Paleoworld - Television Tropes & Idioms

Paleoworld is a highly extensive TV Documentary series on Prehistoric Life that ran on The Learning Channel from 1994 to 1997. To quote The Other Wiki:

"Season 1 (1994) featured a smooth style to it and was narrated by Ben Gazzara. This series had lots of musical scenes, which resulted in what some consider to be an extremely calm and relaxing show. It also uses a lot more Paleoart than later series. Season 2 (1995) and Season 3 (1996) lost the musical element (as well as changing narrators), which resulted in a more conventional style nature documentary. Even so, seasons 2 and 3 were still perceived as maintaining the quality standard. For season 4 (1997), the series changed narrators again, and viewers felt the show suffered a drop in quality, shifting from musical and calm, to full-on and repetitive. Consequently, season 4 was canceled mid-season. The show never returned for a fifth season. However, TLC released a new series about dinosaurs the following year (1998) as a spin off to the Paleoworld series. It was called "When Dinosaurs Ruled" ("Jurassica" in some countries)."

Series-wide tropes:

Everything's Better with Dinosaurs
Science Marches On: Has its own page.
Shown Their Work: Most of the airtime was devoted to paleo-folk explaining things in detail.
Stock Footage: Mostly in the later seasons and its Spin-Off, this was taken to ridiculous heights. Instead of creating animation for each featured animal, they would often show the same few stock clips repeating. Every sauropod, every large theropod and every small bipedal dinosaur looked the same, disregarding what unique features they might have had or in the small dinosaurs' case, even whether they were meat or plant eaters. Other times, they just showed the camera wading through vegetation or looking up at trees. Another common theme was showing stiff and wooden animatronic dino-robots.
Talking Heads

Tropes used for each episode:

Episode 1: Rise of the Predators

Episode 2: Flight of the Pterosaurs

Ptero Soarer

Episode 3: Back to the Seas

Sea Monster: Basilosaurus.

Episode 4: Carnosaurs

Tyrannosaurus rex: Half the episode's about him.

Episode 5: Missing Links

Episode 6: Sea Monsters

Megalodon: The last bit of this episode is about him.
Sea Monster: Quite a number.

Episode 7: Tale of a Sail

Episode 8: Attack of the Killer Kangaroos

Australian Wildlife: Just a million years back.
Land Down Under

Episode 9: Dino Sex

Episode 10: Mistaken Identity

Episode 11: The Legendary T-Rex

Tyrannosaurus rex: Guess what.

Episode 12: Dino Docs

Episode 13: The Mysteries of Extinction

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

Episode 14: African Graveyard I: Hunting Dinosaurs

Episode 15: African Graveyard II: Discovering Dinos

Episode 16: Earthshakers

Episode 17: Trail of the Neanderthal

Episode 18: Monsters on the Move

Episode 19: Mystery of Dinosaur Cove

Land Down Under: Where Dinosaur Cove is.

Episode 20: Dinos in the Air

Episode 21: Mammoths!

Episode 22: Are Rhinos Dinos?

Somewhere, a Palaeontologist is Crying: The show used its puppet of Triceratops and passed it off a rhino. This is the equivalent of an ostrich being labeled a human.

Episode 23: Killer Birds

Feathered Fiend: This one's full of them.

Episode 24: The Land That Time Forgot

Kill 'Em All: The Permian extinction almost does this.

Episode 25: Island of the Giant Rats

Episode 26: Troodon: Dinosaur Genius

Episode 27: Ancient Crocodiles

Episode 28: Dawn of the Cats

Mega Neko: Quite a number.

Episode 29: Boneheads

Use Your Head: The pachycephalosaurs do this.

Episode 30: Amber Hunters

Episode 31: Dinos in the Snow

Episode 32: Armored Dinos

Episode 33: Flesh on the Bone

Episode 34: Ape Man

Episode 35: Horns and Herds

Episode 36: Treasure Island

Episode 37: Dino Diet

Episode 38: Dwarf Dinos

Little People: The small dinosaurs.

Episode 39: Early Birds

Episode 40: Prehistoric Sharks

Episode 41: Loch Ness Secrets

Sea Monster

Episode 42: Secrets of the Brontosaurus

Episode 43: Baby Monsters

Episode 44: Valley of Venom

Episode 45: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Episode 46: Killer Raptors

Feathered Fiend: Just without the feathers.

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