Chased by Dinosaurs – A Retrospective Review

[Infinity Blade]

Chased by Dinosaurs – A Retrospective Review

Not long after the beginning of this year I realized that Chased by Dinosaurs will also have its 20th anniversary in December. The Giant Claw was first broadcast on December 30, 2002, and Land of Giants was broadcast on January 1, 2003. But you know what? Screw it. In celebration of the fossil expedition I will be going on next week, I have decided to get this review out early (I actually wrote it early in January, so it’s been sitting in my computer files for half the year).

“Special” indeed. Unlike the “proper” episodes of WWD or The Ballad of Big Al, the format isn’t that of a traditional nature documentary, where the wonderful voice of a British narrator fills your ears as you watch the prehistoric world as people thought it was. This is more like one of those documentaries or programs where the camera is always on some TV presenter who goes out into the wild, talks to the camera and narrates, and you get to see him get up close and personal with wildlife. In this case, that presenter (and naturalist, and conservationist) is Nigel Marven. This was, in fact, his first presence in prehistoric media (which surprised me because when I grew up, I first saw him in Prehistoric Park). While we don’t have Kenneth Branagh here, Nigel Marven definitely makes up for it.

Although I haven’t personally reviewed WWD (partly because we already have video reviews of that here), I will review this. Chased by Dinosaurs adds to the WWD “lore”, showing us how the franchise viewed animals we never got to see in the original series. These specials cannot be ignored. So strap in and get ready to be chased by dinosaurs!

The Giant Claw: Mongolia, 75 million years ago

• The intro to Chased by Dinosaurs is quite a nice one. Here, Nigel Marven is surrounded by a whole slew of dinosaurs, including those that appeared in WWD and those that appear only in this special.
• Nigel shows us a cast of the hand claw of Tyrannosaurus rex. As you’d expect, it’s downright puny compared to the claw of Therizinosaurus. He then says if the claw of T. rex is yea big, imagine what Therizinosaurus is like. Keep in mind that Nigel starts off thinking that Therizinosaurus is a predator, but his objective is to find it and see what it’s really like.
  
  Something I noticed about the latter is that it seems to have a keeled edge underneath. That would suggest the keratin sheath also had a sharp cutting edge too.
• But as Nigel is talking, the grumbling noises of dinosaurs can be heard. Put in the same situation, I feel like I’d probably be focused on that as opposed to breaking the fourth wall and explaining Therizinosaurus.
• Nigel believes the 40 foot Saurolophus must be 8 tonnes. Believe it or not, Nigel actually somewhat underestimates the size of Saurolophus here. A 43 foot Saurolophus would be closer to 11 tonnes (according to Greg Paul’s Princeton Field Guide). Two species of Saurolophus existed, and the Mongolian one, S. angustirostris, was the bigger of the two. So yeah, honkin’ big hadrosaur.
• How accurate is the model? As far as I can tell, I think I would make the crest longer and skinnier. Excusable inaccuracies are the shape of the bill (less “duck-like” and more vertical and shearing past each other) and the front feet (which I absolutely can’t blame them for; no one got hadrosaur front feet right until very recently). So for the time, I think the model was quite decent.
• Nigel then comes across a nesting colony of Protoceratops. No one knows how aggressive Protoceratops really was, but we do know it could and would employ its beak as a weapon (something Nigel points out). I’d be a little on edge if I had to walk past all these Protoceratops. That’s not even considering the fact that they have eggs to protect.
• As for the model, I think the frill could be wider. This-> is what it would look like.
• ”Oh my lord”
  ~the poor cameraman who now has to get to the other side
  
  XD
• When Nigel gets to the forest to look for a Therizinosaurus (what he calls the “Giant Claw”), he realizes a pack of Velociraptor blitzing all around him. It turns out they’re hunting a wounded Protoceratops.
  
  These Velociraptors are small, as they should be. They have the elongated skull, as they should. The most outdated thing about them is their lack of feathers, but for the time that’s excusable. I honestly can’t tell if the hands are pronated or just folded.
• As for the way they kill the Protoceratops, they basically rush in, dish out some damage with their claws, and quickly retreat.
  
  I have different views on how a dromaeosaurid would attack larger prey. Personally, I think if Velociraptor attacked a prey item larger than itself, it would incorporate some elements from RPR by jumping on the prey item and getting a tight grip with both its foot and hand claws. As the prey item violently struggles, grips with the hand claws can result in gouges and lacerations (this is often happens when cats grip onto struggling large prey with their claws), while the long sickle claws on the feet get driven in the flesh further and further. This would result in horrific stabbing wounds and significant blood loss->. Exacerbating this would, of course, be the long tooth row of ziphodont teeth slicing away at skin and flesh.
  
  In this manner, a dromaeosaurid would not only effectively utilize all of its weaponry, but it also uses them in ways that are in line with current ideas about their function. This is especially true of the foot claws. Nowadays dromaeosaurid sickle claws are thought of as pinning and gripping implements, and that’s exactly what the dromaeosaurid would be using them for here (but of course, this doesn’t preclude their ability to cause horrific damage). Similarly, one biomechanical study found that force at the tip of the claw was at its maximum when the hindlimb was in a flexed/crouched posture (Bishop, 2019) (keep in mind, though, that modern ground birds can deal serious damage by kicking too). In the scenario I described above, the dromaeosaurid’s legs would naturally be in a crouched position as it latches onto the prey item.
• Oh, and currently we don’t have any evidence for pack hunting in Velociraptor. But evidence for group behavior in dromaeosaurids exists, so I won’t completely rule it out.
• Note that there’s no background music as this scene unfolds. It’s exactly what you’d hear in nature, and the only other thing you hear is Nigel Marven’s commentary.
  
  Just in case you needed a reminder (after watching the previous installments of the franchise) that in real life, nature’s not all dramatic, epic background music.
• Also, props to the writers for not making Protoceratops a walking hamburger. One of the Velociraptors receives a broken arm from the ceratopsian’s beak as a result of the hunt.
• Nigel sets up camp for the night. He ends up catching a Mesozoic scorpion and decides to keep it as a souvenir. I wonder if there are any unique needs a Mesozoic species of scorpion might need in comparison to any modern species. That’s an interesting thought.
• Nigel is visited in the night by a bunch of Mononykus. They’re greatly oversized here. Nigel says they must be no more than 6 feet long; the real animal was a meter long and weighed 3.5 kg (referring to the Princeton Field Guide).
  
  At the same time, of all the dinosaurs in this episode that should or could be feathered (so basically, every theropod in this episode), Mononykus is the only one depicted with them. It could be more extensively feathered (on the head, neck, tail, and belly), but yeah, I think these are the first feathered non-avian theropods in the entire Walking with series.
  
  Predictably, Nigel has a difficult time catching them due to how cursorial they are. Alvarezsaurids are, in my opinion, extraordinary examples of dinosaurian weirdness. Usually, adaptations for running fast and digging through insect nests are mutually exclusive. Short, stocky legs with heavy bones, massive distal leg muscles, and long claws are a poor design for running fast. Similarly, long, gracile legs with light bones, musculature concentrated on the upper legs, and blunt claws that are mostly there for traction are far from the ideal morphology for digging. That is…if you’re a quadruped and need all four legs for locomotion. As bipeds, alvarezsaurids got around this issue completely. Their forelimbs were completely specialized for digging through termite nests (I wish Nigel talked more about them), while their hindlimbs were completely specialized for fast running. They were able to combine the absolute best of both worlds and didn’t need to compromise. How many other animals, alive or extinct, did the same thing?
• Unfortunately, the Mononykus ate Nigel’s scorpion, which mildly frustrates him. Press F in the chat.
• Nigel has still not had any luck in finding the Giant Claw. He still thinks it’s a predator, but he gets his first clue as to its true nature when he finds an abandoned nesting site of Therizinosaurus. Throughout the nesting site he finds herbivore dung laced with undigested plant matter. He also happens to find a skeletonized embryo still in its egg shell, but the skull has detached. This means Nigel still can’t take a look at the teeth and jaws to deduce what it ate, and he leaves still under the belief that the Giant Claw is a predator.
• Nigel eventually finds himself in a more lush area with trees and vegetation (albeit not as dense as the forest he was in earlier). At this point he finds the real apex predator of the ecosystem, Tarbosaurus. Let’s take a moment to compare the Tarbosaurus model with the franchise’s T. rex model.
  
  
  Screen capture from Chased by Dinosaurs.
  
  
  Screen capture from Walking with Dinosaurs (1999).
  
  The head of this Tarbosaurus alone already makes it a far more accurate depiction of tyrannosaurid anatomy than the T. rex in the og series. It isn’t perfect, but definitely an improvement. That said, I can still see some intriguing aesthetic similarities between the two. The Tarbosaurus has a striped tail like the WWD T. rex. When it raises its body and head up a bit (image->), I can still see the WWD T. rex in it. Something about the way it moves and its body shape just screams “WWD T. rex”.
• When Nigel hides from the Tarbosaurus he tells us how on any modern safari you want to see the apex predator. Not here. Just the sheer size of the Tarbosaurus compared to any land predator today kills any excitement, and in its place is fear. Quite understandable.
  
  But anyway, Nigel is spared by the tyrannosaur’s keen sense of smell by being downwind. After it walks away, he calls it “scary, but a thrill”.
• Nigel heads to a big lake and finds skeletal remains of Therizinosaurus. He’s able to put together an entire forelimb, but also comes across shed teeth befitting of a herbivore. This is his second clue as to the true nature of Therizinosaurus.
• After fleeing from a pack of Velociraptor and scaring them off with a bicycle horn, he sees the Tarbosaurus again by the lake. We hear a vocalization that sounds like it was made by a dragon: Therizinosaurus. We get the famous fight of this documentary, ending in the Therizinosaurus swatting the tyrannosaur’s face, producing a mist of blood from its mouth (though, without any visible wounds afterwards).
  
  How accurate is this? What were the claws used for? A finite element analysis of various therizinosaur claws, including those of Therizinosaurus, showed that Therizinosaurus’ elongated claws took a lot of stress in scratch-digging functions. This makes it unlikely they were used for a fossorial lifestyle. However, they were well suited for hooking and pulling vegetation, like you later see them doing here. Although there’s no direct evidence for their use in defense or combat, these functions can’t be ruled out. Therizinosaurus’ claws experienced little stress when used for piercing (Lautenschlager, 2014). So at the very least, I can see one trying to “bear hug” another animal and stabbing deeply with its long, sharp claws like an anteater. Because this study also doesn’t account for the keratin sheathes, it’s possible they would help strengthen the claw enough for swiping too (as depicted here), but I can’t say for sure.
• You know this is still basically WWD when you hear the end credits theme. It’s the same exact one used in the original series! I completely forgot about this and am positively delighted.

Final verdict:


You can tell that this was sort of meant to introduce the audience to the weirdo that was Therizinosaurus, teaching us a bit about its strange features. That is, despite its fearsome claws, it was actually a herbivore, most likely using its claws to hook branches while feeding (though some self-defense, when in order, is also plausible). Now, they kind of give it away when they show us the dung filled with plant matter; it’s kind of hard to argue with that, unless the program wants you to think that maybe another animal made those droppings. And for paleo-nerds like you and I, who have been familiar with therizinosaurs for years, this episode’s narrative can feel very drawn out. But not everyone is a paleo-nerd like you and I, so I don’t really have a problem with this.

And as the episode takes several minutes to figure out what the Giant Claw was, we meet some of Campanian Mongolia’s other denizens. And I think that, at least for the time, most were done adequately. Though naked, the Velociraptor at least wasn’t oversized and had the elongated skull it had in real life. The Protoceratops was portrayed as a potentially dangerous herbivore that could injure its predators. The Mononykus was feathered (though, the fact that it was absurdly oversized kind of steps it down a notch). And the Tarbosaurus’ intimidating portrayal, and the fact that it reflects real tyrannosaurid anatomy better than the series’ Tyrannosaurus, are all neat.

So overall, you of course need to keep in mind that it’s been almost twenty years since this came out, as is the case with WWD and WWB. None of the dinosaur models are perfect. And if you’re a twenty-something (hell, maybe even a teenage) paleo-nerd like me, and you’ve known what Therizinosaurus is for years, the “mystery” of the Giant Claw may be obvious and not anything special to you. But again, also keep in mind that most people don’t know what a therizinosaur is, or that big sharp claws could evolve for multiple things. And chances are, this was the first place you had ever heard of Therizinosaurus too. It was for me.

[creature386]

Funnily enough, I'm not sure if I ever watched it (I think I did, but my memory is VERY foggy). Enjoyed reading this.

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Nigel believes the 40 foot Saurolophus must be 8 tonnes. Believe it or not, Nigel actually somewhat underestimates the size of Saurolophus here. A 43 foot Saurolophus would be closer to 11 tonnes (according to Greg Paul’s Princeton Field Guide). Two species of Saurolophus existed, and the Mongolian one, S. angustirostris, was the bigger of the two. So yeah, honkin’ big hadrosaur.

I think I'll headcanon this as saying that he found a slightly smaller than individual than full size because, scaled down from 43 feet to 40 feet, the messmates a lot of sense.

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Nigel then comes across a nesting colony of Protoceratops. No one knows how aggressive Protoceratops really was, but we do know it could and would employ its beak as a weapon (something Nigel points out). I’d be a little on edge if I had to walk past all these Protoceratops. That’s not even considering the fact that they have eggs to protect.

I'd be fun if we ever found evidence hat ceratopsians were peace-loving gentle giants while ornithopods were bullish brutes because popular media depicts them the exact opposite way. XD Jokes aside, I do enjoy dinosaur media that teaches us a healthy respect of these creatures without treating them like monsters. Like, I'd certainly be scared if I had to interact with living, unchained dinosaurs, but not in the way most people would.

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• These Velociraptors are small, as they should be. They have the elongated skull, as they should. The most outdated thing about them is their lack of feathers, but for the time that’s excusable.

It's amazing that this whole feather debate was something that only really flared up within our lifetimes. Like, this show got made while we were both alive and we only got definitive proof of Velociraptor being feathered five years after it first aired and now, no-one really debates its integument anymore. That's the sort of stuff that keeps you hungry for more stuff in the coming decades.

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• Alvarezsaurids are, in my opinion, extraordinary examples of dinosaurian weirdness. Usually, adaptations for running fast and digging through insect nests are mutually exclusive. Short, stocky legs with heavy bones, massive distal leg muscles, and long claws are a poor design for running fast. Similarly, long, gracile legs with light bones, musculature concentrated on the upper legs, and blunt claws that are mostly there for traction are far from the ideal morphology for digging. That is…if you’re a quadruped and need all four legs for locomotion. As bipeds, alvarezsaurids got around this issue completely. Their forelimbs were completely specialized for digging through termite nests (I wish Nigel talked more about them), while their hindlimbs were completely specialized for fast running. They were able to combine the absolute best of both worlds and didn’t need to compromise. How many other animals, alive or extinct, did the same thing?

I think one reason we don't see more of it is that it's a rather specialized body plan that, once reached, restricts future paths of evolution (compared to more conservative amniote body plans where forelimbs and hindlimbs are similar in form and function) and increases risk for extinction. I once did a presentation on carnivoran hypercarnivory where it turned out that hypercarnivory is similar. It's great for mammalian predators at first, but because you can't "de-evolve" it once you reach that phase, hypercarnivoran mammals became restricted in their evolution and almost always got replaced by other, convergently evolved hypercarnivorous groups later (I still have that presentation on YouTube somewhere, but I don't want to shamelessly self-promote).

That said, I do wonder why there weren't more niches that benefited from the alvarezsaurid survival strategy. Maybe most insect diggers found other predator avoidance strategies (like being nocturnal) more effective than running away.
 

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• But anyway, Nigel is spared by the tyrannosaur’s keen sense of smell by being downwind. After it walks away, he calls it “scary, but a thrill”.

That sounds like something straight from a movie while still having the level of realism that's acceptable in a documentary. Like it.

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• We get the famous fight of this documentary, ending in the Therizinosaurus swatting the tyrannosaur’s face, producing a mist of blood from its mouth (though, without any visible wounds afterwards).

Oh, yeah, I do remember this (though I don't remember if I watched it in the documentary or on YouTube).

Jul 26, 2022 6:35:53 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

• And if you’re a twenty-something (hell, maybe even a teenage) paleo-nerd like me, and you’ve known what Therizinosaurus is for years, the “mystery” of the Giant Claw may be obvious and not anything special to you.

Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I'm the type who enjoys movies even after someone has spoiled the ending. It might kill one type of tension ("what will happen?"), but it creates an entirely different one ("how will it happen?"). Even if you know what a Therizinosaurus is, it is always interesting to see what one particular dinosaur documentaries' take on it is, what model they will use and so on.

I remember this had another segment about giant Argentinian sauropods, curious to see your take on that!

[Infinity Blade]

I still have that presentation on YouTube somewhere, but I don't want to shamelessly self-promote

Oh no, please do link to it.

I remember this had another segment about giant Argentinian sauropods, curious to see your take on that!

Yes, the other episode features Argentinosaurus. I'll definitely try to review that later.

[Infinity Blade]

Land of Giants: Argentina, 100 million years ago

• The timing is anywhere from only slightly to rather significantly off, depending on how you look at it. Nigel says he’s traveled back 100 million years, but the dinosaurs featured here are from a bit later, and not even contemporaneous. Any real dinosaur-nerd can tell you that Giganotosaurus and Argentinosaurus didn’t actually live with each other; Giganotosaurus is from the somewhat earlier Candeleros Formation (~99-97 Ma). That’s not too far off from what Nigel says. Argentinosaurus is from the Huincul Formation, which directly overlies the Candeleros Formation and dates to ~97-93 Ma. So depending on which of these two dinosaurs you use as a reference point, you’re really looking anywhere from 99-93 Ma.
• So did Giganotosaurus live with a giant titanosaur? And did Argentinosaurus live with a giant carcharodontosaurid theropod? Actually, yes and yes, just not with each other.
  
  The Huincul Formation bears fossils of Mapusaurus, a similarly gigantic carcharodontosaurid. Rather recently, the remains of a giant titanosaur from the Candeleros Formation were also published on (though not named); this titanosaur is estimated to have been at least as big as Patagotitan (probably exceeding it) (Otero et al., 2021). In fact, given how the Huincul directly overlies the Candeleros, I can’t help but wonder if Mapusaurus and Argentinosaurus are directly descended from Giganotosaurus and this unnamed giant titanosaur, respectively. I’m not really sure, though, as Otero et al.’s preliminary phylogenetic analysis placed their titanosaur “at the base of the clade leading to Lognkosauria, in a polytomy with Bonitasaura” (so maybe not quite within Lognkosauria, which Argentinosaurus is definitely a member of).
• Wikipedia makes mention of “several iguanodonts” being found in the Huincul Formation, and this book by Donald Prothero also mentions “an array of other iguanodonts” as part of the fauna (link->). Alas, I cannot find much information on them.
  
  They can make cool sounds, though.
• We don’t have anything close to a complete skeleton from Argentinosaurus, and as a result we can’t say it looked “exactly” like so and so. At the same time, however, based on the relatives it’s no longer believed Argentinosaurus would have had that rounded, almost Camarasaurus-like skull shape depicted here. For a better idea of what Argentinosaurus probably looked like, see these two skeletal by GunnarBivens-> and SpinoInWonderland->.
• As Nigel stares at a juvenile Argentinosaurus walking away, he’s almost taken by a Sarcosuchus from the river. It’s true that there was a South American species of Sarcosuchus (S. hartti), but at this point in time it would already have become extinct.
• The iguanodonts are just called Iguanodon here. Nigel explains how Iguanodon have been on Earth for 45 million years already and will be around for another 30, colonizing every single continent.
  
  This is the result of a ton of iguanodont species being referred to Iguanodon, with taxonomic revisions in the early 21st century cutting back on this a lot. For example, iguanodont remains from North America have been referred to as “I.” lakotaensis; these have since been assigned to their own genus, Dakotadon. There are now only two unambiguous accepted species of Iguanodon, I. bernissartensis and I. galvensis. Whatever iguanodonts lived in South America, they were most definitely not Iguanodon proper.
• Maybe I’m just that much of an idiot on pterosaurs, but I don’t have much to say about the Pteranodon segment other than the fact that in real life it doesn’t show up for another 14 million years.
• At night Nigel comes across his campsite wrecked. Among the things he finds is a large ziphodont tooth embedded in a can of meat, with bits of gum still attached to the root of the tooth. The doc is obviously teasing the Giganotosaurus. But with the camp wrecked, I wonder how the crew slept that night. The following morning Nigel looks a bit disheveled.
• And when Nigel treks through the forest he sees just what kind of damage those teeth can do on a living animal. An iguanodont is badly wounded on the leg and bleeding out, to the point where it collapses. Another one is killed (off-screen) and taken away by a Giganotosaurus.
• Iguanodonts seeing an airplane:
  
  
  Pterosaurs seeing an airplane:
  
• An Ornithocheirus appears, I guess because they wanted to feature one of the original WWD cast members in this program. Because this wasn’t made very long after the original WWD, they repeat the now outdated information about the size and identity of the pterosaur in question (i.e. the specimen it is based on has since been reassigned to Tropeognathus, and it did not have a wingspan of 40 feet). Time period is right for Ornithocheirus, though.
• Finally Nigel spots an Argentinosaurus herd. The track playing while we see these giants among giants walking the Earth is quite nice, conveying some sense of wonder and awe.
  
  When he gets on the ground he sets up a bunch of measuring plates to weigh one of the dinosaurs. He gets 92 tons. More precise modern estimates for known individuals are less than this, but I don’t think this is by any means an implausible mass for an Argentinosaurus to achieve.
• The Giganotosaurus seem to be solitary when hunting anything else, but opportunistically gang up on extremely large prey like Argentinosaurus in this program. I think that’s plausible enough as long as they’re not a family unit like in modern carnivoran packs. They also single out a young Argentinosaurus that is clearly not fully sized. Again, plausible. In fact, looking at how large the young individual looks compared to the Giganotosaurus, I honestly don’t think five or six Giganotosaurus would literally take a whole night just to kill it.
• At this point I think we’ve reached my main issue with this episode, or at least of its main premise. I get it, giant prey vs giant predator. The greatest Goliaths that have ever walked the Earth going up against Davids that themselves are Goliaths to most other lifeforms, and are armed with enormous saws for jaws and steak knives for teeth. But, and this is just my opinion, the presentation of the confrontation is kind of lackluster.
  
  As the Argentinosaurus are attacked, a deadly gauntlet they must go through annually, they just continue slowly plodding along like they have been for the entire episode. Anyone that’s not the young female being attacked hardly even acknowledges the existence of the Giganotosaurus. Even if you think the adults are completely immune to predation by the carcharodontosaurids, clearly not every individual in this herd is necessarily a healthy 70+ ton adult. You would think, then, that the herd would react in an alarmed manner. Perhaps power-walking away from the theropods as fast as they can or reacting more aggressively, ready to stand their ground (the most we get of that, from what I could see, was one adult lunging its head and neck a bit towards a Giganotosaurus). Nope. Hardly any of that. Even the young female just keeps slowly walking along until the theropods have successfully separated her from the rest of the herd. When she is surrounded, she doesn’t even seem to fight back, just get bitten over the course of several hours (and come on, after that many bites in that many hours from at least five of the largest predatory jaws that evolved on land?). Not even the track playing in the background is particularly exciting.
  
  For comparison, think back to the Ballad of Big Al’s Diplodocus hunt. The Allosaurus were running around the salt plains seeing which Diplodocus was the weakest. The Diplodocus react accordingly, moving away from the allosaurs as fast their graviportal legs can carry them, because as long as they can just put some distance between themselves and their predators (without even having to fight and kill them), they’re good. The track playing in the background is one of the most epic in all of the Walking with franchise. When the Allosaurus finally separate their weak quarry from the rest of the herd, the Diplodocus has no choice but to fight back, smacking Big Al to the ground with its neck (and breaking some bones IIRC).
• I should note that I say this only in the context of how the BBC wanted to portray this predator-prey relationship. That is, they wanted an epic battle where the giant prey takes days to die, sort of like wolves trying to kill a bison.
  
  I, however, wonder if there was a better way. Look at this video-> of a Komodo dragon hunting a water buffalo, a prey item that can weigh up to ten times as much as itself. The buffalo just views it as an irritation, not a serious threat. The dragon is cautious around such a large, dangerous prey item, and spends much of its time casually moving around, looking for an opening. And when the buffalo least expects it…CHOMP!!!
  
  If you’re a large carcharodontosaurid, perhaps a better way to kill a sauropod multiple times your size is to take a devastating lacerating bite when it least expects it (whether through ambush or the sauropod just not registering you as a threat). Not engaging in a prolonged fight where it may be keeping its eyes on you, ready to strike with its tail, legs, or neck.
• The episode ends with the Argentinosaurus stopping near water to lay their eggs. And then a Sarcosuchus attacks the camera.

Final verdict:

I kind of hate to say this, but I feel like more could have been done with this episode. It’s not even the inaccuracies at this point. It’s more the delivery and presentation of the giant predator vs giant prey schtick. When we finally get to that part, it feels underwhelming, and a step below what the Walking with series already did in the Ballad of Big Al.

That said, as far as a clash of titans goes, I liked most aspects of what was going on. While I don’t like how the young female Argentinosaurus did basically nothing as it was getting bitten to death, the Giganotosaurus take lacerating bites out of it to bleed it to death (even if I feel this should probably not have taken as long as it did, given the circumstances), and they choose a weaker and smaller individual. And as always, it was nice to see the BBC’s take on other prehistoric animals we didn’t see in the original WWD.

So…I guess this segment is alright? Maybe I’m just a jaded paleonerd who can’t find quite as much enjoyment out of this segment as I did when I was a kid, but then again, I can’t push myself to say I like everything. How I feel is how I feel, I dunno.

[thalassotitan22]

"Wikipedia makes mention of “several iguanodonts” being found in the Huincul Formation, and this book by Donald Prothero also mentions “an array of other iguanodonts” as part of the fauna (link->). Alas, I cannot find much information on them."

From what I can tell, the only evidence of large iguanodonts from the Rio Limay Group (of which Candeleros and Huincul are a part of) are footprints belonging to roughly Iguanodon-sized animals. Any skeletal material mentioned in scientific literature is actually referring to smaller animals nowadays classed as elasmarians. Some of these fossils have since been named, like Anabisetia and Chakisaurus.

[thalassotitan22]

Something else worth noting is that Sarcosuchus hartti was quite dinky compared to its famous cousin, just look at the size of its skull; www.deviantart.com/arminreindl/art/Sarcosuchus-hartti-Skeletal-869277771 The artist estimates that the animal would have been comparable in length to a saltwater crocodile.