Jurassic Fight Club – A Retrospective Review

[Infinity Blade]

Seriously, what has my life come to? After graduating college, then going to a fun college reunion, going through not-immensely-serious-but-nagging personal problems (somewhat related to old college friends), and trying to make myself more productive or a more promising future (in the form of applying to grad school), is this what has become of the mighty Infinity Blade? Reviewing awful TV programs that aired when all of the problems he faces now were bridges that were miles ahead?

I guess so. If I'm going to have inordinate amounts of free time that most people would kill to have, I might as well have fun with it. I guess reviews have become somewhat of a thing for me on this forum, so why not review whatever I want to revisit? This doesn't mean I've forgotten about my Animal Face-Off review (which I moved to the "documentaries" section...because if I'm considering this crap a "documentary" AFO might as well be too)

Anyway, this is...Jurassic Fight Club...a retrospective review.

Directory:

- "Cannibal Dinosaur" (this post) (link to video->)
- "T-Rex Hunter" (link to video->)
- "Gang Killers" (link to video->)
- "Bloodiest Battle" (link to video->)
- "Deep Sea Killers" (link to video->)
- "Hunter Becomes Hunted" (link to video->)
- "Biggest Killers" (link to video->)
- "Raptor's Last Stand" (link to video->)
- "Ice Age Monsters" (link to video->)
- "River of Death" (link to video->)
- "Raptors vs T-Rex" (link to video->)
- "Armageddon" (link to video->)
- Overall verdict->
- Alternative episode ideas->

Cannibal Dinosaur


CGI models from Jurassic Fight Club.

• I think it’s a little ironic how the narrator says the remains of the dinosaur (Majungasaurus) were clearly that of a predator. He’s obviously right, but before 1996 the creature was thought to be a pachycephalosaur.
• ”Could an epic fight have taken place here?” I mean…it’s not impossible, but it’s also equally likely to have been a scavenging event to, as far as we can tell.
• The identity of the bite marks on Majungasaurus bones is made out to be something of a mystery, at least initially. And when I was watching this on YouTube, I came across a comment that said “I do not know of a true scientist that would say they were able to solve the mystery of what happened here. I would expect a scientist to say they believe they may have solved the mystery.” But like, all you’d really need to do is look at what carnivorous fauna you do know from the ecosystem, see if their teeth match the size, spacing, and shape of the bite marks, and boom. Sure, not every bite mark can be confidently traced back to a specific species, but in this case we certainly can. Later on, George Blasing actually sums up quite well how they figured out the tooth marks were made by Majungasaurus.
  
  Then again, this person could also have been talking about how the bite marks were made, in which case they’d be absolutely correct.
• ”Majungatholus.” That’s all I need to say, you know what the correct name is (I’ve said it twice now).
• ”The T. rex of the east.” Obligatory T. rex comparison. Seriously, I wouldn’t mind it if dinosaurs weren’t compared to T. rex every once in a while (like how orcas are called “wolves of the sea” or Allosaurus the “lion of the Jurassic”), but people do this all the damn time.
• So of course, the Majungasaurus looks wonky, to put it mildly. Legs are too long, even the puny arms look wrong (they’re pronated, have elbow joints which the real dinosaur didn’t even have, and would realistically be pointing backwards). I would also have added “lips” if the model were to be remade today; of all toothed non-avian theropods, I think it makes the least sense for their relatively short teeth to be exposed.
• George Blasing talks about all the horns and spikes all over Majungasaurus’ skull. But I mean, it’s really just that one short horn. Judging from the texture of the skull bones, the face would indeed have been gnarly in life (which means there’s no real room for that that red fleshy comb on the male Majungasaurus’ snout, if that’s indeed what it is). He also refers to it as a male, but while this isn’t impossible, we don’t know the sex of any known Majungasaurus specimen. You can see where the speculation is in this program.
• The use of the head as a weapon is…reasonable. If this were me back when I was like, 15, I would have been really skeptical of this idea. Now I’m pretty confident that the head of Majungasaurus, and at least some other abelisaurids, could be used as some sort of weapon. I don’t think it was built for a collision from a max speed charge (like a bighorn sheep, which Blasing compares it to), but close-ranged striking blows (like a giraffe) are certainly possible to me. The horn of Majungasaurus was likely covered in armor-like dermis, judging from osteological correlates. Hieronymus (2009) also proposed that the bony ornaments in Majungasaurus and abelisaurids could have been used to absorb blows in agonistic behaviors (Cerroni et al., 2020).
• ”Thrived and fought to the death.” Trust me, if Majungasaurus were trying to fight everything on the island to the death routinely like a one-dimensional killing machine, it would not have been thriving.
• Majungasaurus is described as an animal that was stalking prey, killing it, eating it, and…resting for a while. Kudos to Thomas R. Holtz Jr. making this creature seem a bit more like an actual animal.
• This Majungasaurus horrid anatomy becomes really apparent when you look at their digitized skeleton. In addition to the inaccuracies I mentioned above, the neck is all wrong too. The cervicals were much more robust than what we see here.
• Majungasaurus teeth were pretty interesting, but the features mentioned here (tooth replacement and serrations) are pretty standard for theropods. It turned out much later (so I, of course, don’t blame JFC for not knowing this) that Majungasaurus had an unusually high tooth replacement rate for a theropod. In Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus it was about 100 days (in T. rex it was over two years), while in Majungasaurus it was 56 days. Given Majungasaurus’ habit of biting bone, and the fact that its teeth weren’t robust in the way tyrannosaurid teeth were (they were basically really short versions of normal theropod teeth), this would have been a very helpful adaptation (D'Emic et al., 2019).
• Majungasaurus’ tail is listed as a weapon. I’m…not sure there’s much reason to think that, even if theropod tails in general were massive, long, and muscular organs. I mean, we already established that the skull of Majungasaurus does double duty as a biting, even striking/butting, weapon.
  
  The closest I have ever seen to a scientist proposing theropod tails as weapons was in The Tyrant King, particularly in a chapter discussing tyrannosaurid pathologies. It said “The frequency of fibular fractures suggests that these are not from falls, unless the animals were less coordinated than at least one of use (R.M.). More likely, the fractures resulted from conspecific interactions, but are less likely from tail impacts. Tyrannosaurid tails are too high off the ground, although possible injury from a prey animal (e.g., sauropod tail whip) could be considered.” (p. 291). So they consider tyrannosaurid tails as a possible cause of injury to other tyrannosaurs, just not a likely one for the kinds discussed in this excerpt (i.e. fibular fractures).
  
  To which…take that for what you will…?
• The narrator acknowledges the relatively short legs of Majungasaurus, which is contradicted by the show’s model. This is seen as a drawback with regards to the prowess of Majungasaurus. But while Majungasaurus was not an especially cursorial predator (although, I’m pretty sure it could run significantly faster than 10-15 mph; come on, that top end figure is comparable to even less cursorial rhinos), this also meant it was a stocky predator; short, robust legs are useful for maintaining stability when struggling with a giant sauropod. Also, shorter legs are good for acceleration, and Majungasaurus had an enormous cnemial crest on its tibia, indicating powerful calf muscles. This suggests Majungasaurus could still have been fast in short bursts.
• Majungasaurus is claimed to have poor vision, but Lawrence Witmer says himself in this program that the visual centers in a Majungasaurus brain endocast weren’t “tremendously enlarged” and relatively “modest” [in size]. If this is true, then perhaps its eyesight was not especially great, but not terrible either. They also mention the relative lack of binocular vision it had, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to bad eyesight; I’d hesitate to call every single herbivore without binocular vision to have bad eyes (also, not all predators are equipped with developed binocular vision).
• Again with the “it was a massive battle” stuff.
• What Holtz says about where the bite marks are distributed is true. They’re found on ribs, neural arches, and chevrons on tail vertebrae (Rogers et al., 2003
• ”What about the females?” This show was being speculative enough by assuming that this was a fight. Sexual dimorphism is difficult to prove in fossil dinosaurs, so now you’re definitely in speculative territory. Peter Larson is featured as a talking head and claims female Tyrannosaurus were larger than males (which we now know is unproven). Judging from the visual they show us (comparing male and female Majungasaurus skeletons), I guess they chose to make the female smaller.
• Okay, the male being more brightly colored than the female. That’s not out there by any means, but again, we don’t know (there are sexually monomorphic birds too).
• They talk about the environment for a bit. Their depiction of ancient Mahajanga Basin is a forested environment with seasonal changes. It is true the environment back then was highly seasonal, but it was also a semi-arid climate, not the jungle-like forest depicted here.
• ”Small primitive brains” “primitive stereotyped behaviors”
  
  Oh yeah, JFC loves to play with this trope: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumbDinos
• ”He has no idea that he’s dancing, with the devil.” I mean, he’s literally the same species as her, so he’d have to have some instinctive idea (or even one from experience) of what it’s like to court and mate with a female…right?
• The way the program recaps what was previously “established” after commercial breaks as if it were fact makes me think it’s easy to be enthralled by whatever the episode’s narrative is (e.g. “In these steamy jungles, a colossal battle of the sexes took place.”). If this were me when I was 9 or 10 years old (the age when I first saw JFC), I would fallen for this hook, line, and sinker, and thought it was actual scientific fact. That’s sort of what happened when I saw all these battles years ago, actually.
• The effects of island life on the life history of dinosaurs is discussed. Blasing theorizes that animals on islands would have to be more protective of their offspring than on larger mainlands, as their young would, in theory, be much more likely to come into contact with a threat on a much smaller landmass. But then again, wouldn’t an island’s undoubtedly smaller population help offset that? We later discovered that Rapetosaurus (a contemporary of Majungasaurus, and the largest prey item available) was precocial (Rogers et al., 2016), able to survive as a hatchling with little to no need for parental care, which isn’t consistent with this “greater need to protect children” idea.
  
  Inbreeding is also discussed as a harsh reality of island life, which I mostly don’t have a problem with. But then Blasing theorizes that Majungasaurus may have had its gnarly, ugly face as a result of inbreeding. One glaring problem with this is that abelisaurids in general had gnarly faces, whether they lived on small islands or not.
• Ah yes, fight time.
  
  There’s a brief scene where the male Majungasaurus sideswipes the female with his head. That, I think, is a more plausible way of showing how head striking/butting would work in Majungasaurus (and many other non-avian theropods that may have used their heads for butting). Later on, the female charges right into the male’s side from a distance and collides with her head, and even later on they butt heads. As I’ve said above, that’s not how I’d envision a fight would go.
• Couldn’t the female Majungasaurus see that its baby isn’t moving in the male’s jaws, and is thus dead? Oh wait, I forgot, these people think Majungasaurus had shit eyesight.
• Now we get to how the female Majungasaurus wins. First, she charges at him and grabs onto the male’s neck, which apparently breaks his neck and paralyzes him.
  
  One YouTuber who reviewed this show pointed out the following: that attack should have killed him, not simply paralyze him. The narrator literally says that the female goes for the jugular, and severing that would be a big yikes. There’s also the windpipe, which would likely be damaged by an attack like this.
  
  What I think would be more likely to happen is that the female grabs onto the male’s neck. It may not necessarily break the neck vertebrae, but she’d sort of be grappling with him using her mouth. Later, she’d pull back, ripping a horrific wound with her serrated teeth. This is a more likely way that Majungasaurus killed its prey.
• ”They [dinosaurs] only think of one thing at a time.”
  
  I suspect that this “dinosaur brain primitive dinosaur one track mind dinosaur dumb” sub-narrative (for lack of a better term) plays into JFC’s larger portrayal of these animals as mindless killing machines. At least when we’re talking about non-dromaeosaurs (I think they later go on to portray dromaeosaurs as hyper-intelligent).
• I’m going to allude/add to a point that the aforementioned YouTuber mentioned. JFC presents the female as a hyper-aggressive fighter who’s willing to kill the male to protect her baby, and the male as the larger, but more careful combatant who doesn’t want to kill the female, and must still be careful as he tries to commit infanticide.
  
  While I have no doubt about the aggression of a mother protecting her offspring, the female is at no less risk of dying in this fight compared to the male. If anything, the odds are less in her favor if we grant JFC that the male is the larger and more powerful individual (and even if he were only the same size, he would still be a serious threat). The point I’m making here is that the female would have at least as much, if not more reason to be cautious in this fight as the male. And I mean, what good is being hyper-aggressive against a larger version of yourself if you get yourself killed and your baby is left completely defenseless?
• Majungasaurus’ extinction is claimed to be a result of environmental changes. Which is technically true, it was just a result of a Mt. Everest-sized asteroid or comet slamming into the Earth and devastating all life on the planet, not Madagascar drifting further out into the sea. The Maevarano Formation’s biota were living all the way up to the end of the Cretaceous, making Majungasaurus one of the last non-avian dinosaurs.

Final verdict:
Apart from some inaccuracies here and there, the real issue with this episode is that the premise rests on shaky ground. No matter how you slice it. You say that this was a fight? How do you 100% know that?

Fine, I’ll grant you that this was a fight. How do you know that it was a fight between a male and female?

Fine, I’ll grant you that too. But a Majungasaurus actively attempting to kill a much larger member of her species when it might be a better idea to just drive it off first via aggression? When that male could very well kill her too?

Concept-wise, I didn’t find it particularly exciting. It’s just two Majungasaurus fighting each other really. While a fight between two species can still be fun to watch, it’s not helped by the fact that this is nothing but a possible scenario.

[creature386]

Nov 2, 2021 9:21:20 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Seriously, what has my life come to? After graduating college, then going to a fun college reunion, going through not-immensely-serious-but-nagging personal problems (somewhat related to old college friends), and trying to make myself more productive or a more promising future (in the form of applying to grad school), is this what has become of the mighty Infinity Blade? Reviewing awful TV programs that aired when all of the problems he faces now were bridges that were miles ahead?

I guess so. If I'm going to have inordinate amounts of free time that most people would kill to have, I might as well have fun with it. I guess reviews have become somewhat of a thing for me on this forum, so why not review whatever I want to revisit?

Hey, you're not the only one who had inordinate amounts of free time between colleges. I wasted mine on writing Starsnatcher which no-one read and which I had to delete from certain places due to its poor quality. At least your reviews keep the forum going (and they keep me coming back despite my non-existent spare time; might be part of the reason why you're doing so many).

Nov 2, 2021 9:21:20 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• So of course, the Majungasaurus looks wonky, to put it mildly. Legs are too long, even the puny arms look wrong (they’re pronated, have elbow joints which the real dinosaur didn’t even have, and would realistically be pointing backwards). I would also have added “lips” if the model were to be remade today; of all toothed non-avian theropods, I think it makes the least sense for their relatively short teeth to be exposed.

dinosaurrevolution.fandom.com/wiki/Majungasaurus

jurassicfightclub.fandom.com/wiki/Majungasaurus
(Provided the links in case images don't work.)
I think the direct comparison shows just how... off JFC's portrayal is, although in complete fairness, DR's model lacks lips, too, but as you mentioned, this was one of the more forgivable mistakes.

Nov 2, 2021 9:21:20 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Okay, the male being more brightly colored than the female. That’s not out there by any means, but again, we don’t know (there are sexually monomorphic birds too).

At least it's not something that can be disproven in the foreseeable future...

Seriously though, it's fascinating how often the visuals directly contradict what the talking heads say. The short legs are one exmaple, as is Larson claiming that female theropods were generally larger. I don't remember if this was a recurring pattern in JFC or not; something to look for in future reviews maybe.

Nov 2, 2021 9:21:20 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• ”Small primitive brains” “primitive stereotyped behaviors”
  
  Oh yeah, JFC loves to play with this trope: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumbDinos

You know, I was incredibly gullible back then and bought most of their BS but this was one of the few times I didn't. Glad that other dinosaur documentaries protected me from that. I did believe them that this fight was an established fact though.

Nov 2, 2021 9:21:20 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• I’m going to allude/add to a point that the aforementioned YouTuber mentioned. JFC presents the female as a hyper-aggressive fighter who’s willing to kill the male to protect her baby, and the male as the larger, but more careful combatant who doesn’t want to kill the female, and must still be careful as he tries to commit infanticide.
  
  While I have no doubt about the aggression of a mother protecting her offspring, the female is at no less risk of dying in this fight compared to the male. If anything, the odds are less in her favor if we grant JFC that the male is the larger and more powerful individual (and even if he were only the same size, he would still be a serious threat). The point I’m making here is that the female would have at least as much, if not more reason to be cautious in this fight as the male. And I mean, what good is being hyper-aggressive against a larger version of yourself if you get yourself killed and your baby is left completely defenseless?

And that was a thing, too. Besides the small brained dinos, the female's victory always felt weird to me. Like, why? Is the aggression really enough to overcome the size and strength disadvantage given? Maybe if this male was attempting infanticide for the first time in his life (which, to be fair, it looked like he did). Granted, JFC is more focused on specific scenarios rather than figuring out which combatant wins most of the time (unlike AFO), but still. Their scenarios are supposed to be somewhat representative of what would have happened in real life (at least that's how I understood their "matchups" when I was smaller).

Well, this is going to be fun (I wonder how often I'll be able to comment on time, given my currently busy schedule, but we'll see).

[Infinity Blade]

I added a hyperlink to the video in the OP. The History Channel took it upon themselves to upload full episodes of the show on YouTube.

Nov 2, 2021 14:43:57 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Seriously though, it's fascinating how often the visuals directly contradict what the talking heads say. The short legs are one exmaple, as is Larson claiming that female theropods were generally larger. I don't remember if this was a recurring pattern in JFC or not; something to look for in future reviews maybe.

I think it may very well be, if I remember some of PaleoNerd's YT reviews of the show correctly. One example I can name at the top of my head is where Blasing says an Allosaurus disembowels a Ceratosaurus with its foot claws, but in the actual fight, the Allosaurus just slashes its belly once, not literally disemboweling it.

Nov 2, 2021 14:43:57 GMT 5 creature386 said:

And that was a thing, too. Besides the small brained dinos, the female's victory always felt weird to me. Like, why? Is the aggression really enough to overcome the size and strength disadvantage given? Maybe if this male was attempting infanticide for the first time in his life (which, to be fair, it looked like he did). Granted, JFC is more focused on specific scenarios rather than figuring out which combatant wins most of the time (unlike AFO), but still. Their scenarios are supposed to be somewhat representative of what would have happened in real life (at least that's how I understood their "matchups" when I was smaller).

Given how much larger they present the male compared to the female (at least in one visual), I feel like this would be akin to a lioness killing an adult male lion while defending her cubs. I mean, is it hypothetically possible? I suppose, but is that the normal or expected outcome? Hell no, and I agree with you that I thought these scenarios were supposed to represent what would most likely happen.

[Infinity Blade]

T-Rex Hunter

• At the beginning of the episode, the narration isn’t entirely about North America being split in two by an ocean at this time. It’s definitely true that the Western Interior Seaway split the continent in two earlier in the Cretaceous, but by the late Maastrichtian it had largely receded (here's-> what it looked like 67 and 65 Ma).
• I don’t know just how hot it could get in the northwestern U.S. and southwestern Canada during the late Maastrichtian. But in the Frenchman Formation, T. rex could expect to deal with a mean annual temperature of 16^o C, with marked seasonality (Cockx et al., 2021). I guess I could see the temperature nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the dry season like JFC claims. This is a subtropical, swampy, Everglades-like environment we’re talking about here.
  
  But then JFC claims high oxygen levels allowed dinosaurs to grow to immense sizes. Yeah, no. Oxygen levels during the end of the Cretaceous were around 14% (Tappert et al., 2013). That’s substantially lower than it is today.
• ”And he’s [Tyrannosaurus] about to engage in a colossal fight…to the death.”
  
  If he were fighting a Triceratops, Torosaurus, Ankylosaurus, or even a big Edmontosaurus, I’d totally believe this. But T. rex isn’t going up against any of those. He’s really fighting a teenage member of his species that’s like, roughly ten times smaller than he is (assuming the juvenile rex/“Nanotyrannus” weighs somewhere around 600-700 kg). Epic fight amirite?
• I’m looking at the Tyrannosaurus model they’ve got. My biggest complaint (apart from exposed teeth and pronated hands) is arguably the “tummy tuck” (to borrow a term from Duane Nash) where the pubis and its soft tissue outline stick out, while then the abdomen caves in front of it. You can often see this in older reconstructions (e.g. Greg Paul’s skeletals), but no one seems to regard this as accurate anymore. Sue’s most recent skeleton mount reconstructs it with no concavities in its gastralia (link). The result, as I’m sure we all now know, is a bulky animal built like a tank.
• I did some background research, and I think I found the supposed find this episode’s premise is based on. Tinker is a specimen that was found in South Dakota in the summer of 1998 (link). Apparently it is 7-7.5 meters long, but had teeth that were shaped like those of adults (no, I don’t think this really proves “Nanotyrannus” is a thing). The specimen displays healed rib pathologies (Garton, 2018). I can’t find anything more on it, though, this specimen seems to be relatively obscure.
• ”…what animal could have taken on and killed this young T. rex?”
  
  Uhh, a lot of things, if it was young.
• Lol, “Cretaceous: 136 to 55 mya”. Ten million years off there.
• ”over 3,000 pounds per square inch”. Not a unit of force. If you mean pounds of force, it’s WAAAAYYYY more powerful than that.
• ”No other creature, before or after, has had spikes designed like these.”
  
  Uhh…there were/are plenty of other predators with robust, spike-like teeth. Granted, not all of them were/are necessarily doing the same heavy duty bone-crushing that tyrannosaurids did, but there were other giant predators with this basic tooth shape. Giant crocodilians (Purussaurus most of all), giant pliosaurs (some even had cutting edges on their teeth), and the giant raptorial sperm whales. The largest of the latter even had teeth that were just as long and much thicker-> (undoubtedly because they were much larger animals than T. rex).
• Septic bite theory and the Komodo dragon are brought up. Komodo dragons having a septic bite is, of course, outdated. But what about tyrannosaur teeth getting ribbons of rotting meat fibers trapped between their denticles? That is indeed true. There is, in fact, a paper which experimentally demonstrated meat fibers getting stuck between the cellae between tyrannosaur denticles, and that they were actually hard to dislodge (Abler, 1992).
  
  Could this alone (completely ignoring the erroneous Komodo dragon comparison) help make a tyrannosaur’s bite infectious? We have evidence of bite wounds caused by theropods becoming infected and causing osteomyelitis. A couple authors even suggested that large theropod facial wounds only show partial healing because they would escape the fight, heal to an extent, but die of infection shortly afterwards (Tanke & Currie, 1998).
  
  But really, any animal’s bite could potentially become infected, potentially having a high risk of infection. Some might even do things that may make their bites more likely to be infectious. For instance, crocodilians have mouth flora that might actually be from their previous prey’s feces, and their bites have a high risk of infection (Thomas & Brook, 2014).
  
  So then, infection from a tyrannosaur bite. A possibility? Absolutely. High risk? Don’t know (maybe the meat fibers getting trapped and rotting could increase risk?). An additional weapon that was special to it? Uhhh…not really.
• I think it’s time for me to mention that the juvenile T. rex in this program look identical to the adults, when they really would have been a lot slimmer, leggier, and with more gracile skulls and more blade-like teeth (also seemingly larger forelimbs for their size).
• They use their Deinonychus model to depict dromaeosaurs living in the late Maastrichtian environment. I hope they’re not suggesting Deinonychus was alive at that time.
• And the killer is revealed to be…Nanotyrannus a juvenile T. rex!!!
  
  I mean, that’s not unprecedented in the fossil record. The specimen Jane has pathologies from the teeth, and even claws of other young tyrannosaurids (Peterson et al., 2009; Rothschild, 2013).
• Tooth shape is brought up as an argument for "Nanotyrannus" being distinct. The teeth just went from ziphodont to incrassate when the animal (Tyrannosaurus) got older.
• So of course, the program sides with the pro-Nanotyrannus camp. They do have Thomas R. Holtz talk at one point, where he says it’s almost certainly a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, but then emphasize some strange differences in brain morphology that he points out.
• …Seriously? Their explanation for the absence of bite marks on the juvie rex is that “Nanotyrannus” didn’t have a bone-crushing bite??
  
  Well that’s a weak argument. In addition to the evidence I cited above, we also recently discovered juvenile Tyrannosaurus bite marks on an Edmontosaurus tail vertebra (Peterson et al., 2021). Hell, any bite mark produced by a ziphodont-toothed theropod shows how weak this explanation is.
  
  JFC is right that “Nanotyrannus” (juvenile Tyrannosaurus) didn’t have the same bone-shattering bite that adult Tyrannosaurus had, but this argument is complete hogwash.
• Dinosaur George notes that this juvie rex was relatively complete (which, as far as I can tell, is true). He suggests that if the juvie rex was scavenged upon, then we’d expect there to have been less remains found due to being fed upon (or at least the skeleton becoming torn up and disarticulated).
  
  …Except this flies in the face of JFC’s argument that “Nanotyrannus” wasn’t biting into bone like adult Tyrannosaurus were. So by this show’s own logic, a scavenging “Nanotyrannus” would just completely avoid the bone. Which isn’t entirely true, as I’ve just explained, but if you needed an example of JFC being inconsistent, here you go.
• The question is asked as to why a “Nanotyrannus” would kill a juvenile rex but not eat it, and DG suggests it may have been interrupted by something else. It’s not until later that DG imagines the “Nanotyrannus” to be motivated by getting rid of competition.
• The talking head scientists tell us how a “Nanotyrannus” would have been very similar to a juvenile Tyrannosaurus in build (no points for guessing why…). The program directly contradicts this with a juvie rex model that’s literally identical to their adult model in everything but size. So yeah creature386, you were definitely right about this show directly contradicting itself.
• ”Nanotyrannosaurus” rofl.
• ”With completely different tooth design, these two dinosaurs may have used them differently. There is no doubt that each were effective weapons. But which would be more deadly in combat?”
  
  
  (Image source)
  
  Gee, I wonder…
• Fight time.
  
  The Tyrannosaurus couple goes to hunt, leaving their young unguarded. But if they’re at an age where they match the known “Nanotyrannus” specimens in size, they could just fend for themselves, really. Hell, they’d be filling in the medium-sized carnivore niche of that ecosystem.
• ”They’re too young to have ever seen a Nanotyrannus”
  
  They’re too young to have ever seen another teenage rex?
• ”These young tyrannosaurs have a special defensive mechanism: a mouth full of bacteria.”
  
  Or, really, their teeth and claws, which are literally the same as those of “Nanotyrannus” because they’re literally the same animal.
• When one of the juvenile rexes charges, the “Nanotyrannus” knocks it down with a headbutt. I’m actually now convinced that large adult tyrannosaurids could deliver close-ranged headbutts with the keratinous bosses or hornlets over their eyes (possibly also the low snout ridges), kind of like giraffes striking each other with their short, blunt horns. But a juvenile T. rex has a skull that, in my opinion, is too gracile for that.
• Then the “Nanotyrannus” picks the young rex up, then rag-dolls it. Not really sure the skull and teeth are suited for that (they seem much better suited to delivering slicing bites), but okay. But then it’s also stupid enough to think that this would somehow be enough to kill the young rex.
• ”The lone juvenile doesn’t stand a chance.”
  
  What? JFC, you established earlier how similar and evenly matched the two would be (the real reason being that they’re the same animal). If anyone didn’t stand a chance during this fight, it’s the “Nanotyrannus”; it’s literally two against one.
• The second young rex is back in commission and bites the leg of “Nanotyrannus”. Dinosaur George says ”…if that wound becomes infected, it could end his life.”
  
  Well, an infection’s not going to set in during a relatively short fight (this is also why I never really understood why people bring up infectious wounds as an argument in a vs debate). The real reason why this is a problem is because the juvenile T. rex is armed with long slicing teeth and a surprisingly powerful bite. That would easily sever tendons and muscles, even more easily on a slender, cursorial leg. The “Nanotyrannus” should have had its leg shredded and disabled, pretty much giving the win to the two resident young rexes.
• But nope. The invader clamps down on its attackers neck, crushes the spinal cord, then stomps on its head.
  
  First, if that bite damaged the spinal cord, the young rex should have been paralyzed, not squirming on the ground after it gets thrown down. Second, the “Nanotyrannus” is seen biting and holding onto the struggling young rex. A more realistic depiction would be it biting and powerfully ripping back, since the skull and teeth seem a lot more designed for that.
• After killing the young rex the “Nanotyrannus” lets out an obligatory victory roar and goes after the other rex. It literally collides into it with its head and knocks it down, which I’ve already explained why I don’t think it would do that.
• The mother T. rex comes back. The fact that only the mother comes back suggests to me the T. rex couple has no problem with having only one parent out there hunting. If that’s the case…couldn’t one of the parents have just stayed in the nesting area to guard their offspring and prevented any of this from happening in the first place?!?!
• ”…she’s three times bigger.”
  
  More like six or seven times bigger, by this program’s own admission (JFC lists “Nanotyrannus” at about a ton, and an adult T. rex at 6 or 7 tons). This is not a fight, and the “Nanotyrannus” is f*cking stupid for staying in the fight (I think Dinosaur George even said earlier that it wouldn’t attack if an adult was present, so…).
• As DG is explaining a scenario where the “Nanotyrannus” can win this fight, the mother rex grabs its front section with her mouth. I don’t understand why she doesn’t just end the fight there by just crunching down a little harder…
• One thing I didn’t notice until now is that a later shot shows the mother rex having scratch marks on her jowls (when I first watched this years ago, it definitely wasn’t in 1080 p). I just realized that as it was being held in the mother rex’s jaws, the “Nanotyrannus” ended up raking her face with its foot claws as it was struggling. Huh.
• ”…using the bite force of 1,000 pounds per square inch…”
  
  That’s pretty much the same figure JFC claimed for the bite strength of “Nanotyrannus” (“nearly half a ton of pressure”). For an “awesomebro” dinosaur documentary, it’s weird how severely they underestimate the jaw power of an adult Tyrannosaurus here (ignoring their use of psi). I’m pretty sure the adult rex could just bite the “Nanotyrannus” in half.
• Then the mother rips up the invading tyrannosaur’s body with her foot claws and leaves it for display for any other “Nanotyrannus” as a warning to not invade, like she’s a medieval executioner or something leaving the corpses of thieves hanging on gallows or the heads and limbs of traitors on display.

Final verdict:
I’m pretty sure this is up there as the most one-sided match in this entire program (except maybe the Edmontosaurus vs the pack of puny Dromaeosaurus). It’s literally (and I mean literally) T. rex vs teenage T. rex. creature386 , what award do you think this deserves? Vlad Tepes award?

Aside from this, “Nanotyrannus” was always contentious, and is now generally agreed to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus (with a few notable dissenters). This was meant to be the first interspecific matchup on the program, but it really isn’t. The result is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus fighting against another juvenile Tyrannosaurus, possibly in a case of intraspecific competition. That’s just as, if not more lame than the Majungasaurus fight from the previous episode.

Is there a way to improve upon this episode? Maybe. I think you could improve upon this by having a large pack of juvenile Tyrannosaurus in a bout with a single adult. That way the episode could show the different ecological niches Tyrannosaurus filled throughout its lifetime, and show us a scenario where the two might come into competition with each other, despite their morphological differences. Now, is there any direct fossil evidence of this? Not to my knowledge, but I think by now you see just how much reaching JFC has to do to get us a fight scenario, so they might as well have just made up a hypothetical, but plausible scenario (I think this is a problem with JFC in general).

Or better yet, just pit T. rex against a single animal that could actually give it a serious fight.

[creature386]

AHAHAHAHAHA, this was beautiful. Especially that picture with Jane and Sue.

Nov 5, 2021 22:10:12 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

creature386 , what award do you think this deserves? Vlad Tepes award?

The way I see it, this episode is practically an onion of bullsh*t (to borrow that excellent metaphor from AnticitizenX - the text is clickable). If you peel off one layer of wrongness and think you're done, you discover another layer underneath that's every bit as silly as the last.

Let's say the outer layer is how, conceptually, this matchup is just plain stupid as they're literally the same animal. Let's just say you ignore that to see what else the episode has to offer. Then, you have to offer with the fact that the episode is a mismatch no matter how you look at (either you have the teenager vs adult problem or the two vs one; it doesn't matter). But even if you concede that, you get to the third layer: Almost all the information presented is wrong. When I was younger, I thought presenting infectious-bite as some T. rex specific superweapon was the worst the episode did, but given your rundown, it's small potatoes compared to everything else. But even ignoring that, you get to the fourth layer where the information they present is not even internally consistent.

Or we could just borrow RationalWiki's term fractal wrongness:

Fractal wrongness is the state of being wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. That is, from a distance, a fractally wrong person's worldview is incorrect; and furthermore, if you zoom in on any small part of that person's worldview, that part is just as wrong as the whole worldview.

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fractal_wrongness

So, yeah, this episode is for all intents and purposes a crime against humanity and the Count Vlad Tepes Award For Excellence is appropriate.

[Infinity Blade]

Nov 6, 2021 2:13:34 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Let's say the outer layer is how, conceptually, this matchup is just plain stupid as they're literally the same animal. Let's just say you ignore that to see what else the episode has to offer. Then, you have to offer with the fact that the episode is a mismatch no matter how you look at (either you have the teenager vs adult problem or the two vs one; it doesn't matter). But even if you concede that, you get to the third layer: Almost all the information presented is wrong. When I was younger, I thought presenting infectious-bite as some T. rex specific superweapon was the worst the episode did, but given your rundown, it's small potatoes compared to everything else. But even ignoring that, you get to the fourth layer where the information they present is not even internally consistent.

No wonder this episode gave me a headache. And that's not even getting into whether or not the actual fossil evidence it was based on actually points to a fight or not...

I've heard of fractal wrongness before, but I didn't quite understand it until I had to deal with it while reviewing this episode, and you pointed it out to me.

[Infinity Blade]

Gang Killers


Screenshot from Jurassic Fight Club.

• I don’t think there’s any better way to start this episode’s review by going over the Deinonychus (and general dromaeosaurid) model.
  
  Perhaps the most obvious thing is that it needs feathers. I believe the creators of JFC said that the raptors’ nakedness was due to budget constraints (i.e. it taking time and money to render feathers). I think long ago this would have been a valid excuse, but nowadays not so much; this Tweet-> by Trey the Explainer perfectly sums up the problem with this excuse for modern works. Given that JFC had no problem animating mammals with fur (see “Ice Age Monsters”), I hesitate to let it completely off the hook for this one.
  
  Then obviously there’s the pronated hands, which is just a general issue with all of their theropods. Lastly, the head seems to be based on an outdated skull reconstruction, judging from its shape. The real skull of Deinonychus seems to have been significantly more elongated (Scott Hartman’s reconstruction->).
• Then there’s the whole pack-hunting deal (keep in mind the narrator calls this “coordinated” early in the episode too).
  
  So, a recent study that examined the Deinonychus teeth found that small (juvenile) and adult (large) teeth showed differences in their isotope signatures. These authors found that adult teeth were more depleted in ¹³C, while juvenile teeth had more ample amounts of it, characteristic of dietary shifts seen in modern asocial reptiles. This means that young and adult Deinonychus had different diets, and that Deinonychus was not living in complex families/packs like some pack-hunting mammalian predators (Frederickson et al., 2020).
  
  What this doesn’t necessarily rule out, however, is the possibility that adults could have formed temporary groups to attack prey (which crocodilians do). It also does not rule out complex social hunting in other dromaeosaurid species.
  
  Interestingly, this study found that mature Deinonychus isotope signatures were still similar to those of Tenontosaurus, indicating that it was indeed hunting the ornithopod. This makes sense, as Tenontosaurus was the Cloverly and Antlers formations’ dominant terrestrial herbivore. I could easily see it hunting juveniles, whose isotope signatures were not statistically significant from those of adults (although, this is based on teeth from only two specimens).
  
  On less frequent occasions, I even think it’s possible for Deinonychus to take on adults. Looking at how they compare visually (size comparison by Matt Dempsey->), I could see Deinonychus jumping or latching onto the ornithopod and just staying on while its foot claws sank/raked deeper, the clawed forelimbs held on or raked, and while the mouth basically sawed away at the flesh until Tenontosaurus bled to death. It would be a very difficult hunt for sure, and not something I think Deinonychus would successfully pull off more times than not (so you know who I think wins in a 1v1 more often times than not), but…possible.
  
  So yeah, Deinonychus was not living in complex social packs like some modern mammalian pack hunters, but I believe still a nasty enough S.O.B. to take Tenontosaurus down by itself once in a while…which would actually make me respect it even more.
• ”…this dinosaur could slice you open while he’s hanging on to you.”
  
  Well, to be fair, it could. It just wouldn’t be the primary function, at least not when hunting prey smaller than itself (Fowler et al., 2011). When hunting larger prey (equal sized or larger), I think the foot claws would retain their function of helping dromaeosaurids hold onto the prey. But of course, that doesn’t mean the claws couldn’t still cause horrific damage, whether through stabbing or cutting (for analogy->)...
• Given what I just said above about Deinonychus social behavior (or lack thereof), the Deinonychus found together could represent either a short-term group that gathered for a hunt or solitary individuals that were attracted to the same site.
• Deinonychus was not 5 feet tall (see the size comparison I linked to). At the hip, theropods were proportionately much shorter than humans being horizontally slung bipeds, not vertically-oriented like us. Body mass of 150 lbs (68 kg) is about right, though.
• The teeth of Deinonychus and their function are given a bit of attention. Given the fame of the raptor sickle claw, I don’t think most people realize just how big the head and jaws of Deinonychus are.
  
  
  
  Seriously, that skull is 41 cm long, and the whole jawline makes up the vast majority of that length. You can see how it compares to mammalian predators roughly in this weight range; just the length of the tooth row rivals the condylobasal length of these carnivoran skulls. And the long jaw means a big bite, which means larger wounds when it cuts and slices with those ziphodont teeth.
• Night vision in Deinonychus is discussed, which I actually think is an interesting conversation to be had. There is work that looked at the proportions of the sclerotic rings and orbital bones of various dinosaurs. This study looked at three dromaeosaurids – Sinornithosaurus, Microraptor, and Velociraptor – and found that the former was cathemeral, while the latter two were nocturnal (Schmitz & Motani, 2011). So nocturnality is an interesting possibility to consider in Deinonychus.
• Now we meet the opposition: Tenontosaurus. It’s claimed to be 8 feet tall and to have weighed in excess of a tonne.
  
  Which is another thing. Sometimes you might see Tenontosaurus depicted as this elephantine behemoth fighting raptors that were just downright puny compared to itself. But while Tenontosaurus was big, it wasn’t that big. In his Princeton Field Guide, Greg Paul estimates T. tilletti (the type species) at 600 kg, while T. dossi was indeed about a tonne (Paul, 2016). It certainly wasn’t 8 feet tall. That would make T. tilletti about eight, or perhaps even ten times heavier than Deinonychus (the latter, though, assumes 60 kg for Deinonychus, which I believe is very conservative).
• In terms of inaccuracies, the Tenontosaurus forefeet are incorrect (although to be fair, a redescription of this dinosaur’s manus only recently came out), and the nails tipping the toes on its hind feet are too hoof-like.
• ”It moved at a snail’s pace”
  
  Why do you think that? It’s not that big and not that much of a lumbering slowpoke.
• Brain to body size is used as a metric of intelligence here. Which…no, just no.
• Dinosaur George thinks the four broken Deinonychus individuals were most likely either crushed by the tail or under the weight of Tenontosaurus. Former makes sense, latter not as much. I mean, the latter would turn a whole Deinonychus into a pancake.
• Okay, I just noticed something weird about the Tenontosaurus model. The upper jaw has the upper beak, but the lower jaw seems to be a fleshy, lip-like structure (jump over to 20:11 just to see what I’m talking about). Am I seeing things?
• Phil Currie talks about how a Tenontosaurus might physically defend itself. And I agree.
  
  
  
  That tail was massive and muscular, which could deliver a powerful blunt force blow. The hind feet actually had these surprisingly long, sharp claws, which could be used to deliver a nasty kick. So the back end of Tenontosaurus was actually well protected.
  
  But additionally, Tenontosaurus retains many anatomical features in its manus associated with grasping (alongside some adaptations for weight bearing). The first and second manual digits also ended in a claw-like ungual (Hunt, 2021). An earlier paper on the osteology of Tenontosaurus also suggested the ability to grasp with the manus (although, it’s not as up to date) (Tennant, 2013). It suggested that, among other functions, this would have allowed Tenontosaurus to clasp predators. Although Tenontosaurus had shortened phalanges (which I think would have reduced grasping ability to some extent) and claws only on the first two digits, I still think it’s possible for Tenontosaurus to sort of grab a much smaller Deinonychus and easily overpower/pin it. Plus I haven’t even considered the possibility that Tenontosaurus could just grab a Deinonychus with its beak and thrash/ragdoll it (there’s a video where a horse does just that to a sheep).
• For this fight I’m going to assume that this is a short-term pack of otherwise asocial Deinonychus that recently formed in order to take down a Tenontosaurus. It’s the only way I can watch this without resorting to suspension of disbelief, and because such behavior hasn’t been ruled out yet.
• The Deinonychus gang picks the weakest member of the herd, which is reasonable.
• ”…they’re built like ninjas.”
  
  …
• ”Tenontosaurus is a very heavy, slow, lumbering animal.”
  
  Again, Tenontosaurus tilletti is only about as big as a horse. This isn’t a freaking elephant we’re talking about here.
• As I’ve alluded to above, pretty much anything on this Tenontosaurus can be used as a weapon against a Deinonychus, given how much larger it is in comparison. It could crush one under its forefeet, pick one up with its mouth and thrash it, kick one with its hind feet, and club one with its enormous tail (the only thing it’s actually seen using as a weapon in this fight).
• ”He still has a very light, bird-like skeletal structure.”
  Ah yes, the theropod weak bone meme.
  
  This annoying, stupid myth has been debunked so many times over the years that I’m just going to drop a link to a post addressing it. A tail blow from Tenontosaurus would indeed turn a Deinonychus to mush, but not because raptors have weaker than usual bones. They did not, and neither do birds.
  
  theworldofanimals.proboards.com/post/59435
• By this point, one of the Deinonychus has already been killed by a tail swipe. I can’t really tell how many Deinonychus are in this fight, but if there are relatively few, then this could already significantly lower their chances of taking down the Tenontosaurus.
• Another thing I want to note is that at one point, the Tenontosaurus jumps and takes a wide swing with its tail while airborne (link->). No doubt that it looks awesome. But could 600 kg Tenontosaurus tilletti do this? Maybe? Could 1,000 kg Tenontosaurus dossi do it? I have my doubts.
• ”His hand claws and foot claws can be broken pretty easily in combat.”
  What???
• Dinosaur George mentions a “slash and dash” tactic where a raptor rushes in, slashes with its finger claws to inflict as much damage as it can, and then dash away to safety. While dromaeosaurid finger claws could certainly cause lacerations with enough force, the primary purpose of virtually all claws is not to lacerate. Cat claws, for instance, are primarily there to grip, even if they can deliver some nasty lacerations.
• You know what I think would be a more practical tactic for all these raptors? Just latch onto the Tenontosaurus, hold on with all hand and foot claws (the latter of which would be sunk deep and continually stabbing into the ornithopod the more it struggled), and then bite and cut away with the serrated teeth. Raking with the manual and pedal claws (as in popular stereotype) is optional. They don’t even need to be coordinating like wolves to do this.
• The Deinonychus lose another participant of their mob, so now I have really no idea how many are still left.
• Dinosaur George tells us that the Tenontosaurus, despite being in a place where there’s not much room to use its bulk and tail, still kills four more raptors. Indeed, we see it smashing one raptor into a rock and another onto the ground. Again, just how many raptors are attacking this thing?
• ”The alpha male raptor grabs the prey by the throat and begins to crush its windpipe.”
  
  Not something I’d imagine Deinonychus would do. The bite was not particularly strong like a big cat’s. More likely it would bite and pull back to tear into the throat.

Final verdict:
Raptor Attack: the 44 Minute Program.

I like nuance. And I hope I made all the nuances regarding dromaeosaurids and predation clear in this review. Although the raptor stereotype is just that, a stereotype, that doesn’t mean I think there’s no truth to it. Could a raptor severely wound or kill another animal by slashing with its claws? It could, it just isn’t their primary function. Could raptors kill prey larger than themselves? I certainly think so (even alone), but like virtually every predator that ever existed, they would prefer to hunt prey that is smaller and easier to kill. Did raptors hunt in groups? That probably depends on the species. If Deinonychus ever formed groups just to kill prey together, it would have been asocial otherwise. But what’s true for Deinonychus doesn’t necessarily hold true for other dromaeosaurids. After all, lions hunt prey cooperatively, but literally every other extant cat is a mostly solitary hunter.

Could Deinonychus kill an adult Tenontosaurus, even alone? I think it’s possible (especially if we’re talking about the smaller T. tilletti), but it would definitely not be an easy task. Size-wise, I think it would be like a leopard taking on an adult bull eland: it’s happened before, but it doesn’t seem to be a regular occurrence. In a straight up fight, the winner is obviously the much bigger Tenontosaurus.

But just you wait: the penultimate episode of JFC is Raptor Attack 2: Electric Boogaloo. And it’s just inexcusable.

[creature386]

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Then there’s the whole pack-hunting deal (keep in mind the narrator calls this “coordinated” early in the episode too).
  
  So, a recent study that examined the Deinonychus teeth found that small (juvenile) and adult (large) teeth showed differences in their isotope signatures. These authors found that adult teeth were more depleted in ¹³C, while juvenile teeth had more ample amounts of it, characteristic of dietary shifts seen in modern asocial reptiles. This means that young and adult Deinonychus had different diets, and that Deinonychus was not living in complex families/packs like some pack-hunting mammalian predators (Frederickson et al., 2020).
  
  What this doesn’t necessarily rule out, however, is the possibility that adults could have formed temporary groups to attack prey (which crocodilians do). It also does not rule out complex social hunting in other dromaeosaurid species.

Funny, considering how the almost universal portrayal of dromaeosaurids as pack hunters is largely based on Deinonychus (although some scant evidence from other taxa might still salvage that idea).

Ironically enough, a non-coordinated attack would actually make this episode more logical. I mean, the scenario of JFC is supposed to be at least somewhat representative. Considering the laughably high body count the Tenontosaurus caused (which was supposedly a weakened individual), it's clear that the few survivors could have never killed a second one. If it was a temporary pack, however, that at least makes slightly more sense (although then the question arises why they would attack an adult at all).

That being said, considering the Nanotyrannus debacle from last episode, I just don't believe it's reasonable to expect from JFC to even consider that juvenile and adult theropods might be different.

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Now we meet the opposition: Tenontosaurus. It’s claimed to be 8 feet tall and to have weighed in excess of a tonne.
  
  Which is another thing. Sometimes you might see Tenontosaurus depicted as this elephantine behemoth fighting raptors that were just downright puny compared to itself. But while Tenontosaurus was big, it wasn’t that big. In his Princeton Field Guide, Greg Paul estimates T. tilletti (the type species) at 600 kg, while T. dossi was indeed about a tonne (Paul, 2016). It certainly wasn’t 8 feet tall. That would make T. tilletti about eight, or perhaps even ten times heavier than Deinonychus (the latter, though, assumes 60 kg for Deinonychus, which I believe is very conservative).

As a kid, I mostly believed them, but even then, I found the Elefanontosaurus slightly weird. Wasn't that supposed to be a regular prey item? But well, it's a dinosaur. Depicting it as more eland-sized might have been bad for the ratings.

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• ”…they’re built like ninjas.”
  
  …

"They're fragile and bird-like, but they're also built like specially trained hairless monkeys, believe us!"

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• By this point, one of the Deinonychus has already been killed by a tail swipe. I can’t really tell how many Deinonychus are in this fight, but if there are relatively few, then this could already significantly lower their chances of taking down the Tenontosaurus.

There were nine. I counted them when I was small, though I'm not sure if I got that right. But even, basically 75%-or-so of them died and they never changed their behavior. I especially like how the Tenontosaurus just killed four of them off-screen and the show treated it like no big deal.

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• ”The alpha male raptor grabs the prey by the throat and begins to crush its windpipe.

The alpha male thing is another one of those elements that make more sense when we consider this as a casual mob rather than a wolf-like family. Points for JFC, I guess.

Nov 11, 2021 2:44:44 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

But just you wait: the penultimate episode of JFC is Raptor Attack 2: Electric Boogaloo. And it’s just inexcusable.

Oh boy, my body is already ready for that. That one's gonna need an award, but it'll be up to you to decide, naturally.

[Supercommunist]

In regards to deinoychus killing tenontos by themselves:

Lone wolves are known to kill moose.

Peterson's team has seen a single wolf kill a moose 11 times, which weakens the notion that wolves hunt in packs because of the difficulty of killing a moose without help. Vucetich, Peterson and Waite used the years of data from the Isle Royale wolf study to calculate that-in terms of energy burned and meat gained-wolves would do best hunting in pairs.p

www.sitnews.us/0604news/061206/061204_ak_science.html

^I think the source overstates how often wolves could pull that off, but I'd consider a deinoychus much better armed than a wolf given how huges its skull is, its serrated teeth. and its ability to latch onto an animal's back like eagle.

A tenontosaurus is probably better equipped to defend itself from much smaller predators than a moose, given that its tail has huge reach but I'd wager that an ambitious deinoychus has a decent chance of bringing down an adult tenontosaurus provided it got a good ambush off.

[Infinity Blade]

Nov 12, 2021 22:51:00 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Funny, considering how the almost universal portrayal of dromaeosaurids as pack hunters is largely based on Deinonychus (although some scant evidence from other taxa might still salvage that idea).

Yeah, the best evidence really comes from less well-known evidence. There was a set of dromaeosaurid trackways described in Shandong back in 2008. They were regularly spaced, similar in size (we're talking Achillobator-sized indiviuals, judging from their size) non-overlapping, and parallel, suggesting they were moving together in a coherent group. It can't be ruled out that whoever these trackmakers were were cooperative hunters (Li et al., 2008). There are also didactyl paravian tracks from the Middle Jurassic of Africa, showing at least two individuals walking together in the same direction (Mudroch et al., 2011). Lastly, there is the Utahraptor block with what appears to be multiple individuals of different ages together; they may or may not have died together.

So there is some evidence suggesting some dromaeosaurids could be gregarious (and thus likely hunt together), the Deinonychus fossils just aren't among it.

Nov 12, 2021 22:51:00 GMT 5 creature386 said:

"They're fragile and bird-like, but they're also built like specially trained hairless monkeys, believe us!"

XD

Nov 12, 2021 22:51:00 GMT 5 creature386 said:

There were nine. I counted them when I was small, though I'm not sure if I got that right. But even, basically 75%-or-so of them died and they never changed their behavior. I especially like how the Tenontosaurus just killed four of them off-screen and the show treated it like no big deal.

Wow, just wow.

Nov 13, 2021 0:54:10 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

^I think the source overstates how often wolves could pull that off, but I'd consider a deinoychus much better armed than a wolf given how huges its skull is, its serrated teeth. and its ability to latch onto an animal's back like eagle.

A tenontosaurus is probably better equipped to defend itself from much smaller predators than a moose, given that its tail has huge reach but I'd wager that an ambitious deinoychus has a decent chance of bringing down an adult tenontosaurus provided it got a good ambush off.

I imagine a Deinonychus leaping onto the Tenontosaurus' flanks, back, or hips and attacking it from there with its talons and teeth, kind of like a Haast's eagle attacking a moa.

[Infinity Blade]

Bloodiest Battle


Screenshot from Jurassic Fight Club.

• ”Increasing oxygen levels allowed dinosaurs to grow taller than a six-story building.”
  
  I think I already addressed Mesozoic oxygen levels in a previous review.
• Wait a minute, SCOTT HARTMAN was in this show!?!? Man, it feels so weird to see him without glasses and facial hair like he has now.
  
  But anyway, he explains different hypotheses for the function of Stegosaurus’ dorsal plates (he apparently favors the sexual display hypothesis). Even now it looks like multiple different hypotheses for stegosaur plate function are still possible, whether it’s display, thermoregulation, defense, or even multiple functions. What we do know now is that they would have been covered in a keratinous sheath (Christiansen & Tschopp, 2010).
• Okay, so the Stegosaurus model. The front feet aren’t quite the elephant feet we often see large herbivorous dinosaurs being depicted with. Instead all five toes are seen bearing the animal’s weight and bearing claws/nails. The back feet also have four toes bearing weight, each having a nail.
  
  This is what stegosaur feet should look like.
  
  © @ Andorou-Khan
  
  I also feel like the legs are too crouched. The legs were columnar and graviportal like an elephant’s. The neck could use some length too.
• Stegosaurus certainly was a relatively slow dinosaur, but I don’t think it would be due to the front legs being longer than the rear. If the scapulae could swing back and forth as the forelimbs moved (and I see no reason to think they couldn’t, it’s not like they had massive clavicles preventing this), this would effectively increase the forelimb length. And in Stegosaurus, this would effectively make the forelimbs “equal” in length to the hindlimbs.
  
  
  © @ Scott Hartman
  
  What’s the real reason why Stegosaurus was slow? Because again, it’s got columnar, graviportal legs like an elephant.
• Jim Kirkland explains that Stegosaurus could pivot quickly to face predators with its tail. He’s right. Stegosaurs had massive deltoid muscles, which would have allowed for powerful and quick sideways pushes with its forelimbs (Bakker, 1986).
• ”cone-shaped hell razors”
  
  Just say thagomizer.
• There were multiple Camarasaurus species, but the one found in the Cleveland Lloyd quarry is Camarasaurus lentus. It’s not the biggest species (that would be Camarasaurus supremus), but it would still weigh somewhere on the order of 15 tonnes (Paul, 2016).
• Everyone here then talks about how much of a brute Camarasaurus would have been in a fight. So I’m going to take the time to add to this while simultaneously pointing out an anatomical inaccuracy in JFC’s Camarasaurus model.
  
  The feet have tiny nails on them. In reality, sauropods tended to have one inward-facing claw on their forefeet (that was held off the ground but could swivel down) and three large, curved claws on their hindfeet. Getting stomped and kicked by your typical sauropod wouldn’t just crush you, those claws would puncture and rip into you.
• When JFC introduces Ceratosaurus, there’s a closeup of its nasal horn->. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it’s actually thicker than I thought it was (at least from looking at illustrations). Maybe it’s just the angle, but I always had the impression it was a super thin, blade-like structure. With keratin it would be even thicker, though how much thicker depends on the sheath’s thickness.
• The narrator says something interesting about how Ceratosaurus got its name. It’s not from the hornlets above its eyes, but for the nasal horn. In fact, you can find some horribly inaccurate paleoart and other depictions of Ceratosaurus where only the nasal horn is noticeable. I always thought the name referred to both of these structures (the orbital hornlets and nasal horn), but later suspected it was just the nasal horn that gave it is name.
• ”He’s got the most wicked looking teeth of any predator that ever walked the Earth.”
  
  Saber-toothed synapsid predators might not concur. Although, for a predatory dinosaur, yes, Ceratosaurus does have some nasty chompers.
• Dinosaur George does say something about its tooth function. The lower teeth, he says, were a little stubbier and stronger and acted as anchors, while the longer upper teeth were the real meat slicers.
  
  This is actually something Greg Paul once said about predatory dinosaur teeth in general in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World (though, that means it wouldn’t be unique to Ceratosaurus).
  
• Ceratosaurus is essentially portrayed as a hit-and-run type of predator, where it quickly rushes in, takes a bite, and retreats (rinse and repeat?).
  
  It is true that Ceratosaurus’ skull and neck were well suited for rapid slashing strikes when engaging with large prey (Snively & Russell, 2007). However, I’m not sure I agree with the hit-and-run tactics ascribed to it here. Ceratosaurus was not especially cursorial for a predatory dinosaur, given its relatively short, stout legs. It also has a torso that, while probably not especially wide, was quite deep. There is evidence that the bite of Ceratosaurus was also quite powerful, and that the manus still retained a primary (if reduced) grasping function (see this post->). It probably helps that Ceratosaurus has a pretty long scapula for the attachment of powerful shoulder muscles (skeletal by Scott Hartman->). A more recent biomechanical analysis of the mandible of Ceratosaurus found that it experienced high stresses during biting (Rowe & Snively, 2021), but the specimen examined (the holotype of Ceratosaurus) was not a particularly large individual, and could even be argued to be an immature animal (Britt et al., 2000; Carrano & Sampson, 2008).
  
  So overall, Ceratosaurus appears to have been a pretty powerful animal in its own right, not the relatively weak hit-and-run predator JFC portrays it as (maybe smaller specimens, like the Ceratosaurus nasicornis holotype, fit this description better).
• JFC claims that Ceratosaurus can walk across the upper crust of the superficially dry mud due to its long and splayed toes. While that certainly helps, I think one disadvantage is that these theropods would exert more pressure on each foot than their quadrupedal prey, as they bear all their weight on two legs instead of four. So I’m not 100% certain that Ceratosaurus would be able to walk over this surface without getting stuck itself. The larger Allosaurus would be at even greater risk.
• ”We now know that by the Late Jurassic, Ceratosaurus was fast becoming extinct, desperate for easy prey.”
  
  What do you mean by the Late Jurassic? Ceratosaurus was restricted to the Late Jurassic, are you saying it was rapidly going extinct for its entire existence? LOL
• Allosaurus is indeed the most common dinosaur found in CLDQ (comprising 66% of the bones found there). JFC’s size figure for Allosaurus (38 feet long and 4 tons) is probably more fitting of the really large allosaurids we find in the younger layers of the Morrison Formation (which may or may not be referable to Allosaurus itself).
• JFC goes with the predator trap hypothesis for the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The program makes mention of recovered bones that were bitten and crushed. While a high frequency of bitten and crushed bones would indeed point towards the assemblage being a predator trap, most dinosaur bones found in the quarry were not tooth-marked. In fact, only 4% of the bones from CLDQ show evidence of feeding traces; compare this to 50% of bones from Rancho La Brea. Also, while 30% of bones from CLDQ show evidence of crushing, there is no sign of pit wear (i.e. the bones wearing against each other as the sediment became rock) (Peterson et al., 2017).
  
  Also, one interesting study from 2018 compared the population distribution of Allosaurus from CLDQ to that of dire wolves from the La Brea Tar Pits (it even went out of its way to make a biological and ecological comparison between the two predator species; it’s…weird, to say the least). What it found was that the two do not share the same population distribution, but also that the same Rancho La Brea dire wolf population does share the same population distribution when divided into individual pits. This serves as additional evidence against the CLDQ being a predator trap (Reddick, 2018).
  
  So it’s certainly not proven that the predator trap scenario we see depicted in JFC is what happened. In truth there are several hypotheses on what really happened at CLDQ. So…what happened? Watch the last part of this video-> for how multiple different hypotheses might actually have been correct, and give us a more complete picture of what went down.
• It’s funny to me how much of the fight’s plot (especially the initial main events) are spoiled throughout the episode.
• …Oh wait, I see. The fight is happening as the episode goes. Huh. Okay, not what I was expecting, but I guess it makes a bit of sense considering how many animals are featured in this episode. It makes watching the fight a little less enjoyable, though (all this time I thought they saved all the fighting for last).
• Then it’s time for me to point out some issues. First, an Allosaurus can be seen planting its foot on top of the mother Stegosaurus’ neck. Given how elongated Stegosaurus’ neck is and how small its skull is, I’m pretty sure an Allosaurus pressing its weight down on its neck would outright kill it.
• Also, an Allosaurus straight up rams a Ceratosaurus in the flanks with its head. There is no evidence that Allosaurus’ skull was built to headbutt or that its hornlets were built to withstand that kind of impact.
• ”Do they continue their attack on the Stegosaurus, or do they dare take on something as huge as a Camarasaurus?”
  
  Allosaurus 1: What should we do Bob?
  Bob (Allosaurus 2): I mean…there are literally three fresh bodies to eat here, Joe.
  Joe: But one of them is Johnny! That would be cannibalism!
  Bob: Why do you care? You’re an Allosaurus.
  Joe: True…oh, but I wanna kill something!
  Bob: Just step on this other Stegosaurus’ head, then. Come to think of it, why didn’t I do that earlier?
  Joe: But the round-headed, hairless mammals aren’t going to be entertained… (pouts)
  Bob: *sigh Alright, fine. Let’s ask the viewers what we should do.
  (Bob and Joe both break the fourth wall)
  Bob: What should we do?
  (silently wait for a response while staring at the viewer as if this were Dora the Explorer)
  Bob: Okay!
  (both proceed to attack the Camarasaurus and end up f*cking dying after a long battle)
• ”But the Camarasaurus could have been a hundred and fifty years old.”
  
  Uhh…not sure about that.
• Thomas R. Holtz reminds us to not underestimate a sauropod, even if its weapons aren’t as obvious as a theropod’s. He brings up size (of course) and its tail, the latter of which I think would do a lot more damage than some people would think. As in, I think if it hit the head, shoulders, or legs of even a similar-sized animal, it would be a serious blow (even a strike to the ribcage could break ribs).
• ”Their skeletal design prohibits them from lowering their heads to the ground.”
  
  I’m not aware of anything that suggests sauropods, or even just Camarasaurus in particular, from being able to lower their heads to the ground.
• Dinosaur George calls the allosaurs’ decision to abandon the Stegosaurus a “very wise” one due to the danger the Stegosaurus presents with her freed tail.
  
  Seriously, they could just eat the three dead carcasses already lying on the mud if they’re that hungry. I get that the Camarasaurus is a lot more vulnerable than usual since it’s mired in mud, but if the allosaurs must kill something, one of them could literally just step on the Stegosaurus’ head and neck. Hey, they did it to the Ceratosaurus, why not this slender necked, small headed stegosaur?
• The Camarasaurus’ #1 priority is to take their babies out of harm’s way…except that I see no babies accompanying the herd.
• The Allosaurus leap at the Camarasaurus’ flanks as if they were the Deinonychus from the previous episode.
  
  No.
• I noticed a part where one of the allosaurs tries to leap onto the Camarasaurus, only to be body slammed, sent flying at least a few meters back, and then landing on the ground. The body slam has no weight to it, even though Camarasaurus is 15 tonnes and Allosaurus ~2 tonnes. I don’t think the animators understood just how much weight there would realistically be to a collision like that.
• The allosaurs stop for a moment to cool down, and then return to attacking.
  
  Actually, I think that might be realistic. Looking at videos where animals fight, it looks like they will sometimes stop briefly/temporarily without much movement, only to continue fighting on (e.g. I’ve seen a video of a tiger fight where this happened). Though, since JFC fights aren’t structured like actual animal footage, it doesn’t look as realistic to us.
• The Camarasaurus lands a tail blow on one of the Allosaurus. Dinosaur George provides us with a brutal description of the blow driving the humerus of the allosaur deep into its own chest. The momentum of the tail strike actually ends up freeing the front feet of the sauropod.
  
  It looks like the hind feet of the sauropod are still free. The smart thing to do would be for the sauropod to back up a bit and/or turn around so it can walk back onto more stable ground. That way it will not only be safe from the mud, but also be more than a match for the lone Allosaurus.
  
  Oh wait, dinosaurs in this show are too dumb to live, I forgot.
• ”The Allosaurus can’t stop. Its momentum literally drives it directly into the foot of the massive sauropod.”
  
  You mean it’s so stupid that it decides to attack a colossus roughly 6 or 7 times heavier than itself standing up at full height, ready to literally crush it?
• Obligatory “X may have won this fight, but in the ultimate battle for survival, they would all lose” statement.

Final verdict:
Don’t get me wrong now, the scenario thought up here is a really cool one in my humble opinion. Stegosaurus and Camarasaurus getting stuck in a natural trap, attracting hungry predators eager to rip them and each other apart for sustenance: it’s hard not to be enthralled by that. The only problem is, such a scenario is speculative and unproven at best, and improbable at worst. At least from what I’ve read, the predator trap hypothesis for the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry isn’t one of the better supported ones these days. The episode isn’t helped by some of the dinosaurs being idiots, so much so that it’s one of this program’s recurring narratives.

[creature386]

Back when I was younger, I found this episode to be one of the more epic ones. This might be due to the scope of combatants or because I grew up watching this video (link) when it was still online and not just a mirror.

Even as a kid, I was baffled by what went through Bob's and Joe's heads when they decided to give up easy food. Thanks to your transcript of their conversation, I feel enlightened now.

Still, I admit I didn't notice all of the massive stupidies back then, like how the Camarasaurus could have survived had it just put its forelimbs onto solid ground.

[Infinity Blade]

I didn't realize that the Camarasaurus could have permanently freed itself until I rewatched the fight and realized that its hindfeet were still on solid ground. I thought, "There's got to be something it could do other than crush the last Allosaurus and get stuck again, right?". Now that I think about it, even just kicking it with its forefeet would have been enough to deal with the last Allosaurus while still staying free.

[Infinity Blade]

Deep Sea Killers


Screen capture from Jurassic Fight Club.

• JFC is Mesozoic heavy. So the fact that they have episodes that take place in the Cenozoic at all is actually refreshing…even if they’re just as trash as the dinosaur-centric ones.
• When you see Brett-Kent holding up a megalodon tooth with a gashed whale bone, the CGI megalodon model behind him looks so ridiculous. The way its mouth looks and its teeth jut out almost reminds me of a lamprey…
• So, the megalodon here basically looks like a scaled-up great white shark, as is often the case with megalodon reconstructions. These days, people are calling this out more. While this doesn’t mean the great white shark can’t be used at all for reconstruction, using the great white shark alone is problematic due to the fact that both species are likely from different families (Cooper et al. (2020)).
• ”That’s the size of a jumbo jet.”
  
  I’m not a plane expert, and I know there are multiple planes called “jumbo jets”, but let’s assume they’re talking about a Boeing 747. The smallest 747 is 184 feet long (link->), and more typical models are easily over 200 feet long (the 747-8 is 250 feet long; link->).
• DG tells us that megalodon would have ignored puny seals and would have hunted whales, giant squid, and other large sharks. The idea of it hunting giant squid seems…odd to be honest. While megalodon certainly hunted whales, we also have evidence of feeding on seals (like Piscophoca sp.). One individual is represented by a fragmentary right scapula that presumably belonged to a creature comparable in size to the Steller sea lion (Collareta et al., 2017).
• ”Paleontologists believe that megalodon was unequaled in the prehistoric seas.”
  
  It’s funny how three months after these words were uttered on television, the first known remains of Livyatan were discovered, although Livyatan wouldn’t be described until two years later. Livyatan had what appears to be the most formidable set of jaws of any tetrapod that ever lived. As far as we can tell, the only animal ever with a maw equally as formidable was megalodon itself. Though to be fair, exactly what Livyatan ate seems to be up for debate. An isotope analysis on a Livyatan tooth from Chile suggests it wasn’t exclusively macrophagous (i.e. its isotope signature didn’t quite match that of the baleen whales from the same rock unit), although it could have fed on baleen whales at higher latitudes (abstract).
• ”They were wrong.”
  
  Oh. I literally just paused right after they said the previous thing above lol.
  
  Yeah, they were kinda wrong. Just not quite in the way JFC says.
• Of course, what I mean by that is Brygmophyseter’s size is greatly exaggerated (35-40 feet). The real animal was more around 7 meters long. Something I’m sure everyone here knew back when they started out on Carnivora forum 9 or 10 years ago.
  
  This-> is how it compares to an orca. It’s not even a particularly big orca.
• I get that whale cervicals are extremely short, but their skeletal reconstruction of Brygmophyseter doesn’t even have a neck.
• DG claims the teeth of Brygmophyseter are as big as a T. rex’s. Livyatan and the Beaumaris sperm whale actually had teeth closer in length to those of Tyrannosaurus (although, these whales had much thicker teeth than the dinosaur; link->). Livyatan and the Beaumaris sperm whale were obviously much larger animals than T. rex was, and Brygmophyseter is a lot smaller than its giant relatives. So I’m skeptical that Brygmophyseter itself had teeth as big as T. rex’s.
• Sonar is mentioned as a literal weapon by the cast.
  
  Nope. Sonar is not used as a weapon by whales, not for stunning, and certainly not for liquifying other animals (Wilson et al., 2008; Fais, 2016).
• Do…do these whales have nostrils at the front of their snout? What???
• *cue dramatic montage of marine vertebrate skeletons…with marine Mesozoic reptiles that have nothing to do with this episode’s topic*
• Looking at that still shot they keep showing of a pod of oversized Brygmophyseter attacking a megalodon, it looks like they could pass off as Livyatan. I’m just going to say this right now: if something like that happened to a megalodon, it’s d e a d. Of course, Brygmophyseter was way smaller, so in real life it wouldn’t be this bad for the meg.
• ”Well, we can’t possibly know everything that would have occurred…”
  
  DG sums up this entire show…
• ”The T. rex had a bite force of just over three tons”
  
  More like 9.65 metric tons for one of the largest known individuals, actually (Rowe & Snively, 2021). Of course, megalodon (and Livyatan) would have put this to shame.
• ”The shark is certainly more agile.”
  
  Idk how much of an advantage that cartilaginous skeleton is, but uhh…Brygmophyseter is also much smaller than the giant shark.
• Also, where’d they pull these speed estimates from?
• I think I realized another thing that annoys me about JFC.
  
  Anyone: says literally anything.
  JFC: dramatic battle music
• Okay now, on to the battle. The shark ambushes a lone Brygmophyseter and renders it unable to move due to a damaged tail and flippers. The Brygmophyseter sends out a distress signal to its pod members, who then come swimming to action.
  
  Wait, what? If the Brygmophyseter was alone but could have its pod members quickly show up after letting out a sonar signal, couldn’t it have done that much earlier so it wasn’t alone? Why swim alone for a bit, only to call out to its mates after it gets mortally wounded by a gigantic shark?
• ”This guy’s designed to battle giant squid in the deepest parts of the ocean, he can handle his own.”
  
  Well, yes, but was it really hunting squid with those jaw muscles and teeth?
• ”the megalodon’s primitive brain is too slow to react”
  😐
• The fact that this megalodon can take so many bites and rams from this many sperm whales…
• Okay but like, what are my thoughts on how an actual battle between megalodon and Brygmophyseter would go?
  
  To be honest, I’m not sure how much a pod of Brygmophyseter would even want to fight a megalodon in the first place, unless there were an absolute shit ton of Brygmophyseter (which is not what we see in this depiction). True, it was a large, powerful, macroraptorial toothed whale like the modern orca. But you know what happens to orca-sized macroraptorial toothed whales that live with ginormous predators like Otodus megalodon? They end up evolving a completely different life history strategy from toothed whales that are actually apex predators (like orcas). They grow fast and die young, the complete opposite of today’s orcas which grow more slowly and live long lives. The former strategy of “live fast and die young” is suggestive of strong predation pressure on the animals. What could prey on an orca-sized raptorial sperm whale? That’s right…megalodon (and probably also other giant raptorial sperm whales). This is exactly what we see in raptorial physeteroids from Lee Creek (Gilbert et al., 2018). Lo and behold, there’s direct evidence of feeding and probable predation on these same Lee Creek physeteroids (Godfrey et al., 2021).
  
  The point I’m trying to make here is that even these large-bodied raptorial physeteroids would have been mere prey to a colossal shark that far outsized even them, and so I envision this scenario as pretty much a predator-prey scenario. Of course, prey can fight back, but the fact that raptorial sperm whales of this size evolved such a drastically different life history from modern apex predatory orcas as a response to gigantic sharks says a lot.
  
  This is also part of the reason why I think it’s stupid whenever people claim that orcas outcompeted megalodon during the relatively brief period of time when Orcinus lived with O. megalodon.
• Oh, just my luck! They advance this stupid “orcas outcompeted megalodon” hypothesis because the orca is a pack hunter…even though by their own logic raptorial sperm whales should have outcompeted megalodon too, but they clearly don’t think that. Our admin made a long post about megalodon, with references that clearly show why this idea is hogwash. I’ll quote the relevant portion here.
  
  

  Inference # 3 - Members of the genus Orcinus drove Megalodon to extinction
  

  
  

  Following study: Lindberg, D. R., Pyenson, N. D., Estes, J. A., Demaster, D. P., & Doak, D. F. (2006). Evolutionary patterns in Cetacea: fishing up prey size through deep time. Whales, whaling and ocean ecosystems, 68-82.

  
  

  - advance an extinction hypothesis that the genus Orcinus might be responsible for the extinction of Megalodon. In fact, this is an older proposition (Mark Renz, 2002). This hypothesis draw heavily from documented interspecific interactions between modern members of the genus Orcinus (killer whales; Orcinus orca) and the Great white shark in which the genus Orcinus appear to have the upperhand and trigger Flight responses in the latter (Jorgensen, 2019).
  

  
  

  REFUTATION
  

  
  

  Boessenecker, et al (2019) find this inference problematic:
  

  
  
  

  Recently described macrophagous sperm whales appear to have been diverse worldwide in the middle and late Miocene, were similar in size to Otodus megalodon, and were likely competing apex predators (Lambert et al., 2010). A high diversity of small-bodied baleen whales during the middle Miocene is implicated in supporting such an assemblage of gigantic predators (Lambert et al., 2010; Collareta et al., 2017). Similarly, Lindberg & Pyenson (2006) noted that the extinction of Otodus megalodon is roughly contemporaneous with the earliest fossil occurrences of killer whales (Orcinus) in the fossil record, and perhaps competition with killer whales during the Pliocene could have acted as a driver in the extinction of Otodus megalodon. However, the Neogene fossil record of Orcinus is limited to two occurrences: an isolated tooth from Japan (Kohno & Tomida, 1993), and the well-preserved skull and skeleton of Orcinus citoniensis from the late Pliocene of Italy (Capellini, 1883). Furthermore, Orcinus citoniensis was small in comparison to extant Orcinus orca (est. four m body length: Heyning & Dahlheim, 1988) and possessed a higher number of relatively smaller teeth and narrower rostrum (Bianucci, 1996), and was probably not an analogous macrophagous predator. Because fossils of Orcinus are not widespread during the Pliocene, claims of competition between Otodus megalodon and Orcinus are problematic. Furthermore, the decline and loss of cosmopolitan macrophagous physeteroids (Tortonian-Messinian; Lambert et al., 2010) appears to have predated the early Pliocene extinction of Otodus megalodon by several million years. - Boessenecker et al (2019)

  - and rightfully so. Citron, S. (2019) also advance the notion that Orcinus citoniensis had LIMITED macrophagous potential and rather committed to consuming relatively smaller fishes, and its findings reinforce contention of Boessenecker, et al (2019). Following observations are also relevant for this theme:

  
  

  6.1. Megalodon was no stranger to competitive pressures from the raptorial Squalodelphinids in its earlier FORM (O. Chubutensis; see 5.2. above), and from the raptorial stem physeteriods in the Miocene epoch who literally dwarfed Orcinus citoniensis in size and also fed on a higher trophic level (Lambert et al., 2017); Livyatan melvillei was a competing apex predator in particular (Lambert et al., 2010), and a Livyatan-like FORM was reported from a South African fossil assemblage circa 5 Ma (Govender, 2019). The raptorial stem physeteriods virtually collapse as a clade around the Messinian-Zanclean boundary cira 5.3 Ma (Lambert et al., 2010; Lambert et al., 2017), and assumptions of FORMS exceeding 5 Ma mark are erroneous and/or not robust. Large odontocetes including physeteroids existed otherwise but there relevance is in question. 
  

  
  

  6.2. The longevity factor of the Megalodon (Shimada et al., 2020), suggest low mortality rate and reinforce the notion of retaining competitive advantage in the face of inferred competition with raptorial odontocetes for access to similar food sources and possibly each other.
  
  6.3. Megalodon had the capacity to prey on animals which were virtually inaccessible to the Great white shark - this inference has its basis in isotopic analysis (Martin et al., 2015), inference(s) of Gilbert et al (2018) in view of the findings of Piazza et al (2019 and Herraiz et al (2020) in combination, and independent examples of trophic interactions in private hands (see 3.7. above). Therefore, this review contends that large odontocetes are a non-factor in regards to extinction of the Megalodon.

Final verdict:
There’s not really much to say other than the fact that this show greatly overestimated Brygmophyseter’s size and thus its power in comparison to megalodon, and it greatly overestimated megalodon’s capacity to endure a no-holds-barred beatdown by what basically amounts to a pod of Livyatan attacking it. Of course, those aren’t the only issues (e.g. megalodon being comparable in size to a jumbo jet, whales using sonar to kill prey, etc.).

Perhaps the one silver lining, it did introduce me to the raptorial sperm whales, while also showcasing one of the Cenozoic’s most famous and formidable predators ever. Before watching JFC as a kid I had no idea raptorial sperm whales existed. If you went up to me as a kid and told me “Hey, megalodon’s going to fight some sperm whales”, I would have just brushed them off. But while JFC certainly got some things wrong about its sperm whales, it is correct that these would have been formidable predators. And hey, we now know Livyatan’s a thing. So if this episode were to be made now, I’m certain they’d have made it a megalodon vs Livyatan match.

[Infinity Blade]

Hunter Becomes Hunted


Screen capture from Jurassic Fight Club.

• The introductory blurb to this episode makes Ceratosaurus out to be the former undisputed king of dinosaurs for some 20 million years, but then implicitly got overthrown once Allosaurus came along.
  
  I remember this really great chart I saw with the temporal ranges of Morrison Formation theropod genera, but I can’t find it anymore. In any case, the thing is, both Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus appeared in the Kimmeridgian and lasted into the Tithonian. This means Ceratosaurus was living with Allosaurus for most, if not even all of its existence. Allosaurus was not Ceratosaurus’ dethroner, it was always a contemporary and probable competitor. So listening to literally the first things the narrator says, we’re already off to a bad start.
• The actual name of the site is Garden Park (which is located in Cañon City).
• JFC claims Ceratosaurus was 13 feet tall. That’s really giant theropod-tier at best, which Ceratosaurus most certainly was not. The real Ceratosaurus would be staring you in the eye if it was standing in its default horizontal position. 20 feet in body length is about right.
  
  They also seem to give it a claw on its fourth finger, which is inaccurate. No archosaur had claws beyond the third digit on its manus. So although Ceratosaurus had four fingers, the fourth would be basically useless for predation. In fact, I suspect the reason why more derived theropods lost the fourth finger was to reduce the chance of injury when using the manus for hunting; you can’t injure something if it’s not there to begin with.
  
  Also, the forelimbs are clearly too long for their length when you look at JFC’s skeletal reconstruction of the animal.
• The narrator then says the teeth of Ceratosaurus were not designed to cut bone. Most theropods aren’t specialized for osteophagy in the way tyrannosaurids were, but that definitely doesn’t mean they were incapable of it. There is, in fact, a specimen of Allosaurus where the pubic foot is missing a large piece, which was bitten off in a single bite by a large theropod. Given the size of the bite marks, it’s thought that either a Ceratosaurus or Torvosaurus was responsible for this bite. Both had long, blade-like teeth. Keep in mind that in large theropods, the pubic foot is also the most massive bone in the skeleton (barring perhaps the sacrum) (Chure et al., 1998). So long, serrated, blade-like teeth may not be optimally built for cutting or damaging bone, but they certainly can, regardless of whether the culprit was Ceratosaurus or Torvosaurus.
• I don’t think DG’s characterization of Ceratosaurus as “not really a one-on-one confrontation dinosaur” is fair, or that it makes much sense. I have no problem believing Ceratosaurus was an ambush predator like he says (in fact, that’s probably most likely), but just because a predator relies on ambush for predation doesn’t suddenly make it unable to hold its own in a fight. The limiting factor here isn’t so much the predator itself, but the prey it is targeting.
• We see an extended characterization of Ceratosaurus as a dumber, smaller, and less deadly animal than the more “advanced” theropods of its time, like Allosaurus, which ended up outcompeting Ceratosaurus (basically, the Virgin Ceratosaurus vs the Chad Allosaurus). I’ve addressed this above.
  
  One old analogy I’ve come across is that ceratosaurs were to tetanurans what marsupials are to placentals. More precisely, if Ceratosaurus was the thylacine of the theropods, Allosaurus was the dingo. I’ll just quote what Darren Naish said about this analogy in one of his recent books: “…don’t overthink this as it becomes less defensible the more you analyze it.”
• Allosaurus was definitely not 15 feet tall (~4.5 meters). A total body length of 35 feet is more attributable to the larger allosaurids of the Morrison Formation, which may or may not be Allosaurus itself.
• The possibility of pack hunting in Allosaurus is also mentioned. Alas, this isn’t something that comes into play in the actual battle.
• ”rooted in jaws that could crush steel”
  
  Err…I know Allosaurus’ jaws were certainly strong due to the sheer size of the animal, but crushing steel? I mean…how thin is the steel?
• DG tells us that Allosaurus teeth were designed for cracking through bone. Of course, there’s some nuance to be mentioned here for clarification. As all of us know, most of Allosaurus’ teeth were still blade-like, and thus not specialized for cracking bone to the same extent as the teeth of tyrannosaurids. However, as has been brought up here countless times, Allosaurus teeth could also saw off large chunks of bone if need be, and process them. Due to their short crown length, they are relatively robust ziphodont teeth. Lastly, the mesial (premaxillary) teeth of Allosaurus are, in fact, thick and well-suited for bone crunching (Hendrickx et al., 2020).
• The talking heads (which include guys like Thomas R. Holtz and Jim Kirkland here) talk about Allosaurus’ huge claws. Ironically, JFC’s model doesn’t do them justice here. JFC’s model shows them all being the same size, when in reality, the claw on the first digit was the biggest, followed by the claw on the second digit. They would have looked like enormous meat hooks in life.
  
  Jim Kirkland picks up their slack a bit. Interestingly, when he shows the audience a replica of the claw sheath of Allosaurus, he mentions that there would have been a couple of carinae present (which the sheath replica has). In fact, bird of prey talons generally have sharp edges on their ventrolateral surfaces, which are undoubtedly there to help aid in puncturing (below is a buzzard claw that illustrates these carinae). So I think it’s very likely the claws of predatory dinosaurs in general had them too.
  
  
  
  The one exception among birds of prey is the osprey. Its claws are rounded instead of grooved ventrally with cutting edges (link->). I suspect this is one of the many adaptations the osprey has for piscivory; its diet is composed almost entirely by fish, which are slippery. Talons which are rounded in cross section without sharp edges are less apt to lacerate the prey and have them slip out of the raptor’s grip. I’m not the only person who has expressed this idea (link->).
• John Foster immediately says something to the contrary (that is, Allosaurus claws are rounded). This doesn’t seem to account for the claw sheath deviating a bit from the bone core in shape, though.
• When it’s time to explain why a Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus were found at the same site, only Dinosaur George actually seems to address the site in question. Notice how Lawrence Witmer only says that it’s possible the two got into squabbles at times. No paleontologist goes out of their way to discuss that particular find. I’m assuming the reason is that they have no proof that these two particular individuals got into a bloody fight with each other, and, being the good scientists they are, don’t claim such a thing accordingly.
  
  Is there any evidence the Ceratosaurus was injured and killed by another animal, let alone by that particular Allosaurus? Not even JFC ever says so. Furthermore, DG never explains why the Allosaurus died and got buried with the Ceratosaurus it supposedly killed (especially considering the program thinks it survived after winning).
• DG coincidentally presents us with his own mammalian carnivore analogy! To him, if Ceratosaurus is the jaguar (that takes small and medium-sized prey), Allosaurus is the tiger, the apex predator that takes pretty much anything it wants. I think it’s a little better than the thylacine-dingo comparison mentioned above. It makes no implications about out-competition or “primitiveness” (even if DG himself would probably agree with that thylacine-dingo analogy), it’s just an ecological comparison. It’s a bit of a weird one though, considering the jaguar is nowadays an apex predator itself, but used to live with much larger predators that presumably were taking much larger prey more regularly.
• ”[Ceratosaurus] hunted in pairs”, they say as if it were fact.
• Now for the fight. We’re told that the Allosaurus has scent marked the boundaries of its territory, and sure enough, there’s a bit of animation of one of the Ceratosaurus sniffing a tree (presumably one that the Allosaurus scent marked). If so, how can it be that the Ceratosaurus are “unknowingly” entering the Allosaurus’ territory?
  
  Also, with all the roars they make here and there, it’s no wonder the Allosaurus was able to find them.
• The female Ceratosaurus hides behind a rock virtually “motionless” (even though she literally moves as she hides). A small prey animal quickly dashes away from the male Ceratosaurus. I reduced the playback speed to a quarter that of normal, and while it’s still blurry when it runs past the camera, it looks like the show’s model for Deinonychus. The colors are the same, and what I could make of the shape is too. So basically, they used the Deinonychus model and passed it off as some small Jurassic dinosaur that was prey to Ceratosaurus.
  
  One thing I like for some reason, is the use of that ominous track that plays while the Ceratosaurus hides. I just like that track in general, and I think it’s a bit of a shame that no one’s ever released the show’s soundtrack, if only for that reason.
• The Allosaurus looks like it’s leaping at the female Ceratosaurus when it attacks, with both of its feet off the ground (I never noticed this before; again, beauty of 1080 p). According to DG, this particular Allosaurus is supposed to be 4 tonnes. I trust I don’t need to explain the issue here.
• ”An unfamiliar roar rips through the forest”
  
  It literally makes the same roar as the Ceratosaurus...
• ”He knows that in this dense forest he can maneuver a lot quicker”
  
  Sounds like the perfect way to gtfo. But because this is JFC and dinosaurs are smart, dumb, or both whenever the writers need them to be, the Ceratosaurus chooses to fight the much bigger Allosaurus.
• The Ceratosaurus thinks about leaping onto the Allosaurus’ flanks. I find it questionable how well Ceratosaurus could do this. I also don’t know where DG gets the idea that it had a stiffened tail from. If anything, it’s the tetanurans (like Allosaurus) that had stiffer tails than more basal theropods (it’s literally in the name too; Tetanurae means “stiffened tails”).
• When the Ceratosaurus ends up raking the Allosaurus’ face with its hand claws, DG says “it’s personal”. Oh my lord…
  
  While I don’t doubt that feeling pain might make an Allosaurus (or any animal) angrier, the Allosaurus is being anthropomorphized here. DG might as well be talking about a psychopathic serial killer here.
• The Ceratosaurus leaps onto the Allosaurus’ body and attacks, but this doesn’t work well because the Allosaurus is much bigger and shakes off the smaller theropod. Then it grabs the Ceratosaurus by the ribcage (the dorsal surface in particular). I genuinely wonder how much gape would be required for a predator to wrap its jaws entirely around the torso width of Ceratosaurus.
• In his story, DG tells us the Ceratosaurus slashes the jaw of Allosaurus with its big upper teeth. But once again, the animation is not in line with what’s being said, and the Ceratosaurus is basically helpless when the Allosaurus picks him up and mauls him. Given the position it’s shown to be in, I doubt Ceratosaurus would have the reach to bite Allosaurus back in that scenario (certainly not its jaw).
• The Allosaurus kills the Ceratosaurus by throwing it against a tree. It then uses its foot claws to “disembowel” the Ceratosaurus’ carcass (the animation is more toned down; it rakes its foot claws on the bloodied ceratosaur’s corpse, but it doesn’t literally disembowel it). Then Allosaurus makes an obligatory victory roar.

Final verdict:
I’m pretty sure what really happened in the fossil find mentioned in this program is that either an Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus happened to die relatively close together (no way to tell who died first), or at the very least their bodies were washed over to the same area and were buried together. It’s as simple as that. No evidence of a violent prehistoric bloodbath, nor of a setup that reads like the plot of a horror film.

Furthermore, this episode parrots an annoying myth that species that are more “derived” are inherently “better”. The reason why Allosaurus won this fight wasn’t because it had some mythical aura that put it higher up on the Great Chain of Being. It won because it was much bigger, and its weapons were more than enough to put the Ceratosaurus down (then again, I’m not sure if Ceratosaurus was even still around by the time giant allosaurids like the one shown here were around). You can’t judge Ceratosaurus for being smaller and overall less powerful than its foe here. That’s like judging a leopard because it’s not as powerful as a lion.

The only thing I really like here is the concept of Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus duking it out. These are indeed two very formidable, powerful predators that lived with each other, so in my subjective opinion it’s a cool concept. But that’s really just my inner fanboy wanting to be appeased via cool factor.