Prehistoric Planet

[spartan]

I was also surprised by the weight of the Mosasaurus, but apparently it's not an unreasonable estimate. The animation was top notch and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of dinosaurus!

[creature386]

Infinity Blade I love this review. It was obviously quickly-written, but it sums up the enthusiasm for the episode well.
We got novel concepts, beautiful visuals, latest research, plausible speculation, fresh takes on old paleo tropes, well-known and less well-known taxa, and friggin' bioluminescent ammonites. What more can you wish for?

[Infinity Blade]

Third episode review. I was trying to review the second one last night, but got preoccupied and couldn’t do it. I’ll try again later today.

SPOILER: Click to show

• Rock-navigating Velociraptor…noooiiiiicce…
  
  These little raptors are portrayed as exceptionally agile predators navigating the dangerous cliffs, using their broad tail feathers to give them stability as they leap around. The pterosaur (some kind of azhdarchid) colony can’t properly hear the raptors coming due to the sound of the waterfall. As a result, the female raptor leaps down and snatches a pterosaur. It falls and tumbles somewhat, only to get back up on its feet without any serious injury, which goes to show you how athletic these little theropods are.
  
  Best. Velociraptor. Ever.
• An old male T. rex is seen with a Triceratops it killed. Honestly, I was disappointed that we didn’t get the fight. A realistic take on rex vs Trike was something I was very much looking forward to. But at least we know that the rex was formidable enough to take the Trike down, even with a fresh scar on his thigh. In fact, this old male has scars from “decades of fighting armored prey”.
• Then the old male goes to the river, meets a female, and gets laid. There’s some tension at first before Attenborough tells us this foreign rex is a female, but it all turns out peacefully.
  
  I have a feeling this is the last time we’ll see Tyrannosaurus. I’d really like to see it in action hunting, but if not, we’ll have to wait next episode to see a tyrannosaurid hunting.
• The Deinocheirus is amazing, and so is it scratching itself on a tree to get rid of the insects (cleverly, the camera shakes as the dinosaur rubs its body on the tree, as if the camera were mounted on it). The thick feather coat looks great, though I wonder how hot the Deinocheirus is under all that plumage. Evidently it’s hot enough for there to be blood-sucking insects flying around.
• Quetzalcoatlus is depicted in Africa. Recently (as in, a couple days ago) a paper came out saying Quetzalcoatlus was only a short-ranged flier like a kori bustard. I tried asking Mark Witton and Darren Naish for what they think of it, if it really holds. Evidently at the time this was being made, Naish had no problem with Quetzalcoatlus flying from North America to Africa.
• The Quetzalcoatlus has deep vocalizations, which I like. It’s a great contrast from the higher-pitched noises pterosaurs are usually given in paleomedia. The honks they make when they’re in combat are perfect.
  
  Did I say combat? Yep. A young mother fights an older female Quetzalcoatlus looking to lay her own eggs. When the latter finds the former’s nest, she not only digs it open, but she eats the eggs already inside to make room for her own (the extra nutrition doesn’t hurt either). Although the resident female wins, her nest is devastated, and only three remain. It’s a bit of a heartbreaking scene.
• The elasmosaurs hunting for fish looks great, but it’s a rather anticlimactic ending, ngl.

Overall verdict:

This episode had both awesome highlights but also some disappointments. Call me an “awesomebro”, but I was really hoping to see the rex and Trike go at it. A realistic take on T. rex hunting Triceratops would have been the best thing in this episode had it shown up. I didn’t think much of the ending either, though it was still aesthetically pleasing. However, there were some strengths too. The Deinocheirus, Quetzalcoatlus, and the rock-dwelling Velociraptor were all top notch.

So overall, not my favorite episode, but still great.

[Infinity Blade]

Second episode.

SPOILER: Click to show

• "Dreadnoughtus" he says, with a badass riff playing right afterwards as the majestic giants march through the dark desert.
  
  The males are distinguishable from the females with their more colorful red necks and...neck balloons. The males have two rows of inflatable gular sacs running down their necks which are used for display. But when young males decide to challenge "the man" (read: large, old, dominant bulls), fights break out. And boy oh boy, this fight really is something. The titanosaurs bludgeon each other with their necks (I'm glad to see that this idea is taken seriously by the paleontological consultants). They wrestle with their forelimbs. They stab each other with their thumb claws (Darren Naish confirmed in a tweet-> that the presence of thumb claws in the derived titanosaur Diamantinasaurus heavily influenced their decision to give Dreadnoughtus thumb claws, even though these are widely thought to have been lost in titanosaurs). They even bite each other and draw blood by raking with their teeth (something not even I expected, so I was surprised to see the paleontological consultants actually believe a sauropod's teeth could do this kind of damage). And eventually, the old bull falls. When you're 50 tons, a fall can be life-threatening.
  
  The camera panning out in bird's eye view is really nice. As Dreadnoughtus disappear and move away, one body doesn't move: the old bull's...
• I'm going to be honest, I still can't tell if that lizard is live-acted or if it's really rendered in CGI. Because if it's the latter...holy shit.
• A group of Tarbosaurus are seen sleeping with each other. This is going to sound oddly specific, but their toe claws look relatively blunted. I can't tell if that's because they based it off of ratite foot claws (which can become blunt) or if it's because these Tarbosaurus are probably walking a lot on hard rocky ground (the T. rex from the first episode doesn't seem to have as worn claws on its feet, at least from what I remember).
• The Velociraptor hunting for lizards interrupts the sleep of the Tarbosaurus, who then walk away. Rip.
• We are then introduced to Mononykus. Alvarezsaurids are rarely depicted in paleomedia, despite their unique anatomy and biology. Mononykus itself has only ever appeared in one other documentary: Chased By Dinosaurs. And the difference in the models between then and now shows just how far we've come in paleontological knowledge.
  
  The Mononykus has a face like a barn owl's, from the color to the facial disk aiding in hearing (though not as wide as in an actual owl). With her hypersensitive directional hearing, she is able to dig through a dry log and feed on the termites inside with a long, flexible tongue. Once the rains arrive and bring about an unusual abundance in vegetation, the Mononykus is out hunting again. She tries going after enantiornithines (finally, a documentary acknowledges these things existed), but Attenborough admits they're a bit too big for her (which I agree with, Mononykus has no place hunting and eating even tiny birds).
• Some Barsboldia are then seen trekking through a desert with sand blowing all around them. They arrive at a watering hole...full of dinosaurs and a few pterosaurs. Sauropods, more hadrosaurs, therizinosaurs, even ankylosaurs (but you have to look carefully; these guys don't get much of a spotlight, sadly). It looks like a scene out of Disney's Dinosaur.
• The Mongolian Titans are based on ichnotaxa known from the time and place. Supposedly, the footprints these sauropods are based on are not big enough to justify 70 tons, but I don't really know much about them. Great to see that they're not just a reskin of the Dreadnoughtus, though.
• Everyone is enjoying their drinks...but then you see something appear out of the dunes in the distance. Tarbosaurus. The herbivores at the watering hole give the theropod a wide berth as it walks over to the watering hole, clearly tense from its presence. Luckily for them, it's just there for water. But the distance they put between themselves and the Tarbosaurus says it all. This thing is 2016 Shere Khan, but 25 times bigger.
• Barbaridactylus return. We get a fight to the death between two males (one of them is rammed into by the other and tumbles down the cliffs to his death).
• But then we get "sneakers". That is, smaller males that don't have the antler-like head crests of large males, but look like females and pass off as such to the large males. The idea for these sneaks is to mate with females without being noticed to the large males. Sometimes the sneaks do get noticed...and the large males court to them, thinking they are females. This is obviously based on certain species in modern times, where males can either be Chads or sneaks.
• Plot twist: the Chad Barbaridactylus is actually bisexual and deliberately courted to the sneaky male.
• The sneak is successful in getting a mate. And afterwards, Attenborough delves a bit into the female side of sexual selection. The females want to mate with as many males as possible to ensure their genes are passed on to the next generation. So if one can't get an antlered large male, she'll settle for a sneak, so long as she sees him as fit.
• Lastly, we come across a South American desert of gypsum (White Sands is a modern example). Secernosaurus (a hadrosaur) is depicted as a hardy, specialized desert dweller that can remember where to travel and what to do when times get tough. It also knows how to navigate based on the positions of celestial bodies in the night sky (some modern animals do this too apparently, but I don't know which ones off the top of my head).

Overall verdict:

Another banger episode. The powerful, deadly Dreadnoughtus, the dreaded Tarbosaurus, the mating strategies of Barbaridactylus, the lizard-hunting Velociraptor, and the Mononykus are all astounding. The sauropod fight is probably my favorite segment, and just goes to show how formidable these giants were. I don't think I really have much bad to say about this particular episode.

[creature386]

I agree with the assessment on episode three.
I'm not sure if it deserves a spoiler, but...

SPOILER: Click to show

It's sad that we haven't seen so many riparian animals. TVTropes makes a good point that Didelphodon, Champsosaurus, pseudosuchians, coelacanths, and garfish would all have been available in the ecosystems featured. At least the depictions of Deinocheirus and Beelzebufo were breathtaking.

[Infinity Blade]

I completely agree.

[Infinity Blade]

Episode 4.

SPOILER: Click to show

• Unspecified dromaeosaurids are seen hunting in a group in a snowy environment. They actually target hadrosaurs (Edmontosaurus, I assume) this time around, specifically any juveniles traveling with the herd. Though, as much as I like seeing dromaeosaurids hunting in packs and hunting large prey, I'm kind of doubtful that these small predators would cause a whole herd of giant hadrosaurs to panic. Maybe it's the sudden presence of the dromaeosaurs combined with the already present nervousness of the hadrosaurs (from crossing the icy river) that caused them to panic. Idk.
  
  Anyway, one of the juvenile Edmontosaurus is lucky and reunites with its parent. But the raptors don't walk away empty-handed, as they come across a dead juvenile on the river bank.
• When spring comes, we see Ornithomimus. They're properly feathered, have colorful red wing feathers, and are sneaky thieves, stealing tree branches from other's nests to form their own. Wonderful.
• Further up north, it's colder (but many places don't have as much snow). These misty hills are home to Olorotitan. They incubate their eggs in warm volcanic sand, making for a nice brief scene where eggs hatch...
  
  ...but as usual something's there to spoil the fun. Mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are irritating to the adults, and can actually be lethal to babies if they suck enough blood. The Olorotitan are forced to move on, and if their babies are too weak to follow, they are left to die. One baby is seen struggling to move with the rest of the herd, and we're convinced it's going to die. It's a sad moment, and tough to watch if you're sensitive to this kind of thing. Luckily, this baby manages to catch up. Phew.
• But now it's time for me to address a claim that I take issue with. Hadrosaurs are said to have surprisingly thin skin. I have little doubt this is based on a paper which analyzed a sample of hadrosaur skin from a subadult specimen. This skin sample was 3.3 mm thick, and hadrosaur skin samples from similarly-aged specimens were similarly thick (link->). Thus, the authors conclude, hadrosaurs had much thinner skin than similar sized megamammals like rhinos and elephants.
  
  You see the problem, right? Subadult. The authors literally say it's a subadult in their supplementary info. They also include a skeletal reconstruction of the specimen, and it appears to have been around ~4 meters long. A 4 meter subadult hadrosaur is most definitely NOT similar in size (read: mass) to a fully grown rhinoceros, let alone elephant. How the authors thought that this was a fair comparison is beyond me.
• Rather contrary to this episode's title, this episode isn't just one of ice. It's also one of fire. During a forest fire, a troodontid is seen hunting, even in thick smoke. Their prey are these surprisingly hefty mammals (confirmed by Darren Naish to be Cimolodon), which kind of look like marmots.
  
  I have a bad feeling this is the only time we're going to see Mesozoic mammals, and only as dinosaur chow, which is rather disappointing. Well...at least they're exposing us to surprisingly large, unique forms of Mesozoic mammal?
• We're next introduced to young Antarctopelta. At last we're getting ankylosaurs in the spotlight. Recently, Antarctopelta has been found to be related to the newly-discovered Stegouros. Thus, it is also possible it had a macuahuitl-like tail weapon (link->).
• They burrow too, that's neat. And sleep under bioluminescent fungi in caves too.
• Finally, we get Pachyrhinosaurus and Nanuqsaurus. The latter are a super persistent predator done right (they're also not completely white like polar bears, a common meme). They weather out a blizzard and resume their attack once it clears up. One bull Pachyrhinosaurus is wounded and cannot keep up with his herd. He has no choice but to fight back, but he is killed relatively swiftly by three Nanuqsaurus. It's a shot from above, and there's not much blood.

Overall verdict:

Definitely a cooler ending than the previous episode. I think it's got to be up there as one of my favorite episodes for putting these animals in realistic and serious situations that most people wouldn't expect to see in a paleodocumentary. And in an environment most don't imagine dinosaurs to be in.

[Infinity Blade]

Episode 5.

SPOILER: Click to show

• We're introduced to a usual beautiful aerial shot of a forest. But one tree is toppled down. By whom, you ask?
  
  Well, none other than a sauropod. You know, dinosaurian elephants. These ones are Austroposeidon, and they look great (they even have dorsal spines). In Attenborough's words "They use their great weight and their 8-inch thick breast bones to simply push the trees over." 8 inches thick? Holy Jesus! Sauropods and their strength really are done justice in this program. It's great to see these giants shown as the immensely powerful beasts they were.
  
  A couple times I've seen people express doubts over the idea that sauropods could knock down trees like elephants could due to their differences in build, but I think these doubts are unjustified. A sauropod could always just use its shoulder or breast to push the tree over.
• But even after the sauropods clear a patch in the forest, this gap is soon closed by plants. And we see a brief but intriguing montage of plants competing with each other to gain sunlight at the top of the canopy. Vines twirling around other plant stems, thorns piercing and shredding the leaves of other plants, that kind of thing. I think it's interesting because we tend to view plants as doing nothing, but no. They compete with each other every bit as much as animals do. It reminded me of this excerpt-> from the original Jurassic Park novel.
• Triceratops! Oh man, we finally get to see these alive. The individual variation they show in horn shape and frill color is the cherry on the top. Some have fractured horns, straight but slightly upward pointing horns, or upward pointing horns that somewhat remind me of Loki's horns (though they're not nearly as strongly curved). Some have blunt nasal horns, others have sharp ones. If I had to nitpick one thing, I would have loved to see some bulkier individuals in there too. Triceratops was very bulky (link->).
• To neutralize the toxins in the plants they eat, the Triceratops must find some clay inside of a cave to line their stomachs. Which just goes to show you that, just as plants are a living, competitive bunch that do everything they can to survive, so too are animals. These Triceratops get the best out of their meal without otherwise suffering the consequences.
• The Trikes look fantastic in black and white when they travel through the caves too. One of the calves becomes abandoned at one point, and you are legitimately left wondering whether it will make it out or be lost forever.
  
  And it does.
• In South America we see a weird clearing in the forest. It's the work of a male Carnotaurus preparing for his mating ritual. His low-pitched rumbles eventually garner the attention of a female, and that's when it happens.
  
  The male stands upright and spreads his dinky forelimbs outwards. Although he's more brightly colored than the female in general, his forelimbs are blue on their undersides, and he wiggles them around as part of his display. He also twirls around like a chicken (which Mark Witton explains in a personal anecdote of his on Twitter->). Does he impress the female?
  
  ...Nope. Sorry bud.
• Another interesting detail about these Carnotaurus is that the female is the larger, more powerful sex. And the reason I say that is because in "Freshwater", the old male T. rex is bigger than the female who encroaches upon his territory (in contrast to what we see in Walking with Dinosaurs). This variation in sexual dimorphism among theropods in the PhP-verse is interesting to see, and it goes to show you what kinds of attributes don't fossilize (but which you can use your imagination for).
• The only issue with the Carnotaurus is that the osteoderms are seen in organized rows along their bodies. Recently, a paper came out showing that the osteoderms of Carnotaurus were, in fact, randomly distributed across the body (Hendrickx & Bell, 2021). But given how recently this paper came out, it's completely understandable why this wasn't featured in the final product. Coupled with how minor this is, it would be foolish to not let it slide.
• The Corythoraptors look lovely! Everything from their bright blue feathers to the detail on their keratin crests (which even show some individual variation in shape. Stalking them is Qianzhousaurus (pronounced "chien-zhoh-saurus"; wasn't sure how to correctly pronounced it until this episode aired). It's a striped predator native to Asia and hunts these oviraptorids using ambush. Sound familiar to a certain big predator living today?
  
  Although she fails the first hunt, we see her again in the winter, where it's windier and leaves start falling. And this time, she succeeds, even tumbling and getting down and dirty after grabbing her quarry (these are wild predators after all, they will play rough).
• Next segment cuts to a forest fire, with an Edmontosaurus family trying to escape. Once the fire ends, however, we see lifeforms returning to the charred forest. One of them is an Atrociraptor using a smoking stick to get rid of parasites on its wings (which is lit). An ankylosaurid also appears, and it appears to be Anodontosaurus. That's because of the pointed tail club it has, and it's great to see this ankylosaur in a documentary (the pointed halves of the tail club have interesting functional implications).
• At last we get a segment with...therizinosaurs! Mostly babies, but still. Their mission is to reach a low-hanging bee hive that is still high enough for them to be a challenge, and eat the honey. The bees sting them too, and I wonder how many bees it would take for this to be a lethal situation. But someone kind of spoils their fun: an adult Therizinosaurus, who has no problem reaching the hive and eating most of it (although, there's a few scraps left for the hatchlings to feast on).
• Last but not least, Hateg Island. We at last see the (baby) Zalmoxes we saw in the trailers. But one of them is eaten by the apex predator of the island: Hatzegopteryx.
  
  But in contrast to Planet Dinosaur, it's not framed as nightmarish or scary (or at least, they're not trying to). In fact, it's portrayed more as majestic and regal, especially as it reaches the beach and flies off into the sunset of this...prehistoric planet.
• Oh what's that? You were expecting the K-Pg extinction event? No doom and gloom today!

Overall verdict:

This episode is less of a high stakes episode and more of a "this is what animals do" episode. It's just as great, and a nice break from those high stakes vibes we got in some of the earlier episodes. The animals looked amazing, what with individual variation, colors, and details to scales and feathers. We see interesting behaviors (unexpected ones, extravagant ones, and even intelligent ones) as well.

There's honestly not much more for me to say here. Like all the other episodes, this one was great.

[creature386]

So, yesterday, a bunch of people at my uni did a group watch session of Prehistoric Planet. It was a real cinema-like experience. A lot were watching it for the first time. It was funny to have them guess which animals would appear in which episode.

There was a guessing game about which animals would appear in which episode. A lot of people guessed we would see Tyrannosaurus, Archelon and Mosasaurus in the first episode.

SPOILER: Click to show

They were right (to be fair, the trailers helped).

What I noticed during the rewatch was that the documentary had more "plot-twists" than I remembered. Things that held up during the rewatch include

SPOILER: Click to show

the time when the mosasaurus apparently ate the fish, but the fish just wanted to clean it and then its rival suddenly showed up. The twist with the Tarbosaurus being at the oasis just to drink water was also great.

Also, everyone had a good laugh at the "timelapse sequences" like

SPOILER: Click to show

the Quetzalcoatlus guarding her nest really quickly or the "hadrosaurus growing up" montage

.

It's kinda sad that my Apple TV+ subscription will expire tomorrow because there's so many details that I only really notice upon re-watching. Although that might just be me being bad at paying attention. It was a decent evening, even if I came back home way too late.

[Infinity Blade]

Wait, did you do this all online? And you didn’t invite me?

[Infinity Blade]

Final thoughts on this show.

SPOILER: Click to show

Overall verdict:


For twenty-three years, I and many others have waited for a worthy successor to Walking with Dinosaurs. A number of paleontology documentaries have arisen over the years since. Some were good in their own right. Others were trash. But a popular sentiment within the online paleocommunity was that none of them managed to top Walking with Dinosaurs (and the other installments in Walking with), even despite this documentary's age and poorly-aged scientific accuracy. It's a sentiment I personally agree with (though opposing opinions certainly do exist). For all my life, I thought nothing captured the magic of WWD. The WW documentaries were in a category of their own when it came to paleontology documentaries, sitting all by themselves for over two decades.

But could it be another has joined its ranks?

Prehistoric Planet was, according to Steve Brusatte, a decade in the making before the trailer was released. And it was worth the wait. This documentary was every paleoenthusiast's dream come true. Highly accurate models; any inaccuracies were largely due to information only coming out very recently. Exquisitely detailed CGI. Animals acting like, well, animals. All in the format of a traditional BBC nature documentary. Hell, we even got Hans Zimmer to help with the soundtrack and David Attenborough to narrate in his usual splendid voice. But it wasn't just all these. The creators of Prehistoric Planet understood that it would take more than accuracy or pretty animal models to recapture what made WWD so great. To do that, it needed a majestic presentation of the prehistoric world. The Alcione hatchlings gathering up on the cliff top and flying in a massive wave to the safety of the forest. The Dreadnoughtus males marching their way up to the mating grounds and battling for supremacy. The list goes on. By doing this, it brought the magic of WWD back to a modern audience with all the great stuff mentioned beforehand.

Additionally, it does all of this while providing a fresh new look at the Mesozoic's denizens. Most people's image of a T. rex is it biting another dinosaur to death and roaring loudly for all to hear. And while at least the first half of that was most definitely a thing it did (with the second being more debatable), how many people imagine a T. rex adeptly swimming through perilous waters to feast on a dead giant turtle it sniffed out? Most people imagine pterosaurs just skimming through the water for fish, with dinosaurs, crocodiles, and marine reptiles being their primary predators. How many people imagine them trying to be sneaky while finding a mate or confusing a same-sex conspecific for a mate? Or for that matter, the diverse lot of them being their own worst enemies (seriously, when was the last time you've seen pterosaur-on-pterosaur predation in paleomedia?)? Most people imagine sauropods as gentle vegetarians. How many people imagine them using their bludgeoning necks, stabbing claws, and even their mouths to aggressively fight each other, even to the death, like hippos and elephant seals? How many people imagine a herd of ornithopods using the stars to navigate their way through the night? How many people imagine a troodontid starting a fire to drive out its mammalian prey? A giant Mosasaurus lying around and rolling like a puppy to clean itself? A freaking frog preying on baby dinosaurs? The list goes on. Prehistoric Planet could basically be called "All Yesterdays: The Documentary". By being such, it also ensures that none of what we see is the same rehashed thing over and over again.

Of course, it wasn't perfect. That was unavoidable, and even before the first episode came out no one expected it to be 100% perfect on everything. A few nitpicks on animal models could be made (e.g. the osteoderms on Carnotaurus). The lack of attention to mammals, champsosaurs, and crocodilians when many other non-dinosaur groups got an ample spotlight (people mostly pointed this out for the Freshwater episode; all the aforementioned animals inhabited the freshwater habitats of Hell Creek). I'd even argue, despite what I said in the paragraph above, that the lack of an accurate take on T. rex hunting Triceratops was a bit of a disappointment (although, that's admittedly more of a personal opinion). But the inaccuracies could easily be chalked up to science marching on more quickly than any project to reasonably keep up with perfectly. Likewise, if TV Tropes is correct, it's not that the creators didn't want to show other creatures, but time constraints had gotten in the way (which you could partially chalk this issue up to).

So, now to answer the question: is PhP a worthy successor to WWD?

Yes. Absolutely. I'm not going to mince words here, the answer is a resounding yes. While the two documentaries do some things differently, there's no denying that PhP, with its same majestic presentation, updated scientific accuracy, top notch CGI, and concept is definitely up there as one of the greatest paleodocumentaries of all time. No other documentary since WWD has made me feel so happy to be a paleontology enthusiast. No other has given me greater hope for other extraordinary content appearing in the future. If you had me travel back in time to my young self amazed after watching WWD for the twentieth time, this will be the first future documentary I would tell him about (although, he might be rather miffed it would take so god damn long for it to come).

[creature386]

Well said. It's been a long time since I've seen the paleo-community be this active and this happy.

I would have never thought that you could do so much with a single time period. Like, a lot of us make this whole dichotomy between the present world and some monolithic prehistory while losing sight that every single time period was by itself every bit as diverse as the modern-day. I think the best thing about this documentary is that you could, with unlimited budget and creativity, make near-endless sequels and they'd never get stale. Of course, creativity and budget are not endless, so, I hope this doesn't happen. (Franchise Zombies are an unfortunate thing). But I hope there'll be at least one or two sequels/prequels. And countless imitators, like with WWD.

Lots of people discussed on Twitter what time period should get the next "global treatment". A popular thread suggested the Miocene, although picking something this close to the present-day feels like low-hanging fruit. But I'm not sure on the possibilities myself.

[theropod]

For me the thing that would make most sense is for the next season to be set just a bit further back in time than the first. I think it might not be feasible to set everything at precisely the same point in time, as was done for the first season, but maybe roughly. Or maybe not at all, but still enough to cover a consistent time interval between the first and any future season.

Going forward in time and setting the next season in the paleogene would of course be a possibility as well, but my guess would be that they would be more interested in staying in the mesozoic for now.


In fact I thought pretty much everything about the execution of Prehistoric Planet was excellent to an unmatched degree among prehistory documentaries (models, animation quality, narration, accuracy, plausible speculation instead of awesomebro hyerbole and non-stop mayhem) but the one thing I think it currently lacks is the concept of telling not just a set of individual stories set in one time period, but the overarching epic of how life evolved over a long period of time, as the walking with series did, albeit with many shortcomings in execution (mostly in terms of accuracy) . But with the excellent reception it seems to have had, I really hope they take that as motivation to expand the series into something even greater.

May 31, 2022 4:50:10 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Wait, did you do this all online? And you didn’t invite me?

Nope, we did it in person, sorry

[Infinity Blade]

Jun 2, 2022 14:11:54 GMT 5 theropod said:

For me the thing that would make most sense is for the next season to be set just a bit further back in time than the first. I think it might not be feasible to set everything at precisely the same point in time, as was done for the first season

Is that really what they did? I just thought it was general Maastrichtian. For example, the Prince Creek Formation seems to date to a few million years earlier than the terminal Cretaceous (66 Ma). So does the Nemegt Formation. Was the idea really that they were all living at the very end of the age at the same time?

And yeah, I get that it’s maybe not a stretch to depict them living that late if they only date to a few million years earlier, but still. Even a few million years can see notable differences in fauna, even without a mass extinction in between (there were deinotheres, saber-toothed cats, and sauropod-sized sharks just a few million years ago, but not anymore).

Nope, we did it in person, sorry

Y’all living the paleontology career life without me. For now I’m stuck as a lab animal technician.

[theropod]

Yes good point. I suppose it is general Maastrichtian, at least in spirit. I just kept hearing 66 Ma repeatedly ("our planet, 66 million years ago), so I jumped to the conclusion that it was all supposed to be end-Maastrichtian. But that does not make a whole lot of sense, you are right. Many age estimates don't even have that sort of precision to begin with.
Some things in there seemed a little off, like the Velociraptor (which should be Campanian), but then, they were coexisting with Tarbosaurus anyway, so it stood to reason they were taking some reasonable liberties with extending slightly older taxa (like Tarbosaurus, Velociraptor, Dreadnoughtus...) forward in time, possibly up to the end of the Maastrichtian.

But anyway, I suppose future seasons might require a slightly wider time interval than those 4 or 5 Ma. It might be difficult or at least not desirable to the showrunners to set a season entirely in the Coniacian, for instance.