How a Yukon scientist helped Hollywood re-create the ice age in Alpha

Grant Zazulawas pretty excited to hit the cinema in Whitehorse on Friday night, for the opening night of Alpha an ice age adventure tale about a boy and a wolf but he was also a bit nervous.

"I know there are some compromises in the movie.There are some things I'm going tocringe when I see and I'm going togo, 'I told you not to do that!'" Zazula said.

The Yukon government paleontologist was drafted three years ago to serve as a scientific adviser to the filmmakers. An anthropologistfriend of his in Vancouver, already enlisted to develop language for the film, helped make the connection.

"She was meeting with the director and the producers, they asked her if she knew any paleontologists and she said, 'well, I know this guy up in Whitehorse,'" Zazulasaid.

"That's how I got roped into this very cool process."

Zazulais a renowned expert on ice age animals, having dug up and studied bones and fossils throughout Yukon. Woolly mammoths, bison, and scimitar cats all of which feature in Alpha are his bailiwick.

'This doesn't look right'

The movie is set in Europe, 20,000 years ago andZazula'sjob was"to make sure it looked like the ice age," he said. That meant reviewing scripts and talking about film locations.

It was a very different experience for Zazula, who's appeared in plenty of television documentaries but had never worked on aHollywood film. His scientificinputwas not always warmlyembraced, hesaid.

Alpha was directed by Albert Hughes, who also co-directed theDenzelWashington flimThe Book of Eli,and the critically-acclaimedMenaceII Society.

"I think [the director]kind ofthought, 'don't you know you're talking to Albert Hughes?'" Zazula said. "But you know, I had to put my stake in the ground and say, 'no, this doesn't look right.'"

"When you hire a scientist to work on a film, you expect scientific advice."

Still, he was excited to finally see the full, finished product. He's confident the filmmakers got it rightand made a spectacular ice age tale.

"What I've seen is amazing ... to me that's the important part it's going tolook good, and it's an awesome opportunity to tell the story of the ice age," Zazulasaid.

"I think it's really the first time the ice age, and ice age people and animals, have been portrayed in Hollywood in a proper scientific form."

Alpha opened in theatres on Friday.

With files from Tara McCarthy