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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 13, 2021 2:30:44 GMT 5
They do, but right after we get our first hint of Mapusaurus' presence, they give us a size comparison between Mapusaurus and T. rex, where they're 13.5 and 12.5 meters long, respectively (also, the Mapusaurus skeletal has an almost comically large head and just looks wonky). So PD sort of contradicts itself in this episode (tbf, they later say "over" 10 meters long, which 13.5 meters technically is, but then again no one takes "over" as a description that literally). Unrelated, but I can't believe that post is 2 years old now. Time really does fly fast. While I don't think any dinosaur deniers are gonna watch dinosaur documentaries (otherwise, they won't be deniers anymore), I bet many among the general public are asking themselves such questions. Besides, children love dinosaur media and "how did the dinosaurs grow so big?" is something I'm sure they're asking themselves all the time. So, definitely a useful explanation to have. True. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 19, 2021 10:13:37 GMT 5
The Great Survivors: Screen capture from Planet Dinosaur. Image source. - I think this is the only dinosaur documentary that explores Haţeg Island as a dinosaur ecosystem. Props to you Planet Dinosaur.
- Bradycneme has the same model as the troodontids from earlier episodes. It looks like it’s been a headache to figure out just what kind of theropod it was (the earliest suggestion was that it was from an owl!), but it looks like now we’ve settled on it being an alvarezsaurid. So it would have looked more like this. This also means that vertebrates, even those small lizards Bradycneme is occasionally seen hunting, would have been safe from it.
- The Hatzegopteryx is obviously based on other azhdarchids such as Quetzalcoatlus. What wasn’t known back then was that Hatzegopteryx was much more heavily built than its other large cousins. Thus, it wouldn’t have been as tall as a giraffe or have a 3 meter skull (as claimed), but it would have had a relatively broad skull (half a meter wide), very powerful neck muscles and vertebrae, and actually had a robust construction consistent throughout the body (based on undescribed fossils). Hatzegopteryx was suited to take on much larger prey than its relatives, perhaps even animals too large to be swallowed whole (Naish & Witton, 2017). The azhdarchid Alanqa, which weighed anywhere from ~16-37 kg, was estimated to have been able to prey on animals weighing between 9-13 kg based on the strength of its neck vertebrae. And I don’t believe Alanqa was as robust as Hatzegopteryx. So if Alanqa was able to prey on animals AT LEAST ~1/4 of its size (and possibly up to something close to its own mass) (Williams et al., 2021), Hatzegopteryx would have been able to prey on animals even bigger than this.
- Shouldn’t the Magyarosaurus defend the youngster that’s in very close proximity to them? They could still easily mess up a predator that’s a fraction of their size.
- ”Zunityrannus”. Oof.
So, this name was invented by the BBC as a fill-in for the then-unnamed Zuni Basin tyrannosaur (this is the same creature the dromaeosaurs from WDRA are based on)…without permission. According to the Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences, the BBC was specifically told not to use that name, as that would make “Zunityrannus” a nomen nudum and unusable (link). Out of all the errors and other negative things I’ve pointed out here, this is the one that actually, truly miffs me. Like…just why BBC, why? - Of course, this tyrannosaur is now called Suskityrannus. Its true adult size is unknown.
- In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the apex predator of the ancient Moreno Hill ecosystem. Recently, a carcharodontosaur from Uzbekistan’s Bissekty Formation (Turonian in age) was described. At 7.5-8 meters and >1 tonne, this carcharodontosaur was the previously unrecognized apex predator of the ecosystem. What this means is that allosaurs were still around in at least some parts of the world as late as the Turonian, approximately the same time the Moreno Hill dinosaurs lived. The youngest carcharodontosaur from North America that I know of is Siats, and it lived during the Cenomanian (Tucker et al., 2020), literally just a few million years before the events of this segment would take place. So although no large theropod is currently known from the Moreno Hill Formation, I wouldn’t bet against the possibility that carcharodontosaurs were still North America’s top predators at this time, maybe even in this very ecosystem.
- So, these hypothetical adult Suskityrannus 1) attack something closer in size to themselves when alone, 2) will back away if dangerous prey outnumber them, 3) attack Nothronychus in groups, 4) will even attack Nothronychus from behind, and 5) opportunistically scavenge their own dead if they can’t make a meal out of the therizinosaurs.
Compare this to a dromaeosaur that attacks some giant clawed herbivore that could just step on it to kill it, and continues eating even when there’s fire literally surrounding it. If these tyrannosaurs were in the WDRA-verse, they’d easily replace those raptors as the smartest dinosaurs around, no question about it. - Unfortunately, the tyrannosaurs all get botulism and die.
- John Hurt is right about the diversity of theropods. And it only becomes greater once you take modern birds into account. Hell, up until about 600 years ago, there was literally a whole island that was basically a bird world, where birds alone filled in the major niches traditionally dominated by mammals. And that’s birds alone (and more specifically, Neornithes). Hypothetically, you could have an ecosystem dominated by theropods, avian or otherwise alike. A literal theropod world. Sounds like a really cool spec evo idea to me.
Okay, okay, I’m done singing praises about theropods. - Tyrannosaurs are claimed to be the most successful of the predatory theropods, with other species going extinct whenever they came to dominate an area.
But how is success here being measured? They certainly lasted a long time, up until the end of the Cretaceous, but so did some other groups. They occupied predatory niches at varying levels, but they only produced long-lived lineages of apex predators in the last 15 million years of the Mesozoic (their only previous venture into the apex predator niche was during the Early Cretaceous, in the form of large proceratosaurids). A recent paper proposes that juvenile tyrannosaurids might have outcompeted other predatory medium sized theropods (Holtz, 2021), so, maybe there’s that? - We revisit the world of Gigantoraptor and get insight into their brooding behavior this time. Where it was once seen killing a brooding Saurornitholestes, it now must protect its own nest. It successfully defends its nest from marauding oviraptorids and Alectrosaurus (it even kicks one down!), but it’s finally buried alive by a sandstorm, which may qualify as one of the sadder moments in this show.
- And then comes the end. The K-Pg extinction event.
The first thing to note is that unlike virtually every other dinosaur documentary, PD doesn’t focus on western North America. This ecosystem is undeniably the one that is most often explored when the K-Pg event is a significant subject. Who can resist seeing the fate of so many of pop culture’s most iconic dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Pachycephalosaurus? Well, Planet Dinosaur can. It chooses Haţeg Island as its focus for the K-Pg segment. Every part of the planet was experiencing the hellfire and long periods of darkness that North America saw, and that included the series of islands that was Europe, with all of its little known fauna.
Second, PD proves no less adept at showing us the effects of the asteroid impact; you see the food chain collapse in the now dreary, bleak Haţeg Island. In fact, PD is actually one of the more in-depth docs when it comes to the K-Pg (aside from docs which are specialized entirely on the mass extinction), and this is where its explanatory style with visuals proves very advantageous.
One of the things I love most about this segment here is that PD makes it very clear that all life was affected. Very few documentaries will say anything on how much mammals, birds, insects, and amphibians suffered. The usual narrative is that the dinosaurs, marine reptiles, and pterosaurs got wiped out, while the small mammals and birds survived, with no further detail than that. My guess is that most people are under the impression that, because these groups ultimately survived, they must have gone through this extinction event relatively unscathed. That might be true for amphibians, and to a lesser extent insects, but it was most certainly not true for mammals (93% of species went extinct; Longrich et al., 2016) and birds (all birds that survived were non-arboreal; Field et al., 2018). When I first saw this years ago, this was the first time I started to grasp how harsh this extinction event was, even for the survivors. And I think more documentaries need to illustrate this; this event was by no means a walk in the park for our ancestors. - There is a big missed opportunity here, though. The dinosaurs get a montage of all the fauna from previous episodes to once again remind us of the diversity and adaptability of the dinosaurs, before Planet Dinosaur is brought to an end. The dinosaurs are condemned to extinction…
…except that they’re not. Planet Dinosaur, you made this very clear in your second episode! Birds are dinosaurs and they still live! I get that they would have to repeat this for the last episode, but this is literally the best time to do so. If the producers really wanted to drive home the narrative of dinosaur survivability and resilience, there is no better way to do this than to remind the audience that the dinosaurs survived all the way to the present day, if only through one group. WDRA briefly did this, WWD briefly did this, PD could have too. More than that, it would have worked as their last and ultimate segment that proves their narrative of dinosaurs as the “great survivors”.
Final verdict:Sometimes, the way PD demonstrates its narrative can be a little weird and confusing in this episode. At one point, it mentions how theropods that changed their diet survived alongside tyrannosaurs by not competing with them, cutting to a bunch of oviraptorids. The ultimate point of that segment, however, later turned out to be that dinosaurs cared for their nests, a trait that was carried over to birds and allowed them to survive. So…what’s the message for that segment? PD already provided us with a clear example of theropods that changed their diets to avoid competition with predators (therizinosaurs), so I guess it’s the latter. I feel like survival on an island is also a bit of a weird point to bring up for dinosaur adaptability. I get that an island has less resources than a mainland continent, but is it really that extreme to be able to adapt to there by becoming smaller (or bigger)? Mammals and birds in the Cenozoic did the exact same thing. That’s just me, though; maybe I’m really underestimating how big of a deal it is to adapt to an island. PD does a really fine job of going over the K-Pg extinction, and even does things most other dinosaur documentaries don’t do (i.e. illustrate the casualties that even the survivors experienced). It does have a nice ending showcasing the diversity and survivability of dinosaurs, but the lack of mention of birds is not only a big missed opportunity, but also a very jarring contrast to the last words of episode 2.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 19, 2021 21:56:51 GMT 5
Overall verdict: Allosaurus hunting Camptosaurus. Promotional art for Planet Dinosaur. Image source. When it was first released, Planet Dinosaur was intended to show audiences what we have learned about dinosaurs with recent advancements in the field of dinosaur paleontology. But now it’s a decade old, so how does it hold up today? Well, some of the information has certainly become outdated, and not all of the depictions of the prehistoric life shown here (mostly dinosaurs) hold up anymore. Less often, information presented was already questionable at the time and a few animal models were not very accurate (particularly the sauropods). Some animals had recycled vocalizations, most notably the non-maniraptoran theropods. Then there is, of course, the whole “Zunityrannus” matter; why the BBC chose to ignore the specific instruction to not call the animal that eludes me, and I guess it always will. But for the information that had simply become outdated, that’s just how science works, and Planet Dinosaur certainly can’t be faulted for what it didn’t know at the time. In fact, new discoveries that let us get a closer, better picture of dinosaurs is the very spirit of Planet Dinosaur (it’s for this reason that I hope no one sees my criticisms of scientific accuracy as me shitting on the doc). At least some of the dinosaurs featured here have since become even weirder and more wonderful ( Spinosaurus being an excellent example); the only thing that prevented the documentary from capitalizing on this was time. I like to think, then, that the producers of Planet Dinosaur and the late John Hurt (if he were alive today), would be delighted to see what’s changed in dinosaur paleontology in the ten years since they made this documentary, whether they were originally correct or not. Each episode has a clear narrative about the dinosaurs, and I think for the most part these are handled quite well, even with all their errors (outdated or wrong to begin with) and any other issues. I only wish that they had highlighted the dinosaurs’ ultimate feat of survival in the last episode. Planet Dinosaur also introduces us to a cast of Mesozoic creatures that many tuning in may not have even known existed at all, woven into plenty of memorable scenes of action. How many people know about Epidexipteryx, Gigantoraptor, or Hatzegopteryx? Spinosaurus may be popular among paleo fans, but when you consider that the average person isn’t a paleo fan, and that there were almost certainly viewers who knew pretty much nothing about dinosaurs beforehand, even it has the potential to be a mind-boggling creature. And if you were a paleo fan when you watched PD, what you saw was a far cry from its depiction in Jurassic Park 3. All of this is to say nothing of Argentinosaurus, Paralititan, Pliosaurus, and so on. In other words, Planet Dinosaur shows how much of the dinosaur kingdom, or the whole Mesozoic for our matter, still deserves more of our attention. Additionally, John Hurt’s narration was great, and I have long added him to my list of great nature documentary narrators (sadly, we will never again hear his voice grace another). The track is, at times, also memorable. I’ll always remember the show’s theme, especially as it plays over the intro’s montage of dinosaur diversity and discoveries, the Allosaurus charging, and the Alaskan troodontids looking over the Edmontosaurus herd in preparation for their hunt. So to conclude, I consider Planet Dinosaur to be one of the “greats” in dinosaur documentaries. If in its early development it was a dwarf standing on the shoulders of the giant that is Walking with Dinosaurs, it was no longer a dwarf by the end of production. It turned out to be a giant itself.
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Post by creature386 on Oct 21, 2021 1:15:23 GMT 5
- I think this is the only dinosaur documentary that explores Haţeg Island as a dinosaur ecosystem. Props to you Planet Dinosaur.
Basically why this is probably my favorite episode, only rivaled by the first one. - The Hatzegopteryx is obviously based on other azhdarchids such as Quetzalcoatlus. What wasn’t known back then was that Hatzegopteryx was much more heavily built than its other large cousins. Thus, it wouldn’t have been as tall as a giraffe or have a 3 meter skull (as claimed), but it would have had a relatively broad skull (half a meter wide), very powerful neck muscles and vertebrae, and actually had a robust construction consistent throughout the body (based on undescribed fossils). Hatzegopteryx was suited to take on much larger prey than its relatives, perhaps even animals too large to be swallowed whole (Naish & Witton, 2017). The azhdarchid Alanqa, which weighed anywhere from ~16-37 kg, was estimated to have been able to prey on animals weighing between 9-13 kg based on the strength of its neck vertebrae. And I don’t believe Alanqa was as robust as Hatzegopteryx. So if Alanqa was able to prey on animals AT LEAST ~1/4 of its size (and possibly up to something close to its own mass) (Williams et al., 2021), Hatzegopteryx would have been able to prey on animals even bigger than this.
And the Hatzegopteryx is the second reason. Those guys were uncanny in this episode. If you are used to the relatively benign fish-eaters as which paleo documentaries normally depict pterosaurs, the sight of Hatzegopteryx picking off sauropods (baby sauropods, but still) can be downright uncanny. Incredible to think they are one of the few prehistoric killers whose scariness PD vastly underestimated (to be fair, it's not like they could have known better). - Shouldn’t the Magyarosaurus defend the youngster that’s in very close proximity to them? They could still easily mess up a predator that’s a fraction of their size.
...no idea why I never noticed this when I was smaller. - ”Zunityrannus”. Oof.
So, this name was invented by the BBC as a fill-in for the then-unnamed Zuni Basin tyrannosaur (this is the same creature the dromaeosaurs from WDRA are based on)…without permission. According to the Zuni Dinosaur Institute for Geosciences, the BBC was specifically told not to use that name, as that would make “Zunityrannus” a nomen nudum and unusable (link). Out of all the errors and other negative things I’ve pointed out here, this is the one that actually, truly miffs me. Like…just why BBC, why?
That's ... not a very pleasant thing to have learned today. Funnily enough, being young and naive, I did once upload a Zuniceratops vs Zunityrannus video to YouTube and your post just made me double-check to see if I already corrected the name to Suskityrannus (yep, I did). - One of the things I love most about this segment here is that PD makes it very clear that all life was affected. Very few documentaries will say anything on how much mammals, birds, insects, and amphibians suffered. The usual narrative is that the dinosaurs, marine reptiles, and pterosaurs got wiped out, while the small mammals and birds survived, with no further detail than that. My guess is that most people are under the impression that, because these groups ultimately survived, they must have gone through this extinction event relatively unscathed. That might be true for amphibians, and to a lesser extent insects, but it was most certainly not true for mammals (93% of species went extinct; Longrich et al., 2016) and birds (all birds that survived were non-arboreal; Field et al., 2018). When I first saw this years ago, this was the first time I started to grasp how harsh this extinction event was, even for the survivors. And I think more documentaries need to illustrate this; this event was by no means a walk in the park for our ancestors.
Definitely. Even years after first watching this, I still had the extinction figures they provided (I think 90% for mammals and 97% for birds) in my head. I was genuinely surprised when I first saw them.
I agree that ignoring birds being dinosaurs was a major missed opportunity. While this episode overall handled the extinction theme slightly better than DR, it didn't go out with as much of a bang, unfortunately.
But yeah, I agree with your overall verdict. The show gave Spinosaurus (and many others) the documentary represenation it long deserved (just compare PD's portrayal to that of MR and you know what I mean), managed to be exciting without adding T. rex, and its very fact-based style that was nonetheless way less intrusive than the usual talking heads made it just plain unique. I can't say much more, unfortunately, as I'm short on time, but great documentary and great retrospective review.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 21, 2021 6:39:09 GMT 5
Thank you!
Also, I tried to reference the Zuni Basin from WDRA in this review too like I promised. Something about how smart the "Zunityrannus" were here compared to the raptors in the other doc.
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Post by creature386 on Oct 21, 2021 13:51:55 GMT 5
I actually had to chucke when I first read the raptor comparison, but I forgot to mention that in my reply (I blame time pressure).
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Post by thalassotitan22 on May 5, 2024 13:48:30 GMT 5
I think the reason we got several portrayals of Rugops as an 8-9 meter predator in the late 2000s was due to one 2008 study suggesting that the holotype skull (which was initially attributed to a 6-meter animal) came from an immature animal due to a lack of fusion in the bones.
Likewise, I think the main reason we see Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus overlapping with Sarcosuchus and Ouranosaurus in this and some other media is because all four genera have historically been used as minor wastebin taxa for fragmentary fossils found across North Africa. I've seen all four genera being listed as part of the Ain el Guettar Formation in Tunisia, fragmentary crocodylomorph fossils from Kem Kem being listed as cf. Sarcosuchus, dinosaur fossils from the Wadi Milk Formation being listed as cf. Carcharodontosaurus and cf. Ouranosaurus, and I've even seen carcharodontosaur fossils from the Elrhaz Formation being attributed to Carcharodontosaurus prior to the description of Eocarcharia. Of course, once you exclude all the dubious material and just look at the unambiguous fossils, yes, Sarcosuchus and Ouranosaurus are only known from the late Aptian-early Albian and Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus only from the Cenomanian.
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