Series / Prehistoric Predators

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Prehistoric Predators is a paleontological documentary series that ran on the National Geographic Channel in 2007. As its title implies, it focused on prehistoric predators, examining their morphology, killing prowess, and relationship with their prey animals and sympatric predators, using CGI to recreate the extinct animals, intercut with Talking Heads segments where experts shared their opinions and theories on the eponymous predators.

Surprisingly, its focus was not on dinosaurs (non-avian ones anyway) but rather on Cenozoic predators, with the first season centering on the apex predators of the famous La Brea Tar Pits (the short-faced bear, dire wolf, and saber-toothed cat), while the second season shifted its focus towards more ancient hunters (terror birds, megalodon, entelodonts, and Hyaenodon).

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The series provides examples of:

• Anachronism Stew:
  • Generally averted, but played straight with Amphicyon galushai, who is depicted as having met (and outcompeted) Hyaenodon in North America around 23 mya. However, the last of Hyaenodon died out in North America during the Mid Oligocene (around 28-25 million years ago), while the earliest occurrence of Amphicyon in America dates to about 18 million years ago.
  • Addressed and debunked with Titanis. The terror bird episode cites the old controversy regarding whether or not Titanis walleri survived until 10,000 years ago, and by examining the chemical signatures of the minerals within its bones, it concludes that the youngest Titanis fossils are in fact 2 million years old.
  • A small example, but one scene in the terror bird episode shows a Titanis encountering a trio of Smilodon gracilis feeding on their kill, which happens to be a bison. Bison didn't enter North America until the very Late Pleistocene, about 200,000 years ago, long after Titanis died out.
• Animal Jingoism: Like Walking with Beasts before it, the series showcases the Hyaenodon Vs. entelodont and terror bird Vs. Smilodon rivalries respectively. There's also the classic Cat/Dog Dichotomy with Smilodon and the dire wolf.
• Armor Is Useless: The small glyptodont Parapropalaehoplophorus gets easily killed by the Kelenken, who uses its foot to flip the glyptodont over on its back and then strikes its unprotected belly.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • Quite a few things involving the bear-dogs:
    • The unnamed bear-dog featured in both the Hyaenodon and entelodont episodes conflates attributes of Amphicyon and Daphoenodon, who come from different amphicyonid subfamilies. Its Eurasian origin, anatomy, and size (described as lion-sized) are clearly based on Amphicyon galushai, but the claim that it was a long-legged pursuit predator is lifted from the native Daphoenodon robustum (we also see a skeletal mount of one confronting a Dinohyus), while Amphicyon species were hefty ambush predators. By contrast, Daphoenodon were very lanky and digitigrade (most bear-dogs were plantigrade), bearing a much closer resemblance to canids.
    • Suggesting that bear-dogs outcompeted Dinohyus is questionable at best, since it coexisted with Daphoenodon and other midsized taxa like Ysengrinia for most of its reign, while the episode implies that bear-dogs were an alien, invasive species when the giant entelodont went extinct. With that in mind, the arrival of A. galushai at the time of its extinction (as well as the native bear-dogs') is more likely a case of the Eurasian bear-dog filling up a vacant apex predator niche, as supported by its descendants subsequently increasing in size, eventually leading to the gigantic A. ingens a few million years later.
    • They claims that North American chalicotheres died out in the Early Miocene along with Dinohyus (due to over-hunting from bear-dogs), depleting the giant entelodont of its main food source, but Moropus actually survived there until much later, along with the later, dome-headed Tylocephalonyx, with the American chalicotheres vanishing alongside the native bear-dogs like Amphicyon ingens around 14 million years ago.
  • The terror bird episode heavily implies that they were the sole predators in South America until the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, and their subsequent encounters with the placental carnivores of the north being a new, unprecedented challenge. But that’s not the case, as throughout their evolutionary history, terror birds had to contend with terrestrial crocodiles called sebecids (the largest of which, Barinasuchus, grew as big as a rhino) and metatherian carnivores called sparassodonts (which includes animals such as Thylacosmilus, who evolved to be the ecological equivalent to saber-toothed cats).
  • They parrot the common misnomer that Hyaenodon was named by famed paleontology pioneer Joseph Leidy, when in reality, the genus was actually first described by French paleontologists Laizer and Parieu in 1838. Leidy did name Hyaenodon horridus though, who is the focus of the episode.
  • The American lion (Panthera atrox) is shown with a mane, but based on its close relative and ancestor (as confirmed via genetic research), the Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea), who is always depicted as maneless in cave art, even individuals with visible scrotums, it’s likely that manes are unique to Panthera leo (the extant lion). ^note  This may have been done to hide the fact that the American lion is just a tweaked Smilodon model.
• Based on a True Story: The (theorized) backstories of several real-life finds get recreated in this series. Examples include the short-faced bear that was found at the Hot Springs Mammoth Site (here shown getting fatally struck by a mammoth’s trunk) and a Dinictis who was killed by a bite to the head from a Hyaenodon, as well as a trackway at Toadstool Geological Park in Nebraska, showing an encounter between a rhino, entelodont and another carnivore (here shown as a Hyaenodon).
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • Arctodus simus, the giant short-faced bear, is the focus of one episode, and even though it’s depicted as a kleptoparasite, it’s still The Dreaded, as its massive size allows it to easily steal the kills from Smilodon and dire wolf packs.
  • The bear-dog, Amphicyon galushai, is also a force to be reckoned with, easily killing the chalicothere Moropus and driving the last of the entelodonts into extinction.
• Bigger Is Better: Deconstructed. A common theme across the series is how large animals (especially large predators) are more susceptible to extinction, due to often being more specialized and requiring more sustenance, which leaves them vulnerable whenever major changes occur to their environment. Emphasized with the short-faced bear and dire wolf, who died out at the end of the Pleistocene, while their smaller and more generalized relatives, the grizzly and gray wolf, survived into the present, as well as with the megalodon and great white shark.
• Brains Versus Brawn: Amphicyon vs Dinohyus and Squalodon vs megalodon are this. In both cases, the smaller but more intelligent predator is depicted as social.
• The Cameo: The American lion is occasionally mentioned in season one, and sometimes cameos via one oft-repeated shot that shows it prowling. It’s a Palette Swap of the Smilodon, minus the fangs, and with a short mane.
• Cool Versus Awesome: The short-faced bear gets to fight the ground sloth Megalonyx, which basically winds up being a heavyweight boxing match (and the Talking Heads acknowledge it as such).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Commonly suggested as being a reason why many of the eponymous prehistoric predators died out, most commonly in the form of them becoming too large and thus requiring too much food and space to sustain a healthy population in an ever-changing world.
• Devious Dolphins: The Miocene-aged toothed whale Squalodon (a possible relative of today's river dolphins) is dwarfed by megalodon but it’s smart enough to utilize Zerg Rush to combat the giant shark and attack it where it hurts; its gills.
• Dire Beast:
  • There's the aptly named dire wolf, which is accurately described as a "gray wolf on steroids". The short-faced bear also closely resembles its closest relative, the spectacled bear, but stands 6 feet tall on all fours and weighs over 1,200 lb.
  • Inverted with the Cetotherium, which is a familiar-looking baleen whale but only about 20 feet long. Played straight with its predator megalodon, who resembles a typical pelagic and macropredatory lamniform shark but is the size of a smaller baleen whale, at 50-55 feet and 50 tons.
• The Dreaded: Arctodus and Dinohyus are this in their respective ecosystems. Justified, since they are two of the largest mammalian carnivores ever to walk the Earth.
• Dumb Muscle: Hyaenodon and the entelodonts. Both had plenty of brawn but not so much brain. It’s depicted as a major reason behind their extinction as they could not adapt to a changing world and compete with the more wily carnivorans.
• Feathered Fiend: The terror birds are shown as fearsome predators who ruled South America for tens of millions of years and continued the vicious legacy of their theropod ancestors (as acknowledged in the episode). The featured taxa are Kelenken, the tallest of its kin, and Titanis, who traveled to North America during the Great American Interchange and held its own against saber-toothed cats and wolves.
• Full-Boar Action: The entelodonts Archaeotherium and the even larger Dinohyus are envisioned as bigger, meaner, and more predatory versions of today’s wild suids (even if they turned out to be closer to whales and hippos).
• Hidden Depths:
  • Both Smilodon and the dire wolf are theorized to have potentially cared for injured members of their pack respectively, based on La Brea fossils coming from individuals that somehow survived grave injuries that would have made their survival nigh-impossible if left alone.
  • Hyaenodon had unique teeth that rotated inwards over its lifespan, meaning that even in old age, the animal could chew up a carcass, in contrast to most other land carnivores.
  • CT scans of terror bird skulls show that they had fairly sophisticated brains, and Kelenken is shown using its foot to flip a glyptodont on its back and attack its belly.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: Columbian mammoths are frequently seen in the La Brea-centric season one. The short-faced bear episode, in particular, devotes a small portion of it to the famous Hot Springs Mammoth Site (which also has a short-faced bear specimen). The Smilodon episode also sees one taking down a juvenile mammoth.
• Mighty Glacier: The giant ground sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii might be slow-moving but it's still a hulking powerhouse armed with sharp claws that sabertooths and dire wolves are wary of, and only the giant short-faced bear can take it on and kill it.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Entelodonts are described as such, combining anatomical and/or behavioral attributes of various unrelated animals such as pigs, hippos, bison, bears, and hyenas, which is why paleontologists historically had such a hard time figuring out their ecology, and debates continue.
• Monster Munch: Unsurprisingly, the various herbivores are mainly there to be killed by the titular predators. Though some of them can still put up a fight.
• No Name Given: A lot of the prey animals aren't properly identified, but based on their size, appearance, and the setting in which they appear in respectively, their identity is usually easy to pinpoint; the ice age bison is Bison antiquus, the chalicothere is Moropus, the oreodont is Merycoidodon, etc. The bear-dog also isn't properly named, see Artistic License – Paleontology.
• Panthera Awesome:
  • Smilodon fatalis, the fabled saber-toothed cat, naturally, gets its own episode, and it shows that it does live up to its fearsome reputation. It's smaller ancestor, Smilodon gracilis. was also a major enemy of Titanis.
  • The nimravid Dinictis (not a true cat but a close relative) is also a formidable hunter in its own right, though still beholden to the larger Hyaenodon and Archaeotherium.
• Savage Wolves:
  • The dire wolf is basically a bulkier, stronger-jawed version of the gray wolf specifically evolved to hunt large game like horse and bison, and scarier yet, they are depicted as forming even larger packs than their cousin, up to 30 wolves strong. It’s smaller predecessor, Edward’s wolf, was also a competitor to Titanis and a pack of them manages to drive the terror bird away from its kill.
  • Subverted with the creodont Hyaenodon, as the show notes that contrary to popular belief, it was not similar to canines (anatomy or behavior-wise) and was more comparable to big cats; a solitary ambush predator built for short bursts of speed instead of being a pack-hunting pursuit predator. Though like canids and its namesake the hyenas, it still had slender limbs with non-retractable claws, making it rely entirely on its mouth for killing, like the former.
• Stock Footage: T. rex footage from When Dinosaurs Roamed America is briefly used in the Entelodont episode.
• Stout Strength: Besides its large fangs and short tail, this is noted to be one of the key features that distinguishes Smilodon from extant big cats, with experts describing it as more similar to a bear in terms of build and hunting style than a conventional big cat.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The short-faced bear’s black fur and white chest and facial markings are a homage to its closest living relative, Tremarctos ornatus, otherwise known as the spectacled bear.
• Threatening Shark: Megalodon is the focus of its own episode, a giant 50-foot shark that was the undisputed apex predator of our oceans for some 20 million years. Though it’s not invulnerable, as smaller but more intelligent and social cetaceans like Squalodon can still Zerg Rush to combat it.