The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring is the fourth and longest segment in Fantasia. The plot involves the Big Bang, the Dinosaur Age, and extinction.

Plot
The Milky Way Galaxy can be seen coming out of the darkness as comets, the sun, and shooting stars pass by. Eventually, Earth is shown being born. Volcanos light up the planet as they burst with lava. Multiple volcanoes erupt. The storm worsens, and then everything goes silent.

The scene changes into a sea with green and blue microscopic organisms that split up. One fish crawls onto land, becoming the first amphibian. Gradually, dinosaurs begin to appear, living out their lives. On a cliff, Pteranodons swoop down to catch the fish below. One of them catches a fish, but it is pulled down by a Tylosaurus.

Everything was going so quiet for the dinosaurs. Every dinosaur is doing what the dinosaurs would do. Until then, they look up ahead, as rain begins to fall, and see the Tyrannosaurus Rex. He chases the dinosaurs, and bites the Stegosaurus' tail. The Stegosaurus and the T-Rex both fight, with the T-Rex biting the Stegosaurus' neck and the Stegosaurus using his tail to beat the T-Rex. The dinosaurs look on while Stegosaurus did his last two hits and T-Rex bites his neck and brings him down, killing him. The dinosaurs leave while T-Rex eats him.

Later, everything was destroyed. There was no food and water for the dinosaurs, nothing but dried up pools, branches, ruined trees, and mud. The sun is too hot for them. The dinosaurs move on and some of them are stuck in the mud with Ceratosaurus coming to them. The wind blows and some dinosaurs collapse. Later, footprints are seen and we see bones of the dinosaurs, showing that they are now extinct.

Just as the moon began to form an eclipse with the sun, an earthquake suddenly erupted, wiping the dinosaur bones away. The wind then blew a storm and the sea inland, the lowland and everything around became completely flooded, and everything was silent once again. At the end, when the eclipse was complete, you see it set over the only piece of land, overlooking a now endless sea.

Credits

 * Director(s): Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield
 * Story: Leo Thiele, John Fraser McLeish, Robert Sterner, William Martin
 * Art: Dick Kelsey, John Hubley, McLaren Stewart
 * Background Painter(s): Brice Mack, Ed Starr, Edward Levitt
 * Animation Supervisor(s): Joshua Meador, Wolfgang Reitherman
 * Animator(s): Art Palmer, Don Tobin, Edwin Aardal, John McManus, Paul Busch, Paul B. Kossoff, Philip Duncan
 * Special Effects: Gail Papineau, Leonard Pickley
 * Music: "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky

Trivia

 * The Rite of Spring is a fan-favorite segment.
 * There are rumors of a scene from The Rite of Spring that was cut because it might offend creationists. This segment featured early human life. However, people dispute both how far it got into production before being shelved and if it even exists. Sources will usually either tell you that it's entirely completed or that it barely made it past the drawing board.

Appearances

 * Elasmosaurus
 * Tylosaurus
 * Pteranodon
 * Dimetrodon
 * Nothosaurus
 * Triceratops
 * Kannemeyeria
 * Brontosaurus
 * Diplodocus
 * Plateosaurus
 * Gryposaurus
 * Anatosaurus
 * Parasaurolophus
 * Stegosaurus
 * Struthiomimus
 * Troodon
 * Archaeopteryx
 * Brachiosaurus
 * Tyrannosaurus Rex
 * Ceratosaurus