Trivia / Chased by Dinosaurs

• Accidentally-Correct Writing:
  • In "Land of Giants", while the presence of Pteranodon in Mid Cretaceous South America is a gratuitous example of Anachronism Stew and Misplaced Wildlife, in 2003 (the same year the episode aired no less), we described Ludodactylus, a midsized anhanguerid with a Pteranodon-like crest from Mid Cretaceous Brazil, though it lived around 13 million years before the setting of “Land of Giants”.
  • Mononykus is depicted as man-sized here when it was only around 4 feet long. In 2012, we did describe a man-sized alvarezsaur, Bonapartenykus, which did live around the time "The Giant Claw" is set, but in Argentina (ironically, the location of "Land of Giants"). ^note  A potential large alvarezsaur has been described from Late Cretaceous Central Asia called Kol, but it's only known from a foot and its classification is controversial.
• California Doubling: Like in its predecessor, both episodes were shot far from their in-universe geographic locations.
  • “Land of Giants” takes place in early Cenomanian Argentina, but it was shot in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, including the lava-covered slopes of Mount Teide. The same location would be revisited for the final segment of Walking with Monsters (set in Early Triassic Antarctica/South Africa).
  • “The Giant Claw” takes place in Campanian Mongolia, but it was shot in Fraser Island, off the coast of Queensland. The desert in which Nigel meets the Saurolophus and Protoceratops? That’s not a desert, that’s just a big beach. The same locality would be revisited for the final episode of Prehistoric Park (“Supercroc”), which incidentally, also takes place 75 million years ago but in Texas.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: "Land of Giants" has a particularly odd mishmash of a cast, leading to some of the worst Anachronism Stew in the series. The most glaring example is Pteranodon showing up in Argentina during the Mid Cretaceous, even though the genus is only known from Late Cretaceous North America. While you could interpret them as migrating from the Western Interior Seaway, there was no excuse for the anachronism. It is true that in the past, some fragmentary pterosaur fossils from the Albian-Cenomanian of North America were attributed to Pteranodon (including Bennettazhia), and the Albian Ornithostoma from Britain was historically suggested to be a synonym of Pteranodon, an extensive revision of the genus by Chris Bennett in the early '90s cemented P. longiceps and P. sternbergi (the later being alternatively called Geosternbergia) as the only valid members of the genus, both from Late Cretaceous North America.
• God Never Said That: While it's often claimed that the Patagonian iguanodont was based on the then-undescribed fossils of Macrogryphosaurus (first found in 1999), there is no source whatsoever that confirms this claim, and fans mainly pin Macrogryphosaurus as the identity of the former because Macrogryphosaurus is the only known "iguanodont" from South America (under modern definition, it would be classed as a large elasmarian).
• Market-Based Title: The two episodes are marketed together as "Land of Giants/The Giant Claw" in the UK. In America, they were given the collective title Chased by Dinosaurs.
• Prop Recycling: Several of the creatures in "Land of Giants" are reused models from Impossible Pictures' The Lost World (2001), which were more detailed (and thus better suited for close-ups) than the ones from Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts. The Pteranodon and Patagonian iguanodont are Palette Swaps of the Pteranodon and Iguanodon from Lost World and the Giganotosaurus has the same body as the Allosaurus from Lost World but with a different head.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Both episodes were largely inspired by then-recent discoveries.
  • “Land of Giants” came out in 2002, not long after Giganotosaurus and Argentinosaurus were described in the '90s, and gained notoriety for usurping the iconic T. rex and Brachiosaurus as the largest land carnivore and herbivore respectively (both titles are debatable now). Likewise, while Sarcosuchus was first described in the '60s, it gained much more fame at the Turn of the Millennium, when more complete fossils were described from the Sahara.
  • For “The Giant Claw”, while Therizinosaurus was described in the '50s, its true nature remained an enigma until around the '90s, when it was recognized as the largest member of the segnosaurs (now called the therizinosaurs), who themselves were mysterious dinosaurs of unclear origin until the 1993 description of the basal Alxasaurus helped clarify that they were indeed very derived theropods, and not quadrupedal ornithopods or late-surviving basal sauropodomorphs as some initially believed◊. The same is true for Mononykus, who was only described in 1993, and alvarezsaurs as a whole have only been known about since 1991, making them a radical new group of very bird-like dinosaurs at the Turn of the Millennium.
• Written-In Infirmity: During production of "The Giant Claw", Nigel injured his finger during the filming of the sequence where he and the cameraman are chased by Velociraptors. This injury ended up being incorporated into the Mononykus sequence, shown instead as the result of being bitten by the dinosaur when he captures it.

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