Line #10 Series/JurassicFightClub


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fight.png]]
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3	''Jurassic Fight Club'' (''Dinosaur Secrets'' in Europe) is a television documentary series that aired on Creator/TheHistoryChannel. The basic plot involves [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin dinosaurs fighting]]. Each episode usually has two or more individual dinosaurs fighting with one another over food, territory or mating rights. The show is "hosted" by paleontology expert [[MeaningfulName Dinosaur George Blasing]], who plays out [[SpeculativeDocumentary his own imaginary scenarios on how the fights would go]].
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5	Since its release, the series has become notorious among dinosaur fanatics for its unrealistic and over the top fighting scenarios and the several inaccuracies that plague it.
6	----
7	!!Provides examples of:
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9	* AnachronismStew: ''Dromaeosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' living together. It's a common misconception, but ''Dromaeosaurus'' died out over 5 million years before ''T. rex'' hit the scene. However, when the animators had to cut corners, they did reuse many CGI models that shouldn't belong in the time period the episode is set in; ''Deinonychus'' shows up both alongside ''Ceratosaurus'' and ''T. rex'', for example.
10	* AnimatedAdaptation: Believe it or not. It's titled ''Dinosaur George and the Paleo Team''. George has uploaded the first (and so far, only) "episode" to his Website/YouTube account, in which his animated self travels back in time to encounter the downgraded CGI dinosaur models of this series. Further episodes are in DevelopmentHell.
11	* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Averted in the ''Majungasaurus'' episode.
12	* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
13	** Predators attacking animals several hundreds times their mass because they're territorial. Eh?
14	** Predators trying to drive off potential rivals by spilling food all over their territory. Eehh??
15	** Sharks using their denticles (scales) to taste. [[RuleOfThree Eeehhh???]]
16	** Inbreeding being the reason for ''Majungasaurus'''s odd appearance. Eeeehhhh????
17	* ArtisticLicenseGeology: The narrator states that the ''Arctodus'', unlike the bears of today, could stay active year-round, because ''there were no seasons during the Ice Age''. [[FlatWhat What.]]
18	* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: When [[Literature/{{Meg}} Steve Alten]] is one of your TalkingHeads, you know you've got a problem. To be specific:
19	** [[RaptorAttack Naked raptors]]. The producers did try to chalk this up to budget constraints, with realistic feathers being hard to animate, but many argue that since the feathers would lay flat against the bodies anyway (akin to birds of prey), they wouldn't look fuzzy anyway. Also, if one is making a CGI documentary about what are essentially flightless birds, they should really at least try to get stuff like this sorted out. For emphasis, that would be the equivalent of doing a series about ice age animals while lacking the budget to animate fur.
20	** When describing the size of various theropods, the show usually gives an accurate body length but also describes them as disproportionally tall. ''Ceratosaurus'', for example, is accurately stated to have been 20 feet long but also to have stood ''13 feet tall'', the height of a very big T. rex (in reality, it stood 6 feet tall). The latter, meanwhile, is said to have stood 16 feet tall at the hip, the height of a giraffe.
21	** Giving a horn to a dinosaur that got famous ''because'' it lacked this feature. Some paleontologists suggested the boss nose of ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' was the base of a keratinous horn, though this was debunked by the same paleontologists who proposed it before the documentary was made. Damningly, some talking heads ''do'' bring up that the boss may have not had a horn at all, but that gets ignored.
22	** Depicting a young ''T. rex'' as a downscaled version of the adults, even though even the narrator (correctly) claims otherwise.
23	** Overly long limbs on the ''Majungasaurus'' even though the hosts and the narrator state that it's legs were short and its forearms would have been reduced to just about only a wrist. It also uses the long-defunct name ''Majungatholus''.
24	** It's claimed that ''Ceratosaurus'' was once the dominant predator of Jurassic North America, ruling for 20 million years, until ''Allosaurus'' evolved and drove it to extinction, then taking over for another 20 million years. This is very unlikely, since they both appear in and disappear from the fossil record at about the same time, and the two coexisted for millions of years...but not ''20'' million.[[note]]For the record, ''Ceratosaurus'' showed up slightly ''later'' than ''Allosaurus''.[[/note]]
25	** ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' is shown ''galloping''. Needless to say, a short-legged, multi-ton ceratopsid could not gallop, it could only do a fast walk akin to an elephant.
26	** There's absolutely no evidence of theropods having scent glands like those of modern mammalian carnivores.
27	** There is zero evidence that ''Tyrannosaurus'' had a septic bite. The evidence they do give is also now wrong since we now know Komodo Dragons didn't have a septic bite and were actually venomous.
28	** ''Brygmophyseter shigensis'' is depicted as being as [[BiggerIsBetter big]] as megalodon (50 feet), even though the one specimen we have is only the size of an orca. [[YourSizeMayVary Or more accurately, the talking heads say it reached 35 to 40 feet (which is still too big) but the animation shows it as being 50 feet long]]. Though the discovery of the related ''Livyatan melvillei'' shows that meg-sized raptorial sperm whales did exist.
29	** [[SarcasmMode Suffice to say]], there is no evidence (be it in the form of fossils, or observing living archosaur behavior) to suggest that raptors communicated using ''hand gestures''. You know it's bad when most movies and cartoons don't go that far with the "intelligent raptor" stereotype.
30	** [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Wrong forelimb posture on all of the theropods and chewing sauropods]].
31	* BearsAreBadNews: The short-faced bear, ''Arctodus'', features in an episode.
32	* BewareMyStingerTail: ''Gastonia'' and ''Stegosaurus'' have spikes on their tails and put them to devastating effect.
33	* ContentWarnings: Every episode starts with this or something to the same effect (the last episode replaces "battle" with "apocalypse"):
34	-->"The following is a graphic depiction of a violent prehistoric battle. Viewer discretion is advised."
35	* CurbStompBattle: For a show all about dramatic, intense combat between prehistoric animals, this happens an awful lot.
36	** When the ''Nanotyrannus'' decides to stick around long after the mother ''T. rex'' shows up, the latter dispatches of the smaller adversary with little effort.
37	** Every single confrontation between a ''Ceratosaurus'' and an ''Allosaurus'' ends like this in the ''Allosaurus''' favor. It's understandable the first time, given the first two ''Allosaurus'' were just a distraction for a third to come in and kill the ''Ceratosaurus'', but the other instances aren't so excusable. Even when the ''Allosaurus'' comes roaring in the ''Ceratosaurus'' is too "slow" and "primitive" to register the threat and is similarly dispatched instantly, while the second ''Ceratosaurus'' is utterly outmatched and trounced at every turn against the ''Allosaurus''.
38	** A ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' breaks ranks from its herd and runs off into the woods where it confronts an ''Albertosaurus''. Despite the ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' being quite a bit more massive, it fails to do anything but white scars on the ''Albertosaurus'', who ragdolls and shreds the ceratopsian without a sweat.
39	** The ''Edmontosaurus'' folds like a house of cards against the ''Dromaeosaurus'' pack. Subverted when a ''T. rex'' shows up to steal the kill from the pack, as they know they stand no chance and let the larger predator take it.
40	** Megalodon vs ''Brygmophyseter'' goes both ways. It starts with the shark blindsiding a lone whale and mortally wounding it. The whale's pod then arrives and proceeds to pummel the megalodon, who doesn't even put up a fight, as the whales use their sonar to repeatedly stun the shark. [[AntiClimax Then they just let it get away]].
41	** Surprisingly averted with the American lion and short-faced bear. Though the latter has a distinct size advantage, the lion uses its superior speed and agility to even the odds, though it still inevitably loses the fight.
42	* DeathOfAChild: Often followed up with [[EatsBabies the consumption of said child]].
43	** The ''Majungasaurus'' episode; the male makes it his mission to kill the female's offspring to mate with her.
44	** ''Nanotyrannus'' is described as specifically weeding out and hunting young ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' before they grow big enough to pose a threat to it. In its episode, it kills one of the juvenile ''T. rex'', but help arrives before the second is dealt with.
45	** A young ''Stegosaurus'' is also killed by a ''Ceratosaurus''.
46	* FeatheredFiend: ''Dromaeosaurus'' and ''Utahraptor'', though they were depicted as only [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology sparsely feathered]]. Also ''Deinonychus'', although it's shown with [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology no feathers at all]].
47	* FormulaBreakingEpisode: Rather than focus on a fight, "Biggest Killers" is an overview of the show's theropods, while "Armageddon" focuses on the K/Pg extinction event.
48	%%* {{Gorn}}: What did you expect?
49	* GrandFinale: The show ends with the Cretaceous extinction.
50	* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted:
51	** The subject of one episode, appropriately called ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Hunter Becomes Hunted]]''. It centers around a pair of ''Ceratosaurus'' and an ''Allosaurus'', with the latter killing both of the former.
52	** Also the episode ''T.rex Hunter'' to some extent, where the offspring of the so-called "king of the dinosaurs" are hunted and savagely attacked by a territorial ''Nanotyrannus'', with one juvenile being killed in the process.
53	%%* InsaneTrollLogic: Parodied [[http://albertonykus.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d349fdz here]].
54	* MamaBear: The mother ''Majungasaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' qualify, fiercely defending their young from whatever predator may be threatening them.
55	* NoisyNature: Holy ''heck''. Even Dinosaur George himself knows how unrealistic this is.
56	* PrehistoricMonster: The animals don't do much beyond fight each other and act nasty, but that ''is'' the basic premise.
57	* RaptorAttack: ''Dromaeosaurus'' and ''Utahraptor'' are depicted as only sparsely feathered, while ''Deinonychus'' is shown with no feathers at all. Across all three, they share the classic trope of using their enlarged toe claw to slash and disembowel as opposed to being a piercing and restraining tool. ''Dromaeosaurus'' and ''Deinonychus'' are also shown as pack-hunting pursuit hunters.
58	* RecycledInSpace: ''Series/AnimalFaceOff'' IN THE MESOZOIC ERA!
59	%%* RuleOfCool: What the show operates on.
60	* SeaMonster: ''Megalodon'' and ''Brygmophyseter''.
61	* ShownTheirWork: All of the talking heads give justification for some of the things featured in the show. Actual accuracy varies.
62	** Larry Witmer's CAT scans of the dinosaurs' skulls, showing which senses were more developed than others in each individual creature.
63	** The skull of the show's ''Edmontosaurus'' is similar to that of ''Anatotitan'', which is probably an aged specimen of the former.
64	* StockFootage: The final episode uses asteroid impact footage from ''WesternAnimation/WhenDinosaursRoamedAmerica''.
65	* TailSlap: ''Majungasaurus'', ''Camarasaurus'', ''Tenontosaurus'', and ''Edmontosaurus'' are all described as having tails as potential weapons. All of them except ''Edmontosaurus'' pull it off against their respective opponent.
66	%%* TalkingHeads
67	* ThreateningShark: ''Megalodon'', a fifty-foot shark that hunts whales.
68	* TooDumbToLive:
69	** ''Nanotyrannus'' sticks around after the [[MamaBear female]] ''[[MamaBear Tyrannosaurus]]'' shows up, intending to finish what it started and kill the remaining offspring..
70	** The ''Dromaeosaurus'' pack arguably qualifies as well, attacking prey far larger than them ''[[ArtisticLicenseBiology because they're territorial]]''. (Possibly subverted, as they somehow ''[[FridgeLogic succeed]]''.)
71	* ZergRush: The hunting style of ''Deinonychus'' and ''Dromaeosaurus''; each dinosaur's individual lack of strength is a non-issue when so many come in lightning-fast and rack up as much harm as one creature could do in a few strikes. ''Utahraptor'', being larger and stronger, doesn't need to rely on packs.

Context Series / JurassicFightClub