It may seem odd that in a show all about dinosaurs, most of the main characters... aren't. But from a meta perspective, it makes sense, since it gives them an opportunity to teach kids that pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs straight away. And since the first few episodes are about Buddy trying to figure out what species he is, and everyone knows he's some kind of dinosaur, it also gives them an opportunity to teach kids what the term "dinosaur" does include.
Almost every animal in this show is an example of Amazing Technicolor Wildlife, but the mammals are mostly dull colours such as grey or brown. In real life, mammals aren't very colourful because they only have one pigment, compared to reptiles (for example), which have four.
Hell if we're going this far. "Hey, Mr. Conductor, how come you've never taken us past the late Cretaceous?"
They have gone past the Cretaceous to the Cenozoic in Father's Day and it was all snow.
In one episode, the characters are comparing their collections and one of them had a collection of fossils. In other words, they had a collection of the fossilized remains of dinosaurs they met earlier.
In the episode Father's Day, it is revealed that Mr. Conductor's father used his drill train to go to the Cenozoic but his train broke down and the tunnel collapsed, trapping him until the episode, in which Mr. Conductor uses a new drill train to go to the Cenozoic (who only knew the name of the era because the train Systems said so), and they get his father back to the Mesozoic.
Why don't the dinosaurs know about the asteroid? Wouldn't some of them, at least those in late Cretaceous, attempt to evacuate into the future? Or why not further into the past?
Why isn't dinosaur society in ruins? They can all see into their own future and know that they'll soon be extinct or evolve into something different. They also don't have a centralised government. It should be INTELLIGENT, TIME-TRAVELLING DINOSAUR WARS. Which would get this show so much more ratings.
Here's how I see it. The Troodons discovered how to transport between time and place, but only put it into the past, so they would know all the species they met (Troodons have become paleontologists). Thus the only way they would know of the extinction is when the Troodons have reached the time of extinction. That would mean that if Troodons tried escaping, they would be stranded in time, so they would probably stay at their home.
They know about the different periods being different periods, so they most likely know what exactly separates them. The Chixculub asteroid wouldn't even be the worst thing to happen to life on Earth that they know of; they've been to the Permian, so they know of the Permian-Triassic event, also known as the Great Dying. And there's a chance it wouldn't even be the first asteroid impact they know of, since it's speculated that one might have caused the Triassic-Jurassic event as wellnote Other candidates include gradual climate change or a volcano outbreak; we just don't know for sure. Coupled with the fact that they know life even continues in the Cenozoic, the Conductor probably isn't too worried about any given apocalypse, having seen for himself how cyclic life on Earth is. No use fighting the changing cycles, so might as well learn as much as he can about them.
How did the dinosaurs invent time-travel? They would also have a mastery of quantum mechanics, and at least know how to split the atom. it should be TIME-TRAVELLING DINOSAUR NUCLEAR WARS.
Something happens to the Doc's train after the events of Back to the Future 3. and the Doc and his family are probably eaten.
I love this theory so much...
How do the dinosaurs cope with the predators having to kill to eat? It's especially jarring seeing as there are herbivores that are friends with members of a carnivorous species.
For that matter, what if Tank's secretly an omnivore but is too afraid of being judged by his fellow juvenile Triceratops about it?
Buddy is a Tyrannosaurus being raised by a Pteranodon family. Despite these Pteranodons having T. rex friends, what are the chances of them being eaten by Buddy one day?
Pteranodon is a carnivore who eats fish. Buddy could very likely have survived on a diet of non-cartoony fish.
That's actually what he does in the show. However, in one episode Buddy does remark that he thinks fish don't taste very good and that he would prefer to eat something else...
In addition to fish-eating while at Pteranodon Terrace, Buddy's shown being fed carrion when eating on the Dinosaur Train, so there's that. Later episodes also show him eating carrion when he get it, sometimes with other dinosaurs of his species or similar species.
In one of the later episodes they meet a Deinosuchus that is explicitly stated to eat Pteranodon.
In Migration Vacation there is a scene that multiple T Rex go of a cliff to hunt. Even though it is not shown there are sound effects of eating and then bring back carrion for Buddy.
In a recent episode with Carson Carcharodontosaurus who prepares food from carrion, Ms. Pteranodon asks what the carrion is from. Carson's response? "It's a secret!". So this raises even more questions. Exactly WHY would Carson want to keep the carrion's source a secret? Then you realize that this is a near-utopian universe where all sentient prehistoric animals, predator and prey alike, are great friends, and killing a fellow sentient creature would probably be considered taboo... OH GOD.
In "Back In Time", it's revealed that some of the time tunnels are just sitting there, abandoned, unexplored, and most importantly, unregulated. There are a number of problems with this.
Nobody knows where they go. The Conductor correctly guessed that the one he came across would lead to the Permian period, but it was just that — a guess. Note his liberal use of the word "probably". Who's to say that there aren't any leading backwards to the Precambrian, or worse, forward to 65,000,000 BC/E? Or 65,000,000 years AFTER that...
Nobody knows who has been through them. When the gang actually got to the Permian, the Synapsid they met had already heard of the Mesozoic and the Dinosaurs — he just thought they were mythical creatures in a fairy tale world. There had to have been some kind of basis for him to have heard those stories, though, which means that at least one dinosaur has definitely slipped under the radar into time periods where they don't belong before.
It suggests that the Time Tunnels were not made by the Dinosaurs. While this would make sense, it begs the question; if the Troodons didn't make them, who did? And what happened to them?
Maps of the train line - at least the ones showing it as a single line, rather than a network - indicate that it follows a path through time as well as space (one end in the Triassic, one in the Cretaceous), therefore it seems logical that the tunnel beyond the end of the line runs further into the past.
The Dinosaur Train appears to run on coal... meaning that it runs on dead, fossilized dinosaurs. THE FUEL IS PEOPLE!
Most fossil fuels are older than dinosaurs.
In any case, the creators seem to have thought about this. The coal tender is filled with leaves.
There is also the fact that a huge percentage of the dinosaurs they visit would gladly eat them for lunch if this were realistic, and yet their mom is completely fine with their visits.
In the episode with Carson Carcharodontosaurus, Laura says that Carson would love to meet Buddy...and eat him (her exact words)...then retracts it and says Carson would love to "feed" Buddy. Laura knowingly took Buddy and Tiny to meet someone who would devour them on the spot.
