Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 21, 2023 8:11:38 GMT 5
Mega Predators (2001) – A Retrospective Review
There is an obscure Discovery Channel documentary from 2001 called “Mega Predators”. It is so rare that it only aired once on Discovery and was never released for sale. It’s a miracle someone recorded it all the way back then for it to be preserved for us to watch today.
What is Mega Predators? It’s a nearly 47 minute paleontology documentary that covers seven prehistoric predators, particularly ones from the Cenozoic. On paper that might sound cool. And it might still be…if you can get past certain aspects of this program. What do I mean by that? Well, you’ll see…
Link to the documentary: archive.org/details/MegaPredators
Verdict:
Let’s just get this out of the way: the CGI is absolutely laughable. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen from a paleontology documentary. Of course, documentaries don’t all have equal budgets, and so obviously they can’t all have equally pretty CGI models and all that stuff. But just remember, the Archaeotherium from this documentary came out the same year as WWB’s entelodont.
Putting aside the CGI, however, I do appreciate that this program made some effort to cover extinct Cenozoic era predators. With the exception of megalodon, none of these predators are really that well known to the general public, and are popular only within the context of paleonerds (like myself or other members of this forum). Most people don’t know what Barbourofelis was (a creature the doc could have easily just used Smilodon in its place, but didn’t), or its prey Teleoceras. Nor are they well aware of Titanis, Megalania, or Haast’s eagle. The fact that this documentary tries to educate viewers about them is something I can respect. The information conveyed is rather basic and nothing extraordinary, but it’s serviceable.
One legitimate criticism I have with the doc, aside from the CGI, is the pacing. The transitions between different creatures are very abrupt and the segues are very brief (usually just taking the form of the narrator saying “but another predator…”). I guess it’s to be expected of a documentary that only has 47-ish minutes, though.
Overall, laugh at the CGI all you want. No, seriously, laugh as hard and as long at it as you want. But if you can look past that, the abrupt transitions between subjects, and the few instances of outdated genus names, you’ll find a documentary that at least does its job of educating viewers on prehistoric animals most people don’t even know about.
There is an obscure Discovery Channel documentary from 2001 called “Mega Predators”. It is so rare that it only aired once on Discovery and was never released for sale. It’s a miracle someone recorded it all the way back then for it to be preserved for us to watch today.
What is Mega Predators? It’s a nearly 47 minute paleontology documentary that covers seven prehistoric predators, particularly ones from the Cenozoic. On paper that might sound cool. And it might still be…if you can get past certain aspects of this program. What do I mean by that? Well, you’ll see…
Link to the documentary: archive.org/details/MegaPredators
- The narrator tells us that we feel safe in our modern cities, but that in prehistoric times “danger lurked everywhere”.
Look, I ain’t saying I’d feel safe in the prehistoric world, but I absolutely do NOT feel completely safe in a city. - It’s clear that the CGI in this documentary is…not good by modern standards. Or to put it more eloquently, it f*cking sucks.
Also, they feature a CGI model of a T. rex in the intro along with some other prehistoric predators, even though T. rex will NEVER be touched on in this documentary. - Okay, turns out I lied. They briefly cover T. rex (really predatory dinosaurs in general) as our most popular prehistoric predator, but they use it as a stepping stone to get into their actual focus. That focus being prehistoric predators that lived after the dinosaurs.
- >stock monster noises playing in the background as skeletons of Cenozoic predatory mammals appear
- ”If they had survived, our lives would be very different”
Or maybe we’d shoot them all to death, I dunno? I mean, one of the predators that will be covered in this documentary was one we literally drove into extinction by overhunting its prey. - A clever segue takes us from talk of dinosaurs to birds as dinosaurs that survived (a fact that that they at least seem to imply from their wording, so the doc gets points for that). While this is happening, we get a completely fictitious scene in modern California where a lady mixes up some hummingbird nectar while hearing dogs loudly barking from her kitchen. When she goes outside, she sees the absolute worst-looking Titanis model I have ever seen with my own two eyes eating a dog it killed, then running away from it.
Mind you, it’s not just the look of the models that are so obviously crap. It’s the way they move too. So artificial, holy moly… - Titanis is stated to live in Florida, which is of course true. But it also lived in other parts of the United States, including California where our fictitious scenario played out.
- 80 km/h for Titanis seems rather incredible. But I’ve seen top figures for ostriches that are that high, and I honestly don’t find that figure hard to believe for a bird as cursorial as an ostrich. Phorusrhacids were also generally highly cursorial birds, and I don’t see why a phorusrhacid like Titanis couldn’t run approximately as fast as an ostrich.
- Interestingly, this documentary doesn’t claim that Titanis used its beak like a pickaxe like later documentaries do. Instead it suggests that Titanis either swallowed prey whole or slammed prey against the ground and tore off flesh. This might be a bit before the former hypothesis’ time. I personally see nothing wrong with Titanis simply tearing off flesh with the hooked beak (if the prey was too large to swallow whole), as the documentary suggests.
- Oh my god, this Titanis model only walks on the tips of its toes, it looks so goofy.
- It chases an ancient pronghorn and then trips it with its feet, pins it momentarily with one foot, and then briefly releases it only to pick it up in its mouth and throwing it on the ground. I’m not really sure if a terror bird had enough neck strength to be able to completely pick up an animal that large off the ground (although, this was certainly a large, powerful bird with a strong neck), but I could see it thrashing small prey on the ground. For prey as big as the pronghorn depicted, it could certainly have just kept a foot on the prey and then ripped open a massive wound with its hooked beak.
- Right after this is a really abrupt transition where the narrator goes from talking about Titanis to Varanus priscus (Megalania). This documentary never tells you that Titanis went extinct because of carnivorans (looks at literally every other documentary with terror birds) by virtue of the fact that it never even talks about its extinction at all.
- The documentary refers to its binomial name as “Megalania prisca”. As I’ve just alluded to, the modern binomial name is Varanus priscus, but Megalania is still sometimes used for vernacular use. Also, the translation as “ancient giant butcher” is incorrect. It’s supposed to mean “ancient great roamer”.
- The documentary is correct that the Komodo dragon’s bite causes massive bleeding. But, as you’d probably expect for a science source from the early 2000s, it perpetuates the myth that the bacteria creates an inherently toxic bite.
- The Megalania model looks inexplicably long-legged from certain shots. In this fictitious modern scenario, it ambushes a man cleaning his swimming pool. Well then…
- Again with the abrupt transitions! Literally right after this Megalania walks off after eating a man, we switch over to footage of a great white shark. This means we spend around five minutes covering Megalania; we don’t even see it hunting its actual real-life prey. No points for guessing which mega predator is getting covered here.
- Megalodon’s binomial name is given here as “Carcharodon megalodon”. I know there are some people who prefer to use Carcharocles as its genus name (Otodus has been catching on in more recent years), but I don’t think anyone uses Carcharodon as the species’ genus name anymore.
- After some talk about megalodon, megalodon getting big from hunting whales (which this show depicts as much smaller than itself anyway*), and a brief depiction of a CGI megalodon hunting said whales…we transition straight to our next mega predator! Jesus Christ, this documentary has fast pacing, we’ve only been talking about megalodon for like, four and a half minutes.
*Not that that’s wrong, mind you. - This predator on land is stated to have had jaws “just as terrifying” as those of megalodon. Idk man, I’m pretty sure I’d fear the jaws of a whale-sized shark more than I would of any entelodont.
- The entelodont is called “Megachoerus”, known now as Archaeotherium. One is introduced in the modern world at some farmer’s home (although it’s not shown on-screen yet).
- For some reason the documentary thinks Archaeotherium may have hunted in packs. I don’t see any reason to suppose that.
- Since when was there an action figure of an entelodont?! How did Bob Bakker get one!?!?
- The Archaeotherium model, like the other models in this show, is butt ugly. The way it runs it looks like it’s making small bounds too. I guess that’s what we should expect from this doc at this point.
- Btw, as Bob Bakker is wonderfully explaining the functional morphology of Archaeotherium with an animatronic model and a skull cast, that poor farmer from earlier is running from an Archaeotherium, until he runs past one of his pigs in his barn. The results are predictable.
- Next mega predator covered is Barbourofelis. The model isn’t much better looking than the ones we’ve seen so far. But we do get to see a modern domestic cat checking out a Barbourofelis skull. Aww.
- Apparently Barbourofelis was Larry Martin’s favorite animal.
- ”…it doesn’t look like an African lion, it looks like a 600 pound wolverine”. My god, I love the way Martin describes its build.
- Also apparently the tibia was shorter than its canine teeth?! That seems extraordinary, but it wouldn’t really surprise me.
- Barbourofelis is depicted hunting Teleoceras. This hunting depiction is one of the more “looks about right” ones in the documentary to me. I very much like Mauricio Antón’s-> the best, though, where it takes two of them to restrain the big rhino. Barbourofelis may have been powerful, but Teleoceras’ size, build, and weaponry (sharp lower incisors) meant it was nothing to sneeze at. I actually have my doubts that Barbourofelis was regularly hunting adults.
- Barbourofelis’ proportionately small brain is brought up here. The narrator calls it a “fatal flaw”, but obviously a big brain was not so important for whatever Barbourofelis was doing throughout its existence.
- For once, the mega predator’s cause of extinction is touched on. According to the narrator, Barbourofelis likely went extinct as a result of grasslands expanding and forests becoming less prevalent (which would give a heavily ambush-reliant predator like it less cover). I could have sworn North America was well in the process of becoming more open at the time Barbourofelis was alive, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the process was continuing even then.
- And then we cut to the short-faced bear. We get a depiction of one chasing down a Paleo-Indian man (from his point of view), only for the man to get dragged down a tree by one and killed (this means there are two depictions of Arctodus simus killing humans in paleomedia).
- And then we cut to Haast’s eagle!! I- The pacing- Oh whatever…
- ”The crowned eagle of Africa is the most powerful forest hunter in the world today”
Harpy eagle: “Am I a joke to you?” - Richard Holdaway does a good job illustrating how terrifying Haast’s eagle was, with an actual moa pelvis bearing puncture marks from this raptor’s talons.
- This time they don’t need to show the mega predator attacking a human in the 21st century. Haast’s eagle would have met humans several hundreds of years ago – and may have sometimes killed them – and this documentary knows it.
- The documentary has no way of covering Haast’s eagle without covering how it went extinct. Of all the mega predators covered in this documentary, its extinction is covered the most in depth.
- ”There are no mega predators around today”
Most of the predators covered in this documentary literally cover the same size range as modern macropredators. Sure, they may not have close relatives that rival them in size, but they’re still within the size range of many of today’s predators. - At the end of the documentary, all the horrible CGI prehistoric predators are unleashed on a modern city. One particular man nopes the f*ck away from a Megalania, runs from an Archaeotherium, and then a Titanis (which trips as it’s running down a short flight of stairs), until finally being cornered by a T. rex, which is barely ever covered in this documentary (and certainly not in the way the other mega predators are). Did I mention that he’s holding his hot dog throughout ALL of this? And he holds his hot dog out to the T. rex as if throughout this entire time he was afraid of the mega predators getting his lunch and not being killed by them.
Verdict:
Let’s just get this out of the way: the CGI is absolutely laughable. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen from a paleontology documentary. Of course, documentaries don’t all have equal budgets, and so obviously they can’t all have equally pretty CGI models and all that stuff. But just remember, the Archaeotherium from this documentary came out the same year as WWB’s entelodont.
Putting aside the CGI, however, I do appreciate that this program made some effort to cover extinct Cenozoic era predators. With the exception of megalodon, none of these predators are really that well known to the general public, and are popular only within the context of paleonerds (like myself or other members of this forum). Most people don’t know what Barbourofelis was (a creature the doc could have easily just used Smilodon in its place, but didn’t), or its prey Teleoceras. Nor are they well aware of Titanis, Megalania, or Haast’s eagle. The fact that this documentary tries to educate viewers about them is something I can respect. The information conveyed is rather basic and nothing extraordinary, but it’s serviceable.
One legitimate criticism I have with the doc, aside from the CGI, is the pacing. The transitions between different creatures are very abrupt and the segues are very brief (usually just taking the form of the narrator saying “but another predator…”). I guess it’s to be expected of a documentary that only has 47-ish minutes, though.
Overall, laugh at the CGI all you want. No, seriously, laugh as hard and as long at it as you want. But if you can look past that, the abrupt transitions between subjects, and the few instances of outdated genus names, you’ll find a documentary that at least does its job of educating viewers on prehistoric animals most people don’t even know about.
