TV and film great Jim Henson is certainly best known for his puppetry work, but in fact that's what "Dinosaurs" was -- partly, at least.

The characters on the early-'90s show, structured very much as a traditional family sitcom but with dinosaurs instead of people, were a combination of puppets, robots and actors in costumes.

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, series director Bruce Bilson described the set created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, saying that it was all made on a raised floor, which allowed puppeteers to handle some characters from below while actors in suits could walk around above.

Meanwhile, the faces of these characters were robotic, manipulated via remote control by other puppeteers off-screen.

It was a system that Jim Henson and his production company had been refining since the classic 1982 film "The Dark Crystal," and which had been used to great acclaim in the hit 1990 film "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," a year before "Dinosaurs" premiered.

However, "Dinosaurs" did certainly represent an advancement of the technology. The "L.A. Times," in a sprawling 1991 story about the show's then-groundbreaking technology, reported that, while "The Dark Crystal" required eight people to operate a single character's face, "Dinosaurs" brought that down to one. That brought the spirit very much back to character- and actor-based puppetry.

Puppeteer Mack Wilson told the "Times" that, while it did represent a huge challenge, the possibilities were equally large.

"You're creating life at the same time you're trying to remember dialogue and operate all these servos [robotic sensors]," Wilson said. "The combination of expressions are endless."

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