyrannosaurus rex is, inevitably, the star. The biggest carnivore of them all features in a bloodcurdling climax in which it fights to protect its baby from predators.

Tim Haines, creator and producer of the BBC series, which was seen by 700 million people worldwide and won six Emmys and three Baftas, is a consultant. He said: “At its core, the Arena Spectacular manages to do what the TV series did so successfully, which is to make people imagine they are looking at real dinosaurs.”

Sonny Tilders, who designed and built the creatures, was one of the lead animatronics engineers for Jim Henson's Creature Workshop and worked on Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Peter Pan and Ghost Rider. He said: “To make it appear that these creatures are flesh and blood we use a system called ‘muscle bags', made from stretch mesh fabric and filled with polystyrene balls, stretched across moving points on the body. These contract and stretch in the same way that muscle, fat and skin does on real creatures.”

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