Jurassic Fight Club (Dinosaur Secrets in Europe) is a television documentary series that aired on The History Channel. The basic plot involves 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 Dinosaur George Blasing, who plays out his own imaginary scenarios on how the fights would go.
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.
Provides examples of:
- Anachronism Stew: 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.
- Animated Adaptation: 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 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
Development Hell. - Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Averted in the Majungasaurus episode.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- Predators attacking animals several hundreds times their mass because they're territorial. Eh?
- Predators trying to drive off potential rivals by spilling food all over their territory. Eehh??
- Sharks using their denticles (scales) to taste. Eeehhh???
- Inbreeding being the reason for Majungasaurus's odd appearance. Eeeehhhh????
- Artistic License – Geology: 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. What.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: When Steve Alten is one of your Talking Heads, you know you've got a problem. To be specific:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Depicting a young T. rex as a downscaled version of the adults, even though even the narrator (correctly) claims otherwise.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- There's absolutely no evidence of theropods having scent glands like those of modern mammalian carnivores.
- 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.
- Brygmophyseter shigensis is depicted as being as big as megalodon (50 feet), even though the one specimen we have is only the size of an orca. 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.
- 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.
- Wrong forelimb posture on all of the theropods and chewing sauropods.
- Bears Are Bad News: The short-faced bear, Arctodus, features in an episode.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Gastonia and Stegosaurus have spikes on their tails and put them to devastating effect.
- Content Warnings: Every episode starts with this or something to the same effect (the last episode replaces "battle" with "apocalypse"):"The following is a graphic depiction of a violent prehistoric battle. Viewer discretion is advised."
- Curb-Stomp Battle: For a show all about dramatic, intense combat between prehistoric animals, this happens an awful lot.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. Then they just let it get away.
- 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.
- Death of a Child: Often followed up with the consumption of said child.
- The Majungasaurus episode; the male makes it his mission to kill the female's offspring to mate with her.
- 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.
- A young Stegosaurus is also killed by a Ceratosaurus.
- Feathered Fiend: Dromaeosaurus and Utahraptor, though they were depicted as only sparsely feathered. Also Deinonychus, although it's shown with no feathers at all.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: 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.
- Grand Finale: The show ends with the Cretaceous extinction.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted:
- The subject of one episode, appropriately called Hunter Becomes Hunted. It centers around a pair of Ceratosaurus and an Allosaurus, with the latter killing both of the former.
- 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.
- Mama Bear: The mother Majungasaurus and Tyrannosaurus qualify, fiercely defending their young from whatever predator may be threatening them.
- Noisy Nature: Holy heck. Even Dinosaur George himself knows how unrealistic this is.
- Prehistoric Monster: The animals don't do much beyond fight each other and act nasty, but that is the basic premise.
- Raptor Attack: 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.
- Recycled In Space: Animal Face Off IN THE MESOZOIC ERA!
- Sea Monster: Megalodon and Brygmophyseter.
- Shown Their Work: All of the talking heads give justification for some of the things featured in the show. Actual accuracy varies.
- Larry Witmer's CAT scans of the dinosaurs' skulls, showing which senses were more developed than others in each individual creature.
- The skull of the show's Edmontosaurus is similar to that of Anatotitan, which is probably an aged specimen of the former.
- Stock Footage: The final episode uses asteroid impact footage from When Dinosaurs Roamed America.
- Tail Slap: 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.
- Threatening Shark: Megalodon, a fifty-foot shark that hunts whales.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Nanotyrannus sticks around after the female Tyrannosaurus shows up, intending to finish what it started and kill the remaining offspring..
- The Dromaeosaurus pack arguably qualifies as well, attacking prey far larger than them because they're territorial. (Possibly subverted, as they somehow
succeed.)
- Zerg Rush: 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.
