All kinds of bizarre horns, claws, teeth and back-sails get to be covered, as some of the world's leading paleontologists describe in detail what these beasts used their various eye-raisingly awkward body parts for.
Narrated by Peter 'Optimus Prime' Cullen
◊. note
This series provides examples of:
- Artistic License – Biology:
- The brilliant Jack Horner, when arguing why ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs didn't use their head gear for defense, claims that the last place an animal would want to have a defense mechanism is on it's head. Insert list of modern animals that have defense mechanisms on their heads here.
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- Yes, even NatGeo couldn't avoid this one. The culprits are the CGI clips. One has a chewing sauropod. Sauropod jaws and teeth were unable to do this.
- The painfully incorrect position into which carnivorous dinosaurs twist their hands.
- And also the large, well articulated hands of Carnotaurus. While the narration points out how small and insignificant these were, the animation disagrees. For reference's sake: they should appear as nothing more than mere stumps with more little stumps on them.
- Some experts would rather see the show's Epidendrosaurus referred to as Scansoriopteryx.
- Likewise, all the maniraptors need a shitoad more feathers.
- The crestnote on the show's Spinosaurus isn't nearly pronounced enough.
- The phylogenetic tree that appears in several scenes implies that large tetanurans
are more closely related to each other than small tetanurans, which was suggested in 1986 but is now of course wrong (tyrannosauroids are actually coelurosaurs, to name the best example).
- Covers Always Lie: Masiakasaurus is not featured in the documentary.
- Feathered Fiend: Epidendrosaurus, the immense Gigantoraptor and the mysterious Deinocheirus.
- The first one is not especially fiendish, though.
- Gaussian Girl: A slight blur effect is used for the CGI dinosaur shots, though even these don't conceal the sub-par animation quality.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Nigersaurus, but it is a rare herbivore example that has many tiny, tiny teeth.
- The Masiakasaurus from the DVD cover.
- Real Is Brown: While the CGI animals do have unique skin patterns and colors, these are so muted that this trope could easily be applied.
- Shout-Out: To Jurassic Park III, as Prime describes Spinosaurus and how it put The Worf Effect on T. rex.
- Shown Their Work: All the scenes that focus on scientists.
- Spinosaurus Versus T. rex: At one point, the Spinosaurus encounters a T. rex and scares it away.
- Stock Footage: The dinosaur clips are repeated many times. Still, there have been worse offenders.
- Animal footage from different documentaries is also played, as are scenes from the 1925 adaptation of The Lost World.
- Use Your Head: Pachycephalosaurs, but the program demonstrates that they did not butt heads together, as they are often depicted, since this would have knocked them out. However, ceratopsians and sauropods are seen doing this as part of their natural behavior.
