An entire week after the tumultuous events of the "Gogo Reef Incident", Drew travels to Pleistocene Florida alongside Adrian and Alice to rescue the prehistoric beaver castoroides. Meanwhile, back at the park, Jack and Leon, with some much appreciated assistance from Yolanda, work with the dunkleosteus and titanichthys as part of a team building exercise in an effort to get out of suspension from active rescue team duties.
This episode contains example of:
- Always a Bigger Fish: A subtle example. The first time an eremotherium is introduced into this episode, it is in the form of an adult mother determinedly battling a pair of smilodon gracilis to protect her baby. However, later in the episode, when an adult female Florida jaguar lunges out of hiding to go on the hunt in a separate clearing with a lake, a mated pair of adult eremotherium in the area choose to try to flee instead of sticking around to take their chances against it.
- Amazon Chaser: Both Drew and Adrian are visibly impressed (particularly Adrian, who is gaping) by Alice's goading the young male Florida jaguar into lunging at her, allowing her to send it through the portal.
- Animal Stampede: Three of these occur over the course of the episode, all of them triggered by the arrival of local predators. And one of them, as has happened quite often in previous missions, ends with one luckless individual being unable to keep up with the rest of its group in time to avoid getting taken down and killed.
- Big Damn Heroes: After getting called in to help by Adrian, Alice and Drew arrive back on the scene from an earlier split up to successfully help him both escape from an adult male Florida jaguar and allow both the jaguar and a small group of castoroides to be simultaneously brought through the portal with them to the park.
- Big Sister Bully: Much like in the original series, Matilda the T. rex reveals herself to have become this for her brother Terrence.
- Big Sister Instinct: In contrast, Alice herself proves to have this for Jack like she always does when she makes it clear that she's trusting Drew in that Jack will be alright over the course of the team building exercise he and Leon have been assigned to do over the course of that day.
- Breather Episode: This episode is much more comparatively lighthearted and easygoing after the absolute Drama Bomb of Devils of the Deep.
- Brick Joke: Colette clearly learned a thing or two from Stavros on interrupting arguments judging by how she states the following exact same line that Stavros used when interrupting Leon and Jack's first clash back in Devils of the Deep:Colette: Sorry to interrupt what was clearly a stimulating discussion.
- Chekhov's Gun: Alice still has the small audio recording device that Leon gave to her in Oozing From the Pit, and she proves in this episode to have not at all allowed her skill at handling it to wane in the slightest.
- Crush Blush: Both Colette and Yolanda find themselves seemingly undergoing this in embarrassment when first Yolanda teasingly takes note of how much emphasis Colette places on Jack's name when she expresses concern over whether or not Drew is being a bit too extreme towards him and Leon in regards to their 'team building exercise' and then Colette (after acting quite humorously flustered over the idea Yolanda's implying) subtly points out the possibility of Yolanda herself having a crush on one of them.
- The Dreaded: The Florida jaguar to most of the herbivorous fauna of Pleistocene Florida. The mere sight of a subadult male is enough to send a small group of Florida capybara rushing to get out of the small river they're in. And later on, the arrival of a fully grown adult is enough to send two adult eremotherium fleeing alongside two castoroides and a small herd of Florida tapir (something especially noticeable when another separately encountered and rescue adult eremotherium had previously been introduced willingly fighting determinedly against a pair of smilodon gracilis for the sake of protecting her baby).
- Exact Words: Used by Leon and Jack to justify allowing Yolanda to assist them in their work in feeding the titanichthys. After all, Drew said that they had to prove that they could work together without getting into an argument or similarly risking drama and harm befalling themselves and others in order to get out of their current suspension from active rescue team duty; but he never said that they weren't allowed to accept assistance from other people in the process.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Awareness of a form of this trope helps Jack, Leon, and Yolanda determine a possible alternative food source with which to give to the titanichthys. Since the modern animals that serve the closest to being an equivalent of the Devonian anomalocariids the titanichthys ate back in the Devonian period are shrimp and krill, they decide to try to feed shrimp to the giant filter feeders. Thankfully for all involved, the titanichthys accept this new food source.
- Fiendish Fish: The dunkleosteus are heavily implied to be amongst the animals that the staff are particularly wary of working with.
- Gentle Giant: Much like all the other prehistoric ground sloth species rescued before them, the eremotherium encountered in this mission prove to be this.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite still having both parents with them this time around (as opposed to being abandoned by their father and having their mother killed like in the original Prehistoric Park), Terrence and Matilda still ultimately develop an immensely antagonistic interpersonal dynamic between each other once they reach that particular stage of puberty even in spite of Rexy and Tyrannor's best efforts.
- Knight of Cerebus: Much like the Tyrannosaurus rex back in Return of the King, the Florida jaguar prove to be this over the course of the rescue team's time in Pleistocene Florida.
- Mama Bear: An adult female Florida jaguar is very quick to roar and lunge at Alice and Drew when she thinks that they plan to try to threaten her two cubs...which the duo were in fact exploiting to get her through the portal. And her cubs don't take too long at all to come running after her through the portal as well. And long before the encounter with this jaguar family, a mother eremotherium is likewise very determined to protect her own baby from a pair of smilodon gracilis.
- Monster Is a Mommy: As Alice comes to suspect within minutes after she and Drew decide to follow it, the adult female jaguar chooses to drag the freshly killed Florida tapir back into the undergrowth instead of immediately beginning to eat it after killing it because she is bringing it back to her den so as to use it to feed her two cubs as well as herself.
- Morton's Fork: Adrian at one point has both a single adult male Florida jaguar and an entire small group of castoroides (or what remains of said group after two of their number had already gone through the portal beforehand) in ideal position for getting sent through the portal to the park. Problem is, he can't work to get the beavers through the portal first without leaving himself open to an attack from the jaguar, and he can't let the jaguar lunge at him for the sake of going through the portal without running the risk of scaring the beavers back into hiding after they'd just recently come back out of hiding from a previous run-in with a jaguar. Fortunately, Adrian's awareness of this situation is enough for him to Take a Third Option by successfully calling Alice and Drew in for backup.
- Mythology Gag: Leon and Jack's team building exercise is an almost exact copy of what they had to do in a similar plot point in the Prehistoric Earth version of Alien Empire (except this time they have Yolanda around to help them out during the second half of their exercise and there's no snafu involving an animal husbandry book in an incompatible language and subsequent necessity to use an Indy Ploy).
- Named After Somebody Famous: The fully grown adult male Florida jaguar rescued in this episode is named Cortez.
- Panthera Awesome: Amongst the animals rescued are a pair of smilodon gracilis and at least five Florida jaguar.
- Savage Wolves: A pack of armbruster's wolves prove to be this in the eyes of a sounder of platygonus they attempt to hunt over the course of the rescue mission.
- Ship Tease: There is a heavy dosage of this between Leon and Yolanda, plus a minor dosage of this for Jack and Colette. And Adrian is quite noticeably gawking at Alice in awe after she shows off her Action Girl credentials.
- Shown Their Work: The means in which the adult female Florida jaguar kills a Florida tapir for food and the fact that three of the rescued adult male Florida guanaco split off from a larger group of their kind that they were rescued alongside to form their own separate bachelor group after being released into their enclosure are based on the actual means modern jaguars kill their prey and true social behavior of modern guanacos respectively.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Due to the only confirmed (in this continuity) food source for titanichthys from back in its own home time being one of the other animals on display at the park alongside it, the park staff understandably have to work to figure out a suitable alternative with which to feed the prehistoric filter feeders. Fortunately, they are able to find a suitable substitute in shrimp.
- Tsundere: Colette seemingly fully goes off into this territory when, immediately after Yolanda teasingly takes note of how much emphasis she has placed on Jack's name over the course of expressing concern over him (and Leon) in regard to the 'team building exercise' Drew is having them take part in, she seemingly sheds her tough exterior by acting very flustered over what Yolanda is implying (complete with a seeming Crush Blush).
