History Main / ArtisticLicensePaleontology

** After Hart's death in 2007, the strip started to feature dromaeosaurids, which are as usual featherless and no different than the ones in ''Franchise/JurassicPark''. One strip did, however, point out how birdlike it was [[http://www.johnhartstudios.com/bc/2010/06/sunday-june-6-2010.php in an amusing way]].

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7jSp2xmmEE music video]] for Creator/FatBoySlim's ''Right here, right now'' obviously has no pretense to be an accurate portrayal of human evolution. For one, it begins 350 billion years ago (much longer than ''the universe has existed''), but it shows nothing but multicellular animals, which didn't evolve until about 600 million years ago.

** 25 years later, the Disney Imagineers created a Primeval World diorama for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, with many of the individual scenes apparently inspired by ''Fantasia''. This diorama, which is currently installed at Disneyland in California, is a slight improvement on the film -- the first scene shows dimetrodons in a Coal Age forest of giant horsetails (and giant dragonflies), and then moves to a Jurassic swamp with some generic sauropods, followed by scenes featuring ''Pteranodon'', ''Triceratops'', and ''Struthiomimus'' (all Late Cretaceous, although the precise ages differ somewhat). So far, so good; the sauropods look ridiculous and should not be munching water weeds in a swamp, but that can be put down to a combination of 1960's paleontological ignorance and artistic license. But then the final scene depicts a ''Stegosaurus'' battling some large carnosaur beside a violent lava flow. If the carnosaur is supposed to be a ''T. rex'', as the narrator usually states, why does it have three fingers per hand, and [[AnachronismStew what is the stego doing in the Cretaceous]]? You could ignore the narrator and assume that the setting has reverted back to the Jurassic for some reason, and the stego is fighting an ''Allosaurus''... but that doesn't explain why stego has ''five'' tail spikes on its [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer thagomizer]].

* Dr. Dinosaur in ''ComicBook/AtomicRobo'' claims that "mammal energies" traveled back in time and granted him super-intelligence while wiping out all the rest of the dinosaurs, and then he built a time machine out of rocks, fronds, and crystals to travel to the present and get revenge. His inaccuracies (such as lack of feathers and presence of a larynx) are largely justified however, when Robo points them out and dismisses Dr. D's story as absurd, assuming he's just a genetic experiment based on a ''Film/JurassicPark'' dinosaur rather than a real one. In general, it's a RunningGag that Dr. Dinosaur works his science by AchievementsInIgnorance, which means his appearance is more or less in keeping with it.

* [[http://tomozaurus.deviantart.com/art/Meet-The-Pseudosaurs-282772529 "Meet the Pseudosaurs"]] parodies this trope all over. A GodModeSue ''T. rex'', bendy-necked [[SeaMonster sea serpent-like]] ''Plesiosaurus'', [[RaptorAttack deadly featherless Raptor]], vicious bird-footed [[TerrorDactyl "Pterodactyl"]], KillerRabbit ''Compsognathus'' and [[Film/JurassicPark "spitting"]] ''Dilophosaurus'' are all included.

* The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7jSp2xmmEE music video]] for Creator/FatBoySlim's ''Right here, right now'' obviously has no pretense to be an accurate portrayal of human evolution. For one, it begins 350 billion years ago, but it shows nothing but multicellular animals, which didn't evolve until about 600 million years ago.

* The animators of ''Animation/TheMissingLink'' (AKA ''B.C. Rock'') evidently chose to completely forgo realism in favor of RuleOfFunny. Aside from having humans, dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals coexisting, many of the animals are completely made up. Examples include a single-legged being with a trunk, an underwater elephant that lives in a giant shell and at least two humanoid (but non-human) species: the bottom-heavy "No-Lobes" and a tribe of feral {{Catgirl}}s.

A SubTrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology, and a SuperTrope to AquaticHadrosaurs, AquaticSauropods, and SnowySabertooths. See also DinosaursAreDragons, {{Slurpasaur}}, DumbDinos, GoofyFeatheredDinosaur, RaptorAttack, TerrorDactyl, HeadButtingPachy, LivingDinosaurs and HollywoodPrehistory. For mistakes pertaining to dinosaurs today, see ArtisticLicenseOrnithology.

* [[http://tomozaurus.deviantart.com/art/Meet-The-Pseudosaurs-282772529 "Meet the Pseudosaurs"]] parodies this trope all over. A GodModeSue ''T. rex'', bendy-necked [[SeaMonster sea serpent-like]] ''Plesiosaurus'', [[RaptorAttack deadly featherless Raptor]], vicious bird-footed [[PteroSoarer "Pterodactyl"]], KillerRabbit ''Compsognathus'' and [[Film/JurassicPark "spitting"]] ''Dilophosaurus'' are all included.

A SubTrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology, and a SuperTrope to AquaticHadrosaurs, AquaticSauropods, and SnowySabertooths. See also DinosaursAreDragons, {{Slurpasaur}}, DumbDinos, GoofyFeatheredDinosaur, RaptorAttack, PteroSoarer, HeadButtingPachy, LivingDinosaurs and HollywoodPrehistory. For mistakes pertaining to dinosaurs today, see ArtisticLicenseOrnithology.

* ''ComicBook/JurassicLeague'' makes no attempts at scientific accuracy whatsoever. The main characters are intelligent, anthropomorphic, talking dinosaurs [[OneMillionBC who live alongside cavemen]] and have superpowers. One of them, [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Supersaur]], is from space.

** "Red In Tooth And Claw" depicts the common fictional trope of large phorusrhacids existing alongside Smilodon populator - WordOfGod has admitted that this was RuleOfCool.

A SubTrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology, and a SuperTrope to AquaticHadrosaurs, AquaticSauropods, and SnowySabertooths. See also DinosaursAreDragons, {{Slurpasaur}}, DumbDinos, GoofyFeatheredDinosaur, RaptorAttack, PteroSoarer, HeadButtingPachy, LivingDinosaurs and OneMillionBC. For mistakes pertaining to dinosaurs today, see ArtisticLicenseOrnithology.

The time gap between the last ''Stegosaurus'' and the first ''[[KingOfTheDinosaurs Tyrannosaurus]]'', for example, is about 75 million years. This is 10 million years longer than the gap between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and humans. But since "they're both dinosaurs" it's quite common to see depictions of ''Tyrannosaurus'' preying on ''Stegosaurus''.[[/note]] Some prehistoric creatures, like pterosaurs and plesiosaurs, are technically not even considered dinosaurs. Fortunately, some educational programs attempt to avoid these pitfalls.

** 25 years later, the Disney Imagineers created a Primeval World diorama for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, with many of the individual scenes apparently inspired by ''Fantasia''. This diorama, which is currently installed at Disneyland in California, is a slight improvement on the film -- the first scene shows dimetrodons in a Coal Age forest of giant horsetails (and giant dragonflies), and then moves to a Jurassic swamp with some generic sauropods, followed by scenes featuring ''Pteranodon'', ''Triceratops'', and ''Struthiomimus'' (all Late Cretaceous, although the precise ages differ somewhat). So far, so good; the sauropods look ridiculous and should not be munching water weeds in a swamp, but that can be put down to a combination of 1960's paleontological ignorance and artistic license. But then the final scene depicts a ''Stegosaurus'' battling some large carnosaur beside a violent lava flow. If the carnosaur is supposed to be a ''[[KingOfTheDinosaurs T. rex]]'', as the narrator usually states, why does it have three fingers per hand, and [[AnachronismStew what is the stego doing in the Cretaceous]]? You could ignore the narrator and assume that the setting has reverted back to the Jurassic for some reason, and the stego is fighting an ''Allosaurus''... but that doesn't explain why stego has ''five'' tail spikes on its [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer thagomizer]].

* The "Rite of Spring" sequence in ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' may be one of the TropeMakers here. It shows off a random cross-section of prehistoric life in the space of a few minutes. In part, it's ScienceMarchesOn: [[DanBrowned it is proudly announced]] that this section is BasedOnATrueStory.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime''. Pity the professors of geology and paleontology who have small children at home, because all the errors in these films ''will'' indeed make a paleontologist weep. The original movie ''can'' be considered relatively accurate for its time (AnachronismStew aside, and then only for stegosaurs and pelycosaurs), at least as far as dinosaur depictions in popular media are concerned. But the sequels and TV series zig-zag this trope several times, with notable aversions including the anatomically correct (if improbably large) ''Liopleurodon'' from "Journey to Big Water" and Ruby the ''Oviraptor'' having feathers.

* 150,000 years ago, the title character of ''ComicBook/{{Rahan}}'' (a very well known caveman in France) encounters dinosaurs and sees them as survivors of a very distant past. It's not as outlandish as some of the other examples on this page, but still, Rahan's people are modern-looking Europeans in a time when modern humans had not yet left Africa, Rahan virtually invents every technology from rafts to windmills, and the MisplacedWildlife includes anything from lemurs to gorillas to ''Smilodon'' that look just like Charles R. Knight's art.

*** [[WordOfGod Walt Disney]] has stated that the carnivorous dinosaur fighting the ''Stegosaurus'' is indeed a ''Tyrannosaurus''. Paleontologists told him that ''T. rex'' should only have two fingers, but he declined because he thought people wouldn't recognize a Tyrannosaurus with only two fingers.

* 150,000 years ago, the title character of ''ComicBook/{{Rahan}}'' (a very well known caveman in France) encounters dinosaurs and sees them as survivors of a very distant past. It's not as outlandish as some of the other examples on this page, but still, Rahan's people are modern-looking Europeans in a time when modern humans had not yet left Africa, Rahan virtually invents every technology from rafts to windmills, and the MisplacedFauna includes anything from lemurs to gorillas to ''Smilodon'' that look just like Charles R. Knight's art.

* 150,000 years ago, the title character of ''ComicBook/{{Rahan}}'' (a very well known caveman in France) encounters dinosaurs and sees them as survivors of a very distant past. It's really not as outlandish as some of the other examples on this page.

* TV tropes itself is guilty of this with the trope Main/StockDinosaurs which categorizes creatures that are not dinosaurs as well. This also leads to the funny contradiction in the subsection UsefulNotes/StockDinosaursNonDinosaurs.

In RealLife many of the most [[StockDinosaurs commonly-recognized dinosaurs]] lived in [[MisplacedWildlife different habitats]], continents or [[AnachronismStew time periods]].[[note]]The Mesozoic Era lasted about 186 million years.

* There is this very obscure, very low-quality board game sold in Hungary that goes by the name ''Küzdelem a dinoszauruszok földjén'' (Battle in the Realm of the Dinosaurs). Has only a handful of pictures, all of which contain horrible depictions of StockDinosaurs -- one ''Brachiosaurus'' with a backwards knee, and one with shorter forelegs than back legs, standing as erect as a human; toothed, bat-winged ''Pteranodon''s with the bat fingers sprouting from the ''back'' of the wings; and gigantic, scaly ''Velociraptor''s with ''Therizinosaurus''-like claws. In short, it is the board game equivalent of "Chinasaurs" (see lower).

A SubTrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology, and a SuperTrope to AquaticHadrosaurs and AquaticSauropods. See also DinosaursAreDragons, {{Slurpasaur}}, DumbDinos, GoofyFeatheredDinosaur, RaptorAttack, PteroSoarer, HeadButtingPachy, LivingDinosaurs and OneMillionBC. For mistakes pertaining to dinosaurs today, see ArtisticLicenseOrnithology.

** Subverted: Gert has a pet genetically engineered dinosaur named Old Lace. Everyone calls her a "raptor" and she does look ''exactly'' like a ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' raptor (Identified as a ''Velociraptor'' in the film, but very similar to the the later-discovered ''Utahraptor''). However, as soon as Victor joins the team he points out that it is a ''Deinonychus'', and raptors as depicted in ''Jurassic Park'' do not exist. Old Lace is still incorrectly depicted as featherless, but is nonetheless referred to as a real species with a plausible (for time-traveling, MadScientist-filled comic books) reason for existing. Also,

A SubTrope of ArtisticLicenseBiology, and a SuperTrope to AquaticHadrosaurs and AquaticSauropods. See also EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs, DinosaursAreDragons, {{Slurpasaur}}, DumbDinos, GoofyFeatheredDinosaur, RaptorAttack, PteroSoarer, HeadButtingPachy, LivingDinosaurs and OneMillionBC. For mistakes pertaining to dinosaurs today, see ArtisticLicenseOrnithology.

->''"Many people (''including'' some scientists!) are confused about what is or isn't a 'dinosaur'. They think that flying pterodactyls or fin-backed ''Dimetrodon'' or seagoing plesiosaurs or woolly mammoths are dinosaurs. THEY ARE WRONG!"''

** In another strip, he was seen writing a letter explaining the brontosaur/apatosaur controversy to a cookie manufacturer that used the former term in the "Fun Facts" of their dinosaur cookie boxes. He then immediately tries to blackmail them into sending him free cookies.

** In a 2021 Sunday strip, Jason attempts to convince Andy to turn on the air conditioning by claiming the heat will trigger ''T. rex'' genes in Quincy. It naturally doesn't work, but he should have known dinosaurs are not related to lizards.

** Despite Calvin normally having a callous disregard for scientific accuracy, this trope is amusingly subverted and lampshaded when Calvin and his parents visit a natural history museum. Calvin's mom asks him (in that typical way that moms do when they're trying to encourage their kids to talk about something they like) to tell her about the ''Stegosaurus'' statue outside. Calvin goes into a long (and scientifically accurate) explanation of the most likely habits and characteristics of Stegosaurs, until his mom tries to humor him further by asking if the ''T. rex'' and the ''Stegosaurus'' used to fight each other, leading to this outburst:

** "Red In Tooth And Claw" depicts the common fictional trope of large phorusrhacids existing alongside Smilodon populator - WordOfGod has admitted that this was artistic license done for the sake of RuleOfCool, with the added [[JustifiedTrope justification]] that the time in which the back in the past portions of the mission occurs is a point after the species' officially recognized extinction date where at least a small lingering population of phorusrhacos could conceivably have still been alive (even if just barely).