Prehistoric Planet

[Creodont]

May 23, 2023 22:55:46 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Badlands

SPOILER: Click to show

Badlands:

• The volcanic landscape and erupting lava are rendered exceptionally well here. No doubt that one of the charms of Prehistoric Planet are also its landscapes.
  
  Maastrichtian North America was sometimes depicted as a volcanic ash hellscape with spewing volcanoes and poisonous gas in older documentaries (e.g. Walking with Dinosaurs), but the real Maastrichtian volcanic world was India. It’s great to finally see it and its unique dinosaur fauna in a documentary.
  
  One thing you’ll also notice is that while WWD portrayed its volcano landscape as one where dinosaurs were slowly dying in (with the asteroid being the Mt. Everest-sized straw that broke the camel’s back), PhP frames it differently. While the Deccan Traps certainly are hazardous, they are depicted as a habitat where dinosaurs still managed to survive, even thrive in. Hell, the Isisaurus are *using the warm volcanic ash to incubate their eggs*, with the poisonous gas acting as a barrier from nest predators (at least for a time).
  
  This has the feel of modern animal nature documentaries, and it’s what I love seeing. A habitat may be harsh, deadly even, but in the end life conquers it anyway.
• The Isisaurus design is really well done. The coloration is nice enough, and the strange body proportions of this sauropod (like the relatively robust, thick neck and long upper arm->) are visible to those who know what they’re looking for. They even have dorsal spines, which make the relatively thick neck look more “complete” in my eyes.
• Baby “Velociraptors”! Their heads look rather big for their size, which I find intriguing. Do we have any hatchling dromaeosaurid specimens?
• We get a mixed herd of Nemegtosaurus, as-yet unnamed Mongolian titanosaurs, and Prenocephale. I noticed that the Nemegtosaurus have no claws on their front feet, while the Mongolian titans still have theirs. I don’t know if that’s just something the latter retained from their S1 models or if the team doubled down on titanosaur front claws, but for now at least I’m glad they didn’t completely get rid of them. It isn’t just that some basal titanosaurs like Diamantinasaurus had the front claw, but other titanosaurs still have tiny vestigial phalanges fused on their fourth metacarpal (Opisthocoelicaudia and Epachthosaurus) or articular surfaces at the ends of their metacarpals that imply the presence of phalanges (Rapetosaurus) (Poropat et al., 2015).
• Although the “Velociraptors” anticipate the arrival of the titanosaur herd for their hunt, the sauropods are said to be growing nervous as they enter the canyon. It’s obvious that it’s not the raptors they’re worried about, it’s the Tarbosaurus.
  
  Yes, Tarbosaurus returns from S1. Not only do they sleep together, but they’re depicted hunting together too (how coordinated they are remains up in the air, though; read on). They’re formidable enough to unnerve even the huge Mongolian titanosaurs, a detail I like. Putting aside whether or not a group of Tarbosaurus could seriously threaten one of them, elephants can be put off just by hearing big cat growls, even though the cats are not a threat to them (Thuppil & Coss, 2015).
• Oooh yeah, Tarbosaurus hunting sauropods baby!!!!!
• Tarbosaurus hunting sauropods…right…?
• 
• Well um…I’m rather disappointed, not gonna lie. I was really hoping we’d get to see Tarbosaurus macropredation on sauropods, which the trailers seemed like they were teasing. We know from S1 that the Tarbosaurus are regarded as serious threats by the Mongolian megaherbivorous dinosaur guild, so I was really stoked for actual action in this season (especially since I doubt that we’re going to see T. rex hunting Alamosaurus). The Tarbosaurus pack does get a meal in the end, but we don’t see it (I’m pretty sure they killed the Nemegtosaurus that is seen stumbling to the ground).
  
  Instead the Tarbosaurus spooking the herd is used to lead into the real focus: the “Velociraptor” hunt. It’s obvious that the dromaeosaurids were going for the Prenocephale, because they don’t stand a chance against any of the sauropods. When the pachycephalosaurs run to higher ground from the tyrannosaurs, the raptors pursue them over the rocky cliffs. One of the raptors waits until a pursued Prenocephale draws near and it literally kicks the pachycephalosaur off balance and down to its death.
  
  So make no mistake, the scene certainly isn’t a total loss, and still a good one overall. I was just hoping for something else. Oh well.
• Corythoraptor also reappears from S1. A new species, Kuru kulla (although, it has the same model as the “Velociraptor”), is introduced as a nest predator of the Corythoraptor. Some modern birds are nest predators of other bird species. Imagine this, but on a larger scale, and that’s what you have here. This certainly isn’t the first time dinosaurs were depicted raiding each other’s nests (Oviraptor literally got its name from that proposed habit, and was on the receiving end of it in Dinosaur Planet), but it’s still nice to see again.
• The Kuru’s low-pitched “purrs” are…new. But great to hear. Predictably her hatchlings don’t break into the stolen egg with their mouth or claws, but roll it over and drop it.
• Now we get to the segment that the blurb for this episode advertised. We get Tarchia. I’ve seen this pointed out by a friend of mine on Twitter, but after seeing so many spiky Ankylosaurus depictions, it’s nice to see an ankylosaur species that (most likely) did have spikes on its body.
• After one of the youngsters bullies its companion away from a bush, the second young Tarchia wanders off to find its own sustenance. Attenborough tells us that Tarchia have “mental maps”; that is, they remember where resources are and can travel across wide landscapes accurately. Thyreophorans are often thought of as mentally and cognitively simple animals, so to see one depicted with a “mental map” and great memory of the landscape’s resources (which modern animals commonly have) is something of a break from their common portrayal as dullards.
• Unfortunately, the oasis the young Tarchia finds turns out to be where an adult is napping. Luckily for it, though, the other youngster arrives and provides backup, forcing the adult to relent. Frens after all.
• The final segment returns to the Deccan. Months after the female Isisaurus laid their eggs, they hatch, who then feed on their mother’s dung (giving them healthy gut bacteria and pheromones). I like the track playing as the Isisaurus hatchlings travel out of the caldera.
• Inevitably, though, we get casualties. The first one, though, is implied, and not caused by a predator. One of the baby Isisaurus stumbles into a pit with hot bubbling mud.
  
  While this scene isn’t too bad, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people out there were unsettled by it. We don’t see the hatchling die, but it is never seen escaping as it watches and calls out to its fellow hatchlings. We have no reason to think that it makes it. The other hatchlings march on as if nothing happened. One of them briefly looks at the trapped hatchling and continues walking. They can’t, won’t, and don’t help.
• It’s honestly interesting how the mothers unintentionally did so many things to help their hatchlings. Not only laying the eggs in a place surrounded by poisonous gas (which most animals can’t cross), but also leaving behind dung to feed on and spreading seeds (through their dung) that grew into short vegetation while the eggs were incubating.
• But of course, the predators come. A Rajasaurus introduces itself from behind a rock going “Is it baby killing time?!”
• The thing I like about these Rajasaurus is how surprisingly fast and nimble they are over the rocky crevices. Even when they stumble they’re able to save themselves and maintain their balance. This is an animal probably around 7 meters long and a metric ton (skeletal by Justice Duncan->), and yet it’s able to turn on a dime when catching Isisaurus hatchlings. It’s a display of dinosaur athleticism and dynamism not usually portrayed in media (and I’m glad they don’t fall into the “meh theropod rotational inertia” meme).
• I don’t usually comment on the explanation segments at the end, but this episode covers dinosaur parental behavior. It goes over different parental strategies well, such as incubating eggs with a feathered body (a la Corythoraptor) vs incubating them in sediment (a la Isisaurus).

Overall verdict:

At this point I’d say S2 is still going strong. My biggest complaint is arguably the fact that we were still denied seeing large theropods hunt big game on screen. The Tarbosaurus hunting the sauropods was a perfect opportunity, and one that I was convinced was going to happen judging from the trailers. I feel like it could still have been done in conjunction with the “Velociraptor” hunt too.

Nevertheless, we still get the content we’d expect from PhP at this point. And while the myth of dinosaurs as sluggish and simple-minded is mostly known to be false at this point, we still get a few instances of dinosaurs being the exact opposite of that in “Badlands”. One example is “Velociraptors” setting up a trap for the Prenocephale, running along the cliffs, and basically Sparta-kicking one of them down to kill it; I may have been disappointed by not seeing the Tarbosaurus hunt, but this was still great to watch.

The dinosaurs may have taken quite a few L’s last episode, but they come back full force and make up for it in this one. It’s a nice little reminder that sluggish, tail-dragging, swamp-dwelling* dunces they were not.

*Okay, well, we’re getting a swamp-themed episode tomorrow, but you know what I mean.

Do you think Tarbosaurus could have evolved specifically to hunt sauropods? It appears less ankylosaur-oriented than Tyrannosaurus rex.

[Infinity Blade]

I will address the Quetzalcoatlus vs T. rex scene in my upcoming reviews of the remaining episodes. I hope to finish them once I have nearly all the free time in the world Monday and Tuesday.

May 27, 2023 4:30:24 GMT 5 Creodont said:

May 23, 2023 22:55:46 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Badlands

SPOILER: Click to show

Badlands:

• The volcanic landscape and erupting lava are rendered exceptionally well here. No doubt that one of the charms of Prehistoric Planet are also its landscapes.
  
  Maastrichtian North America was sometimes depicted as a volcanic ash hellscape with spewing volcanoes and poisonous gas in older documentaries (e.g. Walking with Dinosaurs), but the real Maastrichtian volcanic world was India. It’s great to finally see it and its unique dinosaur fauna in a documentary.
  
  One thing you’ll also notice is that while WWD portrayed its volcano landscape as one where dinosaurs were slowly dying in (with the asteroid being the Mt. Everest-sized straw that broke the camel’s back), PhP frames it differently. While the Deccan Traps certainly are hazardous, they are depicted as a habitat where dinosaurs still managed to survive, even thrive in. Hell, the Isisaurus are *using the warm volcanic ash to incubate their eggs*, with the poisonous gas acting as a barrier from nest predators (at least for a time).
  
  This has the feel of modern animal nature documentaries, and it’s what I love seeing. A habitat may be harsh, deadly even, but in the end life conquers it anyway.
• The Isisaurus design is really well done. The coloration is nice enough, and the strange body proportions of this sauropod (like the relatively robust, thick neck and long upper arm->) are visible to those who know what they’re looking for. They even have dorsal spines, which make the relatively thick neck look more “complete” in my eyes.
• Baby “Velociraptors”! Their heads look rather big for their size, which I find intriguing. Do we have any hatchling dromaeosaurid specimens?
• We get a mixed herd of Nemegtosaurus, as-yet unnamed Mongolian titanosaurs, and Prenocephale. I noticed that the Nemegtosaurus have no claws on their front feet, while the Mongolian titans still have theirs. I don’t know if that’s just something the latter retained from their S1 models or if the team doubled down on titanosaur front claws, but for now at least I’m glad they didn’t completely get rid of them. It isn’t just that some basal titanosaurs like Diamantinasaurus had the front claw, but other titanosaurs still have tiny vestigial phalanges fused on their fourth metacarpal (Opisthocoelicaudia and Epachthosaurus) or articular surfaces at the ends of their metacarpals that imply the presence of phalanges (Rapetosaurus) (Poropat et al., 2015).
• Although the “Velociraptors” anticipate the arrival of the titanosaur herd for their hunt, the sauropods are said to be growing nervous as they enter the canyon. It’s obvious that it’s not the raptors they’re worried about, it’s the Tarbosaurus.
  
  Yes, Tarbosaurus returns from S1. Not only do they sleep together, but they’re depicted hunting together too (how coordinated they are remains up in the air, though; read on). They’re formidable enough to unnerve even the huge Mongolian titanosaurs, a detail I like. Putting aside whether or not a group of Tarbosaurus could seriously threaten one of them, elephants can be put off just by hearing big cat growls, even though the cats are not a threat to them (Thuppil & Coss, 2015).
• Oooh yeah, Tarbosaurus hunting sauropods baby!!!!!
• Tarbosaurus hunting sauropods…right…?
• 
• Well um…I’m rather disappointed, not gonna lie. I was really hoping we’d get to see Tarbosaurus macropredation on sauropods, which the trailers seemed like they were teasing. We know from S1 that the Tarbosaurus are regarded as serious threats by the Mongolian megaherbivorous dinosaur guild, so I was really stoked for actual action in this season (especially since I doubt that we’re going to see T. rex hunting Alamosaurus). The Tarbosaurus pack does get a meal in the end, but we don’t see it (I’m pretty sure they killed the Nemegtosaurus that is seen stumbling to the ground).
  
  Instead the Tarbosaurus spooking the herd is used to lead into the real focus: the “Velociraptor” hunt. It’s obvious that the dromaeosaurids were going for the Prenocephale, because they don’t stand a chance against any of the sauropods. When the pachycephalosaurs run to higher ground from the tyrannosaurs, the raptors pursue them over the rocky cliffs. One of the raptors waits until a pursued Prenocephale draws near and it literally kicks the pachycephalosaur off balance and down to its death.
  
  So make no mistake, the scene certainly isn’t a total loss, and still a good one overall. I was just hoping for something else. Oh well.
• Corythoraptor also reappears from S1. A new species, Kuru kulla (although, it has the same model as the “Velociraptor”), is introduced as a nest predator of the Corythoraptor. Some modern birds are nest predators of other bird species. Imagine this, but on a larger scale, and that’s what you have here. This certainly isn’t the first time dinosaurs were depicted raiding each other’s nests (Oviraptor literally got its name from that proposed habit, and was on the receiving end of it in Dinosaur Planet), but it’s still nice to see again.
• The Kuru’s low-pitched “purrs” are…new. But great to hear. Predictably her hatchlings don’t break into the stolen egg with their mouth or claws, but roll it over and drop it.
• Now we get to the segment that the blurb for this episode advertised. We get Tarchia. I’ve seen this pointed out by a friend of mine on Twitter, but after seeing so many spiky Ankylosaurus depictions, it’s nice to see an ankylosaur species that (most likely) did have spikes on its body.
• After one of the youngsters bullies its companion away from a bush, the second young Tarchia wanders off to find its own sustenance. Attenborough tells us that Tarchia have “mental maps”; that is, they remember where resources are and can travel across wide landscapes accurately. Thyreophorans are often thought of as mentally and cognitively simple animals, so to see one depicted with a “mental map” and great memory of the landscape’s resources (which modern animals commonly have) is something of a break from their common portrayal as dullards.
• Unfortunately, the oasis the young Tarchia finds turns out to be where an adult is napping. Luckily for it, though, the other youngster arrives and provides backup, forcing the adult to relent. Frens after all.
• The final segment returns to the Deccan. Months after the female Isisaurus laid their eggs, they hatch, who then feed on their mother’s dung (giving them healthy gut bacteria and pheromones). I like the track playing as the Isisaurus hatchlings travel out of the caldera.
• Inevitably, though, we get casualties. The first one, though, is implied, and not caused by a predator. One of the baby Isisaurus stumbles into a pit with hot bubbling mud.
  
  While this scene isn’t too bad, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people out there were unsettled by it. We don’t see the hatchling die, but it is never seen escaping as it watches and calls out to its fellow hatchlings. We have no reason to think that it makes it. The other hatchlings march on as if nothing happened. One of them briefly looks at the trapped hatchling and continues walking. They can’t, won’t, and don’t help.
• It’s honestly interesting how the mothers unintentionally did so many things to help their hatchlings. Not only laying the eggs in a place surrounded by poisonous gas (which most animals can’t cross), but also leaving behind dung to feed on and spreading seeds (through their dung) that grew into short vegetation while the eggs were incubating.
• But of course, the predators come. A Rajasaurus introduces itself from behind a rock going “Is it baby killing time?!”
• The thing I like about these Rajasaurus is how surprisingly fast and nimble they are over the rocky crevices. Even when they stumble they’re able to save themselves and maintain their balance. This is an animal probably around 7 meters long and a metric ton (skeletal by Justice Duncan->), and yet it’s able to turn on a dime when catching Isisaurus hatchlings. It’s a display of dinosaur athleticism and dynamism not usually portrayed in media (and I’m glad they don’t fall into the “meh theropod rotational inertia” meme).
• I don’t usually comment on the explanation segments at the end, but this episode covers dinosaur parental behavior. It goes over different parental strategies well, such as incubating eggs with a feathered body (a la Corythoraptor) vs incubating them in sediment (a la Isisaurus).

Overall verdict:

At this point I’d say S2 is still going strong. My biggest complaint is arguably the fact that we were still denied seeing large theropods hunt big game on screen. The Tarbosaurus hunting the sauropods was a perfect opportunity, and one that I was convinced was going to happen judging from the trailers. I feel like it could still have been done in conjunction with the “Velociraptor” hunt too.

Nevertheless, we still get the content we’d expect from PhP at this point. And while the myth of dinosaurs as sluggish and simple-minded is mostly known to be false at this point, we still get a few instances of dinosaurs being the exact opposite of that in “Badlands”. One example is “Velociraptors” setting up a trap for the Prenocephale, running along the cliffs, and basically Sparta-kicking one of them down to kill it; I may have been disappointed by not seeing the Tarbosaurus hunt, but this was still great to watch.

The dinosaurs may have taken quite a few L’s last episode, but they come back full force and make up for it in this one. It’s a nice little reminder that sluggish, tail-dragging, swamp-dwelling* dunces they were not.

*Okay, well, we’re getting a swamp-themed episode tomorrow, but you know what I mean.

Do you think Tarbosaurus could have evolved specifically to hunt sauropods? It appears less ankylosaur-oriented than Tyrannosaurus rex.

Not really, because we know for a fact that Tarbosaurus ate more than just sauropods. The one isotope analysis done on Tarbosaurus remains showed that it ate both the native sauropods AND hadrosaurs (Saurolophus angustirostris, mind you, was pretty big itself at 11 tonnes). Bite marks attributable to Tarbosaurus have also been found on Deinocheirus, and there are possible (though not confirmed) bite marks on the skull of one Tarchia specimen.

[Creodont]

Rewatching the Quetz scene, Attenborough himself states one stab from its beak could “cost T. rex an eye” and while I don’t disagree, I can’t help but think the scene has been sensationalized. Realistically, I think the Quetzalcoatluses would have been the ones to back off. They have far more to lose from being on the receiving end. And would such a large animal really have that precise of an aim? I do understand they could harass the theropod from the air. That being said, I’m not trying to defend the T. rex or anything. But, maybe they were going for a “T. rex wasn’t invincible” idea with this segment of the episode.

[theropod]

I concur. Even though it is a really cool scene, the way it is portrayed, I definitely find the portrayed behaviour rather rather less probable than the alternative. The narration also is a little one-sided and didn’t really do anything to rectify this seemingly unlikely behaviour.

It acknowledges that a Quetzalcoatlus’ beak might pose some threat to a T. rex, and that it might not be worth it for the T. rex to pick a fight. I can agree with this. But the T. rex isn’t actually the agressor in this scene, the Quetzalcoatlus are. So the question that one must ask is "is it worth it for the pterosaurs?". It’s at this point that the show fails to really acknowledge (even though it should be obvious) that the risk the Quetzalcoatlus are taking is way higher than that to the T. rex.

Had the latter really wanted to, it could have simply walked right through the pterosaurs (which are only a 20th or so of its mass, after all), tanked the pecks, and killed them with a single bite (or even just trampled them). This is not to belittle the predatory power of giant pterosaurs, but it should be obvious that 200 kg pterosaurs (even a pair of them) are taking a much higher risk when picking a fight with a 5t+ theropod than the theropod when picking a fight with them.

If the Quetzalcoatlus were backed into a corner, for example a parent protecting its nest/offspring or similar situations, sure, I can totally see how it might be compelled to stand its ground against a large theropod, and possibly successfully deter it and convince it to look for easier prey. But this isn’t really the case here. Just like the T. rex could simply walk off and return later, the Quetzalcoatlus could have avoided any confrontation for the T. rex by simply waiting for it to leave. Or, another possibility, it could have even just fed on the same carcass at the same time without any confrontation; there was clearly enough meat on that sauropod for all of them.

That being said, an important thing to remember is that a speculative portrayal in which every single aspect of everything depicted always represents the maximum probability prediction is actually really unlikely overall. While we cannot predict which ones, and for any individual aspect we should generally go with the most probable instance, in reality you are always going to see instances of less likely scenarios occurring. So in a sense, depicting some improbable, weird scenarios (such as a 200 kg Pterosaur challenging a multiton theropod over a carcass) once in a while will actually add to the realism, because a world where nothing ever happens that’s different than would be expected is actually overall really unlikely. That goes for both speculation in paleoart and in docu-fiction. And hence why despite it being a bit imaginative, I still don’t really have a problem with this scene being shown the way it is.

To make this clear: I totally adore this show, and every single episode has both been a joy to watch and far and away the most scientifically sound paleo documentary I have watched. There are nonetheless a few minor issues here and there.
I think one is their approach (this has been highlighted here before in the warranted complaint that we barely see them taking large prey) to combating what I’ll call "large theropod clichés" (the commonly depicted "large theropod hell-bent on killing anything that moves and fighting bloody battles all the time"-stereotype). While I find this sentiment very commendable, in some instances I think it isn’t so perfectly implemented. E.g. on the one hand, they go out of their way to continually stress what a powerful predator T. rex is in the narration , but they do not really show it on screen a lot; we see T. rex doing all sorts of fun activities; caring for its young, having a swim, getting hunted by mosasaurs, playing with baby turtles, feeding on carcasses, snapping at small troodontids and getting bullied by pterosaurs, having a romantic get-together at a river…but the only scene where we see a T. rex hunting is the scene with the Edmontosaurus. This seems to be a classic case of trying a bit too hard to subvert expectations, to the point where it gets a little inconsistent with them telling us what an amazing predator T. rex is all the time. TBH I think the latter is generally understood by everyone, so I don’t really think we need to hear it all the time, and maybe it would have been better to just show us instead. Showing T. rex hunting so little and eating so much carrion could also run the risk of reinforcing the popular scavenging fallacy, as there are literally more scenes showing it scavenging than of it hunting.

[Infinity Blade]

Swamps:

SPOILER: Click to show

• First segment starts off typically with baby azhdarchids as the focus. Given the presence of Shamosuchus, this would place in what is now the Djadochta Formation, or at least somewhere reasonably nearby. This formation does have an indeterminate azhdarchid, and I assume that’s what this is.
• Let’s talk about the Shamosuchus. I’ve heard some complaints that the head of Shamosuchus looks nothing like the real animal’s, but given how Shamosuchus and Paralligator have been thought synonymous for the longest time (only in more recent years have they been separated; Turner (2015)), it’s possible PhP based their “Shamosuchus” on Paralligator instead. If so, it’s not that PhP pulled the croc model out of their ass, they just based it on the wrong species.
  
  Looking at the real Shamosuchus skull (particularly IGM 100/1195, the much more complete specimen), though, I don’t know why Wikipedia still claims that the eyes were not raised above the skull, given the clearly raised orbital margins of the newer specimen (though, it is true that the nares seem to have been positioned somewhat anteriorly (anterodorsally) compared to those of modern crocodilians) (Pol et al., 2009).
• We move to South America. We see a “ferocious, 3 foot long garfish”…before it’s revealed that this is just a small juvenile that gets caught by an Austroraptor. The Austroraptor looks nice here. But what’s even more interesting is their sociality, or rather, lack thereof. Austroraptor is portrayed as a mostly solitary species, only gathering in relatively large numbers when fish become very abundant. And when that happens, they are at each other’s throats while competing for food. The program makes sure that not every raptor species has the exact same hunting behavior (i.e. not every species is a pack hunter), and of the ones they had as unambiguously solitary, Austroraptor was a good pick IMO. As a primarily piscivorous predator that targeted fish much, much smaller than itself, I see little reason for it to be a pack hunter.
• Cut to the Madagascar segment: Masiakasaurus returns yet again, making this its third appearance in the series.
• Beelzebufo is introduced menacingly like its usual portrayals, but since we’ve already gotten such a depiction in S1, this season does something new. This story is about a male Beelzebufo trying to find a mate. For once it’s nice to see it doing something other than being a baby dinosaur-eating devil frog.
  
  With the low, dinosaur-like croaks he makes, I had a feeling he was going to end up attracting a giant dinosaur lol.
• The Rapetosaurus are majestic! Unfortunately for the Beelzebufo, they take up the space in his area, denying him his mud hole. Reaching a new hole, for this relatively small creature playing literal leap frog with these colossi, is presented as a serious struggle for the devil frog. Even when it gets to sing again, it has a problem making itself heard among the grumbling herd. Only when the sauropods leave does the frog get to exploit a benefit of their (former) presence: more mud holes to use.
  
  Again, love how we get to see another facet of the life of this extinct frog outside of hunting.
• However, at times it seems like the Beelzebufo is moving its head around a bit (and I’m not the only one who noticed this). While there are frogs that have rather reasonable neck mobility, I don’t think Beelzebufo was one of them, looking at its skeleton.
• I swear, this whole season of Prehistoric Planet is all about small animals scaring off bigger ones (the Beelzebufo gets a Rapetosaurus to back off).
• When we cut to North America, we see a former swamp. The narration makes it clear that some par-the-course climate change is happening over time in the Maastrichtian; a former swamp has turned dry after a whole decade of rain. Very interesting.
• The Pachycephalosaurus herd running and creating dust looks great, and their models are too (what’s striking to me are the well-developed spikes on the back of the head, so the paleontologist team behind this seems to think that fairly large spikes supported on the rather small bone cores of the skull are reasonable). What’s also interesting is that during hard times, it’s not completely herbivorous, partly subsisting on insects. There aren’t many depictions of ornithischians incorporating a bit of animal matter in their diet. And insects in dying wood does not sound unreasonable to me by any means.
• So this fight scene is easily one of my favorites in the entire show. Pachycephalosaurs have long been subject to debate over how exactly they used their trademark domes. Head-butting? Flank-butting? Head-wrestling? Display? Well guess what they do here?
  
  That’s right, all of these. Plus shoulder shoving. A structure can have more than one function and be used in more than one way, and this fight is the perfect example of that principle. I feel especially vindicated by the head-butting and the Uncovered segment that reveals all of the evidence for it. I have literally been citing this very same evidence for years for pachycephalosaur head-butting (these are not new papers), yet curiously people seem insistent on ignoring such evidence…
  
  That said, the Pachycephalosaurus are not above butting each other’s more vulnerable, fleshy flanks either.
• You can tell this fight hurt both combatants. The younger male limps for a bit before running off. The older male with a more brightly colored dome is actually bleeding a bit from his nose if you look closely. I also like how it’s mentioned that both are going to struggle afterwards too. While the exiled younger male is worse off, even the dominant male and his herd still have to live in the parched land.
• Hell Creek is rendered beautifully here. The place was a lush subtropical floodplain. Think Everglades, but with dinosaurs. The track that plays as the Edmontosaurus and Triceratops herds walk and graze is pretty nice too. Too bad it turns ominous when the T. rex show on screen.
• The T. rex pair waits until night to hunt. I’m not sure if T. rex’s night vision is really as optimized as claimed here (an estimate of the size of T. rex’s sclerotic ring based on Gorgosaurus’ preserved ones suggest its eyesight was best suited for diurnal hunting; Carpenter (2013)), but even if not, specialized diurnal predators like cheetahs still sometimes hunt at night (Broekhuis et al., 2014). T. rex had excellent olfaction and auditory abilities, which it could certainly use when hunting at night.
• Edmontosaurus being twice as fast as T. rex despite being just as big? Can’t say I agree.
  
  Although both were better suited for running than specialized graviportal animals such as elephants or sauropods, tyrannosaurids had every advantage over hadrosaurids in terms of adaptation for speed. Tyrannosaurids had larger room for leg muscle attachment than hadrosaurs (Paul, 2008). Tyrannosaurids possessed shock-absorbing arctometatarsalian feet, which hadrosaurids lacked. The lower legs of T. rex were proportionately longer than those of Edmontosaurus (see image below), increasing stride length.
  
  
  
  Lastly, the placement of the fourth trochanter (the attachment point of the musculus caudofemoralis longus) is more proximal on the femur of tyrannosaurids than on hadrosaurids. The trade-off associated here is that a more proximal placement would increase the femur’s fore-and-aft range of motion, thus allowing for greater stride length, while a more distal placement is more mechanically efficient and would likely result in less fatigue for the caudofemoralis muscle over time. What this means is that the tyrannosaur’s advantage is in speed, while the hadrosaur’s advantage is in endurance. In other words, think of the T. rex as the lion, and the Edmontosaurus as the zebra (Persons & Currie, 2014). And, while this is certainly more speculative, zebras and impala often escape lions and cheetahs (respectively) by running at less than their maximum speed (where their slower speed would put them at a disadvantage), but jinxing their predators at the last moment to escape (Wilson et al., 2018). I think it’s possible an Edmontosaurus could have done the same too. So yes, Edmontosaurus was far from defenseless prey against T. rex, just probably for different reasons than stated here.
• Now it’s time for me to explain what I like and what I’m not sure I like about our long-awaited T. rex hunt (aside from the “Edmontosaurus was 2x faster than rex” claim that I just addressed).
  
  What I like:
  
  - The tyrannosaurs use their thickly padded feet to muffle their footsteps. This makes them almost completely silent when stalking their prey. People think a big animal needs to make loud, thundering footsteps when walking, but this isn’t true. If you’ve ever been to zoo and seen elephants up close, you certainly didn’t hear them making loud tremors with every casual footstep like the T. rex in Jurassic Park (1993). Instead, the thickly padded feet muffle its footsteps to where it hardly makes any sound at all->. T. rex could easily do the same and has significantly more incentive to be quiet than an elephant (particularly when stalking prey). After all, unless you think T. rex was always guzzling massive amounts of energy running after its prey like a wolf, it had to have some way of capturing its quarry.
  - The tyrannosaurs even deliberately make a noise to incite panic and trick the hadrosaurs into thinking they’re somewhere they’re not. Dumb dinosaurs they are not.
  - The response of the hadrosaurs is pretty much how I’d expect them to behave in real life if attacked by a giant predator. Flee first, and then if cornered or captured, fight back. One Edmontosaurus is able to shrug off the first bite to the neck (possibly because the T. rex doesn’t get a full force grip on it or something), but once the second one attacks and it’s brought down, the hadrosaur kicks with its legs (both fore and hind) until it’s overwhelmed.
  - The T. rex use pretty much anything they can to overpower the Edmontosaurus. Not only by biting it, but one of them literally uses its head and weight to topple over the hadrosaur. Once grounded, they even attempt to pin it down using their feet.
  
  What I’m not sure I like:
  
  - Although they’re still visible, the darkness of the scene can make it hard to see the hunt unfold for many. Given the view we get of the Adalatherium at night in its segment, as well as the Triceratops in the cave all the way back in S1’s “Forests”, they could have done the same here. Maybe the intention was to illustrate how difficult it would be to see these ambushing predators in real life, but still.
  
  Whatever the case, I’m very happy we got to see such a realistic take on one of the most iconic extinct predators hunting its formidable prey.

Overall verdict:

Although I think the episode starts off okay (made better knowing now why the Shamosuchus look the way they do), I believe it gets progressively better as it goes. Even if you didn’t really care for more baby pterosaurs getting the hang of flying and the baby killer crocs that follow, the Beelzebufo segment was definitely nice to watch (especially since it’s doing something else now). The Austroraptor segment is also neat in its own right. I admit I hold a bias for hunting and fighting scenes, but the Pachycephalosaurus fight and T. rex hunt are my favorite bits here, especially since we know this is an expert team’s take on how they did their famed business. So overall, one of my favorite episodes of S2.

[Infinity Blade]

Oceans:

SPOILER: Click to show

• I think it’s cool that for once we get the spotlight on an mosasaur that wasn’t a gigantic apex predator. Mosasaurs were more diverse than just that.
  
  The species focused on in the first segment is Phosphorosaurus, which is depicted as a nocturnal predator that hides in reefs from larger predators. Funny how the last segment in the previous episode was also about a nocturnal hunt. Still kind of wish we got the nighttime camera for the T. rex hunt.
• I actually like how Attenborough calls the Phosphorosaurus a deadly hunter like the much larger Mosasaurus. We’re all impressed by large predators hunting large, impressive, even dangerous prey. And to be fair, we have every right to be (and we will get our share of this later in the episode). But that doesn’t mean predators hunting small prey aren’t marvelous and impressive in their own ways. Small prey may not necessarily be able to kill their predators directly, but they may require speed, agility, substance immunity, cunning, or other adaptations to be taken.
  
  The lanternfish are in no way comparable to the large marine reptiles, sharks, or other large predatory fish a Mosasaurus might hunt, but they have their own challenges for predators. Their bioluminescence and massive numbers allow them to confuse predators. They can even blend in with the moonlit waters when viewed from below. What’s a mosasaur to do? Evolve huge eyes for its size to spot them. These are the key to take advantage of this food source, not colossal size and brute force. That’s what makes the Phosphorosaurus a deadly hunter.
  
  Or maybe this was obvious to everyone else and it’s something I just had to remind myself of…
• Oh look, it’s Hesperornis. It’s not only the only dinosaur you’ll see in this episode, but it’s also the one animal that comes closest to interacting with the camera in this entire series. Anyway, they look great.
• Xiphactinus appears, and it also looks amazing (I love how the face has that silvery fish-like sheen, if you know what I’m saying). It’s a large, fast-swimming fish (and there is evidence for endothermy in Xiphactinus, so this is likely true) (Ferrón, 2019).
• The Xiphactinus eating smaller members of their own species isn’t surprising if you know the first thing about its known eating habits.
• One other thing: think Xiphactinus, the fast-swimming cannibal fish that swallows things half its length, was scary? As late as 73 Ma, the Western Interior Seaway was also home to Cretoxyrhina (the Ginsu shark). And there is a large Cretoxyrhina mantelli specimen with relatively large Xiphactinus remains as its stomach contents (Shimada, 1997).
  
  Sadly for it, it became extinct before the setting of Prehistoric Planet, and thus does not appear.
• We cut to a segment where baby ammonites hatch from their eggs and make their way into the ocean. This is definitely not something you see in your average paleontology documentary.
  
  They are trapped in a pool of water that is evaporating. So what do they do? They coalesce together, and their combined effort means they move as a single unit. They escape into deeper water, and there’s a part of the soundtrack that plays that’s yet another ear worm that lasts too short.
  
  This part actually kind of blew my mind, that baby ammonites could do this. Or, most likely I’d say, this just goes to show how ignorant I am on invertebrates.
• The baby ammonites that didn’t make it are scavenged by baby…Pyroraptors!? Holy shit, now I want to see an adult!
• Tuarangisaurus and Mosasaurus are revisited after appearing in S1. The Mosasaurus is even called an “intelligent and patient hunter” here. Considering monitor lizards today can be surprisingly intelligent, this wouldn't surprise me.
  
  But then the Mosasaurus does something that later Mike Habib explains. It forms a C-shape with its body, its tail running parallel to the seafloor and the head pointing upwards. This helps it accelerates quickly and rush at the Tuarangisaurus. This is something many modern swimmers do, and before this episode I had no idea about it. It’s one thing seeing a paleodocumentary like this relay information and concepts that you already know but don’t usually see. It’s another to learn something you legitimately had no idea about before.
• We then get the most epic bit in this entire episode. The mosasaur grabs a Tuarangisaurus and leaps out of the water like a great white shark. The real juicy part? Attenborough says that the impact alone is enough to kill the plesiosaur (something reiterated in the Uncovered segment). I feel like this is an incorporation of the ramming mosasaur hypothesis, one way or another (and of course, as you could probably guess, I think that’s very awesome and good on them for portraying).
• We return to the baby ammonites; most of them did not survive out in the open sea, as you’d expect. But we get to see a variety of ammonite species. The 6-foot long Baculites have long, horn-shaped shells. Diplomoceras are almost as large but look like living paperclips. Nostoceras have protruding spirals as babies, while adults have shells that make them look like they’re eating themselves. And towards the end of the segment, we see a wide shot of all these beautiful ammonites together, reiterating how these were some of the most successful animals that ever lived.
  
  This sounds like a summary of what PhP gives us of these amazing ammonites. But the truth is, the narration’s description of them is really about as shallow as what I just said above. It’s really “look at this ammonite, and look at that ammonite!”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly glad to see these crazy cephalopods, but I feel like they maybe could have done more covering them. Or not, since they only had a limited number of minutes to cover multiple species. Either way, this is an obvious ammonite-dedicated segment designed to introduce the viewer to the amazing diversity of these extinct cephalopods. Whether or not you like that is up to you.
• The Morturneria segment is similar (“look at this plesiosaur swimming and eating mud”), although I do think the fact that it’s featured in icy waters does make it a bit more interesting (to show that Mesozoic reptiles could survive in such an environment.

Overall verdict:

Although the visuals and concepts of the segments here all stand in their own right, I do feel like this episode was one of the most underwhelming this season (and it shouldn’t have been). Still love the Mosasaurus hunt, the myriad of ammonites, and the baby ammonites but…idk. It would’ve been cool to see some more done with the ammonites and the filter-feeding plesiosaur (because these are indeed awesome animals), but then again I’m not sure how.

[Creodont]

Personally, I’d like PhP to give as much screen time and species diversity to mosasaurs as they’ve given to pterosaurs.

[Infinity Blade]

The Nemegt Formation was recently dated, and it turns out to be from the late Maastrichtian (~66 Ma).

This means Prehistoric Planet was right to include Tarbosaurus, Deinocheirus, Barsboldia, Tarchia, etc.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/iar.12488

[theropod]

Jun 3, 2023 2:51:16 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

The Nemegt Formation was recently dated, and it turns out to be from the late Maastrichtian (~66 Ma).

This means Prehistoric Planet was right to include Tarbosaurus, Deinocheirus, Barsboldia, Tarchia, etc.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/iar.12488

I just took a look at the abstract, but it seems that this should more properly be interpreted as a lower bound to the age of the formation, as the dating was done directly on the fossil apatite. Usually long-term radiometric dating is done using isotopes contained in zircon crystals, because these have an extremely high closure temperature (somewhere around 900°) and are therefore usually closed off to outside influences after formation.

Apatite on the other hand can lose or gain isotopes much more easily later in its diagenesis or metamorphosis (for U-Pb dating, the closure temperature of Apatite is ca 350-550°), so while it’s possible to directly date the apatite, the resultant dates will only reflect the last time that apatite’s closure temperature was reached, which could be well after its formation and burial. I remember a woman I studied with as an undergrad doing her thesis on radioisotopes in Tendaguru dinosaur bone, and while I don’t remember the exact ages she dated them to, it was something much younger than the actual age of the Tendaguru formation, i.e. reflecting the last time of metamorphosis and not the age of the fossil.

A lower bound age can still be valuable, although I think we could have already guessed a lower bound of 66 Ma for the Nemegt fm.

[Infinity Blade]

North America:

SPOILER: Click to show

• At last, the episode you’ve all been waiting for (and anticipating to mock because the title doesn’t quite fit with the theme of the others; get ready to eat your words btw).
  
  Alamosaurus appears, and they, like all other sauropods in this program, are majestic. I was surprised by the stated weight (80 tonnes); I was told there are some estimates for Alamosaurus this high, although not necessarily newer ones. Also interesting is the fact that their model for Alamosaurus has the thumb claw (like the Dreadnoughtus and Mongolian titan, but unlike the Nemegtosaurus).
• The old male’s death is sad, as he lags behind the rest of his herd and slowly lies down on his side. However, for those who are sensitive to death and suffering in nature, this is as “good” as it can get. It is one of, if not the most peaceful death depicted in the series so far. For a series full of predation on adults, predation on babies, predation on eggs, and death for other reasons (implied for an Isisaurus hatchling that gets stuck, and death for many hatchling ammonites that don’t make it to sea), this sauropod’s death due to old age is a break. The old male had about as natural of a death as his species could’ve asked for, and not before braving countless predators in his youth and fathering other Alamosaurus (including some of the individuals in his herd, as Attenborough states). It’s also a nice illustration of how comparatively rare death from old age is in the wild.
• *inhales deeply, exhales* Okay, it’s time to review THAT scene everyone’s been arguing about. You know the one:
  
  
  (Art by AngurrSkurrr->)
  
  My TL;DR thoughts on it are this: I don’t have a problem with *what was depicted*, I just think that the wording could’ve been better.
  
  What do I mean by this? Yes, smaller animals can fight off objectively much larger, much more formidable animals. They don’t even need to pose any physical threat to the much larger animal. There are so many examples of this, but here’s one: Andean condors actually stress cougars out so much that the cats kill 50% more animals and spend less time eating their kills than their North American counterparts (Elbroch & Wittmer, 2013). Both could theoretically share a carcass (some of the kills are prey as large as guanacos or huemul), but the birds’ presence drove off the cats anyway. The one time condors challenged a cougar for a carcass, they successfully fought the cat off via simultaneous attacks on multiple fronts (even though the condors can’t actually do jack sh!t to the cougar).
  
  This king penguin-> was able to escape predation from a fur seal by using its beak as a deterrent to the pinniped head-on. It’s stated that the seal could “easily lose an eye” and that the only safe way to grab a penguin is from behind.
  
  But it gets even more extreme than this. Arctic terns, you know, your typical puny little birds, can fend off a POLAR BEAR from their nests by pecking at its nose and eyes. In this instance, the terns even drew blood from the bear’s muzzle.
  gfycat.com/disgustinghideousaddax
  
  Now, in my honest opinion, the danger these beaks pose to the much larger animal is rather overstated. The danger isn’t nonexistent (there is a case where a sandhill crane killed a coyote with a stab to the eye), but it’s unlikely to happen. Plus, as anyone with an eighth of a brain could tell you, if the rex REALLY wanted to kill the Quetz, you can be that that’s what’s going to happen for…extremely, EXTREMELY obvious reasons.
  
  However, the question we need to ask ourselves is DOES the rex really want to kill the Quetz? Because this is our ultimate limiting factor to who wins this confrontation (one way or another): the tyrannosaur’s temperament. If it doesn’t feel like seriously attacking the pterosaur at the moment, it could very well relent. Just like how lions can (and have) killed honey badgers when they wanted to, at times they also relent to them. Consider the fact that the rex here found a free 80 tonne meal. The only energy it spent to get this carcass was the energy it used to casually walk to it. Apart from that, there was no effort on its part. So when two annoying pterosaurs want first dibs on the carcass, what’s the T. rex to do? Just leave until they’re gone and then get its fill. Someone likened it to this: if you’re at a buffet, and two annoying guys show up (hell, let’s grant that you could easily body them if you really wanted to), you could just leave and come back until they’re gone; there’ll still be plenty of food left.
  
  And this is what the pterosaurs have going for them: they’re annoying. I’m not counting on them to consistently poke out the T. rex’s eyes, but their jabs (especially when they’re flying and harder to hit) are annoying. I think this should’ve been emphasized more by Attenborough’s narration than the small amount of danger they pose, but if you think of the pterosaurs driving off the theropod because they were annoying little sh!ts, what you see could work. It’s like, 99% the fact that they’re annoying, and maybe 1% the fact that the beak could theoretically put out an eye.
  
  You could argue that the sheer size of the carcass is also a case for the pterosaurs not having to drive off an elephant-sized bone-crushing apex predator; they could just share the carcass. And I do think that’s also possible; if they depicted this instead, I would’ve had no problem with it. But maybe the pterosaurs just wanted first dibs to get the most delectable parts of the carcass (although, the T. rex didn’t open up said delectable parts, and their beaks would thus have trouble dismembering them). Maybe they were really hungry and just wanted the rex out of there. Idk.
  
  So to summarize, I think *what is shown* is possible, I just think the wording of why the pterosaurs drove it off or the multiple possible outcomes of this interaction needed more work.
• In one of the T. rex’s vocalizations (particularly one when it’s confronted by the first pterosaur), you can actually hear a bit of the JP T. rex in there. It’s blended with a hissing/grumbling noise and lower pitched than the original sound effect, but I can hear a semblance of it. I actually think this was a clever move. Stock sound effects aren’t inherently bad; if you can implement them correctly, they can work very nicely.
• Another mosasaur segment. But for a second time, it’s not the famous macropredatory giants we all know and love. It’s Globidens, and if you look at the brief glimpses of its teeth, you can see that. Here it’s depicted hunting Sphenodiscus (colloquially called “tiger ammonites” here, which I actually think is kinda cool).
  
  But the way the Globidens kills the ammonites is what really intrigues me. I had assumed that a Globidens would just eat a whole ammonite, shell and all, with its extremely robust jaws and semispherical tooth crowns. But the Globidens here simply makes a single bite hard enough to punch holes in an ammonite’s shell, releasing the air inside that keeps it buoyant, sinking the ammonite to the seafloor. In a way, that’s actually even more brutal than my expectation, and the mosasaur kills DOZENS of ammonites this way. Afterwards, it pulls the fleshy bodies of the cephalopods out of their shells and only eats that. Very interesting, I hadn’t considered this.
• These Sphenodiscus are all females that lay their egg sacs into cracks and crevices of rocks. Once again, it’s interesting to see an aspect of ammonite reproduction in this show.
• We get to a drier area of North America, where the Rocky Mountains are in the process of forming. This is resulting in some climate change, which, again, is very cool to see in play here (it’s not something we usually see given spotlight in a single moment in time during the Mesozoic). This segment interests me for one good reason.
  
  “Styginetta”. Okay, that name is a nomen dubium, but it’s a bird. And not some weird toothy bird like Hesperornis. A toothless, neornithine bird. A waterfowl.
  
  Now, a waterfowl in a series about dinosaurs hardly seems like the kind of thing to ogle at. But the inclusion of these galloanserans in Prehistoric Planet nails in how some animals we think of as modern very much have prehistoric roots. Waterfowl are familiar to us today, but they appeared all the way back in the Late Cretaceous, meaning they were living with dinosaurs for a time. In fact, they WERE dinosaurs, every bit as much then as they are now, and every bit as much as the T. rex, Triceratops, and sauropods you see in this show. So to see these as just another group of dinosaurs, but fascinating, unique ones in their own right, is great.
  
  I just wish the narration wouldn’t make this implied distinction between these birds and dinosaurs (namely the Pectinodon that are also in this segment). Birds ARE dinosaurs damn it!
• The fly larvae can filter out the lake’s toxic salts when feeding, giving us a staggering (if not eerie) view of the millions of adult flies now hatching. The Pectinodon hatchlings take advantage of this until two of them run into each other. The “Styginetta” watch this and move their heads in *near* unison, like flamingoes. Perfect.
  
  I thought this was all this segment was going to be until the father Pectinodon goes after the birds themselves. What follows is a Cretaceous version of a single hyena or jackal charging into a flock of flamingoes in Africa. Again, perfect.
• Now for another great segment: the Triceratops fight!
  
  We learn more about the sociality of the Triceratops here from the previous season. It’s depicted gathering in large numbers during mating season. And if the previous season didn’t make it apparent how much the shape of the brow horns vary in these Triceratops, this segment makes it crystal clear.
  
  We meet a young bull (somewhere around 6 tonnes) with horns and a frill in prime condition. He already has huge orbital horns compared to many of the other Triceratops in the gathering. But then we see the old bull; his horns put the young bull’s to shame. It’s like a 10 point buck going up against a 15 pointer.
  
  The old bull doesn’t just have horn size going for him, though. He’s also 4 tonnes heavier (the old bull is stated to weigh “more than 10 tonnes”, hence where 6 tonnes for the young bull comes from) and much more experienced. This lets him basically throw down the young bull at the end of the fight. I feel like most people don’t put into perspective just how powerful a Triceratops would really be. Compared to an elephant, or even a rhino scaled to the same size, the ceratopsian would put both to shame.
• The size difference between the old bull and the female he mates with is kind of surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised if he weighed around twice as much. He was already a lot heavier than the young bull. One can’t help but wonder if ceratopsians had pronounced sexual dimorphism in size in real life.
• Lastly, what I like most about this scene is that it’s not a total loss for the young bull. Although he lost this battle, he now has a visible battle scar (really a broken off horn tip) that will help him attract a mate in the future.
• The final segment centers on a female Nanuqsaurus struggling to hunt Ornithomimus. I love how the Ornithomimus properly look like they’re running fast, rapidly swinging their legs fore and aft. Some dinosaur documentaries make their dinosaurs look very slow during a run or chase.
• Given how we now know that Nanuqsaurus was not the dwarf we originally thought it was (subsequent remains suggest an animal comparable in size to other North American tyrannosaurids like Albertosaurus) (Druckenmiller et al., 2021), I think an adult Nanuqsaurus would really have to rely on ambush to successfully take an Ornithomimus. I mean, it already does here, but it would be crucial.
• Rather unsurprisingly, the Nanuqsaurus fails the first hunt we see here, lacking cover and having to rely on panic.
• Btw the Nanuqsaurus seems to have relatively longer manual claws than the other tyrannosaurids. Given how the team went through great lengths in designing their tyrannosaurids, I wonder what the rationale for this was.
• The Nanuqsaurus tries again when it’s snowing, and this time she’s better able to ambush the herd. She’s even able to single out one like she intends to. You can kind of tell this Ornithomimus is doomed as you can see it fumbling a bit as it runs. When it trips and falls (but recovers to get back on its feet), this gives the Nanuqsaurus enough time to catch up and kill it. It’s little stuff like this that can mean the difference between dinner and starvation. Just a few falls is the difference between a bull eland running away and a leopard (a predator a tenth of its body mass) finding an opening and asphyxiating it. Here, it’s the difference between the ostrich mimic possibly outrunning the tyrannosaur or becoming dinner.
• The Nanuqsaurus later turns out to be a mother bringing the kill to her chicks. I’m kind of reminded of that episode of Prehistoric Park where the mother T. rex takes an Ornithomimus and brings it to her young (Terence and Matilda, for those of you who watched it). Only this has a happier ending.
• Since this is the last segment of the season, I like the look the Nanuqsaurus gives the Ornithomimus herd, as Attenborough states that she will have to repeat her success to successfully rear her chicks. The Ornithomimus see this and leave.

Overall verdict:

People thought this episode idea was ridiculous because it doesn’t fit the theming of the other episodes. And yeah, I suppose it is a sign that they’re running out of episode ideas for the Maastrichtian (if they ever do a third season, especially).

But this was one of my favorite episodes this season, and ranks up there as one of my favorites in the series. The Quetzalcoatlus-T. rex fight, even if you disagree with how it went down, was still cool to see. The Triceratops fight, Globidens hunt, and the Nanuqsaurus hunt were all wonderful to watch as well. Heck, even the “Styginetta” and Pectinodon hunting them was cool to see (the inclusion of a presbyornithid especially).

The only thing I could have asked for is the inclusion of Appalachia. The eastern half of North America during the Maastrichtian is underrated. And while it’s understandable because the dinosaur fossil record there is rather poor, we still had things like Dryptosaurus roaming North America at the same time T. rex was the scourge of the American west.

So yeah, loved this episode. If they ever do a third season still set in the Maastrichtian, I’d definitely want Appalachia included, though.

[Infinity Blade]

So dinosauria101 showed this to me on Discord. It's a supposed expected release date for S3 of Prehistoric Planet. Is it a typo or is it seriously legit? Because that's literally next month.

While an official release date for Season 3 of “Prehistoric Planet” has not been announced yet, we can speculate based on past patterns. The series has been renewed for a third season, which is expected to be released on October 22, 2023. The third season will have five episodes and will follow the same format as the previous seasons, running for a week-long event.

tmcassam.org/prehistoric-planet-season-3-release-date/

The show is anticipated to air on October 22, 2023. The upcoming season will be having five episodes and have the same structure as the first two. For a week, Prehistoric Planet has been active.

openmediahub.com/prehistoric-planet-season-3/

[dinosauria101]

Sept 10, 2023 3:50:07 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

So dinosauria101 showed this to me on Discord. It's a supposed expected release date for S3 of Prehistoric Planet. Is it a typo or is it seriously legit? Because that's literally next month.

I ended up googling 'Prehistoric Planet Season 3', which turned up next to nothing besides those that wasn't blind speculation on Reddit or similar. There's this website that also references it, but it's literally the only other one.

Prehistoric Planet Season 3 Release Date, Cast, Storyline, Trailer Release, and Everything You Need to Know

sunriseread.com/prehistoric-planet-season-3-release-date-cast-storyline-trailer-release-and-everything-you-need-to-know/159022/

Since it's under 2 months away with no trailer or poster or anything yet besides this foreshadowing guesswork, I can't help but wonder if one of these sites was given misinformation and the other two are just parroting it, as opposed to there being an actual Season 3. Something like this isn't unprecedented: you might remember that Forgotten Bloodlines was listed by IMDb as coming out on June 1, 2022....yet only the first episode is funded and it still lacks a solid release date.

Honestly though, as my upcoming S1 and S2 reviews would presumably demonstrate, I would not be particularly bummed out if there is no S3 after all. Not to mention we've got the confirmation of a WAY better documentary than PP for a mere 3 days after that.

[Infinity Blade]

Sept 10, 2023 4:53:51 GMT 5 dinosauria101 said:

Sept 10, 2023 3:50:07 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

So dinosauria101 showed this to me on Discord. It's a supposed expected release date for S3 of Prehistoric Planet. Is it a typo or is it seriously legit? Because that's literally next month.

I ended up googling 'Prehistoric Planet Season 3', which turned up next to nothing besides those that wasn't blind speculation on Reddit or similar. There's this website that also references it, but it's literally the only other one.

Prehistoric Planet Season 3 Release Date, Cast, Storyline, Trailer Release, and Everything You Need to Know

sunriseread.com/prehistoric-planet-season-3-release-date-cast-storyline-trailer-release-and-everything-you-need-to-know/159022/

Since it's under 2 months away with no trailer or poster or anything yet besides this foreshadowing guesswork, I can't help but wonder if one of these sites was given misinformation and the other two are just parroting it, as opposed to there being an actual Season 3. Something like this isn't unprecedented: you might remember that Forgotten Bloodlines was listed by IMDb as coming out on June 1, 2022....yet only the first episode is funded and it still lacks a solid release date.

Honestly though, as my upcoming S1 and S2 reviews would presumably demonstrate, I would not be particularly bummed out if there is no S3 after all. Not to mention we've got the confirmation of a WAY better documentary than PP for a mere 3 days after that.

Yeah, I'm not counting on this being a thing, especially not at this stated date. I'm not too sad, though, since we have Morgan Freeman paleo doc that month.

As much as I respect your opinion, I would be bummed if we never got a S3 ever. I think I remember someone saying that Darren Naish has expressed interest in subsequent PhP seasons taking place in different time periods. And even if not, no S3 certainly takes away that possibility from ever happening.

[dinosauria101]

Sept 10, 2023 5:32:00 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Yeah, I'm not counting on this being a thing, especially not at this stated date. I'm not too sad, though, since we have Morgan Freeman paleo doc that month.

I should really make the thread for that one! In fact, once this reply is finished, I will go and do just that.

As much as I respect your opinion, I would be bummed if we never got a S3 ever. I think I remember someone saying that Darren Naish has expressed interest in subsequent PhP seasons taking place in different time periods. And even if not, no S3 certainly takes away that possibility from ever happening.

Tbf, I would definitely be bummed - just not nearly as much as if a documentary like FB got the boot, hence my not particularly statement as opposed to not at all (if this is hard to understand, all of it will make much more sense with my final verdict, I promise). 

That being said...other time periods does raise a little more interest vs more of just the end Cretaceous: as many flaws as PP has to me, it would always benefit from episodes during other times in prehistory, both during and aside from the time of the dinosaurs. If against the odds we DO get S3 and it either shows those time periods or definitively paves the way for future seasons to do so, I would definitely be more excited for that.

[Infinity Blade]

Sept 10, 2023 5:59:02 GMT 5 dinosauria101 said:

Sept 10, 2023 5:32:00 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Yeah, I'm not counting on this being a thing, especially not at this stated date. I'm not too sad, though, since we have Morgan Freeman paleo doc that month.

I should really make the thread for that one! In fact, once this reply is finished, I will go and do just that.

As much as I respect your opinion, I would be bummed if we never got a S3 ever. I think I remember someone saying that Darren Naish has expressed interest in subsequent PhP seasons taking place in different time periods. And even if not, no S3 certainly takes away that possibility from ever happening.

Tbf, I would definitely be bummed - just not nearly as much as if a documentary like FB got the boot, hence my not particularly statement as opposed to not at all (if this is hard to understand, all of it will make much more sense with my final verdict, I promise). 

That being said...other time periods does raise a little more interest vs more of just the end Cretaceous: as many flaws as PP has to me, it would always benefit from episodes during other times in prehistory, both during and aside from the time of the dinosaurs. If against the odds we DO get S3 and it either shows those time periods or definitively paves the way for future seasons to do so, I would definitely be more excited for that.

Ah, I guess I kind of misinterpreted what you originally said.

Thinking about it, I'd like to see PhP set in the Pleistocene, and I'm not just saying that for "muh Cenozoic representation" either (even though the Pleistocene's representation in pop culture rivals the Mesozoic's in general). A good reason they're able to do two whole seasons of PhP in just the Maastrichtian is because for a Mesozoic time period, it's pretty well documented. Late Cretaceous western North America most definitely is, and when you add in all the other fossiliferous formations around the world that date to this time, you have a relatively good view of the world at that time. On top of this, the fauna and habitats across the globe are varied enough that you not only have a variety of lifeforms to show, but also pretty much every habitat that can be explored in an extant nature documentary can also be shown in one set during the Maastrichtian. If you tried doing the same in the Late Jurassic (~150 Ma), for example, you can't do an "ice worlds" episode.

The Pleistocene is most definitely very well documented (probably more so than the Maastrichtian). And even though it was the ice age (which did have effects on climate and habitat worldwide, whether directly or indirectly), there were still plenty of different habitats in the world at the time. There were still jungles, plains, all that jazz, so you can still dedicate a number of episodes to a variety of habitats.

The only real problem I can think of is that the Pleistocene shares many of the exact same species with those in the modern day, and if you want a good look at the Pleistocene's fauna, this would probably be hard to ignore. However, I think there would still be enough distinct, extinct species that you can put in the doc (alongside some showings of extant species), depending on when exactly in the Pleistocene you set it in (for example, you probably shouldn't set it right at the end of the epoch, in which case you won't be able to show the Australian megafauna without it being anachronistic).