Prehistoric Planet

[dinosauria101]

Nov 2, 2023 19:51:29 GMT 5 Exalt said:

Is there anything else in particular that we would want to see from the Maastrichtian, or are we fully on board with preferring that they go to another time if they make more?

Fully on board with another time. I saw a Reddit thread (edit: www.reddit.com/r/PrehistoricPlanet/comments/13s1f78/list_of_new_maastrichtianage_fauna_for_a/) about this earlier today and the vast majority of unused Maastrichtian animals it listed are only minimally different from what they already have shown us.
The literal sole exceptions on the list in that Reddit thread that I remember are megaraptorans, polycotylids, leptoceratopsids, and a few Mesozoic mammals. Not enough to make a new season on without reusing a whole bunch of stuff.

Instead of leaving it in the shoutbox where it will eventually disappear, I'll put it here where it will stay for good: A new season outside the Late Cretaceous - and preferably an underrepresented time like the Palaeozoic, the Early Triassic/Jurassic/Cretaceous, or the Miocene - completely eliminates the serious problem PP currently has with being restricted in timeframe to the most overrepresented timeframe in palaeodocumentaries.

In fact, all else being equal it would be a notable step up from the other seasons precisely thanks to fixing that problem. I already mentioned the restricted timeframe fix such new seasons would bring in my first comments on the thread, but I think given my opinion change that it does bear reiterating (and if I put it here, like the above, it can stay for good instead of disappearing down the shoutbox). After all, everything else being equal, it would turn into something I would like instead of something I'm not sure I even like!

[Exalt]

I guess this is the part where I say what I think of the series.

When I first saw that trailer back in March or April of last year, I was really excited. I had not gotten really into paleontology and such yet, and by no means was I at the peak of interest in dinosaurs. That trailer showed how real we can make such creatures look now, and with David Attenborough on board, it seemed like we were in for a treat. (That music also did a lot.)

The first episode was honestly magical in a way, and I was pretty impressed with Season 1 on the whole. I don't know why, but I didn't get as much out of Season 2, despite the fact that most seemed to find it an improvement? I don't think it was bad, and it had some good scenes. Nonetheless, this is when I started getting interested in going deeper, though I seem to have ended up as much more of a Cenozoic enthusiast.

In conclusion, we were delivered a painstaking effort into depicting late cretaceous fauna as life-like as possible, putting to the side baked-in perceptions of how some of these things are, giving both our eyes and brains insight into this chapter of Natural History. I'm not a superfan, but I certainly appreciate the series.

[Infinity Blade]

May 29, 2023 19:48:03 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

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.

Okay an update. Darren Naish posted a massive thread on PhP S2 recently. According to him, that Edmontosaurus was "twice as fast as T. rex" was a mistake that made it to the final version for unclear reasons. They were supposed to say that both animals had a similar top speed, which is much closer to reality than the hadrosaur being twice as fast (you could argue, as I do here, that T. rex was better built for speed than Edmontosaurus, but that it likely wasn't an extreme difference).

[dinosauria101]

SpinoInWonderland shared this on Discord.


Compared to not even being sure whether I like the original or not, I'd give this a high 8/10 because it fixes the major gripes (listed in the final verdict on Page 8) I have with PP of no hooking intro, narration I don't like, dearth of to-my-taste-soundtracks, and immersion I found to be consistently very awful. The classic WWD intro with the appropriate footage edited in fits ideally for obvious reasons, the WWD narration and soundtracks I love are provided by editing the WWD sounds unto the PP scenes, and the scenes presented in such the order they are tell a substantial, immersive story - even if it is not the full 30 minutes of Death of a Dynasty.

This is nice to see on more levels than just being presented something more entertaining than PP. I think it helps me realize where one of my big gripes with PP CGI of general disdain is coming from.
I did not have nearly as much disdain for the PP CGI of this clip as I did for the original show. That proves what I had suspected: some of that disdain came from association with a program that I never found that good in general.

[Supercommunist]

Jun 6, 2023 2:57:28 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

North America:

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.

Do you think a cougar's aversion towards condors could be a behavioral hold over from when they weren't one the largest carnivores in the area? Flocks of vultures will often drawn in big, dangerous predators so perhaps cougars have developed this aversion towards condors because in prehistoric times, condors would lure in more dominant predators. For instance, here is a video of a cheetah getting pestered by vultures and within seconds of it leaving a lioness shows up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=37B11Nr8e4g

[Infinity Blade]

May 1, 2024 6:30:11 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

Jun 6, 2023 2:57:28 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

North America:

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.

Do you think a cougar's aversion towards condors could be a behavioral hold over from when they weren't one the largest carnivores in the area? Flocks of vultures will often drawn in big, dangerous predators so perhaps cougars have developed this aversion towards condors because in prehistoric times, condors would lure in more dominant predators. For instance, here is a video of a cheetah getting pestered by vultures and within seconds of it leaving a lioness shows up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=37B11Nr8e4g

I wouldn't bet against that not being a factor. I think it possibly contributes to the response of the cougars, although I've also seen a video where a cheetah gives up its kill, but it's just vultures that come (afaik). So if it is a factor, I sort of doubt it's all of it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkYvz_28XJA