Prehistoric Park – A Retrospective Review

[Infinity Blade]

Prehistoric Park – A Retrospective Review


Prehistoric Park is probably better deemed a “docufiction” than a true documentary. But because there’s still an element of education to it, it can still be judged by its paleontological accuracy. Plus, it was a very significant and memorable aspect of my childhood, fostering my interest in paleontology (a field I am still fighting to become a part of). I remember when I was a little kid and thought Prehistoric Park was real, and obsessed over a Prehistoric Park book I bought at a school book fair. A book I still have in my bookshelf (albeit in poor condition due to wear and tear over the years). Many in the online paleontological community, especially those closer to my generation, have the same fond memories of this show. They also fondly remember the main host of the show, Nigel Marven (who I now follow on Twitter!).

Having recently gotten a new job and continued to endure other life struggles (including, like I said above, getting into the field of paleontology), I have done everything I can to make me feel like myself again. And it’s been a whole month since I posted my last review of a paleontology-related television program, so what better thing to do than write another review?

Welcome to this retrospective review of the ultimate wildlife sanctuary. Welcome…to Prehistoric Park.



Directory:

- T-Rex Returns->
- A Mammoth Undertaking->
- Dinobirds->
- Saving the Sabretooth->
- The Bug House->
- Supercroc->
- Overall verdict->

[Infinity Blade]

T-Rex Returns


Screen capture from Prehistoric Park.

• The intro goes hard. Nigel Marven drives through the entrance of the park as various extinct animals run free and dramatic music plays in the background. All as the narrator (David Jason in the UK, Jim Forbes in the US; I grew up with the latter) says “Welcome…to Prehistoric Park.”
• I have to say, Nigel’s pretty ambitious to want to go with freaking Tyrannosaurus rex as his first pick for the park.
• The time machine in this show is kind of interesting. It’s not a booth, it’s not a spaceship-esque thingamajig, it’s a portal that’s generated by setting up two poles apart from each other.
• ”Nigel is going back to the very end of the age of dinosaurs, as close to the meteorite impact as he dares.”
  
  This is the one thing many fans don’t quite get. Out of all the points in time you could go back to to save a prehistoric animal, why choose the point when it’s literally about to go extinct (as we’ll see later, Nigel heads back just two days before the K-Pg extinction event begins)? I’ve heard the suggestion that it’s to minimize the amount of changes to the timeline as much as possible, but sometimes Nigel goes back to a past location twice. Once at a point where the species is thriving and once at a point where it’s in the process of going extinct. I’m not sure if Nigel’s really that concerned about changes in time in-universe.
• When we first see end Maastrichtian Montana 65 million years ago (now understood to be 66 million years ago, but they didn’t know that back then), we’re treated to a barren, mountainous landscape with ashy(?) ground, dominated by volcanoes. It’s kind of like its depiction in Walking with Dinosaurs, although everything (especially the ground) looks darker and somewhat gloomier here.
  
  The Hell Creek Formation (part of which is in Montana) has been interpreted as a subtropical, forested floodplain. It would have looked more like what you see in these depictions below.
  
  
  Rendition of ancient Hell Creek by Saurian->
  
  
  © @ Andrey Atuchin.
• But then Nigel heads to a forest to look for a T. rex (so maybe what I just said is partly moot).
  
  The given size for T. rex is 45 feet long and 5 tons. The length is a bit long for any known rex specimen (although, not something I would consider impossible to achieve either), while the stated weight is very conservative.
• The first dinosaur Nigel sees is Ornithomimus. O. velox is indeed known from this time and place. Of course, if we had to update this model based on modern knowledge, the first thing we’d do is add feathers. Nigel tells us that the Ornithomimus will eat insects and meat if given the chance, but are mostly herbivorous (indeed, Nigel found nipped plants near the Ornithomimus). Later on they’re going to be depicted filter feeding through water like ducks, on the basis of lamellae found in ornithomimid beaks (in reality, these were not analogous to the flexible filter-feeding bristles of ducks, but more like the ridges seen in turtle and hadrosaurid beaks, meant to crop tough vegetation).
• Nigel plans to capture one of the Ornithomimus to save it from extinction. His antics are written off as a little silly, but trying to catch and wrangle with one Ornithomimus while a whole herd of these 170 kg animals stampedes around you isn’t exactly the safest thing to do. There’s also a chance one of them becomes aggressive and makes an active attempt to kick you. Ostriches can perforate human intestines, damage eyes beyond repair, and even disembowel people with their kicks. They can also break each others long bones and pelvic girdles. Ornithomimids could do much the same.
• Of course, way worse than this is being chased by three adult T. rex. Which is what ends up happening to Nigel right afterwards. He ends up escaping them and heads back to camp empty-handed, probably because he and his cameraman are in no way equipped to take three of these aggressive colossal predators back.
• When Nigel encounters a herd of Triceratops, he decides Triceratops horridus is an unfitting species name due to how beautiful he finds the live animals to be. This raises an interesting point. If we knew some modern animals only from their bones, we might also consider them to be “horrid” as well. Hippos are a great example, and you need only look at their skulls to see what I mean. But I’m sure there are people out there who have seen hippos in the wild (or even in captivity) and consider them to be beautiful, majestic animals. If we could see some fossil animals in the flesh, I’m sure we’d think the same thing about them. I just know that laying eyes on a living Triceratops would have been a breath-taking experience.
• Also worth noting that by the very end of the Cretaceous, Triceratops prorsus would be around, not T. horridus. There is evidence suggesting the latter evolved into the former. T. horridus is found lower in the Hell Creek Formation, T. prorsus is found in the upper third of the formation, and transitional forms are found in the middle unit thereof (Scannella et al., 2014).
• The narrator claims T. rex could move up to 40 mph. Yeah…no.
• Let’s take a moment to talk about the T. rex in Prehistoric Park.
  
  First, they’re definitely lankier here than they were in real life, so PP’s rex model is definitely not the most accurate one out there. Additionally, the hands are pronated and something about the skull shape just looks off (I think it’s the orbital ridges).
  
  Second, they claim it could bite ten times harder than a lion. Believe it or not, this is actually a conservative estimate. A 3D model of a lion’s skull and jaw muscles suggests it could bite with a force of 3388 N at the canines (McHenry et al., 2007). A recent estimate found one specimen of Tyrannosaurus, BHI 3033 (Stan), to bite with a force of 35,365 to 63,492 N, which is up to >18 times more powerful than a lion’s bite at the canines (Cost et al., 2020). Another recent study even found one of the largest known T. rex specimens, FMNH PR 2081 (Sue), to bite with a force of almost 95 kN (Rowe & Snively, 2021). That’s nearly 28 times more powerful than a lion’s.
  
  Third, I’m a bit confused by their depiction of its social structure. Nigel comes across a pack of T. rex in a bone-littered territory with broken eggshells. That suggests that they’re living in a tight-knit family, and that they regularly come to this particular spot to feed, interact with each other (we see some individuals fighting), and reproduce. On the other hand, the adult female T. rex that’s focused on so much in this episode is presumably part of this pack (when they attack the Triceratops herd later, the narrator refers to them as “the” T. rex pack, implying it’s the same one seen in the territory). But later on it turns out to be nesting two babies in the mountains, with no evidence that it lives with any other T. rex in that spot. So…which is it? Tight-knit family or single mother taking care of young?
• The next morning, the T. rex pack attacks a herd of Triceratops. I actually like the way they depict the behavior of both species involved. The great thing about living in a herd is that you are individually less likely to be the one getting killed, and most of the Triceratops (including the juveniles) take advantage of this. Formidable as these Trikes are, they’re not above saving their own skins and avoiding direct combat if they can. Of course, if push comes to shove, they are more than capable of fighting and injuring a T. rex. One of them comes to the rescue of a captured youngster and stabs a rex (the same adult female I mentioned earlier) straight through the thigh.
  
  On the part of the T. rex gang, while they don’t cower to adult Triceratops that stand their ground, they’re not above going after more vulnerable juveniles if it suits them.
  
  And frankly, that’s how it should be.
• Nigel tries to bring back both a young Triceratops and the injured female rex about to kill it, thinking that the latter will pursue the former across the time portal. She doesn’t, but Nigel still successfully brings the young Trike to Prehistoric Park, making it the first animal the park has brought back.
• Head Veterinarian Suzanne (who, btw, is an actual veterinarian->) is excited to see a Triceratops in the park. Head Keeper Bob (portrayed by Rod Arthur) finds a suitable place to put the Trike (where there isn’t a lot of grass), and Nigel dubs the Trike “Theo”.
• Bob builds the T. rex enclosure with his crew, and here lies one of my biggest issues with the series. The enclosures tend to just be wood post fences, yet somehow they’re enough to contain animals as large as a Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus. Granted, Theo isn’t a fully grown Trike, but he’s still stated by the narrator to weigh 3 tons. He will, of course, continue to grow in the future until he’s as big as a bull African bush elephant.
  
  Below are recommended barriers to keep captive elephants in their enclosures. Notice how wood posts are not one among them.
  
  
  AZA Standards for Elephant Management and Care (revised April 2012)->
  

  A recommended minimum height of walls, cables and horizontal railings for adult elephants is 8 ft (2.4 m). The use of electric fences is not sufficient as a primary containment barrier. A wide variety of building materials can be used for elephant containment barriers. The barriers must be safe for the elephants, must be able to withstand an elephant’s strength, must contain the elephant in a specific space, and must prohibit direct contact between elephants and the visitors. Recommended materials for barriers include solid concrete, rock walls or horizontal steel rails, pipe or cable.

  
  
  EAZA Best Practice Guidelines for Elephants (2020)->
  

  The main goals of barriers are safety and prevention of direct contact with the public and staff. Thus, barriers must be well maintained and escape-proof. The most common barriers are either concrete walls, gates/doors, electric fencing (secondary barrier if not steel ropes), and/or water or dry moats.

• I love the music playing as Nigel walks across a waterfall and river. It’s fitting for the beautiful scenery, but at the same time it also has a hint of sadness to it as the narrator and Nigel explain that this waterfall and the life around it will soon be decimated.
• ”And an animal that weighs 6 tons they can’t walk quietly.”
  
  I mean, elephants can walk quietly, and they weigh just as much as a T. rex. Look at this video-> of an elephant walking. Far cry from the loud booming thuds you’ll often hear giant dinosaurs making with every footstep in popular media (for example, Jurassic Park). Part of the reason elephants can walk so quietly is because their thick, spongy foot pads muffle a lot of the sound, but giant tyrannosaurids also had thick, fleshy foot pads that could produce the same effect. There was even a study that found that the foot structure of theropods could also have reduced the intensity of seismic waves moving forward, reducing the chances of being detected (Blanco et al., 2018).
• One thing I didn’t notice when I watched this episode as a kid was the Triceratops corpse flowing downriver. Maybe this Trike ended up in the river when it fled from the T. rex attack but ended up drowning.
  
  The female rex badly wants to eat the dead Trike, but can’t risk getting swept away or flipped over by the fast running river. But looking at the river, it honestly doesn’t seem very deep at all. If it’s not, the heavy rex should easily be able to cross the river and drag the carcass out of the water.
• Back at the park, Bob and Suzanne see that Theo is acting strange. He keeps pushing against a tree with his head and his frill has changed color. Suzanne theorizes that Theo has an urge to mate, and Bob has a “very good idea” that he’s all too happy to try out (please don’t take that out of context…).
  
  This is one good thing about Prehistoric Park. It’s not like the show only gives the animals attention as they’re being brought to the 21st century and completely ignores them after that (well, this is probably true for some animals, but not all). It actually shows us the challenges the park staff face when caring for these animals. Prehistoric Park is one part prehistoric nature and another part veterinary care.
• Nigel and his crew build barriers made of logs to corral the injured T. rex through the time portal. Not only does the T. rex come this way, but a herd of Ornithomimus does as well, trying to escape the tyrannosaur. In my honest opinion, I can’t imagine such a giant, relatively slow predator would want to pursue ornithomimids for food, and with an injured leg, no less.
• Also, I noticed that PP sometimes recycles animation of their prehistoric animal models. We’ll notice this in subsequent episodes too. Ah well, budget constraints.
• I love how Nigel just decides, on the fly, that he wants to bring back certain extinct species not on his original bucket list. Like, he sees it once, he wants to bring it back too. To be fair, this isn’t the first time he’s seen the Ornithomimus, and he did state earlier that he would like to have them at the park too, but we’ll see this played straight with animals seen in later episodes.
• But anyway, the Ornithomimus herd (minus a slow one that ends up killed by the T. rex) goes through the portal to Prehistoric Park, and Bob gets to have fun containing them. Nigel then has to follow the T. rex walking away with its kill. I don’t even know how Nigel planned to get her back to the park at this point.
• With the nice track playing in the background and Bob’s light grin, there’s a sense of satisfaction of Prehistoric Park having obtained its second extinct species (a whole herd of them, no less).
  
  Bob is still working on his solution to Theo’s rutting behavior btw.
• As Nigel tracks down the T. rex, he learns that the reason why she didn’t eat the Ornithomimus in her mouth is that she’s a mother. Two young tyrannosaurs are waiting for her in their lair. Again, refer to what I said above regarding the show’s depiction of T. rex social structure.
• I’m just going to quickly note that the young rexes don’t look too different from the adults, with some differences in the head being the most notable. Depending on how young they are (and to be fair, I don’t, as even by episode 5 they’re not fully grown), they should look very different from the adults.
• Nigel hopes for a second that they could maybe get this whole family of T. rex back to Prehistoric Park. But alas, the heartwarming moment doesn’t last long, as a hungry, potentially infanticidal adult male T. rex enters the mother’s territory.
  
  The animation cycles for two fighting T. rex we see here are reused twice in this fight. They will be reused in a later episode. The mother actually seems to have the upper hand for most of the fight, but she doesn’t cause any visible damage to the intruder with her bite. Even more unfortunately for her, the intruder wrenches his neck free, and in doing so smashes her head against a rock, mortally wounding her. He then walks off with his stolen prize.
  
  What follows does a really good job at making you feel sorry for the mother. Quiet, ominous, yet poignantly sad music plays in the background. The mother rex lies on the ground, her own blood splattered on the ground around her head. Her two helpless offspring look at their dying mother.
  
  Think about everything that’s happened to her throughout this episode. She’s been seriously injured by a Triceratops, and she has difficulty moving around and finding food. She had to abandon a carcass at a river, something that could have been an easy meal. The only reason she’s able to get a meal is because one Ornithomimus happened to be slow enough for her to catch it. It’s a small meal for her, yet she hikes all the way up the mountains to feed her offspring. Then an intruder comes along, steals her kill, and mortally wounds her.
  
  When Nigel slowly approaches the mother rex, she makes one last roar as he gets too close, probably (as TVTropes says) as a final desperate attempt to protect her offspring; Nigel even has a look of sadness on his face. The roar is one we’ve never heard from the T. rex previously. It’s actually a stock dinosaur/monster roar, but in this case it actually works. Maybe it’s just me, but something about the way it sounds makes the mother sound truly desperate and dying. Finally, the mother rex can let out no more and her head slumps to the ground, expired.
• It just gets worse from here. The Chicxulub asteroid slams into the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  I’m not exactly an expert on the exact physics of the Chicxulub impact, but I think it’s agreed that you would have noticed and seen it even if you were in Montana (indeed, Nigel does himself). You could have even been blinded by the bright flash of light as the asteroid collided into the Earth. That wouldn’t have been good for Nigel and the young T. rex siblings.
• Just a reminder that everyone’s lives are at stake here. Not just the young rexes, but Nigel and his crew too.
• Nigel uses a ham sandwich and himself to lure the young rexes through the time portal.
  
  Miraculously, it works (and even more thankfully they don’t turn back around through the time portal for whatever reason, idk, animal logic). T. rex returns.
• The two siblings are male and female, named Terence and Matilda, respectively. They’re monitored in some holding pens before they’re moved to their permanent enclosure. Now that I think about it, the way they passively aggressively growl at each other over food seems like an early sign of their later aggression towards each other.
• Theo is still having issues. In fact, he charges at Suzanne and Nigel looking at him through his fence. He literally rams one of the wooden posts between his horns. How the hell does this fence hold??!! The posts aren’t even that thick, Nigel can sort of grip them in one hand.
• Bob then arrives with his solution to Theo’s aggression: a tractor Triceratops. No, seriously. He customizes a tractor outfitted with two sticks mimicking a Triceratops’ brow horns to see if this will stimulate Theo. This is what I like about Bob as a character. He may sometimes be exasperated by the chaos of rearing extinct fauna, but he’s got a fun side to him too.
  
  Nigel can’t help but join Bob on the Tractor Trike, and Suzanne opens the gates in amusement at the two men. Nigel and Bob have fun play fighting a Triceratops, while Theo seems to be getting his enrichment and letting his aggression out on the tire-padded tractor. The narrator remarks that this is a chance for all the boys to let off steam.
  
  “Men…”, Suzanne remarks. XD
• Nigel shows us how there are actually fossil specimens of Triceratops with injured frills and skulls, indicative of intraspecific combat. So yeah, it’s not like this show went completely unresearched or anything.
• The episode ends as the Trinity Suzanne, Bob, and Nigel observe Terence and Matilda in their permanent enclosures, as the narrator explains how they will rapidly grow into some of the most formidable predators that has ever walked the Earth…and that Prehistoric Park needs to be ready.

Final verdict:

As cliché as some may find T. rex to be, this was a solid first episode. Nigel makes two attempts to catch a T. rex, with only the third time being the charm (and even then only juveniles), highlighting the difficulties in catching this enormous predator. Along the way he brings back two other end Cretaceous species as well, animals just as fascinating as the T. rex he’s after. And he does it all with the threat of the Chicxulub asteroid looming over him (and eventually striking Earth). We’re even treated to a hard-hitting emotional moment, particularly the death of Terence and Matilda’s mother.

Perhaps the one complaint I have is that the cast of species we see here is not particularly big. Only three species (four if you count the pterosaurs, which I don’t think are accurate for the time period) are ever seen, when end Cretaceous Montana was home to many more creatures than just those. I know there were time and narrative constraints, but seeing at least a few of these other species would have been nice, and serve as a poignant reminder of what Nigel couldn’t save. There are some paleontological inaccuracies here and there, but I think some of them were at least excusable for the time.

[Infinity Blade]

A Mammoth Undertaking


Screen capture from Prehistoric Park.

• Bob and his crew feed Terence and Matilda, and we get a recap of how they were rescued in the last episode. The narrator mentions them as half-starved when they first arrived at the park, which is consistent with Suzanne saying they looked a bit thin or emaciated in the previous episode. Looks like their mother had a hard time feeding them (though, they should have been able to hunt for their own food even at that age).
• Nigel’s next mission? Save the woolly mammoth. I guess for his first couple missions he starts off with iconic stock prehistoric fauna (i.e. T. rex & woolly mammoth).
  
  Also, this is stupid of me, but I just realized the elephants Nigel’s seen with at the beginning of this episode are the same herd that serves as a surrogate family for the mammoth.
• Nigel says the last of the mammoths were east of the Urals in Siberia.
  
  Well, they were actually on Wrangel Island, but I can understand Nigel not wanting to bring back an inbred mammoth.
• So, Nigel’s traveled back to Siberia 10,000 years ago. Two episodes from now he’s also going to be in South America, also 10,000 years ago. Imagine if he ended up traveling to both places on the exact same days; while Nigel is in Siberia, there’s another Nigel rescuing saber-toothed cats on the other side of the planet.
• Is the extinction date of 10k years ago accurate? Surprisingly, the real extinction date may be much later than that. There’s actually some recent evidence suggesting that woolly mammoths survived in the Taimyr Peninsula as late as ~3,900 years ago (give or take 200k years). While the presence skeletal remains would indeed suggest an extinction date of ~10 ka in continental Eurasia, this new evidence is based in genomics (Wang et al., 2021). Granted, woolly mammoth populations would certainly still have been greatly declining since the end of the Pleistocene, but that’s still way later than paleontologists previously thought.
• After plowing through endless tracts of forest, Nigel finds a cave. Except that it contains a…cave bear?
  
  One dramatic chase scene (with one of the best tracks in this series playing in the background) later, Nigel is able to escape death by climbing up a tree while his cameraman ends up fine on the ground, somehow. Nigel was sure cave bears were extinct by this point, which is an interesting point of discussion. Isotopic, chronometric, and taphonomic evidence all suggest that cave bears went extinct around 24,000 years ago (Terlato et al., 2018), well before the time period Nigel travels to. If PP wanted to strictly adhere to the evidence, they would have excluded the cave bear. However, they deliberately misplaced it living around 10,000 years ago, believing that it’s not unreasonable that cave bears could have survived later than paleontologists thought at the time.
  
  Now, at this point, the depiction of cave bears surviving as late as 10k years ago has not been vindicated. But the point PP was trying to make is clear. It did, in fact, turn out to apply to the mammoths, as well as another ice age creature we’ll later see in this episode.
  
  But Nigel does surmise that if cave bears are still around then, they certainly can’t be around for much longer.
• The show tells us that another reason why mammoths went extinct is because they were overhunted by prehistoric humans (juxtaposing a dead hunted mammoth with ominous music and random elk(?) noises). While I don’t dispute the exact statement at face value, there’s some evidence suggesting the cause of the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions was very complicated. Which is to say, just because one thing caused the extinction of a species in one region doesn’t mean it did the same in another. There is evidence for humans contributing to mammoth extinction in some parts of North America (Klapman & Capaldi, 2017); Broughton & Weitzel, 2018). However, the evidence by Wang et al. (2021) (posted above) suggests that humans and woolly mammoths would have coexisted for thousands of years in Siberia, with the latter going extinct much later than the time of human arrival. This suggests that, at least in Siberia, human hunting had pretty much nothing to do with the local extinction of the woolly mammoth.
• Nigel finds a flute made from a mammoth tusk buried in snow. He blows on it briefly. Personally, I wouldn’t have taken any chances. I wouldn’t want to let prehistoric humans find me.
• At last he finds a mammoth. Or two mammoths. Actually just one mammoth. One of them is obviously dead, while the surviving one (probably her sister) makes distressed low grumbling noises before being brought to her knees herself (a spear tip is embedded in her shoulder).
  
  The closeups of the dead sister are pretty brutal. Not only was the mammoth obviously bleeding from her wounds, but it’s the fact that she has so many damn spears embedded in her body that sells it. These prehistoric humans put the “overkill” in “overkill hypothesis”.
• After Nigel calls for help because the mammoth is too weak to walk through the time portal, we get a jarring transition from the sad and serious state they’re in to some upbeat track playing while Bob looks after Ornithomimus. This is where the whole “Ornithomimus sieves food like a duck” shebang comes into play. As I said in my previous review, this isn’t accurate. Ornithomimus were indeed largely herbivorous.
• Throughout the night, Nigel needs to look out for opportunistic predators like hyenas, wolves, and humans. The hyenas should have recently gone extinct by this time. The humans are said to be the hardest to spot in the night since they lack any eyeshine, but by that same token they also have the worst night vision out of the three. I would imagine the prehistoric humans would want to navigate their way through a dark forest with fire, which would be a dead giveaway of their presence. They don’t use it here, though; maybe all the light Nigel set up was enough for them to make their way through.
• TVTropes makes an interesting point: out of all the prehistoric predators featured on this show (and they feature some terrifying ones, like Tyrannosaurus, Smilodon, and Deinosuchus), it’s the humans who are built up and presented as especially frightening. We don’t even see their faces, just their dark silhouettes moving through the forest->.
  
  Put in the same position, I wouldn’t just be worried for the mammoth’s safety: I’d be worried about myself as well. Who knows how prehistoric humans would react to you? Your best bet at communication are hand gestures because no matter your language, no one was speaking it 10,000 years ago. Your face is probably going to be different from theirs, and your clothes and equipment certainly will be. Would they be hostile? Would they be scared of you? Would they be scared of you and as a result become hostile?
• I love the track that plays when the mammoth gets back on her feet. To an extent, also the track playing when Nigel leads her through the time portal.
  
  Soon afterwards, Suzanne and an assistant remove a stone spearhead from her body. The team then names the mammoth “Martha”.
• Their problems don’t stop there, though. Martha doesn’t eat anything given to her, which risks her infection flaring up again. The interesting part is Suzanne showing us the similarities between modern elephant and mammoth teeth, and how she doesn’t think her dentition is the problem; she should be able to grind up grass, so maybe it’s the type of grass or differences in her digestive system. This is actually where I first learned of their similarities in dental structure, so these educational tidbits are a definite plus for Prehistoric Park.
  
  Also, there’s a random Ornithomimus screech that can be heard as Suzanne discusses Martha’s health. Now I lowkey want to see Martha interact with these dinosaurs. Like, imagine being a woolly mammoth, you’re in this new environment that’s the opposite of your ice age habitat, you’re not eating well, and suddenly…you see this two-legged beast with skinny arms, legs, and neck, that should have feathers.
• Nigel: ”Save…MARTHA!!!”
  
  
• Anyway, Nigel travels 150,000 years in the past to…get some grass. I didn’t realize how mundane of a reason for time travel that is until now. But don’t worry, Papa Nigel’s gonna bring back something far greater.
• Mammoths are far more common at this time that Nigel’s traveled to. This would have been a far better time period to choose to catch a mammoth. The tracks that play are nice, and it’s a little more heartwarming to see after seeing the sorry state the mammoths’ descendants are in 140,000 years later.
• After a wholesome scene of the mammoth matriarch freeing a calf stuck in the mud, an Elasmotherium appears next to his snowmobile, grazing for grass. I love how the “danger track” (titled “Trex Showdown”) immediately plays, and you can tell from Nigel’s face that he knows he’s in trouble.
  
  First, let’s talk about the show’s Elasmotherium model. While the exact shape of the structure on its head is still open to debate (I’m pretty certain there was some individual variation in shape, just like there is in modern rhinoceros horns), it’s probable, most likely even, that Elasmotherium did not have that giant unicorn horn it’s often depicted with (Titov et al., 2021). The study I just cited proposes it had a short keratoid pad covering the huge bony frontal swelling. The dome would have functioned to enhance olfaction and possibly even amplify sounds, while the keratoid pad would provide some protection to the fragile, thin-walled structure (Titov et al., 2021).
  
  Second, the narrator tells us that the Elasmotherium will soon be extinct as its habitat disappears due to a warming climate. While it appears to be true that Elasmotherium went extinct due to habitat loss, and therefore the extensive grass it relied heavily on (this was a highly specialized grazer), we now know that Elasmotherium actually went extinct much later than 150,000 years ago. Instead it went extinct ~39-35,000 years ago (Kosintsev et al., 2019). See? Another ice age animal that went extinct later than previously thought.
  
  Lastly, Nigel’s pretty worried about getting impaled by that horn. Now, as a puny human that weighs some two orders of magnitude less than the rhino, he has every right to be scared of Elasmotherium, regardless of what it’s got in its head. But one very obscure fact about Elasmotherium is that it actually doesn’t have an ideal cranial structure for using its “horn” as a weapon. The structure of the occipital crests (moderately projected backwards in Elasmotherium versus stretched upwards and backwards in rhinos that use their horns as weapons) and the horn positioned on the frontal (not on the nose, so as to utilize all the impulsion given by the neck muscles) actually make it doubtful that whatever it possessed was used as a weapon (Mazza & Azzaroli, 1993).
• The situation is made worse by a bull mammoth (previously stated by Nigel to be in musth) confronting Nigel. Nigel escapes the charging bull mammoth on his snowmobile, but at the cost of dropping the bag of grass he needs.
  
  Unfortunately, PP blueballs a potential fight between a mammoth and a giant rhino from us. I would have loved to see that. Knowing what I know now about both species, I’m actually unsure of who would win.
• After his encounter with the two megaherbivores, Nigel decides he wants to bring the Elasmotherium back with him. He grabs the bag of grass he dropped and uses himself as bait for the rhino. One thing I like is how the Elasmotherium trots as it chases Nigel. It doesn’t gallop, which seems logical to me; I can’t see a 5 ton rhino galloping.
• And…Nigel is successful. The rhino is trapped as they close a wooden gate that, honestly, doesn’t look strong enough to hold a 5 ton rhino (yet of course, it does anyway).
• Nigel returns to Martha’s enclosure with his prehistoric grass, in the hopes that Martha will start eating.
  
  Except she doesn’t. It’s at this point that Nigel suspects that Martha is lonely.
  
  (And I swear, I still hear some elk noises in the background. Am I going crazy?)
• The Trinity Nigel, Bob, and Suzanne hold a meeting at night in Nigel’s den. I’d assume they’re having the meeting after working hours, but I wouldn’t mind spending a bit of time at night in a literal prehistoric animal sanctuary.
  
  Anyway, after some discussion, it’s agreed that the next morning Martha will be introduced to the park’s resident elephant herd, despite the potential risks.
  
  And it works. The bush elephant matriarch appears to interact positively to Martha and vice versa. Martha begins feeding again, and we have a happy ending.
  
  (But don’t worry, this isn’t the end of Martha’s story arc with the elephant herd)

Final verdict:

Despite a handful of inaccuracies, one of which was deliberate and at least most of the rest being stuff they couldn’t have possibly known back then, this was a nice episode too. You can’t help but feel for Martha here. Even after being saved from brutal prehistoric hunter-gatherers, Martha still has problems. She doesn’t eat well at first, and the park staff have to figure out why. And when they suspect Martha’s lonely, they take big risks introducing her to a herd of modern elephants (which, mind you, are in a completely different genus); it’s only through luck that it actually goes well. It’s this mix of problems and dangers, both prehistoric and veterinary in nature, that makes this episode interesting. It was also nice to see the rarely-depicted Elasmotherium being depicted too (in contrast to the popular woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta).

As with “T-Rex Returns”, I do kind of wish we saw more prehistoric fauna. We technically see more here than in the previous episode, but the hyenas and wolves get little screen time, while the human hunters are just, well, humans.

[Infinity Blade]

Dinobirds


Screen capture from Prehistoric Park.

• The narrator mentions that Terence and Matilda are the pride of the park. Not surprising.
• As you can imagine, Martha is also having trouble adjusting to her new home, as she’s adapted to ice age life, not whatever warm place Prehistoric Park is in.
• Immediately Nigel and his crew realize the dangers of the volcanic area they’re in when they travel back to Early Cretaceous China. The episode is supposed to take place 125 million years ago, although, the Jiufotang Formation Microraptor hails from seems to be slightly younger than this.
• Several pterosaur species are known from the Jiufotang Formation. Sadly, they don’t specify which species the ones seen here are.
• Nigel enjoys viewing the pterosaurs fishing. But when he and his crew return to the campsite, they find that it’s been raided by something. All the meat was stolen, tents are wrecked, and one even has bloody claw marks that ripped through the fabric. No one is sure what caused this, and there is insufficient food left for the crew. Later on, they’re seen trekking through the forest, but are spooked by unseen creatures moving through vegetation. I haven’t seen this episode in a while, but I’m pretty sure I know what they’re supposed to be.
• Martha gets a hair cut. That…that’s all.
• Nigel encounters an Incisivosaurus, an oviraptorosaur that’s actually known from the earlier Yixian Formation (ergo, from what we can tell, it did not live with Microraptor). It actually attacks him, and later Nigel is staring into the dropped camera to wipe off its saliva. Animal interactions with the camera are also seen in Walking with Beasts & Monsters, and it’s great to see them continued in another Impossible Pictures production (earlier, Martha sneezed on the camera lens).
• One of the crew members is attacked by a pack of man-sized carnivorous theropods. Nigel actually smacks one in the head (what a chad) and they run off with a backpack containing meat.
  
  I’m just going to say it: these theropods are supposed to be Mei long. If the show were made today, we would give it a more extensive feather covering. We also wouldn't depict it living with Microraptor, since like Incisivosaurus it's known from the earlier Yixian Formation. It was also a tiny troodontid, and it was nowhere near as big as PP portrays it. While the holotype specimen is said to have been a juvenile when it died, one small mature specimen smaller than the holotype measures about 325 mm long (Gao et al., 2012). This tells us there was some variation in adult size, but there’s no way in hell any adult Mei was man-sized like in this show. No way they could threaten an adult human being or cause the kind of damage done to the crew’s campsite.
• You know what could, though? How about a juvenile Sinotyrannus? Sinotyrannus wasn’t known when PP aired, but in 2009 this giant proceratosaurid was discovered in the same formation that bears Microraptor remains. And by giant, I mean giant: this early tyrannosaur was ~8-9 meters long and weighed ~1.5 tons (Brusatte & Carr, 2016). Juveniles could easily be large enough to destroy the campsite and be a serious threat to the crew members. Adults, well…you get the picture.
  
  This also means Nigel and his crew traveled back to a time and place housing a hippo-sized predator without having any idea that it existed…which is a really terrifying thought. And it just goes to show you that, if you really did travel through time, you’d be surprised by what you find.
• Bob, for once, seems pretty relaxed watching over the Ornithomimus enjoying their new home. Except for one loner that’s just hanging around doing nothing.
• Back in prehistoric China, Nigel finally finds Microraptor gliding above the forest canopy. In another case of science marches on, we now know of preserved melanosomes in Microraptor feathers that indicate an iridescent black coloration (Li et al., 2012).
  
  As Nigel chases the Microraptor, we get a nice transition where one of them flies next to a titanosaur that pops up in view of the camera. Nigel staggers a bit before getting out of its way, and the titanosaur is followed by a herd. We even get a homage to "Time of the Titans" in the form of a ventral view shot of a titanosaur walking through. Impossible Pictures remembered its roots.
• The footprints of the titanosaurs turn up dirt and expose invertebrates that were hiding underneath the soil. This provides food for the Microraptor, and it might suggest the titanosaurs in PP are a keystone species of their ecosystem. Pretty neat detail.
• Nigel has difficulty catching Microraptor, even when they’re on the ground. I’ll give the show credit for not depicting Microraptor as clumsy on the ground, like people would later do.
  
  So then he and his crew set up some bird nets in the hopes of catching one. Unfortunately, a fighting pair of Incisivosaurus ruin the trap and Nigel fails yet again to catch a Microraptor. Dejected, he decides to head back to Prehistoric Park to think of another strategy. It turns out to be a net gun that he accidentally(?) tests on Bob.
• Nigel comes across a group of Mei that he thinks are sleeping. But when he claps his hands, touches one with a stick, and checks his CO₂ device, it becomes clear that they’re never going to wake up. This, of course, is based on the actual holotype of Mei long, which died in a bird-like roosting position.
• At one point (ngl, I forgot where exactly and I don’t feel like replaying to check again) Nigel suspects creatures like Microraptor were outcompeted by modern birds. Of course, Microraptor went extinct long before crown birds appeared, and “dinobirds” in general (like enantiornithines) survived until the end of the Cretaceous, so this definitely can’t be true.
• Eventually we are introduced to a problem that will last for the next two episodes. This episode marks the beginning of Terence and Matilda’s antagonism. The increasing heat makes them angry to the point where they fight each other. Bob and his crew have to separate them and cool them down with a hose (I’m sure the last thing you’d want is to get close to two angry Tyrannosaurus). Although it works, the two are temporarily moved to holding pens as a dividing wall is built in their enclosure.
  
  Alas, this is FAAAR from the end of the troubles the T. rex cause, both to each other and to literally everyone/thing else.
• The only good news so far is that the loner Ornithomimus is, in fact, pregnant, as revealed by a scan Suzanne does on it.
• Nigel and his crew narrowly escape death by getting onto higher ground. But the volcanic tremors tell us that they’re definitely not out of the woods yet. So he needs to get a Microraptor now. Luckily, the net gun works, and he captures a few Microraptor.
  
  But right after he catches the last one, the volcano erupts. It spooks a nearby titanosaur to start walking in the opposite direction, which is towards the last netted Microraptor. Nigel has the guts to snatch it between the titanosaur’s feet and is able to save it, albeit with a clipped wing on the Microraptor. The sky quickly becomes dark with volcanic ash, to the point where Nigel and his crew need to put on masks to prevent their lungs from getting lacerated. Here, it looks like Nigel is in more direct contact with the lethal effects of the volcano than he was with the Chicxulub asteroid in episode 1. You can kind of feel the urgency to gtfo.
• Bob sees Nigel, his crew, and the Microraptors they’re carrying make it in one piece…followed by the herd of titanosaurs, much to Bob’s disbelief and later grief as they destroy the surrounding wooden fences.
  
  >be Bob
  >expect Nigel to bring back tiny dinobirds
  >see gigantic f*cking sauropods pass through
  >contemplate life decisions
• It’s pretty cool and wholesome to see one of the Microraptors making friends with Nigel’s parrot.
• >when you think some wooden post fences that only come up to the base of the titanosaurs’ necks will stop them.

Final verdict:

The third episode does something completely different from the first two episodes. Instead of bringing back a giant, popular, and charismatic prehistoric species, he brings back a small, not very well known (at the time), yet very unusual animal. It’s a nice change of pace, and it’s an acknowledgement that it not all fascinating species are big. The multiple strange and/or unpopular dinosaurs shown in this episode are also a plus (Incisivosaurus, Mei long).

As for the volcano, do I get serious “oh crap” vibes from it? Kinda? Although I’d argue Nigel and his crew are in more direct danger from natural disasters in this episode than in the previous two, I feel like they could have done a better job with establishing the volcano as a threat. It’s only in the second half of the episode where it becomes an actual hazard to Nigel and his crew; in the first half, it’s really just there as a “oh yeah, that thing might be a problem in the future” sort of thing. If they had say, experienced their first tremor upon arriving and more gradually amped up the effects of the volcano from there, that would have been better.

We get a nice continuation of the husbandry of the park’s current residents (except for my boi Theo and the Elasmotherium…). Some get more attention than others, but then again, there’s not really much to giving a mammoth a hair cut.

[Infinity Blade]

Saving the Sabretooth


Screen capture from Prehistoric Park.

• Nigel actually tells the view of a couple options for extinct cats and “cats” to bring back. These include the giant cheetah (Acinonyx pardiniensis) and the marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex; obviously not a true cat). Neat little bonus info for those who aren’t prehistory nerds.
• Nigel had that Smilodon skull since he was a kid. I tried getting skull casts of animals from Bone Clones and Skulls Unlimited as a kid, but my parents said they were too expensive. Instead I remember getting a Bone Clones shirt that was way too big…
• As is the norm for paleomedia, Prehistoric Park falls for the “sabertooths outcompeted terror birds” meme. Large terror birds already competed with carnivorans for a few million years without going extinct within that timeframe, as well as metatherian and sebecosuchian predators for tens of millions of years prior to that. It should be noted that Nigel is planning on going back 1 million years ago, but by that point large terror birds were already gone (Titanis goes extinct in North America 1.8 million years ago). Only small psilopterines remained by that point, and they certainly weren’t competing with the big carnivorans like Smilodon populator (which itself appeared a little later than 1 Ma, if we’re being strict).
• Bob is unable to properly hear Nigel over the radio because his tractor is too loud as he follows the titanosaurs. But he is able to make out a need for a bird cage; Nigel needs a 10 foot tall cage for his terror bird. So just before Nigel leaves, Bob comes up to him with a regular bird cage. Lol
• There’s a brief scene where a herd of Toxodon are quietly grazing on a grassland in Pleistocene South America, but then Nigel’s jeep appears out of nowhere and spooks them. Nigel has to not hit them, while the Toxodon surely have no idea what just happened and gallop away.
• The Toxodon in this universe are semi-aquatic animals like hippos. Nigel even pulls out a copy of Charles Darwin’s journal where the latter surmises that Toxodon was an aquatic animal like modern sirenians. While I have no problem with Toxodon taking the occasional dip in the water, it is now believed to have been a terrestrial animal.
• Nigel suggests that Toxodon might even be dangerous like hippos, and sure enough, one of them aggressively approaches Nigel (making bear noises…).
  
  To be fair, the only thing I could envision a Toxodon even doing to hurt another animal is body/shoulder slamming or trampling it. A bull hippo, which Nigel uses as a comparison, is just as big as Toxodon except it also has a big mouth filled with huge self-sharpening tusks. To be fairer, Toxodon’s sheer size would be enough against most of the animals in its environment (and certainly against Nigel). I guess it could even tip the jeep over with its shoulder.
  
  The ensuing chase scene is one of the most memorable in Prehistoric Park in my opinion. After Nigel is able to get it off his tail, he remarks that they’re just as dangerous as a saber-tooth. Given that Toxodon weighs ~1.4 tonnes, I won’t bother disputing that.
• Suzanne retrieves two eggs the Ornithomimus mother rejected, hoping she can hatch them using modern technology instead. I’m pretty sure this is based on modern bird behavior. Honestly, I have no idea how birds determine whether or not an egg should be rejected.
• A Smilodon is spotted by Nigel. But the show’s model for Smilodon just doesn’t…look right. The face looks kind of weird; I guess it’s not as detailed/well rendered as one would like for a cat’s face? In any case, it’s definitely not my favorite Smilodon depiction in paleomedia; I’d take WWB’s Smilodon over it.
• I was originally planning on giving a whole explanation on why I don’t think a single Smilodon populator could take down a Toxodon, but looking at how big the Toxodon is compared to its assailant, I feel like it may be a juvenile. That may be a deliberate choice on the animators’ part, or they undersized the Toxodon here. It’s definitely not as big as I remembered.
  
  Also, PP recycles some of the same SFX from the WWB chalicothere for the Toxodon, in particular (and coincidentally) the noise the chalicothere makes as it gets its throat crushed by a Hyaenodon. Never noticed that before.
• But Infinity Blade, why don’t you think Smilodon populator can take on a Toxodon by itself? Isn’t it specialized to hunt animals larger than itself, you ask?
  
  Short answer: based on a biomechanical study of saber-tooth jaws, the effective gape between the tips of its upper and lower canines would actually be quite narrow (only 32 degrees) (Lautenschlager et al., 2020). Simply put, I don’t think S. populator would be able to open its mouth wide enough to cause anything more than a superficial wound on the massive, thick neck of the rhino-sized Toxodon.
• Like in WWB the social structure of Smilodon in this show seems to be based on lions. I said this in my review for that doc, but judging from the much lesser (if not nonexistent) sexual dimorphism in Smilodon compared to lions, I’m quite skeptical of using lions as a base for Smilodon’s social structure.
• This episode of Prehistoric Park is what first introduced me to phorusrhacids all those years ago. Although we know that the big terror bird shouldn’t be around this late, let’s take a look at it anyway. The species is never identified, but the big terror bird closest to this time period is Titanis walleri. It wasn’t quite 3 meters tall like Nigel says, although it was still a tall, heavy bird (reconstruction->). The color of the plumage was an interesting choice, and they added a “crown” of feathers on top of the head. The feet are pretty standard-looking bird feet, although if the animators wanted to go the extra mile for accuracy (and coolness), they could have added a somewhat enlarged sickle claw on the second digit, similar to a modern seriema.
  
  The most disappointing thing about the terror bird, however, is the fact that it’s portrayed as completely submissive to the sabertooths and being outcompeted by them. To be fair, the species of Smilodon portrayed is probably meant to be S. populator, which could weigh upwards of 400 kg. But once again, I’ll direct you to this size comparison-> of Titanis walleri with contemporary saber-toothed cat species. This bird was anything but a wimp in comparison.
• To bring the terror bird back to Prehistoric Park, Nigel steals a large piece of Toxodon meat, ties it to his jeep, and lures the bird though the time portal with it.
• While Suzanne introduces Nigel to the newly hatched Ornithomimus chicks, Bob is still waiting on the two he put in the incubator. Suzanne doubts they’ll hatch, but Bob is determined to bring life to them, as they’re too valuable in his eyes. You know, it’s actually kind of heartwarming to see Bob – the biggest butt-monkey of the series who constantly endures some of the most stressful aspects of managing a park full of prehistoric animals (and makes his grief known) – unwilling to give up on the two eggs, even when their own mother did.
• Nigel enlists the help of big cat expert Saba Douglas-Hamilton to bring back a Smilodon, this time from the period in which they are going extinct (10 ka, which puts it at the early Holocene; if you wanted to be more precise you would bump this up >1,500-2,000 years earlier). Apparently he does this because he wants to know why Smilodon was going extinct.
  
  Predictably, they can’t find shit on their first day (Saba is denied ever seeing living, breathing Toxodon and terror birds, rip). On the second day, Nigel and Saba are only able to find an armadillo and a dead Smilodon cub, respectively. But at least this suggests the presence of an adult female nearby. The second night produces some interesting signs as well, with camera trap footage revealing the presence of an adult male.
• Saba looks for the adult female. You can actually see it behind her before it roars and makes its presence known to her.
  
  Interestingly, the last Smilodon populator would have been familiar to the presence of humans (although, Saba obviously wouldn’t look or dress anything like the humans the last sabertooths would have encountered). Fishtail projectile point technology appeared in SA about 13,000 years ago, and it reached a peak ~12,400-12,200 years ago, until it declined and pretty much disappeared ~10,900 years ago. In fact, this coincides with the extinctions of large mammals in South America, and it is believed human hunting was a primary reason for the South American megafaunal extinctions (Prates & Perez, 2021). At this point, a Smilodon might recognize a human as a competitor for prey, which might give this female another reason to hate Saba.
• Saba and Nigel later find the same female stalking what the former thinks is some sort of deer. It’s not specified what species it is because it’s ultimately not important, but there were some fairly big extinct deer (~200 kg or so) living in South America until the late Pleistocene/early Holocene, like Antifer or Morenelaphus (Antifer->, Morenelaphus->). The latter was even the most common cervid in the fossil record up until its extinction. By this point, these two genera were dying out with Smilodon. Maybe that deer belongs to one of those two genera and is also a dying species (it has no antlers, so maybe it’s a female or male that’s shed its antlers)?
• But anyway, the deer is absolutely not suitable prey for the stocky Smilodon and easily outruns her. It’s concluded Smilodon is going extinct because of the lack of large, slow-moving prey animals, presumably associated with the climate changes the narrator mentioned before.
• It turns out the female Smilodon actually has a surviving cub, but she is unable to produce enough milk to keep it healthy. It gets worse when the male Nigel saw on the camera comes close to them with the intent to kill the cub, so the two decide to tranquilize it first.
• The sad rivalry between Terence and Matilda continues. As a kid I felt bad for Terence, and I still can’t help but feel that way. Just wait til next episode; it will get much, much worse.
• Turns out the male didn’t need to do anything to the cub: Nigel and Saba find it dead later on. Taking the female back to the park is not as fun as it should be.
• Some time is spent nursing the two sabertooths back to health, and the idea is for them to mate and have cubs (so the male may just get laid like he probably was hoping for after all).
  
  And the two Ornithomimus eggs hatch! Because Bob is the first thing they see, they imprint on him, amusingly enough.

Final verdict:

I guess it’s nice to see another take on Pleistocene South America by Impossible Pictures. I’m a bit disappointed by how the Smilodon look, but maybe you can chalk that up to what I imagine was a lower budget. Of course, I’m even more disappointed with their portrayal of terror birds. Sure, literally every prehistory documentary has depicted the terror birds being outcompeted by da gloreeyuss mammulz, so the truth of the matter isn’t so clear to everyone (even less so in 2006). But fueling a meme is still fueling a meme.

That’s not to say I have no praise for the episode. Perhaps its greatest strength is the emotional storytelling mixed with a legitimate lesson on sabertooth extinction and overspecialization, especially on Nigel’s second trip. The depauperate land, the dead cub, the Smilodon being unable to catch desperately-needed (but fast moving) food and nurse its remaining cub, and the second cub dying later. Even the threatening adult male must not be having a good time, with the decline of his species making it hard to find a mate and all. One thing you’ll notice about this episode is that the sabertooths aren’t brought into the park like all the other animals so far. They weren’t lured through the portal using food or Nigel himself, or rescued as they were fleeing a natural disaster. And their entry through the portal was certainly not a glorious, epic moment. They had to be sedated, loaded onto Nigel’s jeep, and driven through the portal. This subdued method of bringing the animals to the park reflects the grim atmosphere of the situation, as well as Nigel and Saba’s lack of emotional satisfaction in bringing them back to the park (luckily, they are in the process of being nursed back to health afterwards). And just a reminder: they make you feel sorry for a god damn saber-toothed cat. The same fearsome prehistoric predator of popular imagination. That was seen swiftly killing a Toxodon earlier in the episode. But an animal that can suffer all the same.

There are a couple subplots in this episode too: one heartwarming, another less so. Bob’s dedication to hatching the two rejected Ornithomimus eggs is great to see, and it made me realize Bob is actually more than just some whiny old guy managing a crazy wildlife sanctuary. If you had any doubts that he legitimately cares for his job, this episode should throw them right out the window. And then there’s Terence and Matilda’s continued hostility. There’s something just a little upsetting seeing some of the park’s earliest residents and “pride of the park” bullying each other (well actually, one more than the other), even if they are just animals.

[Infinity Blade]

The Bug House


Promotional image for Prehistoric Park.

• Is Theo really still bad tempered? I thought they resolved that issue all the way back in episode 1. They recycle some footage of Theo ramming his wood post fence. Sadly, not all of the park’s current residents are given equal attention narratively.
• Odd as it may seem, Bug House was one of the first episodes of Prehistoric Park I had seen. I definitely saw the latter half of the series before the earlier half. So seeing the flashbacks of Terence and Matilda being rescued puzzled me a bit when I was a kid; I originally wrote them off as one-off footage they didn’t make an episode for (luckily I was wrong).
• Oh, and here it is…Terence and Matilda’s first serious fight. Matilda fights just like her mother, but at the expense of her brother. Hell, fails to land even a single bite, which I remember frustrating me when I was a little kid. For some reason, unlike her mother, Matilda’s actually able to draw blood from her opponent with her teeth.
• Something fitting to add here is that, based on the fossil record, tyrannosaur fights involved a lot of attacks to each other’s faces. Another way they could have shown this fight was Matilda and Terence biting and scarring each other’s snouts, but the former is able to overpower her brother with her superior size. Then maybe Terence would have his neck open to attack.
• A tranquilized Matilda chases Nigel (who’s in a jeep) after curb-stomping Terence. She’s shown slumping to the ground on her side after the tranquilizer dart takes full effect. Given that this risks broken ribs in an elephant-sized animal, I don’t think this should be something the park staff would want to let happen (not that Nigel could have done anything else, though).
  
  To say nothing of the fact that two of their animals just got into a near-death match that left one of them severely wounded.
• >be Nigel
  >drive through time portal with epic time travel music playing in background
  >land in the middle of a muggy swamp
• Some animal’s screech is heard. I know it’s just a stock background animal vocalization that’s meant to convey the setting, but what the hell could even be making that noise at this point in time? I remember hearing stock monster SFX used as background animal vocalizations in Walking with Monsters’ Carboniferous segment. This legitimately has me thinking what the late Carboniferous would have sounded like. The only paper I could find that addresses this question is a paper from Phil Center (where he proposes non-avian dinosaurs were basically silent, a hypothesis I don’t agree with; Senter, 2009). According to him, by the time this episode takes place, amniotes could feasibly make defensive hissing vocalizations. Not quite like the vox that I mentioned just before. But honestly, this is so minor that I’m not going to count it against this episode.
• ”…in a prehistoric swamp, you never know what’s just around the corner”, the narrator says as a Meganeura flies right behind Nigel without him noticing.
  
  The Meganeura probably agrees after seeing some two-legged thing that’s not supposed to evolve for another 298 million years trudging around the swamp. I bet when it was hovering in the air for a moment it was like “I’m trippin’…”.
• Suzanne has to treat Terence now. The narrator confirms that Terence did, in fact, receive wounds on his face (the worst one, in fact, being a deep gash on it) and explains how fossil evidence shows that theropods bit each other’s faces a lot. Ah, so they are aware of that fact. Neat!
  
  Suzanne also highlights some of the challenges of this particular operation and the different approaches she’s taking. If there really were a Prehistoric Park, I’d imagine there would be a lot more trial and error in figuring out what works and what doesn’t work in extinct animal husbandry, at least at first. That’s because, well, we obviously don’t have the luxury of directly observing them and learning the quirks and special requirements of all the different species.
• As you’d expect, the documentary tells the viewer that the high oxygen levels back then were the probable reason why the insects and other invertebrates grew so large.
  
  Since then, evidence has emerged suggesting this is actually not the case. For example, Arthropleura (which we’ll see later in this episode) achieved its gigantism before Paleozoic oxygen peaks. One specimen (and a huge one at that; 2.63 meters long and ~50 kg) dates to a time when the atmospheric oxygen level was 23%, which isn’t much higher than today’s (21%) (Davies et al., 2021). Likewise, very large meganeurids (which we saw flying behind Nigel earlier and will see more of later) with wing lengths up to 210-230 mm were present in the late Permian, when oxygen levels had greatly declined since the Carboniferous (in fact, it’s supposed to be the period with the lowest atmospheric oxygen concentrations) (Nel et al., 2008).
• Humorously, as Bob tells us about the construction of the bug house, a titanosaur moves closer to the camera in the background, and causes some damage to their current progress. Bob’s archnemeses have struck again.
  
  On a more serious note, this is the price you pay for letting whale-sized megabeasts free roam in your park. I get that they’ve broken out of every enclosure the park staff have built around them (and that sauropods are far bigger than any land animal we humans have ever kept in captivity), but considering the park’s idea of a solid and sound enclosure for elephant-sized beasts is a wooden post fence, I question if they’re really trying their hardest. Giant sauropods don’t even need to be aggressive just to be a major pain in the ass or a serious danger to the people in the park. And god forbid one of them genuinely gets pissed…
• Nigel encounters an Arthropleura. It rears up and lunges at Nigel whenever he gets a bit too close for comfort. I assume that it might be trying to bite Nigel with its huge mandibles; WWM also states Arthropleura to have a nasty bite (despite it being a herbivore). Apparently, though, no mouthparts have ever been recovered from Arthropleura (Prothero, 2013), so it’s hard to tell just how bad a bite from this mega millipede would have been.
  
  Despite his attempts (or rather, pleas) of getting the Arthropleura to calm down, it escapes from him.
• Suzanne is able to manage Terence’s health AND the sabertooth breeding program in the same time span. Girlboss moment (that is like, the first time I ever typed that word).
• Oh my god, I LOVE that brief tribal/prehistoric music that plays as one of the sabertooths rests in its enclosure.
• Bob washes some stones that he plans to give to the sauropods. The idea is they will serve as gastroliths. I’m not as sure about gastroliths in sauropods anymore. Some research doesn’t support sauropods having a gastric mill to process plants (Wings & Sander, 2001) and that they were rare and unimportant in processing food (Wings, 2014).
• After a dramatic dogfight with a conspecific, a Meganeura settles on a fallen log in the water. Nigel tries to capture it with his huge butterfly net, but is bitten in the leg, scaring the Meganeura off. Then he gets some unknown Carboniferous era disease from the now-infected wound being in contact with muggy swamp water and dies.
  
  Just kidding. Nigel’s a Chad and he keeps going on.
• Nigel points out a couple interesting quirks about the Carboniferous. First, the need to be careful with fire due to the atmosphere’s high oxygen concentrations. Second, and there’s more I could say about this one, the lack of mosquitos. One of Nigel’s crew members (named Bill) is about to sleep with one, but Nigel tells him that mosquitos won’t evolve for a while. That is true (and probably a relief for Bill); it seems hematophagous evolved independently multiple times in arthropods, but only starting in the Mesozoic (Lehane, 2005). It may be that blood-sucking evolved as a result of a strong association with vertebrates, and at this time their colonization of land had only just started taking off.
• Bob’s gastrolith plan works (again, not sure how much it would in real life) and he hopes the titanosaurs finally stay in one place. Terence, on the other hand, has septicemia and Suzanne is forced to give him antibiotics, despite not knowing how they will affect him.
  
  Alluding to what I said earlier, as a kid I also hated how long and drawn out Terence’s recovery in this episode seemed. It makes more sense now (plus I realized an episode of Prehistoric Park isn’t that terribly long).
• Nigel: You don’t have to worry about mosquitos biting you.
  
  Bill: Okay cool.
  
  Nigel: You have to worry about the meter-long scorpions crawling on you.
  
  Bill:
  
  
• When Nigel decides that his big net is unsuitable for catching a Meganeura, he switches to a water gun with detergent. I love the way the Meganeura hovers while staring at Nigel; it’s almost like it’s saying “come at me bro”. After missing several times, he finally shoots the Meganeura after it settles on a log. He celebrates…just as a Crassigyrinus swims right past him. With the right execution, they could have made that quite terrifying, much more so than it actually is.
• Sadly Nigel’s not able to take the Crassigyrinus with him to Prehistoric Park. Which is a shame because it really does look like an interesting animal, with its head full of sharp teeth, very reduced limbs, and paddle-like tail.
• The sabertooths don’t kill each other…neat.
• Nigel captures a Pulmonoscorpius, but is stung in the process. I think this is the first time Nigel incurs an injury that’s taken very seriously.
• Sure enough, we get a forest fire that results from the high oxygen levels of the Carboniferous. And he finds another Arthropleura as he has to carry the scorpion’s crate back to his jeep (which is closer to the fire).
  
  Nigel: Ah shit, here we go again.
• ”I’m not sure if it’s a centipede or a millipede”
  
  Millipede.
• So, they got the Arthropleura captured (in case you’re wondering how, Nigel tackles it with a tarp, and they tie it up). To get the jeep through the portal, Nigel has to go through it and tie a rope to it, and then come back through and hook it up to the jeep. Guess what he hooks the jeep to?
  
  That’s right. A titanosaur! Oh my god, that is just golden! And think about it: a prehistoric animal saved from extinction saving others from it too.
  
  “When you’ve got a park full of dinosaurs, you’ll never need a tow truck.”
• It looks like Nigel is safe from the scorpion sting (it may help that they’re primarily hunting insects with that venom and not mammals like Nigel, which hadn’t even evolved at the time).
• The Carboniferous critters are now happy in their new home. Terence, who had been out of commission for most of the episode, has largely healed (thanks to the antibiotics) and is set to make a full recovery. This entire scene is just satisfying.
  
  Unfortunately Suzanne has to clean up her medical station after Terence trashes it. XD

Final verdict:

This episode is set apart from the others in multiple ways. First, it’s unique in that Nigel finally goes after invertebrates as his main target, giving prehistoric invertebrates some of the spotlight (even as someone who mostly cares for vertebrate paleontology, this is refreshing). Second, it’s also the only Paleozoic episode. The Paleozoic was a long era, even longer than the Mesozoic and Cenozoic combined. Even if this episode only covers a tiny sliver of time from that era, it’s a very unique period that is a prime example of the weirdness and wonder of the Paleozoic. Fourth, unlike the other episodes, there’s no single primary animal to bring back either. In the previous four, it was T. rex, the woolly mammoth, Microraptor, and Smilodon, respectively. Here, it’s an assortment of Carboniferous invertebrates; even after Nigel catches one, his mission’s not quite over yet until he catches all of them.

Narratively, they do a fine job with some of the animals already in the park (except for my boi Theo), especially the T. rex. Terence and Matilda’s tensions reach their apex, and you spend the episode wondering how they’re going to treat Terence. The sabertooth subplot arguably has you less on the edge of your seat (despite the fact that putting the two in the same enclosure is supposed to be a tense, uncertain scene), but it does leave you wondering when the hell the two will finally start to get along and produce cubs.

So overall, great episode. It sticks out from the rest, and still has its own respectable, even dramatic, subplots.

[Infinity Blade]

Supercroc


Promotional image for Prehistoric Park.

• It’s the final episode…
  
  As a kid I always lamented the fact that the show stopped after just six episodes. Actually, I still do.
• Despite the title “Supercroc”, this is not about Sarcosuchus. Ironically, not only is Sarcosuchus less related to crocodilians than Deinosuchus and Purussaurus (both of which were actual crocodilians), but it was also somewhat smaller than them. Deinosuchus specimens ~10 meters certainly existed (Farlow et al., 2005), and these are not even the most liberal published estimates for the genus (Scwhimmer, 2002); a recent paper specifies that Deinosuchus was AT LEAST 10 meters long, if not longer (Cosette & Brochu, 2020). One rigorous skeletal artist even suggests Deinosuchus could get really big; as in, bigger than any theropod and rivaling Diplodocus carnegii-level big (link->). Known specimens of Sarcosuchus are estimated to have been up to 9.5 meters long and 4.3 metric tons (O'Brien et al., 2019).
• This is the first time Bob actually expresses doubt that Nigel can actually catch what he’s going for.
• When Nigel lands in Campanian Texas (75 Ma), the first dinosaurs he finds are Parasaurolophus. For the time it looks reasonable. Nowadays a thicker, more muscular neck would be in order (Bertozzo et al, 2021), and I don’t believe the forefeet should look like the pronated “bunny hands” often given to dinosaurs.
• The Parasaurolophus are clearly running from something, and it turns out to be a pair of Albertosaurus. So, Albertosaurus was not around this early and confirmed Albertosaurus specimens are restricted to Alberta, Canada, not Texas. Of course, I’m not saying Albertosaurus lived nowhere other than Alberta, but nothing from the genus as far down as Texas has been confirmed (I’m being deliberately careful with my wording here, as there are apparently “cf. Albertosaurus sp.” remains from Mexico).
  
  However, Deinosuchus did indeed live with large theropods. The Judith River Formation has remains of Daspletosaurus and Gorgosaurus (the latter is similar to Albertosaurus), as well as Deinosuchus. The Menefee Formation has Deinosuchus and the tyrannosaurid Dynamoterror. In the Aguja Formation of Texas, where this episode takes place in, indeterminate tyrannosaurid remains are known.
• The Albertosaurus are also just reskins of the show’s T. rex model. They actually look quite nice with that yellowish tan color. The model’s relative lankiness would, if anything, also be more fitting for Albertosaurus than for T. rex.
• Bob needs to plant 2,000 trees a year to feed the titanosaurs. Mega oof.
  
  Meanwhile, the time skip between this episode and the previous one saw the birth of two Smilodon cubs. A bit unfortunate we don’t see a smoother transition from the adults being rather uneasy with each other to them suddenly having cubs.
• Only Nigel Marven has the balls to remain excited while standing in the middle of a stampede of giant dinosaurs.
• And that scene of him “talking” to the Parasaurolophus with a conch shell is neat; the track helps.
• Nyctosaurus was extinct for about 10 million years before the time this episode is supposed to take place.
• They’re also the same pterosaurs you see flying in the intro of the show. Unfortunately, no, they’re not brought back to the park. Which is a real shame, because of all the times Nigel could have caught a pterosaur, these would have been the perfect ones.
  
  But to be fair to Nigel, it would have been difficult for him to bring one back. Nyctosaurids completely lacked any fingers with the exception of the flight digit. Pteranodontians like Pteranodon and Nyctosaurus also have some of the shortest hindlimbs for their size of any pterosaur, with Nyctosaurus’ hindlimbs being only 16% of a single wing length (Witton, 2013, p. 179). This suggests they rarely walked on the ground and spent most of their time flying. The best thing I can think of is trapping it in a net while it was flying, catching it, and then carrying it back to the park while it was restrained.
• A Deinosuchus is seem bursting out of the water and snatching a Nyctosaurus. This is a paleomedia trope usually seen with mosasaurs, which were also around at the time. If a Deinosuchus traveled into deeper waters for some time (and for whatever reason), it might encounter one (link->).
• For the first time since the second episode, Martha is given significant focus. But as it turns out, she hasn’t fully integrated into the bush elephant herd she was introduced to. Although she likes socializing with an elephant calf, the mother (who also happens to be the matriarch) doesn’t like Martha much and actually drives her away. The problem is, the matriarch accepted Martha into the herd and actually had a friendly interaction with her all the way back in episode 2. I get wanting to continue Martha’s story arc by continuing her loneliness problem, but they’re not being consistent here.
• Nigel is later seen rowing through mangroves on an inflatable raft. It doesn’t take long for a Deinosuchus to swim up to him. This reminded me of a video of a man kayaking, only for his kayak to capsize (with the man in it) when an alligator charges at him. Now imagine a Deinosuchus doing the same thing…
• The reason for Deinosuchus’ extinction is briefly discussed. Nigel says that the sand banks the Deinosuchus reside in will be flooded by the sea with time.
  
  If anything, wouldn’t it be the opposite? The Western Interior Seaway receded with time during the Late Cretaceous.
• Now for an establishing character moment (I’d argue there’s another one later down the road). A Deinosuchus ambushes a Parasaurolophus from the edge of the lake and drags it into the water to its death. Others arrive and they use the death roll to rip off chunks of flesh.
  
  It was this scene that made me really respect Deinosuchus as a kid. It cemented Deinosuchus as a dinosaur killer in my 6-year old mind.
• But did Deinosuchus actually eat dinosaurs?
  
  Uh, yes, of course (although it ate a lot of sea turtles too) (Schwimmer, 2010). What? You thought I going to “debunk” this scene like some snobbish armchair paleo-nerd?
• In the forest, Nigel encounters Troodon (which are now eating the bait meat he intends to use for the Deinosuchus). Nowadays it’s recognized, once again, as Stenonychosaurus (Evans et al., 2017; van der Reest & Currie, 2017; Cullen et al., 2021). Of course, like the Mei from episode 3, they lack feathers, have pronated hands, yadayada.
• Nigel says that the sickle claw on the troodontids’ feet are not used for killing prey (like in dromaeosaurids), but instead for pinning onto flesh for feeding. Actually, both families would have primarily used the sickle claw for pinning down or holding onto live prey, it’s just that dromaeosaurids would have hunted larger prey given their larger claws and more robust metatarsals (Fowler et al., 2011).
• At the same time, the park staff are struggling to manage so many animals in the park. The Elasmotherium just produces a lot of dung. The terror bird is able to escape (despite some temporary measures to keep it in its enclosure) and it has to be lured back using the same method Nigel used to get it through the time portal. I noticed that the whole thing is not played all too seriously; it just has minor issue vibes to it. Despite the fact that, you know, it’s a 300+ kg carnivorous bird with a huge hooked beak and raptor talons. If, instead, one of the Smilodon (the only other extinct carnivores at the park around the same size) broke out like that, would they treat it with the same atmosphere?
• We get another establishing moment for the Deinosuchus. Tyrannosaurs: unstoppable and unparalleled in size and power among the Late Cretaceous’ panoply of predators…right?
  
  Well, when Nigel gets up in the morning (after a night where the bait meat he uses is almost entirely stolen by some Stenonychosaurus), he hears a trio of Albertosaurus confronted by some Deinosuchus; the prize is a dead Parasaurolophus. A great bit is a tug of war between one Albertosaurus and one Deinosuchus over a chunk of meat. Just from comparing the size of their heads you can see which one is the more powerful predator. Predictably, the croc wins the tug of war, and the crocs steal the hadrosaur carcass from the tyrannosaurs.
  
  This scene establishes that not only can this giant croc kill dinosaurs like hadrosaurs, but it can also steal food from freaking tyrannosaurs.
• A brief cut back to the park has Suzanne worrying that if Martha remains isolated (and she’s more isolated than ever now), she might go back to being a wreck that won’t eat food. It’s not a very important scene, but along with the lack of manpower in managing all the park’s animals, it does establish the tough road the park is currently treading on.
• Nigel uses a tried and true plan to get the Deinosuchus back to Prehistoric Park: using himself as bait! There really seems to be something about that method that works like a charm.
  
  He uses an oar to slap the water at the edge of the lake; theoretically, a Deinosuchus will pick up the vibrations and swim up to attack, thinking it’s a prey item. Nigel leads it through the path of wooden posts he and his crew built. With some meat he uses as bait, he succeeds in luring the giant croc through the time portal.
  
  Now I wonder how they’re going to stop the Deinosuchus from eating the Nile crocodiles already in the park…
• After all is said and done, Bob has to do work cleaning up. And we get a nice, if brief and interrupted, moment with him.
  
  Bob he loves his job. He really does. In fact, he admits “I’ve got the best job in the world. There’s no doubt about that…”. It’s just that there’s so much to do. The park already had enough on its hands before the Deinosuchus arrived. More creatures means more management. And…
  
  And 3…2…1…DISASTER MODE ACTIVATED.
• Wait what? Well, turns out a Stenonychosaurus snuck into Nigel’s truck underneath a tarp, and he was unintentionally brought back with everyone else. This causes Bob to lose his bearings on the jeep, spooking the nearby titanosaurs. One of them proceeds to wreck the enclosures of other animals, and all hell breaks loose.
  
  It gets progressively worse. First the Ornithomimus herd. Next, the terror bird. Then…Matilda the T. rex. We also know the Elasmotherium escaped, as it’s seen stampeding in the same direction as the Ornithomimus herd and Bob; I suspect it saw Matilda and booked it.
• Matilda later threatens the elephant herd, most of which attempt to flee (considering an elephant herd is made up of “only” 3 tonne females, I’d consider that an appropriate response to them seeing a gigantic f*cking predator like T. rex. Even worse, Matilda separates the matriarch’s calf from the rest of the herd. But then, Martha intervenes, and were it not for Nigel, we would probably have gotten a T. rex vs mammoth fight.
  
  Who do I think would have won? I don’t know exactly how old Matilda is at this point, but she looks pretty much identical to an adult rex at this point. But last episode, she and Terence are explicitly stated to not yet be fully grown. If she’s at least close to adult size, then Matilda would smack Martha. Unless adult female T. rex were substantially smaller than the males and that they were smaller than reflected in the fossil record (i.e. 6+ tonnes), then Matilda should be substantially bigger than Martha. As in modern elephants, female mammoths were much smaller than the males, and female woolly mammoths typically weighed 2.8-4 tonnes. In fact, realistically, I would expect Martha to just gtfo along with the other elephants if she saw a fully grown T. rex.
  
  Even if Matilda’s no bigger than Martha, though, I still think the former would win pretty handily.
• I love the way the Nile crocodiles react to Matilda charging through their home.
• We get one last badass scene with the Deinosuchus. It bursts out of the water with its mouth wide open towards Matilda. The T. rex narrowly avoids the alligatoroid’s jaws, buying Nigel more time to escape.
  
  The Deinosuchus rn: “9 million years and you still haven’t surpassed me.”
• Nigel successfully locks Matilda in a holding pen. After a few weeks, the park has the extra keepers it needs and is able to rebuild. The escaped animals go back to their enclosures. Even better, the sabertooth cubs are able to eat meat now, and Martha has been accepted by the herd for her heroic actions.
  
  The episode, and series for that matter, closes with the implication that Nigel’s going to go on another adventure. Every child fan of this show was blueballed when no more episodes came out.
• Just before I end this, though, I want to form my own theory.
  
  Just before the end, Nigel is reading a book, points at something, and leans back on his chair. From his body language, I think he’s decided which animal he wants to bring back next. But there are features on the book’s pages that I think I recognize.
  
  
  
  Screen capture from Prehistoric Park.
  
  It’s hard to tell with the suboptimal quality, but I recognize a dark colored (purple?) bar almost at the top of the pages, as well as a black bar almost at the bottom of the pages. These are features of Dinosaur Encyclopedia: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man, and I suspect this is the book he’s reading. I looked through my own copy of the book (which I still have after all these years) just to see if I can find any page that closely matches the one Nigel’s looking at. The closest match I found was a page that features Nothosaurus (link->).
  
  My theory? He wants to catch a Nothosaurus next, if my observations are accurate (but hey, it’s hard to tell with this video quality).

Final verdict:

There’s not much I can say about the Deinosuchus here that I haven’t said already. They have more badass showings than the other two apex predators Nigel brings back (T. rex and Smilodon). Also neat that Nigel goes back to the Mesozoic, but his primary target is not a dinosaur for once.

When I first saw this as a kid, I was really hoping for episodes after this one. But looking back on it, I think I can see signs that they were planning on this being the final one. The park has the issue of there not being enough keepers to manage the park without stressing all the existing ones out. Then towards the end the breakout happens and all the animals, which we saw were contained with great pains, escape. Some of them meet each other for the first time, where they lived in completely different time periods and enclosures before. Eventually, though, the park is back under control. I’m sad to see no episodes after this one, but the park subplot in this episode was a good one, and a good way to end the series.

[Infinity Blade]

Overall verdict:


German DVD cover. It's the best image I could find.


Even after 16 years, I would still say Prehistoric Park is a blast. The biggest complaints you might have about the show now are probably going to pertain to paleontological accuracy, some of which can be chalked up to science marching on. Every now and then you get a few narrative inconsistencies, and not every animal in the park is as thoroughly explored as others, but Prehistoric Park still manages to use many of its animals to good effect from a storytelling standpoint. The premise is enough reason for you to check the show out, and you get plenty of time in both prehistory and in a zoo that everyone would love to see but will never be.

Though not a proper documentary for obvious reasons, you still learn about prehistoric animals as they're portrayed in their original ecosystems, some of which you may not have even heard of before if you're not a paleontology nerd (e.g. Elasmotherium, any the theropod in episode 3, anything in episode 5, etc.). Like I said before, this is also mixed in with plots surrounding animal care, though from the perspective of prehistoric fauna. This can also end up teaching the viewer more about prehistoric fauna (e.g. sauropod gastroliths, mammoth diet, etc.).

There's also quite a nice soundtrack as well. I still remembered much of it from 2006 even before rewatching the episodes in 2022.

So overall, if you're looking for an informative, paleontology-related show with an interesting twist (i.e. time travel and bringing them back to the present), check Prehistoric Park out.