Deep Time: Dinosaurs

From the first fossil in the dirt to a herd of saddled giants.

Deep Time adds 372 real prehistoric animals to Minecraft: 120 dinosaurs on land, 132 sea creatures and 120 pterosaurs in the sky. Each one is built to its real proportions and kept in a crisp, blocky style that fits right in with vanilla. Dig up their bones, bring them back in your lab, hatch and raise them, then tame, ride and gear them up. Build a park to show them off, or leave them to live wild in a world that reacts to them.

Everything can be obtained in survival, and everything works in multiplayer.

🦖 120 land species

Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Velociraptor, Utahraptor, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Therizinosaurus, Microraptor, Hesperornis and over a hundred more, from the Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous.

• Real proportions. Every animal is shaped from published measurements and skeletal outlines, then built in a blocky style that still reads clearly.
• Fully animated. Each one can idle, walk, run, swim, attack, roar, eat, drink, sleep, rest, blink and call. Fights have their own moves: gores, stomps, tail swipes, pounces and thrashes.
• Genetics. Every animal carries genes for size, speed and health, plus coat patterns. Rare albino and melanistic morphs and giants turn up in the wild, and a server-wide message goes out when one spawns.

🌊 132 sea creatures

Mosasaurus, Tylosaurus, Liopleurodon, Kronosaurus, Elasmosaurus, Shonisaurus, Archelon, Megalodon, Dunkleosteus, Livyatan, Basilosaurus, Leedsichthys, Helicoprion, Xiphactinus, Cretoxyrhina, Tanystropheus and over a hundred more: mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, ichthyosaurs, sea turtles, placodonts, nothosaurs, sea crocodiles, prehistoric sharks, giant fish and early whales.

• Each one swims its own way: mosasaurs scull with a shark-like fluke, plesiosaurs fly underwater on four flippers, sharks power on with tall tails, and whales beat their flat flukes.
• Real behaviour: filter feeders strain the water, shell-crackers crush turtles and ammonites, ambushers drag swimmers under, deep divers vanish into the dark, and dolphin-like hunters leap clear of the surface. Turtles come ashore to nest on beaches.
• Big ones can be saddled and ridden under the waves.

🪽 120 pterosaurs

Quetzalcoatlus, Hatzegopteryx, Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, Dimorphodon, Tapejara, Tupandactylus, Anhanguera, Pterodaustro, Thalassodromeus and over a hundred more, from tiny bug-catching Anurognathus to giraffe-tall azhdarchids.

• True flight: flapping, soaring and gliding, quad-launching off the ground, and walking on all fours with folded wings.
• Giant azhdarchids stalk prey on foot and swallow it whole, skimmers fish the surface, and filter feeders sieve the shallows. Night fliers hunt after dark.
• Little ones ride on your shoulder; the giants can be saddled and flown.
• Every pterosaur has its real crest, beak, teeth and wing proportions.

🎨 Many looks for every animal

Every species, on land, at sea and in the air, comes in several coats: male and female colours, juvenile coats, and rare albino, melanistic, leucistic, piebald and other morphs, all bred through real genetics.

⛏️ The dig

• Fossils lie in the sedimentary rock of badlands, deserts and savannas.
• Look for abandoned dig sites: pits with old skeletons, camps with sieves and chests of tools, and walls showing trackways.
• Brush an encased fossil for a clean find, or break it with a pickaxe and the bones come out poorly preserved.
• The rock hammer splits rock for shells, fronds and coprolite. The fossil detector ticks faster as you get close.
• Amber and petrified logs hide finds of their own.

🧪 The lab

• Specimen Analyzer: turns a fossil or amber into a DNA vial.
• Sifting Table: turns sand, gravel or dirt into small finds.
• DNA Splicer: purifies DNA, or crosses two species into a hybrid.
• Sequencer and Gene Editor: read an animal's genes, then rewrite them.
• Embryo Cultivator: grows an egg from the DNA.
• Restoration Bench: rebuilds corroded relics.
• Hoppers and pipes from other mods can feed every machine.

🥚 Eggs and raising young

• Eggs need warmth to hatch. An incubator, a heat lamp, a nest with an adult beside it or a warm biome all help.
• A hatchling imprints on the first face it sees.
• Young animals grow over several in-game days. Feeders hold nine stacks of food and water troughs keep them from going thirsty.
• A Paddock Nameplate shows how the nearest animal is doing.

🤝 Taming and the bond

• Feed a hungry wild animal its favourite food and it may accept you. Big, fierce animals take the longest; babies tame most easily.
• Tranquilizer darts put a dangerous animal to sleep so you can work near it.
• Your bond grows from Wary through Trusting and Loyal to Devoted as you feed and brush your animal. Animals remember who hurt them.
• Give orders to Wander, Follow or Stay, and use the bone whistle to call every animal at once.

🐎 Riding and gear

• Saddles fitted to each species. A narrow back gets a wrap-around saddle and a broad back gets a pad. Each has a girth, iron stirrups, and grab-handle seats so friends can ride behind you.
• Riders sit astride with their legs down the flanks and their feet in the stirrups.
• Barding comes in hide, bronze and diamond; bigger animals carry more plate.
• Saddle bags give you storage on a pack animal.
• Put a GPS collar on an animal and the Dinosaur Tracker finds it anywhere.
• A big mount at full sprint crashes through leaves and brush. It respects mob griefing and land claims, and it never breaks chests or your builds.

🏡 The ranch

• Build nests from sticks, wheat and leaves, and adults lay clutches in them.
• Shear moulted feathers from feathered species.
• Dinosaur dung fertilizes the crops around it.
• Use /deeptime trust to let friends ride and give orders to your animals.

🏛️ The park and museum

• Big animals smash wooden fences. Only an electric fence powered through a control box holds them.
• Motion sensors warn you when something is moving inside.
• Pose full skeletons on exhibit plinths, and show small finds in display cases.

🌿 A living world

• Herbivores graze in herds and flee from danger; predators hunt them, and you.
• Animals eat, drink, sleep at night and grow hungry.
• Dead dinosaurs leave carcasses that draw scavengers. The biggest predator eats first, and smaller ones wait their turn.
• A regional ecosystem keeps the world in balance: overgrazed land stops filling with herbivores, prey booms draw predators in, and herds migrate to fresh ground.
• Hunters learn from every fight, rivals spar, and wild animals remember who hurt them.

📖 Guide book and journal

• Every player starts with A Keeper's Handbook, a guide that explains the whole mod.
• Craft a Research Journal and it fills itself in as you play: first finds, each new species you see, and each adventure.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1 with NeoForge
• GeckoLib (4.7 or newer), required
• JEI, optional; recipes show up in it

Configuration

Server owners can tune or turn off:

• wild spawns and spawn chance
• rare morph and giant chances
• growth speed and animal needs (hunger, thirst, sleep)
• block griefing
• the ecosystem, migration and wild breeding
• carcasses
• rare-sighting announcements
• dinosaur PvP

Credits

All code, models, textures and sounds are original. Species proportions were fitted to PhyloPic silhouettes (CC0 / CC BY). Full attribution is in CREDITS.txt inside the jar.