Prehistoric Monsters Revealed (2008) is a TV Documentary by The History Channel focusing on a select number of weird ancient creatures, their anatomy, evolutionary relationships, and the environments they lived in. The constant changes in paleontology are stressed throughout. Has pretty cheap effects for the scenes focusing on recreated animals.
This documentary provides examples of:
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- The CGI creatures aren't merely
ugly, they have totally wrong anatomy: - Pronated hands on theropods. Even the animation of the raptor arm's skeletal anatomy shows the hand in this painfully incorrect position. In reality, the arm bones of most dinosaurs only allowed for very limited hand-articulation, and in the case of carnivorous dinosaurs, this caused their palms to constantly face each other.
- Giganotosaurus looking like a cheap T. rex knockoff, with a far too robust head. Oh, and it's billed as the largest theropod, two years after Spinosaurus was found to be larger.
- A Spinosaurus that's an exact copy of the JP model, complete with the two little "bumps" over its eyes. The real animal had one single crest in the middle of its forehead. Then again, the CGI of the animal is so abysmally bad, they probably either just threw it together quickly or buried up an already sort-of-finished model. Well, next to some other spinosaur recreations, it looks biologically perfect.
- As said above, pterosaurs wings shouldn't be floppy, since they were supported by strong fibers and muscles.
- While their Velociraptor was nice and feathered, it just wasn't feathered enough. It should have true wings, for starters.
- Quetzalcoatlus is depicted as a defenseless giant bird-like creature with floppy wings.
- The CGI creatures aren't merely
- Feathered Fiend: Velociraptor, Therizinosaurus and Andalgalornis.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: When the prehistoric animals come to life and walk out of the museum.
- Sea Monster: Dunkleosteus and the mosasaurs.
- Shown Their Work: Paleo-science is explained in detail.
- Stock Footage: The kitchen scene from Jurassic Park is shown, when the Narrator talks about how much our perception of the infamous raptors have changed.
- Stock Sound Effects: The JP T. rex roar, used for the Giganotosaurus.
