Prehistoric Planet

[dinosauria101]

Deserts:

-My favorite episode this season, woo!

-We begin with seeing a whole lot of Dreadnoughtus gather out in the desert to mate. 

-The bellows they make are surprisingly similar to the grunting sounds my pictus catfish make with their pectoral spines when I have to net them. Lol.
I don't expect the producers to have netted live P. pictus and recorded their grunting to make that sound effect, but it is pretty funny to think of these 50,000 kilo sauropods making the same noises as the ointment tube-sized catfish I have as pets.

-The females group together and watch the displays of the males for the most impressive - sounds pretty straightforward, right?

Not so: there is an unexpected twist. The males have inflatable orange neck sacs running up and down both sides of their neck to display, and which I can't get enough of aesthetically, especially the head-on view of the dominant bull inflating his.

-Speaking of the dominant bull, he's been holding top spot in the breeding grounds for two weeks thanks to the intimidation of his display. And it definitely shows: he is, as Attenborough says, white with dust.

Egad. I sure wouldn't be able to stand being so dusty for ANY length of time.

-As might be expected, though, there is an undeterred new challenger. He's new enough to NOT be white with dust - making him rather visually contrasting with the dominant bull.

-And as would also be expected, they get into a fight after sizing each other up. They fight by rearing up, wrestling, neck smashing, and even biting(!) each other.

Apparently, the inspiration is elephant seals. It really shows!

-The bite marks are surprisingly visible. In spite of this, however, there is no blood I can see - not even from the thumb-spiking they also do.
That in my opinion is a notable downside of the fight. Not only should there obviously be at least some blood from a goddamn giant sauropod fight, it's more true to the elephant seal inspiration as well.

-Did I mention I love the booming and ritualized soundtrack happening in the fight?

-Eventually, seemingly thanks to having more endurance to lift up such a heavy body with, the new challenger cripplingly knocks the old bull down.

This to me just seems like an overused cliche of the new and excited challenger winning - goes for all kinds of stories, not just palaeodocumentaries. A little swimming against the current and having the existing bull keep his spot would have been nice.

-Lastly, we see all but the doomed old bull Dreadnoughtus clear out from a bird's eye view - which would be very nice to end if it wasn't what came immediately after the fight. 
We are never shown or even told who the most successful male is, and that is the kind of thing I would want to know after seeing such fierce competition, so I would have appreciated it had they done so.

-Next up comes a segment set in Mongolia, a segment for which the intro is rather amusing. We are told there are ferocious-looking reptiles here....as we are shown a lizard which is then stated to merely be a few inches long. Lol.

-I would presume that this lizard is live-acted.

-It's always hard to find a meal here, and for most animals, the resident tarbosaurs (introduced as the desert's equivalent of T. rex, I don't suppose I can disagree with that) aren't helping matters any. Even when they are taking a nap, everyone else is too scared to eat from a dead giant sauropod.

-For the lizard though, opportunity is knocking! Apparently flies find the sleeping tarbosaurs that were eating the corpse more attractive than the corpse itself (I don't get it either), giving it the chance to eat lots of flies off the tarbosaurs (even very close to one's eye!).

-Attenborough tells us it's "time to be bold". Indeed.

-However, not even the lizard is exempt from danger. As the soundtrack turns slow and ominous, some hungry Velociraptors show up, with one catching and eating a lizard out in the open that our protagonist lizard sees and hides from.

"Time to be careful". Talk about doing a 180!

-Now the Velociraptors are being bold: they hunt our protagonist lizard and even pursue him when he runs under a tarbosaur for refuge! The soundtrack becomes fast and dynamic and I like it even more.

-By smacking into the tarbosaur, one Velociraptor wakes it and gets snapped at, with the other tarbosaurs roused by the noise and looking surprised. This is also where a closeup of the tarbosaur's eye like in the trailer is.

-There is no sign of the lizard for a while. I always worried about it getting squished by the tarbosaur rolling over on it, but somehow it must have gotten away safely because we see it back among the rocks.

-To end, the tarbosaurs move away. I find this rather anticlimactic: it would have been more fulfilling to show them doing something more than sleeping and being woken up.

-We move on to the Mononykus shown in the trailer: she breaks open a log to eat the tasty termites inside and learns the hard way how irritating they can be (lol). Aesthetically I like the view we get of her at sunrise.

-However, this segment has (to my eye) a noticeable imperfection. Apparently the closeup of the Mononykus cutting the wood with her claws is a prop closeup, yet it didn't look any more real to me than the not-completely-real-CGI: this could be because their actual physical prop was not a particularly real-looking one? Idk.

-Unusually heavy rains by desert standards then cause her to seek shelter in a cave, and when the rains end the desert has been temporarily transformed into a new, much lusher landscape full of blooming flowers.

There's food here, but only if you know how to catch it.

-And for a while, thanks to the unfamiliarity, our female does not. She can't catch any bite-size beetles, so resorts to trying a scorpion and even some enantiornithine birds that both seem a little too big for her.

"Oh dear". Indeed, Sir Attenborough, indeed.

-In the end she finally gets something. All things considered I appreciate the variety shown here in such a short arc.

-We remain in Mongolia for the next arc, starting with some Barsboldia, long distance desert specialists that have found a watering hole.

-They're not the only ones to have found it, however. The total number of dinosaurs looks comparable to the 2000 Dinosaur herd size, and there is a similar assortment, from 70,000 kilo sauropods to bizarre therizinosaurs and pterosaurs to armored ankylosaurs, and so on.

-And of course some Mononykus, one of which appears to be the same individual from the previous arc. She makes a risky move by heading between the legs of the 70,000 kilo Mongolian Titan sauropod - which, speaking of, are so big that they can literally jump the queue of thirsty dinosaurs with their long ass necks.

-Not all of these animals are ones we are introduced to, however - it's only Barsboldia, Mononykus, and the Mongolian Titans up to this point. It would be nice to have all the present species identified and perhaps even get an estimate of the number of dinosaurs and pterosaurs at the water hole (ie: more than *certain big number*).

-But such a gathering would not be complete without nerve wracking visitors. AKA giant carnivorous dinosaurs. 

A Tarbosaurus (which we first see in the distant sand dunes) begins its approach, and is accordingly noticed. The distance the rest of the dinosaurs put between it and themselves...well, like Infinity Blade says, it's a prehistoric version of 2016 Shere Khan. With it comes another slow and ominous soundtrack I like.

-Luckily for the existing dinosaurs, though, all the new Tarbosaurus wants is a drink of water. 

And that's the end of the arc. I personally would not have ended such a scene on that note: with so many thirsty dinosaurs, an ending showing us how fast they make the water hole shrink or even disappear would be very fitting and telling.

-Back to Barbaridactylus we go, and now they are our protagonists. Here we see them gather to mate on the tops of tall cliffs.

-I am a huge fan of the reddish purple colors they chose for the Barbaridactylus. As much as I can tell the model is not real, the aesthetics are a definitive upside in my book.

-The intro is also a strong one in my opinion. Almost right off the bat we see large male Barbaridactylus are serious enough about defending their mating rights to literally kill the competition: Attenborough's 'violently reinforced' statement is an understatement.

-But as always, the competition will find a loophole. And in this case it's sneaky rival males that look like females to try and remain unnoticed.

Although this works as intended, technically the 'unnoticed' part falls flat on its face. The dominant male actually attempts to court a sneak.

-I like both the ominous intro to the courting scene we get (tone-suggestive that the sneak is toast) and the upright-standing male breathtakingly spreading his wings in display.

-It's very wise of the sneak to pretend to be a reluctant female. And he does so successfully: once the large male moves away, he can successfully find a mate to end the arc.

Like the previous arc, though, a little arc-specific context would have made for a better ending in my opinion. Seeing such different mating strategies makes one wonder how the success rates of each compare: it would have been very easy for them to tell us the comparisons for this universe yet we get none.

-Finally we have some Secernosaurus, who live in a very barren gypsum dune desert. The green snouts on the models are, like the previous arc, aesthetically pleasing for my tastes.

-I don't have much to say about the plot of this arc: they navigate with celestial bodies and lick morning dew off themselves to drink. 

This arc was moderate in my opinion. I am not a fan aesthetically of the extremely monotonous gypsum desert setting, but the 2 nonstandard things above that they do are interesting additions.

Overall verdict:

I'd put Deserts at a solid 7/10 for entertainment. More soundtracks I like, lots of dinosaur species shown in one arc, aesthetically pleasing models, more entertaining storylines, and points of humor all work in its favor and are what make it my S1 favorite despite the fact that most ot the arcs could use some arc-specific improvement.

[dinosauria101]

Freshwater:

-We begin with some juvenile azhdarchids living near a waterfall (for which I like the models aesthetically). Such a steep, treacherous habitat keeps most predators away.....

.....but not all of them! There are 3 hungry Velociraptors that, although they must do so with caution, are fully capable of hunting these pterosaurs. Narratively it's a nice jump scare - and it's also interesting to see Velociraptor hunting something that's not a dinosaur or a small mammal/lizard.

-As the Velociraptors stalk the pterosaurs, it's plain to see how they would be camouflaged well against the rocks. And even their mistakes are camouflaged in a way: one slips and fells some rocks that would otherwise be a dead giveaway for predators, but the waterfall's roar masks the noise.
I appreciate being shown finer details of a hunt here.

-The group's female makes her attack, and when she does, she both loses hold of her target and sets the other pterosaurs into a fear-induced frenzying swarm. It seems like the 2 males are kind of caught off guard by these to me.

-We end with her wisely deciding she wants nothing to do with any of her self-caused trouble, thereby going after her dropped target and running away with it. And in doing so, she leaves those unfortunate 2 males with no kill to, as Attenborough foreshadows kind of pityingly, "face the pterosaurs".

-As much as I like the fine details and nonstandard social behavior/prey choices for the Velociraptor, this arc's end is too big a cliffhanger for me.

Will those 2 unlucky males successfully get away from the frenzying pterosaurs? Will they get seriously injured trying? Do so many pterosaurs pose a threat? All these questions could have been easily answered - and the nonstandard pack behavior reinforced even further given the display of consequences for the males - had they shown us a bit more of the males as they clearly could have, yet this is it.

-The next arc returns to T. rex from E1. We see an old male eating a Triceratops he has killed, and as Infinity Blade alluded to, not seeing the hunt is something I find disappointing as well.

In fact, I'll go one step further and say that - for my personal preferences, this is not objectively a problem - it goes so far as to be an unacceptable breakage of the (unwritten) rules. All the other palaeodocumentaries I liked that featured T. rex had it hunting/engaging with at least 1 of the 'Major 3 herbivores' it lived with of Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and Edmontosaurus - hell, literally every other palaeodocumentary I can think of that I like with literally any species of tyrannosaurid has said tyrannosaurids likewise hunting/engaging with their major prey items that would be their equivalents to the Major 3 of T. rex, would it really be so hard for PP to do that here?

-As a result of the hunt we aren't shown, however, our male has gotten some serious injuries from the Triceratops' horns. These have to be dealt with if he is to live.
To do so, he heads down to a river that may wash them out well enough. At the river he meets a female who may be a rival, but he signals he would prefer to mate instead of fight, and with her approval they go and do just that. The end.

-Unfortunately, the remainder of this scene showcases an even bigger problem with the segment that - unlike my opinion-based problem above - is objectively a problem with the arc: the lack of relevance of actual freshwater. All the T. rex male does with it is briefly try to clean his wounds, and whether or not they get infected in such a short timeframe doesn't have any relevance for the remainder of the plot that I described above.
This arc should have been put in the Forests episode - it would only seem appropriate given how thick the forest is that the T. rex lives in.

-Next up, my favorite arc in this episode! Deinocheirus in the swamp.

Unfortunately we begin it with a prop failure: that close-up of the animal lifting out of the water is using a big shaggy puppet as a prop, which...well, let's just say things got a little hairy. There's a very noticeable difference between the thinner, hairier shagginess of the puppet vs the thicker, smoother feathers of the CGI Deinocheirus, and a dinosaur that lives in a swamp had better have waterproof feathers if it doesn't want to be constantly uncomfortable, yet that puppet gets SOAKED.

-To be fair though, the reason this scene is my favorite despite this blatant prop failure is because I liked what was shown in Apple's preview on YouTube, which did not show the puppet. And, likewise regardless of how poorly executed the props are, I aesthetically enjoy both the model and the backdrop. So as bad a prop failure as it is, we still have a good scene.

-A large male Deinocheirus stuffs his face with nourishing water plants after a lean dry season, and we get some breathtaking aerial shots.

-And now to my favorite part! This and below are the parts Apple put on Youtube as a preview and what got me hooked on this arc.
Our male ends up being both the diner and the main course. A very large swarm of blood-sucking flies is infesting his coat, with Attenborough telling us that they are not just irritating but even painful. Egad, I hope that's not supposed to be a horse/deer fly reference.

-If that wasn't bad enough, despite the itch-scratching power of those eight-inch claws, there's always an itch that's just out of reach. What to do?

Find a dead tree and scratch those bites till they itch no more, that's what! I find the track as he does so to be very compelling.

-Once the itch has been scratched, our male can get back to lunch (and at this point the Apple preview ends). We get some head-on views of him stuffing his face (LOL), and after a particularly nonchalant-looking head-on view, we see...well, to keep it family friendly, we see what went in one end, go out the other. 

Even more nonchalantly, to end the arc he just swishes his tail to get rid of the dung, and once he has done so Attenborough tells us a giant his size can produce over 20,000 kilos of dung every year. Double (in total triple) LOL.

-Guess no one ever told this Deinocheirus DON'T POOP WHERE YOU EAT. Quadruple LOL.

In all seriousness, apparently the dung is an edible prop. Unlike the rest of the prop closeups, it looked OK to me - although I am not well-versed in animal dung so someone who is well-versed may find it looks as fake as the rest of the closeups.

-We fly on over to a nesting female Quetzalcoatlus in an African swamp forest. She must make a nest, guard it for several weeks, and add to the egg count bit by bit - which we get a timelapse of her doing, and which I thought was an interesting way to show how she laid.

-But when she must go to find food, things go to the dogs. Or more accurately, to her rivals.

An older female needs a place to lay her eggs, and because there's not enough food around for two broods, it's down with our female's nest. As the rival destroys and eats the eggs, we can even see the blood in an egg - which I see as a nice touch because it goes to show how far they have developed before being destroyed.

-When our female returns, she gets ANGRY, and sounds it too with some goose-y bellows that are quite different from the higher pitched pterosaur sfx we are familiar with. A beak-stabbing and wrestling fight follows, which our female thankfully wins with no apparent injuries.

Just because she wasn't harmed doesn't mean her chances of success were, though. Now there are only 3 eggs left, giving her only a quarter of the chance she began with to succeed with her breeding season.

-And that's it. Unfortunately this arc has the very same inarguable problem the T. rex arc does - a total lack of relevance of freshwater to the plot - and like the T. rex arc, it might have been a good idea to put it in the Forests episode given that it's a swamp forest.

-By the way, if the nest guarding and nest fight sound familiar, that's because they are(->). 

-Thankfully, what follows is more relevant to freshwater. A family of Masiakasaurus come to mud flats to hunt - or learn how to hunt - the local freshwater crabs.

-One of the youngsters throws his caution to the wind when hunting...and dearly pays for it by becoming a Beelzebufo's lunch. I love this jump scare!

-That's the price paid by the masiakasaurs, for living in paradise, unfortunately!

-The final arc, unfortunately, is one I find both anticlimactic and of questionable relevance - it's elasmosaurs hunting fish in a brackish estuary with a few dinosaur shots. Not much else to say.

Even though the anticlimacy is purely subjective, I strongly believe there's an objective case to be made that they should have put this in Coasts. Estuaries are coastal and not freshwater, fitting that episode WAY better than this one.

Overall Verdict:

I personally find this the poorest episode in the entire series because literally half the arcs don't fit the themed name of the episode, as well as the subjective disappointment from expectations and anticlimactic ending. If it were to be rated on these alone, I would not recommend to watch it.

However, these aren't the sole rating criteria - everything I said in my review factors in! I like how this episode would need significantly fewer arc-specific plot improvements than the last episodes (only 1), as well as having a special-to-me-clip, some humor, a parallel with a top-tier earlier review, and the usual nonstandard depictions.

Taking everything into account, I'd give Freshwater a 55% rating. Despite the significant objective shortcomings, the bad is outweighed by the good.

[Infinity Blade]

Freshwater was the perfect opportunity to explore some of Hell Creek's actual river-dwelling inhabitants. The two pieces of silver lining to that segment were A) it established that they think a T. rex could take on an adult Triceratops (which depressingly too many people think was rare) and B) T. rex mating.

[dinosauria101]

Sept 18, 2023 0:10:15 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Freshwater was the perfect opportunity to explore some of Hell Creek's actual river-dwelling inhabitants. 

I agree. I would be lying if I said I knew what they were and was looking forward to seeing them, but after hearing feedback from others about this missed opportunity I'm pretty disappointed.

One Reddit comment I have seen gave quite some variety of animals that could have been used. 

This. The freshwater episode could have given us all sorts of Maastrichtian amphibians, actinopterygians, choristoderans, crocodylomorphs, turtles, molluscs, and arthropods that actually lived in freshwater. But instead, it just gave us more dinosaurs whose link to freshwater ecosystems is tenuous at best.

Too bad all of these were skipped as protagonist choices (and most of them even skipped altogether!) in favor of 50% forested and coastal segments.

A) it established that they think a T. rex could take on an adult Triceratops (which depressingly too many people think was rare)

I'll grant that I'm not exactly qualified to pass judgement on that at this point, but why is it depressing that so many people think it would be rare? In fact I would be inclined to agree with those people.

Sure, it's certainly within the capability of T. rex, but from a T. rex point of view it seems like something that absolutely should be done rarely. There's presumably about as much chance of failure as success (IDK if T. rex or Triceratops would usually win but I would think it's close), and even if T. rex succeeds, life threatening injuries (as we were shown and warned about in PP and other docs like DP) would be a serious risk.

More often than not, I would think the premier choice for T. rex would be something that poses less injury risk than adult Triceratops - not even considering chances of success or failure. 

and B) T. rex mating.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I think WWD and Dinosaur Revolution - whether individually or in total - already established that sufficiently considering the length and importance given to mating in the programs. Even Clash of the Dinosaurs could be argued to have done so - regardless of the fact that the program is crap - since they had a literal whole episode on it.

[Infinity Blade]

I'll grant that I'm not exactly qualified to pass judgement on that at this point, but why is it depressing that so many people think it would be rare? In fact I would be inclined to agree with those people.

Sure, it's certainly within the capability of T. rex, but from a T. rex point of view it seems like something that absolutely should be done rarely. There's presumably about as much chance of failure as success (IDK if T. rex or Triceratops would usually win but I would think it's close), and even if T. rex succeeds, life threatening injuries (as we were shown and warned about in PP and other docs like DP) would be a serious risk.

More often than not, I would think the premier choice for T. rex would be something that poses less injury risk than adult Triceratops - not even considering chances of success or failure.

"Predator wouldn't hunt x because it doesn't want to get hurt" is only true up to a point (that point being when easier prey isn't available for the moment). Plenty of predators still hunt things that are very dangerous to them despite the risk involved. I mean, getting boo boos is just a fact of life for predators that hunt large prey. Tigers hunt boar, leopards hunt warthogs, lions hunt Cape buffalo, orcas hunt Steller sea lions, etc., etc. The fossil record itself already shows us that theropods lived lifestyles that put plenty of wear and tear on their bodies, and may sometimes have even killed them (this is the whole point of The Ballad of Big Al), and at least some of that must have come prey hunting prey. Whether that's tripping, falling, and getting injured while chasing them (and this could happen even while hunting small prey that can't really physically hurt the predator) or actually getting struck, gored, bitten, clawed, or whatever by the prey.

You could easily take the quoted fundamental logic I began this post with and flip it on its head. "A Triceratops wouldn't fight back against a T. rex because it doesn't want to get hurt". If that sounds like an oversimplification of predator and prey interactions lacking any nuance to you, (and I hope it does), so should the corollary.

[dinosauria101]

Sept 18, 2023 5:03:55 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

I'll grant that I'm not exactly qualified to pass judgement on that at this point, but why is it depressing that so many people think it would be rare? In fact I would be inclined to agree with those people.

Sure, it's certainly within the capability of T. rex, but from a T. rex point of view it seems like something that absolutely should be done rarely. There's presumably about as much chance of failure as success (IDK if T. rex or Triceratops would usually win but I would think it's close), and even if T. rex succeeds, life threatening injuries (as we were shown and warned about in PP and other docs like DP) would be a serious risk.

More often than not, I would think the premier choice for T. rex would be something that poses less injury risk than adult Triceratops - not even considering chances of success or failure.

"Predator wouldn't hunt x because it doesn't want to get hurt" is only true up to a point (that point being when easier prey isn't available for the moment). Plenty of predators still hunt things that are very dangerous to them despite the risk involved. I mean, getting boo boos is just a fact of life for predators that hunt large prey. Tigers hunt boar, leopards hunt warthogs, lions hunt Cape buffalo, orcas hunt Steller sea lions, etc., etc. The fossil record itself already shows us that theropods lived lifestyles that put plenty of wear and tear on their bodies, and may sometimes have even killed them (this is the whole point of The Ballad of Big Al), and at least some of that must have come prey hunting prey. Whether that's tripping, falling, and getting injured while chasing them (and this could happen even while hunting small prey that can't really physically hurt the predator) or actually getting struck, gored, bitten, clawed, or whatever by the prey.

You could easily take the quoted fundamental logic I began this post with and flip it on its head. "A Triceratops wouldn't fight back against a T. rex because it doesn't want to get hurt". If that sounds like an oversimplification of predator and prey interactions lacking any nuance to you, (and I hope it does), so should the corollary.

That was the up-to point I was referring to. Obviously boo boo-causing hunts would have happened and it's something perfectly acceptable for palaeodocumentaries to show (in fact there's 0 reasonable argument otherwise considering the modern and fossil examples you mention), but the when easier prey isn't available for the moment was precisely what I had in mind.

I do indeed see the point of your final paragraph. In fact, as you probably remember, you gave an excellent explanation against just that sort of thing in your TTAKD review, and since reading it back in 2021 it has stuck with me to this day.

[Supercommunist]

I never understood the "tyrannosaurus probably hunted triceratops rarely" argument because it honestly looks tailored made to hunt them. If they were mainly hunting hadrosaurs and young alamosaurus you would expect them to have a more typical lean theropod build rather evolve into being beef buses.

[dinosauria101]

Sept 18, 2023 7:05:22 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

I never understood the "tyrannosaurus probably hunted triceratops rarely" argument because it honestly looks tailored made to hunt them. If they were mainly hunting hadrosaurs and young alamosaurus you would expect them to have a more typical lean theropod build rather evolve into being beef buses.

Triceratops=/=adult Triceratops. It could be that I'm taking what was shown in the show too literally and/or overgeneralizing it, but I can't see any benefit to primarily hunting prey that will give the predator infection-threatening injuries the majority of the time.
Assuming T. rex looks tailored to hunt Triceratops (I'll take your word for it), and that scene was an accurate representation of the kinds of injuries T. rex usually got if hunting adult Triceratops, subadults smaller than the T. rex would seem to be a more viable option.

After all, the original statement I agreed with the 'too many people on' was:

A) it established that they think a T. rex could take on an adult Triceratops (which depressingly too many people think was rare)

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Now back to the primary point of why I'm here: what do you think of the program's entertainment value, especially compared to documentaries like the Trilogy of Life? I am looking to gather as many entertainment-based opinions as possible because most commonly available opinions tend to be overwhelmingly science-based (which, of course, is not why I am reviewing the program).

[Supercommunist]

Triceratops=/=adult Triceratops. It could be that I'm taking what was shown in the show too literally and/or overgeneralizing it, but I can't see any benefit to primarily hunting prey that will give the predator infection-threatening injuries the majority of the time.

You could make this same argument with tigers and boars, but tigers do hunt adult boars with regularity. Sure, if a subadult is around that will be their first pick but a lot of times predators just have to go after what is available.

[tyrannasorus]

Sept 18, 2023 15:37:31 GMT 5 dinosauria101 said:

Sept 18, 2023 7:05:22 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

I never understood the "tyrannosaurus probably hunted triceratops rarely" argument because it honestly looks tailored made to hunt them. If they were mainly hunting hadrosaurs and young alamosaurus you would expect them to have a more typical lean theropod build rather evolve into being beef buses.

Triceratops=/=adult Triceratops. It could be that I'm taking what was shown in the show too literally and/or overgeneralizing it, but I can't see any benefit to primarily hunting prey that will give the predator infection-threatening injuries the majority of the time.
Assuming T. rex looks tailored to hunt Triceratops (I'll take your word for it), and that scene was an accurate representation of the kinds of injuries T. rex usually got if hunting adult Triceratops, subadults smaller than the T. rex would seem to be a more viable option.

After all, the original statement I agreed with the 'too many people on' was:

A) it established that they think a T. rex could take on an adult Triceratops (which depressingly too many people think was rare)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now back to the primary point of why I'm here: what do you think of the program's entertainment value, especially compared to documentaries like the Trilogy of Life? I am looking to gather as many entertainment-based opinions as possible because most commonly available opinions tend to be overwhelmingly science-based (which, of course, is not why I am reviewing the program).

I find it hard to believe that adult triceratops would be an extremely rare prey for T.Rex to take on. Even when easier prey are present predators will still often go for large hale and hearty prey options. Such as Grizzlies taking on bull moose’s, tigers taking on adult Gaur, lions taking down bull Cape buffalo by themselves and such. Not to mention triceratops was the most common large herbivore in hell creek, making it a preferred prey option for Tyrannosaurus

also the extent of injuries and the narration don’t align much, the T.Rex has relatively shallow wounds and it is somehow made out like it has suffered grave injuries for some reason. Fossil records show they were extremely hardy animals being covered in scars and injuries from a lifetime of fighting. The extent of injuries it would receive in a hunter in hunting an adult trike is debatable, but it would come out of a successful hunt relatively unscathed imo

as for the entertainment factor, I’d say the show is overall very good.It’s only downsides are the occasional formats of some episodes which feel rushed at times or the random appearances of a creature which has nothing to do in that episode here and there. Plus there is very little showcase of large scale predation which may be due to budget or animation concerns
I really enjoyed it from an entertainment perspective and would recommend it to someone if they were looking for any type of nature documentary

[theropod]

Sept 18, 2023 7:05:22 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

I never understood the "tyrannosaurus probably hunted triceratops rarely" argument because it honestly looks tailored made to hunt them. If they were mainly hunting hadrosaurs and young alamosaurus you would expect them to have a more typical lean theropod build rather evolve into being beef buses.

And additionally, Triceratops is literally the most commonly found herbivore in the Hell Creek formation (EDIT: Oh, I see I’m not the first to note that…well anyway).

from Horner et al. 2011, PLOS ONE doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016574

This is from a Horner-paper, so if we’re being pedantic about it it’s more accurate to say that "giant, three-horned ceratopsians are the most common herbivore fossils in Hell Creek", as they are of course lumping some other ceratopsians such as Torosaurus in with Triceratops. But I think functionally that’s not such a huge difference, either way these very formidably armed, large-bodied herbivores were probably very common in Hell Creek. Together with definite evidence for predation of T. rex on these animals, this is one of the more obvious and less disputable predator-prey relationships in the fossil record (together with Allosaurus/Stegosaurus).

But of course young or not, we shouldn’t imagine the average Triceratops as some sort of 10+ ton monster, despite some individuals growing that large.
I did have a brief look at what might be considered typical size for Triceratops here, and guesstimated that the average adult Triceratops is likely somewhere between 4-6 t, which would put it at a somewhat lower size than the average T. rex, at 6-7 t: theworldofanimals.proboards.com/post/48575/thread

Now of course terminologies for what is an "adult" can be a bit conflicting (there are some people online who seriously believe Sue and Scotty are the only two "adult" T. rex specimens, mainly as a very convenient excuse to hang on to their fantasy world where these two are perfectly average-sized), and this definition is particularly muddy in the case of ceratopsians and Horner papers, but in this case, what really matters is what sizes the vast majority of Triceratops specimens that would be around at a given time (and constituted most of the prey base) were, not the semantic question of whether we’d class them as adults or large subadults, how fast they were still growing, or what size a rare, outsized individual might have reached.
I.e. T. rex going after adult(ish) Triceratops should be more accurately imagined as going after 4-6 t individuals the majority of the time, not after 10-14 ton ones.

I think Scott Hartman’s old size comparison does bring the point across fairly well of how most Triceratops (and also Stegosaurus) individuals weren’t exactly the size we like to imagine based on exclusively being fed maximum-size estimates for everything (even though that realistic picture is a bit undercut by still using Sue for representing T. rex, Sue of course being a very large individual, instead of showing a more average-sized one for this taxon too):


I think this is also a good example of how this persistent maximum-size cult creates very misleading expectations of what actual ecological interactions likely looked like. Popular culture would have you believe that it was somewhat normal to see a 9 ton T. rex take on a 10 ton Triceratops, when both were individually quite rare (maybe one in 20-30 adults for each), and the combination would thus be far rarer still. Just as a very simplistic combination:
(1/30)^2=0.001=0.1%
So maybe around 0.1% of randomly chosen pairs of Triceratops and T. rex specimens would actually be those sizes, and that’s not considering that there would certainly be some form of bias towards relatively smaller prey items introduced by the predator’s prey-choice, which would likely make it even less likely that a very large T. rex specimen, with all the sizes of Triceratops that are smaller than itself to choose from, would happen to choose one bigger than itself.

So without T. rex hunting adult Triceratops being a rare thing at all, it’s important to keep in mind what that actually means for the majority of cases (namely that a T. rex would be hunting a Triceratops that is sizeable, but likely somewhat smaller than itself, and that both combatants would probably be smaller than most people envision them based on popular portrayals.

Sept 19, 2023 11:31:59 GMT 5 tyrannasorus said:

Plus there is very little showcase of large scale predation which may be due to budget or animation concerns

I very much doubt that was a budget thing, as PP generally didn’t spare any expense when it came to animation, including depicting, modelling and filming many animals and unique landscapes just for a single appearance (e.g. Tethydraco, Austroraptor, Carnotaurus, Antarctopelta etc.). It would have probably been cheaper and easier to replace one of those scenes by a generic T. rex vs Triceratops fight in some generic forest environment. Which is what many more cheaply-made, more awesomebro documentaries have done, after all.
I think the relative paucity of large predators hunting large prey in PP was a purposeful creative decision meant to subvert audience expectations and portray the animals in a more nuanced, less over-the-top gory way. They obviously succeeded in this regard, although many would agree that in the process they might have overdone it a little.

[Supercommunist]

You have some great points. I am not qualified to say how common Sue/Scotty-sized tyrannosaurus were but I think one problem with the "t-rex/other theropods mainly hunted sub adult animals" is the question of what sub-adult trexes ate. Obviously both animal would have preferred less dangerous prey but was there really a large enough sub adult triceratops population to provide a reliable source of food for full grown and mostly grown tyrannosaurus?

Some paleontologists have argued that because dinosaurs had large clutch sizes there were a lot more juveniles and sub adults than fully mature individuals but that would also apply to tyrannosaurus. Since sub adult and juveniles rexes would have even more incentive to hunt smaller, younger animals that would lead to a lot of competition between the two age classess.

In addition, a lot of young herbivores probably were killed by mesopredators in infancy.

Boars are probably they best modern analogs for triceratpps. They are formidable animals that are also fairly fecund animals, producing litters rather than a single calf like most ungulates. From what I seen tigers do prefer to hunt boars smaller than themselves but there are accounts of cats hunting similar sized boars.

[dinosauria101]

Sept 19, 2023 11:31:59 GMT 5 tyrannasorus said:

as for the entertainment factor, I’d say the show is overall very good.It’s only downsides are the occasional formats of some episodes which feel rushed at times or the random appearances of a creature which has nothing to do in that episode here and there. Plus there is very little showcase of large scale predation which may be due to budget or animation concerns
I really enjoyed it from an entertainment perspective and would recommend it to someone if they were looking for any type of nature documentary

I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that you were able to get so much entertainment-related enjoyment out of the program. An observation I have made that so many others have made similar observations to (including viewers such as theropod ) is that this series is much more about education than it is entertainment: as much benefit as education has, it does really show with the jumping around format and overdone lack of fighting (IMO), and consequently at least theropod has told me he agrees with my assessment that the Trilogy of Life is more entertaining.

I wish at this point to leave the T. rex and Triceratops stuff alone, it's pretty out of my league. But I have something for theropod, on the Discord server, there was a fairly wide-torsoed Triceratops model that you should probably know about.
I'm not qualified to comment on its accuracy, but Infinity Blade shared it there and may be able to tell you more. If it is accurate this may have implications for your Triceratops size estimates, they would have to be redone and would go up some. discord.com/channels/410432844209586176/410433716666499073/973012691058835456

[theropod]

Sept 19, 2023 19:36:16 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

You have some great points. I am not qualified to say how common Sue/Scotty-sized tyrannosaurus were but I think one problem with the "t-rex/other theropods mainly hunted sub adult animals" is the question of what sub-adult trexes ate.

That is a good question indeed; while based on their leggy built (and the same reasoning you mentioned before) one might expect that they specialized in hunting smaller, speedier prey (ornithopods, ornithomimosaurs etc.), maybe they also participated in hunting larger, more well-armed animals (such as ceratopsians), possibly in cooperation with other subadults and/or adults.

Obviously both animal would have preferred less dangerous prey but was there really a large enough sub adult triceratops population to provide a reliable source of food for full grown and mostly grown tyrannosaurus?

The juvenile and subadult Triceratops population was probably at least similarly large to the adult one (see the sample of Scannella and Horner 2011). That goes for most dinosaurs, which tend to be more r-strategic than comparably sized mammals, but not for all of them equally.

Some paleontologists have argued that because dinosaurs had large clutch sizes there were a lot more juveniles and sub adults than fully mature individuals

I’d argue that pretty much all paleontologists are agreed on that issue, although of course it doesn’t apply in equal measure to all dinosaurs, and doesn’t mean there were no differences in the survivorship curve shapes beyond high

but that would also apply to tyrannosaurus.

Not necessarily, no. Based on Erickson et al. 2006, the survivorship curve of Tyrannosaurus is similar to a type I curve, with comparatively high survivorship into adulthood, and adults appear to be comparatively quite common in T. rex samples (e.g. Paul et al. 2022, nevermind their ridiculous taxonmic hypothesis) compared to other dinosaurs (such as Triceratops).

Since sub adult and juveniles rexes would have even more incentive to hunt smaller, younger animals that would lead to a lot of competition between the two age classess.

Only if they all preyed on the same species and age class of that species. But what about the various prey species that (even as adults) would be much too fast and nimble for an adult Tyrannosaurus? Yes, Triceratops is the most common herbivore in Hell Creek, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. And then, there are of course also various other large herbivores with sizeable populations, which were also preyed upon by (adult as well as subadult) tyrannosaurs.

In addition, a lot of young herbivores probably were killed by mesopredators in infancy.

In infancy yes. But even a 1 or 2 ton subadult Triceratops would already have been beyond the capabilities of pretty much every other predator in Hell Creek except for a (subadult) T. rex. With how comparatively rare immature T. rex are, and how very rare other mid-sized predators are in Maastrichtian North America, I don’t really see a problem of lack of prey resources here. In fact there’s a much greater diversity of different predators that all compete for the same prey resources in many modern ecosystems than there was in Maastrichtian North America, where T. rex is 10-20 times larger by mass than the next-largest carnivore (namely, Quetzalcoatlus).
---
Erickson, G.M., Currie, P.J., Inouye, B.D. and Winn, A.A. 2006. Tyrannosaur life tables: an example of nonavian dinosaur population biology. Science 313 (5784): 213–217.
Paul, G.S., Persons, W.S. and Van Raalte, J. 2022. The Tyrant Lizard King, Queen and Emperor: Multiple Lines of Morphological and Stratigraphic Evidence Support Subtle Evolution and Probable Speciation Within the North American Genus Tyrannosaurus. Evolutionary Biology 49 (2): 156–179.
Scannella, J.B. and Horner, J.R. 2010. Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 30 (4): 1157–1168.

[tyrannasorus]

Sept 20, 2023 0:16:04 GMT 5 dinosauria101 said:

Sept 19, 2023 11:31:59 GMT 5 tyrannasorus said:

as for the entertainment factor, I’d say the show is overall very good.It’s only downsides are the occasional formats of some episodes which feel rushed at times or the random appearances of a creature which has nothing to do in that episode here and there. Plus there is very little showcase of large scale predation which may be due to budget or animation concerns
I really enjoyed it from an entertainment perspective and would recommend it to someone if they were looking for any type of nature documentary

I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that you were able to get so much entertainment-related enjoyment out of the program. An observation I have made that so many others have made similar observations to (including viewers such as theropod ) is that this series is much more about education than it is entertainment: as much benefit as education has, it does really show with the jumping around format and overdone lack of fighting (IMO), and consequently at least theropod has told me he agrees with my assessment that the Trilogy of Life is more entertaining.

I wish at this point to leave the T. rex and Triceratops stuff alone, it's pretty out of my league. But I have something for theropod, on the Discord server, there was a fairly wide-torsoed Triceratops model that you should probably know about.
I'm not qualified to comment on its accuracy, but Infinity Blade shared it there and may be able to tell you more. If it is accurate this may have implications for your Triceratops size estimates, they would have to be redone and would go up some. discord.com/channels/410432844209586176/410433716666499073/973012691058835456

It could very well be that I have a pretty low standard for Prehistoric documentaries, since I’ve watched majority of them while young and could turn my brain off and go Dinosaurs. Lack of hunting scenes did put me off a little but I decided to not let it bother me too much. If you want to know how I’d rate it compared to other docs(specifically trilogy of life), it does lack noticeably for me. 

 Is this the model you were talking about?(credit to Color from ornithischia server)