The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs – A Retrospective Review

[Infinity Blade]

The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs – A Retrospective Review


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Oh hey, another review…of another dinosaur documentary…neat. At this rate, I’m actually worried if I’ll run out of documentaries to review in the future. There are only so many prehistoric documentaries, right?

Anyway, what I find about TTAKD interesting, especially its first episode, is that it’s the only piece of pop culture media that’s really dedicated to exploring the biological relationship between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Particularly, what would happen if the two got into a physical confrontation. Sure, the image of a T. rex fighting a Triceratops is popular af, but this program is, to my knowledge, the only one that actually puts some effort into unveiling the real nuts and bolts of a fight between these two dinosaurs.

The relationship between T. rex and Triceratops is, in my humble opinion, actually an interesting topic (I at least don’t feel discussing it is completely pointless like say, T. rex vs Spinosaurus), and this is actually why I wanted to write a review for this program in the first place. I’ve seen many takes on T. rex vs Triceratops over the years, even recently. And to be honest, some of them were just plain stupid. So here I’m going to review this program’s take on it, and at the same time give my own. So without further ado, let’s get started!

(Also, I guess I'll have to review the second episode too, but since I've still got the last episode of WWB, JFC, and even some episodes of Animal Face-Off, I'm going to put that on the backburner.)

Episode 1 (full)->

• ”The primordial swamp.”
  
  I can’t help but find that a bit funny. Bill Oddie (who I think is a cool presenter in his own right btw) presents this as the ideal habitat for dinosaurs. While this is obviously just meant to be an overgeneralization, it’s actually true in this particular case. The Frenchman Formation (and by extension, probably the other western North American formations dating to this same time) was quite swampy, having been compared to the Florida Everglades (where Oddie actually is) in press (link->).
• This program’s skeletal reconstruction of T. rex is…not great. Especially the skull. Let’s have a look at it.
  
  
  (Screen capture from The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs)
  
  You can tell that at some point the animators went off the rails reconstructing the skull of T. rex. The infratemporal fenestra is visible all the way in the back (I think the bar of bone just beneath it is too gracile). Then in front of it is what should be the orbit. Except, that’s not where they put the eyeball. In front of the orbit are two fenestrae; in real life it should be one large fenestra (the antorbital fenestra), but here it’s separated by a vertical bar of bone for some reason. The antorbital fenestra right in front of the orbit is where they put the eyeball.
  
  What’s funny is that right before this, they show a T. rex skeletal reconstruction that doesn’t have this problem: there’s no bar of bone separating the antorbital fenestra in two here-> (although, the skull is still too elongated). What went wrong? What the heck were they doing? It’s like they lost their minds or became so lazy that they just added random holes to the skull and put the eyeball in the wrong cavity.
• Bill Oddie tells us that we only have three fossil skeletons of Triceratops to go off of, none of which are complete. I don’t know how many less specimens we had in 2005 compared to now (2021), but I’m pretty sure we had way more than just three specimens. I’m sure Oddie’s right in that none of them are complete, but still.
• When you look at the skeletal reconstruction for Triceratops, you’ll notice it has bony epiparietal and episquamosal hornlets. But when they put the flesh on the bones, there’s nothing covering the edges of the frill. It’s just a smooth, plain edge covered in skin here. In real life, the keratin-sheathed epiparietals and episquamosals would be visible.
  
  What shape were they? These spikes became bumps when the animal matured and became fused into the frill edges. You might think that the keratin covering the hornlets would become blunt too, but according to Matt Dempsey, it’s still possible the keratin sheathes retained their shape even as epiparietals/episquamosals (link->). After all, the horn sheath doesn’t just “go away” unless it’s substantially worn or shed off.
• For much of the first half of the program, it asks whether or not there’s any actual evidence that T. rex fought Triceratops. While it later reveals that the answer to that is “yes”, and it’s always great to have evidence like this, you sort of get the impression that if the answer turns out to be “no” that the program would conclude that T. rex fighting and hunting Triceratops is a mere myth. But if that’s the case, I don’t think that’s fair. Direct evidence for predation on a live animal or a fight isn’t easy to come by in the fossil record. Not only do you have to demonstrate that a pathology or feeding trace was made (or at least was most likely made) by a certain predator (in this case T. rex), but you also have to demonstrate that it was made when the animal was alive. That can either be through healing of the wound, or where the wound is placed on the animal’s body plus the pattern of bite marks (that is, repetitive gnawing suggesting feeding, or a single or few bites suggesting a killing bite). Even if we didn’t have direct evidence of T. rex attempting to prey on Triceratops (or any tyrannosaurid preying on any ceratopsid, for that matter), it would still be plausible that the tyrannosaur sometimes hunted the ceratopsian. The fact that we do have direct evidence for attempted tyrannosaur predation on ceratopsids is remarkable, and not to be taken for granted.
• After letting a wild alligator show us how hard it can bite, the program (particularly Greg Erickson) puts the bite force of T. rex at 35 kN (just under 4 US tons). This is actually pretty conservative. I’ve seen subsequent studies easily go beyond this (over 60, even over 90 kN) (Cost et al., 2019; Rowe & Snively, 2021). So umm, yeah…if you think that the damage their mechanical T. rex skull does here is horrific, just imagine a real one (even though a real T. rex obviously didn’t have a skull or teeth made of steel).
• One important difference between crocodilians like the American alligator and tyrannosaurids like T. rex is where the real crushing teeth are. Tyrannosaurids had highly robust and conical teeth on the anterior end of their jaws, where they usually may have applied their highest impact bite forces. The exact opposite is true for crocodilians: their robust teeth are at the back of the jaw and they produce their highest bite forces there (Rowe & Snively, 2021). This means that a tyrannosaur concentrates its highest bite forces in a part of the mouth that is more easily applied when biting a live animal (needless to say, it’s easier to grab a fleeing or fighting animal with the front of your mouth than with the back of your mouth). Not only that, it concentrates said bite force on the biggest and deadliest teeth in its mouth. This is what makes the bite of a tyrannosaurid so deadly: it basically combines the best aspects of the bite of a crocodile (big head=big mouth=big bite) with the bite of a jaguar (the crushing force can be concentrated at the front of the mouth where the main killing teeth are).
• I’ve said a lot about making metal casts of animal skulls for bite tests in my Animal Face-Off reviews. I don’t think there’s anything new I can say here.
  
  But anyway, then they test it on cow bones. To be honest, what do you expect a bite from a freaking T. rex would do to the leg bones of an animal a tenth of its size? But then again, it was probably the most practical thing they could make do with.
  
  Ngl, I want to know how this mechanical rex skull would perform against an elephant cadaver. Not without reason, as elephants are the only land animals today that actually rival a Triceratops or T. rex in body mass. Maybe get the body of an elephant that died of natural causes in a zoo and test the mechanical skull on it. So over the top, but that would be such an awesome experiment.
• ”So, maybe the bumbly old lumbering three-horned vegetarian wasn’t a complete pushover.”
  
  Bafflingly, I’ve actually seen a few people on the Internet who think Triceratops wasn’t well built for defense against T. rex. One person I argued with legit thought Triceratops would just flee from T. rex by using superior maneuverability to evade it, as if it were a zebra trying to escape from a lion.
  
  That’s stupid. Triceratops has literally the exact opposite build of what you’d expect from an animal specialized in fleeing from predators. It was not like some highly cursorial ungulate. Below is some information (from another post of mine) showing how Triceratops compares to creatures like elephants and rhinos in anatomy (particularly bone robusticity, musculature, etc.). Long story short, it puts them to shame.
  
  

  Appendicular anatomy:
  
  In his 1986 book The Dinosaur Heresies, Dr. Robert Bakker notes that ceratopsid legs were thicker, longer, and more powerfully muscled than those of equal sized rhinos, and certainly much stronger than those of an elephant.
  
  
  
  
  In this interview, paleontologist Gregory S. Paul also notes how ceratopsids were much more powerfully built than rhinos in bone robustness, most likely an adaptation for fighting off similar sized predators (i.e. tyrannosaurids).
  
  

  Ceratopsians were much more strongly built than rhinos in terms of bone robustness. Also, they had enormous pelvic girdles, and the limbs were longer than rhinos of equal mass. All this implies that ceratopsids had larger leg muscles than rhinos. This was probably to give the the ability to fight off the enormous tyrannosaurids - of course Happ has just shown that Tyrannosaurus engaged in direct combat with Triceratops, one of the latter having healed bite marks on its skull. Rhinos do not have to contend with such super predators.

  The Prehistoric Times Interview: Gregory S. Paul
  
  Ceratopsid limbs were much more powerfully muscled than those of rhinos (just look at how the ilium compares, for instance), with its leg musculature once being compared to that of a giant bird (which have enormous leg muscles for their size).
  

  On the other hand, the great horned dinosaurs had much larger areas for muscle attachments than seen in rhinos, indicating a much more powerful musculature.

  The Complete Dinosaur
  
  

  Galloping animals need a great deal of hindlimb thrust. This can be estimated from the size of the attachments for the muscles, preserved as scars on the bones of hindlimbs. Triceratops has relatively larger muscle attachments than found in rhinos or elephants. This suggests that Triceratops would have been a more powerful runner, judged weight for weight, than an elephant or a rhino. Interestingly, though, the arrangement of the musculature of the Triceratops hindlimb looks rather more like that of a large bird than a rhino.

  In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life
  
  Rhino legs are, in turn, more powerfully muscled than those of proboscideans, so that tells you how much more muscular the legs of a Triceratops would be compared to those of an elephant.
  

  Also, the leg muscles of galloping rhinos are more powerfully built than those of elephants.

  Dinosaur Models: The Good, The Bad, And Using Them To Estimate the Mass of Dinosaurs
  
  Ceratopsids clearly have proportionately longer scapulae than do rhinos, providing more room for muscles and greater leverage for propulsion.
  

  In contrast, a long scapular blade could potentially provide great mechanical leverage and thus enhance propulsive power from the forelimb.

  www.gspauldino.com/Forelimb.pdf
  Forelimb posture in neoceratopsian dinosaurs: implications for gait and locomotion
  
  Although rhinoceros humeri are slightly thicker than ceratopsid humeri at the same length (emphasis on slightly; see Fig. 2A for what I mean), ceratopsid humeri are proportionately much longer anyway, and thus must be considerably thicker overall relative to size (also, they’re much more robust than elephant humeri, as if that wasn’t obvious already).
  

  Ceratopsian humeri are robust, considerably more so than elephant humeri, although not with quite as massive diaphyses compared to length as in rhinoceroses (Fig 2A).

  The humeri of ceratopsids are proportionally long (Fig. 1A), and considerably exceed the corresponding values for rhinos, and the hippo in the case of the large ceratopsids, with Protoceratops and Avaceratops falling close to the regression line. In large mammals the humeri are shorter than predicted, being 73% of the predicted value in Hippopotamus, 83-92% in the rhinos, and among the megaherbivore mammals only the elephants have humeri of comparable length to the large ceratopsids, which is in accordance with the results of ALEXANDER et al. (1979a) and CHRISTIANSEN (1999a).

  Augmenting this is the fact that ceratopsid long bones apparently show only small medullary cavities, in contrast to many mammals.
  

  In order to calculate the section modulus of a bone with a hollow medullary cavity the cortical thickness will have to be known, Many mammals have hollow long bones. Fractured long bones of large ceratopsids, however, usually display only a small medullary cavity (pers. obs.). Thus, ignoring the influence of the medullary cavity should introduce little error in the final estimate.

  www.gspauldino.com/GaiaNeoceratopsian.pdf
  Limb Bone Scaling, Limb Proportions, and Bone Strength in Neoceratopsian Dinosaurs
  
  Ceratopsid femora and especially tibiae are more massive.
  

  The femora and especially tibiae of ceratopsians are consistently more massive than in mammals as a group, and much more so than in elephants (Fig. 2A-C).

  Elephant long bones are not particularly robust for their size, given their long length and rather slender shafts.
  

  Figure 1A is a comparison of humeral length and total forelimb length to body mass in mammals and ceratopsian dinosaurs, the latter given as the combined lengths of humerus, radius and the longest metacarpal. Total forelimb length in mammals shows negative allometry with size. Additionally, large species have even shorter limbs than predicted, presumably as a means of preserving limb bone strength by reducing the size of the lever arm of the bending and torsional moments of the diaphyses (Christiansen, 1999a). However, the African elephant is long-limbed and has a total forelimb length close to the predicted value, probably due to the markedly decreased locomotory performance of elephants compared to rhinos (Alexander et al., 1979b; Alexander & Pond, 1992). Having long limbs and rather slender diaphyses (Alexander et al., 1979a; Christiansen, 1997, 1999a, 1999b) at a large body mass makes running impossible, as the limb bones are not strong enough to allow running, as pointed out by Alexander et al. (1979b).

  Same source as the quote directly above.
  
  In this table from Casinos (1996), everything I've said above regarding bone strength is corroborated. Triceratops has an even stronger humerus than a white rhinoceros (~12.4% stronger), let alone an elephant (>2 times stronger). The strength difference is significantly more pronounced when comparing femora among the three.
  
  
  
  And for all their body mass, elephants do not have particularly large, powerful leg muscles for their size.
  

  Also, unlike elephants, the humeral muscle scars [of stegosaurs] were large...

  Source: Currie, P.J.; Padian, K. (1997). Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. Academic Press.
  
  

  Despite proboscideans’ enormous weight, they do not have very developed limb musculature (Knight 1947; Haynes 1991; Paul 1997).

  The inability of elephants and practically all proboscideans to perform true running with a suspended phase may be due to a combination of different factors or features: (i) the diaphysis of the femur and other long bones is larger in lateromedial than anteroposterior diameters (Christiansen 2007); (ii) the cnemial crest of the tibia is relatively poorly developed, indicating that the muscles attached there are not as strong as in other running animals such as rhinos and horses (Haynes 1991); (iii) the ilium is realtively short and therefore not suitable for big muscle attachments (Paul 1998), indicating a low ratio between limb muscle mass and total body mass (Taylor et al. 1974; Weibel et al. 1987); (iv) the proximal segments of the appendicular skeleton (scapula/humerus humerus/ulna and pelvis/femur) are poorly flexed; (v) the relatively long humerus and femur, short tibia and the composition of the manus and pedi with very short and relatively rigid distal elements (especially metacarpals and metatarsals) and big pads are not suitable for a strong propulsive phase of the limb stroke. All these characteristics are highly divergent from those of most running mammals and birds (Paul 1998, 2009; Christiansen and Paul 2000; Christiansen 2007) and have more influence than the high body mass of elephants because calf and juvenile individuals are also unable to perform true running

  Source: Larramendi, A. (2016). Shoulder height, body mass, and shape of proboscideans. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 61 (3): 537–574.
  
  

  There is a correlation between muscle attachment area and speed among birds and mammals. Fast running cheetah, canids, gazelles and horses have more mass than slower cattle and goats (Taylor et al., 1974; Hoppler et al., 1987). In slow elephants and humans the ilium is not long, and anchors a narrow thigh musculature. Faster running mammals and birds have longer ilia that anchor a broader, more powerful thigh musculature. Birds have large cnemial crests and hypotarsi that anchor a powerful "drumstick" shank musculature.

  Source: Paul, G.S. (1998). Limb design, function and running performance in ostrich-mimics and tyrannosaurs. Gaia, 257-270.
  
  

  There is a tendency to restore the limbs of these slow giants [sauropods and stegosaurs] as heavily muscled pillars like the fat-limbed brachiosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park. This is a mistake. Slow-moving sauropods and stegosaurs should have had long, lightly muscled legs, like those of elephants.

  Source: Paul, G.S. (2003). The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs.
  
  Axial anatomy:
  
  Moving away from appendicular anatomy, ceratopsids like Triceratops also had ossified tendons that braced the backbone, an adaptation that elephants obviously lack. A juvenile chasmosaurine specimen shows that these should have existed in the neck, trunk, and sacral regions (Currie et al., 2016), making the ossified tendons extensively distributed along the ceratopsid vertebral column.
  
  Here's a visual of this from The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs.
  
  
  Also, look at an elephant's skeleton-> and compare it to that of a Triceratops->. Which honestly looks like it has the more massive vertebrae (especially the vertebral centra)?
  
  How do the elephant’s tusks compare to Triceratops’ horns? Farlow (1990) found that the basal area of Triceratops horn cores were as thick relative to total body mass as the tusks of elephants, but also noted how bone and ivory probably differ in mechanical properties, how Triceratops horns would be further strengthened by a keratin sheath (unlike elephant tusks), and how the inner cavities of horns and tusks are not the same.
  
  But Farlow also compared large ceratopsian brow horns (particularly those of Triceratops, Anchiceratops, and Pentaceratops) to the horns of antelope and the tusks of proboscideans, particularly by plotting horn or tusk basal area against length (or reach). Lo and behold, while proboscidean tusks continue the trend seen in antelope, Triceratops and other ceratopsid brow horns plot well above this trend. This means Triceratops brow horns were thicker for their length (read: more robust) than the tusks of an elephant. While the horn cores of Triceratops do plot as being somewhat shorter in absolute terms than the tusks of an elephant with similar basal area, the horn cores would have been covered in a keratinous sheath in life, making them both longer and thicker. So a Triceratops would enjoy the benefits of having more stronger and more robust horns while still retaining similar length/reach to the tusks of an elephant.
  
  
  From Farlow (1990) hyperlinked above.
  
  All ceratopsids had skulls with bony secondary skull roofs, with sinuses that made a negligible impact on total skull mass (for example, ~6.5 kg off the 220 kg skull of Triceratops; Farke, 2010). By contrast, rhino skulls are extensively pneumatic (example->), which definitely has an impact on total skull mass, and I'm not aware of them possessing secondary skull roofs. So I think a ceratopsid would have a more strongly reinforced, and overall more massive skull than a similar sized rhinoceros. The same, of course, applies to the skull of an elephant (example->).
  
  Lastly, with regards to axial anatomy, ceratopsids like Triceratops had a single, nearly perfectly spherical occipital condyle connecting their skulls to the atlas. Because it was placed at the natural balancing point of the massive head, it would have allowed Triceratops to rapidly swerve its head (using the powerful neck muscles) at any direction with great precision. This would allow it to make more rapid reactions to a predator attacking it head-on. T. rex trying to reach inward to grab the neck? Rapid swerve to the head counters that. Of course, an elephant's two occipital condyles aren't shaped this way->, and an elephant cannot move its head very far to the sides (Haynes, 1993->); the bush elephant will have a much harder time countering this way than a Triceratops can.
  
  
  From Bakker (1986), as mentioned in the very beginning of this post.
  
  Physical body protection:
  
  Finally, a Triceratops would have had certain parts of its body protected better than in either an elephant or rhino. Obviously there's the thick neck frill, which in Triceratops was solid bone. But also, according to Greg Paul, its abdomen would have been well-protected too.
  
  

  The posterior ribs of ceratopsids were tightly packed together and articulated with the prepubis (Paul and Christiansen 2000), forming a cuirass that provided protection to the abdomen.

  Source: Tyrannosaurus rex: The Tyrant King (Chapter 18, p. 331).
  
  (The third to last picture I posted above contains a visual of this as well)

• Rhinos are claimed to ram into their opponents by this program. People often seem to think that rhinos collide their horns into things as if they were knights (knights were shock cavalry, and their signature tactic was to literally charge at top speed and let all the momentum of their galloping horses ram their lances into their enemies). The problem is, they just don’t do this, or at least not in the way TTAKD describes. And when you actually take a look at their anatomy, this makes sense. They just aren’t particularly built for literally ramming something at full speed. Rhinos have highly pneumatic skulls (link->), the bone that the big nasal horn sits on top of is cantilevered from the rest of the skull with no bone to support it underneath (link->), their horns are entirely keratin with calcium and melanin deposits inside (there is no true bone core like in the horns of bovids or ceratopsians), and the horns don’t even sit directly on top of the bone; they sit on top of dermis that sits on top of bone (link->). Mounted knights they are not.
  
  Perhaps most damning of all, highly specialized rammers in the animal kingdom tend to ram their heads on blunt impact surfaces on their heads, not sharp ones. Bighorn sheep (thick horn bases; horns are curved), muskoxen (boss formed by horn bases; horns are curved), cape buffalo (boss formed by horn bases; horns are curved), American bison (thick hair bonnet; horns presumably not involved in ramming), duikers (dome; horns presumably not involved in ramming), pachycephalosaurs (dome), pachyrhinosaurs (nasal boss), sperm whales (junk), humphead parrotfish (forehead ridge backed by bony plate in males), and tapinocephalids (massive bony skull roof). Rhino horns are the exact opposite structure of what we tend to see in dedicated rammers.
  
  It’s worth noting that brontotheres (distantly related perissodactyls that are superficially similar to rhinos) are anatomically much better built for using the skull and horns as a high impact butting weapon than rhinos are; more or less, they were to rhinos what bighorn sheep are to mountain goats (Stanley, 1973).
• So you made the T. rex skull out of steel to make sure the model was strong enough to withstand massive biting forces (which, evidently, it was in any case), but you went out of your way to find a resin composite that matches the properties of bone for the Triceratops skull???
  
  Hwhat??!!
• Here are my issues with the Triceratops skull crash test:
  
  1.) Leaving aside any subtle differences in horn tip curvature and angle between a real Triceratops’ horns and this replica’s, it assumes a Triceratops would statically keep its skull in the same position from when it’s charging to when it collides into another animal. To avoid having its nose and beak ram into the animal, it could just lower its head down even further, and then lift its head up just before it gores its victim. This way, the orbital horns make contact and stab into the animal before the nose and beak even get to make contact.
  
  2.) I’ve seen Triceratops skulls with significantly more robust nasal bridges than in the cast used here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). So specimens more like these could fare significantly better.
  
  3.) Bill Oddie explains that the broader beak and nose couldn’t cut through the flesh (presumably, that would make them take the brunt of the impact). But this test does not account for the added strength and/or sharpness the keratin sheathes of the beak and nasal horn would add.
  
  Now, none of this is to say that I think Triceratops would literally collide into a T. rex. I don’t. As I’ve explained above, rhinos (the hypothesized modern analogue here) aren’t particularly built for this either. A Pachyrhinosaurus charging and ramming into a Nanuqsaurus, however, is a different story.
• I’m looking at the show’s leg muscle reconstruction of T. rex. They definitely don’t have the entire length of the ilium completely encased in muscle like it should be (only at the middle of the ilium, while completely ignoring the ends).
• Nevertheless, it’s concluded that 25 mph would be pushing it for T. rex (which is about right for John Hutchinson’s older work). Comparable, at least in his words at the time, to a rhino, but faster than an elephant. I’m no longer sure if either the T. rex or could even get up to 25 mph anymore, but both were/are definitely faster than an elephant.
• So of course, T. rex is concluded to be faster than Trike. But the Trike has the advantage in that it’s far more maneuverable, thanks to the fact that it’s a quadruped with most of its mass directly supported by its four legs. To counter the problem that T. rex has, it’s proposed that it would have cocked its neck and head back and lifted its tail up to greatly reduce rotational inertia. As far as I know, TTAKD is the only bit of dinosaur media that actually portrays a T. rex running and turning in this posture.
  
  This is much needed. People still cite T. rex as having a disadvantage in agility, but if it just cocked its head and neck back, lifted its tail up to be vertically oriented (especially at the base of the tail), and, you know, turned its head and vertebral column as it was making the turn, agility would be far less of a problem. And after all, T. rex does still have absolutely honkin’ leg muscles for its size.
  
  Nevertheless, I do agree Triceratops would most likely have the edge in maneuverability, but not simply because it’s a quadruped. Triceratops itself had enormous leg muscles for its size (I remember Greg Paul actually saying in his Princeton Field Guide that ceratopsids had even longer ilia than tyrannosaurids) and is lower to the ground than T. rex. Likewise, it’s not as if T. rex has nothing in its favor in terms of agility either. Its inner ear anatomy is better adapted for reflexive gaze stabilization and agility than that of Triceratops (Witmer & Ridgely, 2009; Sakagami & Kawabe, 2020)
• T. rex is then written off as about as smart as an alligator, which in the program’s view is not very smart.
  
  But as I’m sure many of us now realize, crocodilians are a lot smarter than we give them credit for (Dinets et al., 2013; Dinets, 2014).
• ”T. rex was dumb, Triceratops was dumber.”
  
  Every time I hear someone making some claim that dinosaurs were hyper smart (like that whole “T. rex was as smart as a chimp” shit a few years ago) or extraordinarily dumb (like here), I almost have a stroke. I’m not saying no dinosaur couldn’t have been pretty dumb (ratites, for instance, don’t seem to be that smart) or pretty damn intelligent (our current methods for estimating extinct animal intelligence are just unreliable), but there’s just no real good way to tell.
• When they discuss how a Triceratops would actually attack a T. rex, they show a clip of a cape buffalo to show what they mean (which is just close quarters goring). Ironically, as I mentioned above, the cape buffalo is a far better example of a ramming animal than the rhinoceros used for analogy here.
• ”But don’t forget: T. rex had the weapons to fight back.”
  
  People seem to forget this whenever they go off on how Trike would totally pwn T. rex. “Oh no, I don’t think T. rex would try to hunt an adult Triceratops, T. rex is overrated.” “Triceratops is too dangerous it could just gore T. rex.” “Triceratops could just knock T. rex over with a charge.”
  
  No, shut up, you’re stupid. As dangerous as herbivores can be, that doesn’t suddenly stop predators from taking them on. Gaurs are armed with horns and are much larger than the vast majority of their predators, yet that doesn’t stop tigers from taking them on (alone). Suids have sharp tusks, robust builds, and a nasty temperament, yet big cats can still take them on (again, alone) and successfully kill them. Saying T. rex was no match for a Triceratops simply because the latter was big and armed with deadly horns is like saying Triceratops was no match for T. rex simply because the latter was big and armed with a deadly maw. Here are some points to consider.
  
  1.) T. rex, need I remind you, was just as big as Trike (at least on average) and no less well armed. Why else do you think it evolved to be so big (which takes up a lot of energy) if it wasn’t regularly hunting other giant dinosaurs like ceratopsians? Why have that massive, bone-shattering bite if it was just munching on juvenile or medium-sized adult dinosaurs much smaller than itself most of the time?
  
  2.) We already have direct evidence of large tyrannosaurids attempting to hunt large ceratopsids, and the fact that these predation attempts made it into the fossil record (fossilization is a relatively rare process) tells us that they couldn’t have been too uncommon.
  
  3.) Given that we know T. rex liked to eat and sometimes hunted Triceratops, now consider the fact that Triceratops was the most common giant dinosaur genus in the ecosystem (Horner et al., 2011). It’s very possible that smaller dinosaurs were more common in the ecosystem than this census suggests (since their smaller, weaker bones would be less likely to preserve), but Triceratops was significantly more abundant than even the other giant dinosaurs. This would make it more likely that Tyrannosaurus would try to exploit Triceratops as a food source, including live adult individuals.
  
  4.) Giant theropods were also not as efficient as smaller theropods at relying on scavenging to meet energetic demands (Carbone et al., 2011; Kane et al., 2016a; Kane et al., 2016b). Finding a multi-ton (~5 tonne) carcass would have realistically taken a long time for T. rex, and the ideal size range for capitalizing off of energy gains from scavenging is estimated to have been between 27 and 1,044 kg. An adult T. rex is clearly way outside of this range. Again, this just makes it more likely that live adult Triceratops would be exploited as prey. We should also consider feeding traces left by Tyrannosaurus on Triceratops bones. Although we can’t conclusively prove the exact circumstances behind these feeding traces (i.e. whether the T. rex found a dead Trike or killed it), the fact that it would have taken so long on average to find a multi-ton carcass (like that of Triceratops) would logically bolster the possibility that at least some unhealed bite marks were the result of, or thanks to, successful kills.
  
  Would T. rex exploit a juvenile, decrepit, sick, or injured Trike if it got the chance? Of course. But there are people who take this way too far and suggest an adult healthy Trike was pretty much off the menu for T. rex. Poppycock.
• We return to the mechanical T. rex skull. This time they test it on a pig cadaver as their stand-in for Triceratops. As you’d expect, the body of a pig is no match for the 1.5 meter skull of this elephant-sized (and thus, not exactly an ideal representative for Triceratops, but again, best they could practically go with I would suppose). But then they test it on a car…which it also f*cks up.
  
  For the longest time I wondered if this is something the bone skull and enamel teeth of a real T. rex could do. Well, evidently the bone skull of T. rex could withstand that much biting force (it had to be able to). But what about the teeth? I remember seeing a video of an elephant punching a hole through a safari truck door with one of its tusks. And adult elephant tusks are made of dentin with an outer surface of cementum (a bone-like mineral). Enamel only exists at the tip, and is quickly worn off when the animal is young. If a cementum tusk can pierce through metal, then teeth with an outer layer of enamel should be able to as well. So yeah, I suppose a real-life T. rex could do this kind of damage to a car…
  
  …which is horrifying.
• Bill Oddie has a predictable, but based take on T. rex vs Triceratops.
  
  He says if the T. rex ambushes it, or if the Trike is ill or injured, the theropod wins. But in a “full-on, all things being equal fair fight…[he] really wouldn’t like to predict. In fact, at the end of the day, it might just be a matter of who makes the first mistake.”
  
  Now, by no means am I suggesting you can’t ever say “T. rex wins” or “Triceratops wins”. That’s your opinion, and I can understand where you’re coming from if you favor one over the other. I know folks who favor Tyrannosaurus, and I know folks who favor Triceratops, but I don’t bat an eye every time I come across someone who backs one. It’s just the dumb takes that make me raise an eyebrow. Triceratops being ill-suited to using its horns for defense? Tyrannosaurus rarely, if ever, attacking adult Triceratops because “o noes it’s so dangerous”? Bruh, really?
  
  More than this, though, Bill reminds us that the outcome of a confrontation between these two genera is dependent on a number of variables. If nothing else it could just boil down to plain luck (or lack thereof).
• And now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for.
  
  I always felt like the T. rex makes its ambush attempt too early. It still has to cover a considerable distance at the point where it decides to rush at its prey, but it’s close enough for it to be easily detected by Triceratops. Now, I’m not a predatory animal, but wouldn’t starting the ambush attack closer be better?
• And then Triceratops gores Tyrannosaurus to death. But notice how it doesn’t just one-shot it either. The Triceratops stabs the T. rex three times in the gut with its horn.
  
  When animals with horns (or similar structures, like tusks) gore other animals, they often don’t kill the animal with just one stab. A single stab could be debilitating or outright fatal, but such a stab would be a lucky one to a vital region. I know of several instances where it takes numerous stabs and/or a lot of time just to gore another animal to death. For example, here's an instance-> where an elephant was stabbed 20-30 times by a rival and still survived an unspecified amount of time afterwards before finally dying.
  
  Unfortunately, the odds were not on this particular T. rex’s side.
• ”Maybe Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t quite so invincible after all.”
  
  Quite so.

Final verdict:



So what are my thoughts on this episode? Would I recommend it to someone who wants to learn more about Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops? Overall…I suppose. There are some things claimed here that aren’t exactly true these days (e.g. on alligator intelligence), if they ever were (e.g. rhinos ramming, or their CGI T. rex skull reconstruction). The biomechanical tests done here also sometimes have some questionable aspects. At the same time, however, there were times where even where I raised my finger and opened my mouth to object to something, the program still had a point. I don’t think the Trike skull crash test was 100% true to life, but I agree that Triceratops was not literally ramming into other giant animals as if were a Pachyrhinosaurus. It also raised some interesting points about the biomechanics of both animals: for example, speed vs maneuverability, and how Tyrannosaurus could have countered its disadvantages in maneuverability (by adopting a different posture). Both are depicted as a match for the other, and the final battle is a plausible outcome, though not the only one by any means (which the documentary makes clear).

[creature386]

Dec 18, 2021 23:19:39 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Oh hey, another review…of another dinosaur documentary…neat. At this rate, I’m actually worried if I’ll run out of documentaries to review in the future. There are only so many prehistoric documentaries, right?

I wonder if I'm inciting you with my constant multi-quote responses (no, they won't stop this time).

But hey, it's nice to review an AVA series that's not completely terrible once in a while!

Dec 18, 2021 23:19:39 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• This program’s skeletal reconstruction of T. rex is…not great. Especially the skull. Let’s have a look at it.
  
  
  (Screen capture from The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs)
  
  You can tell that at some point the animators went off the rails reconstructing the skull of T. rex. The infratemporal fenestra is visible all the way in the back (I think the bar of bone just beneath it is too gracile). Then in front of it is what should be the orbit. Except, that’s not where they put the eyeball. In front of the orbit are two fenestrae; in real life it should be one large fenestra (the antorbital fenestra), but here it’s separated by a vertical bar of bone for some reason. The antorbital fenestra right in front of the orbit is where they put the eyeball.
  
  What’s funny is that right before this, they show a T. rex skeletal reconstruction that doesn’t have this problem: there’s no bar of bone separating the antorbital fenestra in two here-> (although, the skull is still too elongated). What went wrong? What the heck were they doing? It’s like they lost their minds or became so lazy that they just added random holes to the skull and put the eyeball in the wrong cavity.

At first, I thought the vertical bony wall in the antorbital fenestra was a part of the back of the skull that, for weird animation reasons, looked like part of the foreground. Looking closer though, it isn't really connected to anything on the other side, so, I'm probably just being too charitable here.

The placement of the eyeball is inexcusable either way. I think JFC even lampshaded at one point how common it is to confuse the antorbital fenestra and the orbit among laypeople, though a documentary naturally has no such excuse.

Dec 18, 2021 23:19:39 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• For much of the first half of the program, it asks whether or not there’s any actual evidence that T. rex fought Triceratops. While it later reveals that the answer to that is “yes”, and it’s always great to have evidence like this, you sort of get the impression that if the answer turns out to be “no” that the program would conclude that T. rex fighting and hunting Triceratops is a mere myth. But if that’s the case, I don’t think that’s fair. Direct evidence for predation on a live animal or a fight isn’t easy to come by in the fossil record. Not only do you have to demonstrate that a pathology or feeding trace was made (or at least was most likely made) by a certain predator (in this case T. rex), but you also have to demonstrate that it was made when the animal was alive. That can either be through healing of the wound, or where the wound is placed on the animal’s body plus the pattern of bite marks (that is, repetitive gnawing suggesting feeding, or a single or few bites suggesting a killing bite). Even if we didn’t have direct evidence of T. rex attempting to prey on Triceratops (or any tyrannosaurid preying on any ceratopsid, for that matter), it would still be plausible that the tyrannosaur sometimes hunted the ceratopsian. The fact that we do have direct evidence for attempted tyrannosaur predation on ceratopsids is remarkable, and not to be taken for granted.

While that's more venting than anything else, the standards of proof for T. rex (successfully) hunting Triceratops some people have are truly ridiculous. Even on Carnivora, people still actually discuss this.

Dec 18, 2021 23:19:39 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Rhinos are claimed to ram into their opponents by this program. People often seem to think that rhinos collide their horns into things as if they were knights (knights were shock cavalry, and their signature tactic was to literally charge at top speed and let all the momentum of their galloping horses ram their lances into their enemies). The problem is, they just don’t do this, or at least not in the way TTAKD describes. And when you actually take a look at their anatomy, this makes sense. They just aren’t particularly built for literally ramming something at full speed. Rhinos have highly pneumatic skulls (link->), the bone that the big nasal horn sits on top of is cantilevered from the rest of the skull with no bone to support it underneath (link->), their horns are entirely keratin with calcium and melanin deposits inside (there is no true bone core like in the horns of bovids or ceratopsians), and the horns don’t even sit directly on top of the bone; they sit on top of dermis that sits on top of bone (link->). Mounted knights they are not.
  
  Perhaps most damning of all, highly specialized rammers in the animal kingdom tend to ram their heads on blunt impact surfaces on their heads, not sharp ones. Bighorn sheep (thick horn bases; horns are curved), muskoxen (boss formed by horn bases; horns are curved), cape buffalo (boss formed by horn bases; horns are curved), American bison (thick hair bonnet; horns presumably not involved in ramming), duikers (dome; horns presumably not involved in ramming), pachycephalosaurs (dome), pachyrhinosaurs (nasal boss), sperm whales (junk), humphead parrotfish (forehead ridge backed by bony plate in males), and tapinocephalids (massive bony skull roof). Rhino horns are the exact opposite structure of what we tend to see in dedicated rammers.
  
  It’s worth noting that brontotheres (distantly related perissodactyls that are superficially similar to rhinos) are anatomically much better built for using the skull and horns as a high impact butting weapon than rhinos are; more or less, they were to rhinos what bighorn sheep are to mountain goats (Stanley, 1973).

I've vented about T. rex downplaying and I think I now need to vent about Triceratops downplaying, but I think details like this are part of why these generalized statements about horns being a useless weapon are so ridiculous. Like, even without detailed knowledge, most people should at least know that "horns" covers a lot in the animal kingdom (from antlers, to ossicones, to true horns, to rhino noses).

Dec 18, 2021 23:19:39 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• ”T. rex was dumb, Triceratops was dumber.”
  
  Every time I hear someone making some claim that dinosaurs were hyper smart (like that whole “T. rex was as smart as a chimp” shit a few years ago) or extraordinarily dumb (like here), I almost have a stroke. I’m not saying no dinosaur couldn’t have been pretty dumb (ratites, for instance, don’t seem to be that smart) or pretty damn intelligent (our current methods for estimating extinct animal intelligence are just unreliable), but there’s just no real good way to tell.

Enough venting and time for some analysis now. I think the example of T. rex vs Triceratops demonstrates quite well why intelligence doesn't really matter in many commonly discussed AVA scenarios.

In general, I'd say intelligence matters in whenever there is complexity involved in a battle and standard tactics won't cut it. Complexity can be involved when there are more than two fighters, when there are complications inherent to the terrain or when one of the fighters is an Outside-Context Problem for the other (or both are mutual OCPs). Most AVA scenarios are 1 v 1 (this one is no exception) and almost all I'm aware of ignore terrain or just assume what's most comfortable for both. In this case, we're even talking about animals that regularly interacted, and, over the course of their lives, probably learned tactics to deal with each other - whether through observation or direct experience. (Thus, my general response to the question "How much does intelligence matter?" would be "How far will standard tactics bring you?")

That's part of why I hate referring to any animal as "dumb" because it brings certain cultural associations with stupidity (such as having poor comprehension of what's going on) that are just not applicable here. Low intelligence isn't the same as being slow to respond, it simply means that tactics/modes of response will be fairly predictable.

So, how do I see this match going down? Well, I think T. rex will try to outmaneuver Triceratops and bite its flanks. I think Triceratops will try to avoid being outmaneuvered and gore the T. rex. That's basically it and the winner will probably come down to luck, individual constitution, and inherent anatomical advantages (though I'm not sure which side holds the advantage here). I think the show got this right.

While you could argue that "It could go either way" is a bit of a cop-out answer, I think it's appropriate here and they did well with showing one particular scenario and arguing that an alternative is possible.

So, yeah, like I said at the start. Nice to talk about an AVA show that's not completely terrible.

[Infinity Blade]

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

I wonder if I'm inciting you with my constant multi-quote responses (no, they won't stop this time).

By all means, keep 'em coming.

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

The placement of the eyeball is inexcusable either way. I think JFC even lampshaded at one point how common it is to confuse the antorbital fenestra and the orbit among laypeople, though a documentary naturally has no such excuse.

Oof...

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

While that's more venting than anything else, the standards of proof for T. rex (successfully) hunting Triceratops some people have are truly ridiculous. Even on Carnivora, people still actually discuss this.

I haven't been on Carnivora for a while, but I guess I expecting nothing less there.

Yeah, the fossil record is quite biased against evidence for successful predation. Unhealed bite marks? Could just be scavenging. Healed bite marks? Clearly it failed to kill its prey (which leads to the perception that the predator was inept at preying on whatever it was trying to kill). You could find unhealed bite marks in a place you might expect for a killing bite, and if it's not like the predator gnawed on the bone, then you could probably say it's a successful kill, but such evidence is very difficult to come across. If you think finding evidence of any predation at all is bad, imagine trying to find good evidence of a successful kill.

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

I've vented about T. rex downplaying and I think I now need to vent about Triceratops downplaying, but I think details like this are part of why these generalized statements about horns being a useless weapon are so ridiculous. Like, even without detailed knowledge, most people should at least know that "horns" covers a lot in the animal kingdom (from antlers, to ossicones, to true horns, to rhino noses).

Agreed.

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

In general, I'd say intelligence matters in whenever there is complexity involved in a battle and standard tactics won't cut it. Complexity can be involved when there are more than two fighters, when there are complications inherent to the terrain or when one of the fighters is an Outside-Context Problem for the other (or both are mutual OCPs). Most AVA scenarios are 1 v 1 (this one is no exception) and almost all I'm aware of ignore terrain or just assume what's most comfortable for both. In this case, we're even talking about animals that regularly interacted, and, over the course of their lives, probably learned tactics to deal with each other - whether through observation or direct experience. (Thus, my general response to the question "How much does intelligence matter?" would be "How far will standard tactics bring you?")

That's part of why I hate referring to any animal as "dumb" because it brings certain cultural associations with stupidity (such as having poor comprehension of what's going on) that are just not applicable here. Low intelligence isn't the same as being slow to respond, it simply means that tactics/modes of response will be fairly predictable.

So, how do I see this match going down? Well, I think T. rex will try to outmaneuver Triceratops and bite its flanks. I think Triceratops will try to avoid being outmaneuvered and gore the T. rex. That's basically it and the winner will probably come down to luck, individual constitution, and inherent anatomical advantages (though I'm not sure which side holds the advantage here). I think the show got this right.

While you could argue that "It could go either way" is a bit of a cop-out answer, I think it's appropriate here and they did well with showing one particular scenario and arguing that an alternative is possible.

That's an interesting way to look at things.

Something I think is worth mentioning is how much an animal would actually use its intelligence in practice. For example, elephants are some of the most intelligent animals living today, but when was the last time you saw an elephant kill another animal by coming up with a master plan in the middle of a fight and actually enacting it? One former member pointed this out to me: ""Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." (Mike Tyson). If you're in the middle of a fight, you tend not to come up with some grand scheme to win the fight, you rely on your primitive instincts and what you've learned to your advantage.

Dec 23, 2021 2:17:20 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Nice to talk about an AVA show that's not completely terrible.

Amen.