First appearance: Star-Spangled War Stories #90
Author/Creator: Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito
Media: Comic
Year: 1960
Located: South Pacific Island
Plot/Premise: Dinosaur Island is a mysterious uncharted island located somewhere in the South Pacific. As its name suggests, the island is known for supporting animal life that would otherwise be extinct in the normal world - most notably, its high population of dinosaurs. It is believed that Dinosaur Island is in someway connected, either physically or mystically, to the Inner-Earth realm known as Skartaris. It is on this island that members of the U.S. Armed Forces found themselves -- armed only with standard issue weapons against the deadliest predators ever to roam the Earth.

In the Star Spangled War Stories #90: The War that Time Forgot when a reconnaissance patrol fails to return from Mystery Island (as it is then known), the Question Mark Patrol is parachuted in and discover that an earthquake has released dinosaurs from suspended animation. It is kept top secret and over the years many patrols stumble upon the island and its secret.

Sequels/Other appearances: Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Revenge of the Reach! (Comic); Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Revenge of the Reach! and Terror on Dinosaur Island! (Comics); DC: The New Frontier Vol 1 3 (Comic); Guns of the Dragon Vol 1 1-4 (Comic); Superman/Batman Vol 1 46 (Comic); War That Time Forgot Vol 1 1-12 (Comic); Batman: The Brave and the Bold: "Terror on Dinosaur Island" (TV); Challengers of the Unknown: "Revenge of the Reach" (TV); Justice League: The New Frontier (Direct to video film)

First appearance: Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms)
Author/Creator: Aleksandr Kazantsev, Pavel Klushantsev
Media: Film
Year: 1962
Located: Venus
Plot/Premise: Three spacecraft set out for Venus, two arrive, one remains in orbit while the third lands. Exploring with their robot John and a hovercar they find a steamy, tropical world populated by dinosaurs, carnivorous plants and the remnants of an ancient civilization.
Adaptations: Women of the Prehistoric Planet (Film, 1966); Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (Film, 1968)

First appearance: X-Men #10
Author/Creator: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Media: Comic
Year: 1965
Located: Antarctica
Plot/Premise: The Savage Land is a tropical region surrounded by volcanoes deep in Antarctica, created over 200 million years ago by the alien Nuwali as one of several planetary "game preserves" for the mysterious godlike Beyonders. The Nuwali stocked the Land with Earthly life of the era, most notably dinosaurs; as Earth's flora and fauna changed over succeeding millions of years, they supplemented their preserve with prehistoric mammals and early hominids, or "Man-Apes."

Sequels/Other appearances: "The Hunter and the Hunted" (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends Spider-Man TV Show, 1981); X-Men (TV series, 1992); "Stranger From a Savage Land" (The Super Hero Squad Show TV show, 1981); Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (Video film, 2008); X-Men: Children of the Atom (Video game, 1994); Genesis X-Men (Video game, 1993) X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Video game, 1995); X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (Video game, 2005); Marvel Super Hero Squad (Video game, 2009)

First appearance: The Valley of Gwangi
Author/Creator: Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, James O'Connolly, William E. Bast and Julian More
Media: Film
Year: 1969
Located: Deep in the Mexican desert
Plot/Premise: The Forbidden Valley is an almost impenetrable valley deep in the Mexican desert where dinosaurs (through very few plants) still flourish. Chief among its inhabitants is the huge carnivorous dinosaur dubbed "Gwangi" which escapes and wreaks havoc when it is captured in a travelling Wild West show.
Sequels/Other appearances: "Gwango's Lonesome Trail" (Children's book, 2006)
Adaptation: Dell Comic, 1969

First appearance: The Mighty Gorga
Author/Creator: David L. Hewitt, Jean Hewitt
Media: Film
Year: 1969
Located: Remote African plateau
Plot/Premise: A circus manager leads an expedition to a remote African plateau inhabited by dinosaurs and a giant ape. The explorers are captured and slated to become human sacrifices when the towering title primate shows up and destroys everything. The explorers escape and find safety in an enormous cave that proves to be filled with priceless jewels.

Explore

Teleport City: Mighty Gorga

YouTube: Mighty Gorga Trailer

B-Movie Central: Mighty Gorga

Eccentric Cinema: Mighty Gorga

Internet Movie Database: Mighty Gorga

Jabootu, the Bad Movie Dimension: Mighty Gorga (1968)

First appearance: Na Komete (On the Comet)
Author/Creator: Karel Zeman
Media: Film
Year: 1970
Located: Outer Space
Plot/Premise: In 1888, just as two men in French Algeria are about to duel, a comet collides with the earth, ripping off their corner of the planet and carrying it into space. Dinosaurs inhabit the comet (apparently picked up in an earlier collision) and the inhabitants must work together to survive. However another collision occurs restoring everything and everyone to its original state. Before long the people return too to their former bigoted and violent ways. Also filmed as Valley of the Dragons (1961) with "slurpasaurs" from One Million B.C. (1940).

First appearance: "Land of the Lost"
Author/Creator: Sid and Marty Krofft
Media: TV series
Year: 1974
Located: Pocket universe

Plot/Premise: The Land of the Lost is a very small, closed pocket universe that consists of a valley surrounded by mountains. A traveler attempting to pass over the mountains will find himself reentering the valley from the other side; at one point the Marshalls climb a mountain peak and using binoculars are able to see far enough across the valley to observe themselves from behind. There is one major river flowing through the Land, forming a similarly closed loop; it flows into a cave at one end of the valley and comes out as a waterfall at the other end.

Sequels/Other appearances: "Land of the Lost" (TV series, 1991), Land of the Lost (Film, 2009)
Adaptations: "Valley of the Dinosaurs" (a Hanna-Barbera cartoon with a virtually identical premise)

Fauna: 1974 TV series

Fauna: 2009 film

Plot/Premise: Skartaris is essentially a translation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar into the graphic medium, with elements of Jules Verne and half a dozen other fictional Hollow Earth settings, and the admixture of magic and the Atlantis myth. In Grell's concept, as in Burroughs', the Earth is a hollow shell with Skartaris as the internal surface of that shell. Skartaris is accessible to the surface world via a polar opening allowing passage between the inner and outer worlds. There are also various tunnels connecting the interior world with the surface. Skartaris is lit by a miniature sun suspended at the center of the hollow sphere, so it is perpetually overhead wherever one is in Skartaris. Skartaris is overrun by a variety of prehistoric creatures from all geological eras, notably dinosaurs. Jules Verne's adventurers made their Journey to the Center of the Earth. Skartaris was retconned into being Another Dimension. It cannot actually exist within the DC Universe's Earth, which isn't hollow.
Sequels/Other appearances: Suicide Squad: Raise the Flag (2007); "The Land of Summer's Twilight" (The Books of Magic issue #3)
Adaptations: "Battle at the Earth's Core" (Super Friends, TV animation, 1973); "Chaos at the Earth's Core" (Justice League Unlimited, TV animation, 2004)

Plot/Premise: This unnamed lost world is accessed via a powerful transdimensional vortex found surrounding the Bermuda Islands and which has become known as the Bermunda Triangle. The portal and the world to which it links was built by the 'Scorpians' a race of extraterrestrials. They created it as an experiment and populated it with dinosaurs and other life indigeneous to Mesozoic Earth. The Scorpians also built The Tower of Time, a massive spiral tower in which each level simulated different periods from Earth's history.

First appearance: The Last Dinosaur
Author/Creator: William Overgard, Alexander Grasshoff, Shusei Kotani
Media: Film
Year: 1977
Located: Inside a dormant volcano near the North Pole
Plot/Premise: Masten Thrust, a billionaire oil tycoon and big-game hunter, has announced the discovery of a lost world hidden inside the warm pocket of a dormant volcano at the North Pole. Traveling via his "Polar Borer", Thrust and his team find that the hidden world is populated with both dinosaurs and prehistoric humans.

First appearance: Dinosaur Planet
Author/Creator: Anne McCaffrey
Media: Novel
Year: 1978
Located: Deep space
Plot/Premise: The crew of shipbred technicians sent to the planet Ireta was prepared for a routine mission to catalog flora and fauna and search for new energy sources. Kai and his beautiful co-leader Varian, the best xenob-vet in the business, followed all the standard procedures, but the result of their investigations was totally unexpected. When their rescue ship mysteriously disappears, they suddenly find themselves surrounded by giant swamp creatures, deadly predators, and terrifying dinosaurs. And a curious change begins to come over many of the crew members—a mutinous change that will lead all of them, in one way or another, into the primitive darkness of a future world that holds many mysteries yet to be revealed. . . .
Sequels/Other appearances: Dinosaur Planet and Dinosaur Planet Survivors; Sassinak (1990, Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon); The Death of Sleep (1990, Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye); Generation Warriors (1991, Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon)

Plot/Premise: In an unspecified future, a passenger spaceship crash lands on an earth-like world populated with savage dinosaurs. They encounter a variety of species and several of their number are killed. The survivors decide that their best chance lay in setting up a defensive perimeter on a plateau until rescuers arrive. However this area is menaced by a deadly Tyrannosaurus which must be defeated if they are to have any chance of survival.
Sequels/Other appearances: Galactic Raiders (Film, in production) has a similar premise.
Adaptation: Planet of Dinosaurs (Reimagining, comic, 2008)

First appearance: Journey to the Underground World
Author/Creator: Lin Carter
Media: Novel
Year: 1979
Located: Earth's interior
Plot/Premise: Under the trackless sands of the Sahara lay Zanthodon. That vast subterranean realm is the final homeland of the one-time masters of the world's surface — great dinosaurs, mighty jungles and living bands of primitive peoples from Neanderthals to Ancient Minoans and even Barbary pirates. Zanthodon is heavily modelled on Edgar Rice Burrough's creation, Pellucidar.
Sequels/Other appearances: Zanthodon (1980), Hurok of the Stone Age (1981), Darya of the Bronze Age (1981), Eric of Zanthodon (1982)

First appearance: Dungeons and Dragons
Author/Creator: TSR Hobbies, Inc.
Media: Role playing game
Year: 1980
Located: Outer Space
Plot/Premise: Mystara's outer surface consists of three principal land masses: the continent of Brun, the continent of Skothar, and the continent of Davania, plus the island continent of Alphatia (up to AC 1010). In the officially published material, the Known World concentrated on the eastern portion of Brun along with the lands of the Sea of Dawn. The continents of Mystara resemble those of the earth approximately 135 million years ago.

The inhabitants of Mystara are diverse: humans of all races can be found here, along with myriad creatures such as elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, and dragons. Dinosaurs exist at various locales on and in Mystara particularly on the Isle of Dread and in the Hollow World, a Pellucidar-like setting crammed with enormous diversity: yellow-skinned, horsemen orcs, pirates, tribal lizard men, Roman- and Egyptian-imperial analogs, dragon-riding elves, savage men, lost empires and of course, dinosaurs.

Isla Nublar

First appearance: Jurassic Park
Author/Creator: Michael Crichton
Media: Book
Year: 1990
Located: 120 miles (190 km) off the coast of Costa Rica and Isla Sorna is 87 miles southwest of it and approximately 207 miles off the coast of Costa Rica.
Plot/Premise: Isla Nublar is the site of a disastrous attempt by InGen Corporation to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. Isla Sorna, also known as "Site B", is another fictional island that serves as an InGen laboratory and research centre, where dinosaurs are hatched and reared before being moved to Isla Nublar as juveniles.

First appearance: Super Mario Bros.
Author/Creator: Rocky Morton, Annabel Jankel, Roland Joffé, Parker Bennett, Terry Runte and Ed Solomon
Media: Film
Year: 1993
Located: A dystopian parallel world accessed via an interdimensional portal in a cave beneath the Brooklyn Bridge
Plot/Premise: Mario and Luigi, two wacky plumbers, undertake a daring quest to save a princess in "Dinohattan" -- a hidden world where the inhabitants evolved from dinosaurs. Mario and Luigi face deadly challenges from a diabolical lizard king and must battle giant reptilian goombas, outwit misfit thugs and undermine a sinister scheme to take over the world.

The Koopahari Desert surrounding Dinohatten

Dinohatten

First appearance: Warcraft: Orcs and Humans
Author/Creator: Blizzard Entertainment
Media: Video game
Year: 1994
Located: Outer Space
Plot/Premise: Azeroth is the name of the world in which the majority of the Warcraft series is set. The world of Azeroth is the birthplace of many races, most notable being elves (night elves, high elves, and blood elves), humans, dwarves, tauren, goblins, trolls, gnomes, and dragons.

On Azeroth dinosaurs inspire awe and respect wherever they go. While animals, dinosaurs possess a might and magnificence that places them above other creatures of the natural world; many sapient races revere dinosaurs, or consider it a test of personal honor to hunt one of the great beasts.

While many types of dinosaurs exist, most are carnivores and thust share the same basic traits. Their forelimbs tend to prove ill-suited for combat, so they attack with their horned heads and teeth. They stake out territories and guard them fiercely. (This territorial instinct exists in herbivourus dinosaurs as well, but they tend to more peaceful behavior, attacking only when a creature wounds or threatens them.)

First appearance: Ice Age: The Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Authors/Creators: Carlos Saldanha, Mike Thurmeier, Peter Ackerman, Michael Berg, Yoni Brenner, Jason Carter Eaton and Mike Reiss
Media: Film
Year: 2009
Located: Enormous subterranean cavern beneath the tundra
Plot/Premise: Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel, Manny the mammoth, Sid the sloth and the gang are back for a third prehistoric Ice Age movie in which they discover a subterranean dino-infested world beneath the tundra with locales like the Jungle of Misery, the Plates of Woe, and the Chasm of Death. They they encounter Rudy the Baryonyx, Roger the Pteranodon, a Brachiosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Quetzacoatlus, Guanlong, Kentrosaurus and Chasmosaurus.

Sequels/Other appearances: Ice Age (Film, 2002); Gone Nutty (Short film, 2003); Ice Age: The Meltdown (Film, 2006); No Time For Nuts (Short film, 2007), Surviving Sid (Short film, 2008)
Adaptations: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Video game, 2009)