History Trivia / TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution

** Small arboreal coelurosaurs, such as microraptorians and scansoriopterygids, especially the Nauger, which is depicted as using an elongated finger to fish out insects like real-life scansoiriopterygids did (although later discoveries suggest the long finger actually supported a wing membrane).

*** The complete absence of abelisaurs, which are not mentioned even once despite being widespread during the Late Cretaceous, can be chalked up to the fact they were only just discovered and named at the time the book was being published. Hence why only tyrannosaurs and "megalosaurs" among large predatory dinosaurs are shown to have survived to the present day (ironically in the places where abelisaurs were known to have dominated).

** Under the cladogram, it's stated that titanosaurs managed to survive over other sauropod groups because they were the most lightly-built sauropods. This couldn't be any more inaccurate, since titanosaurs included the most massive land animals to ever live, and had extremely wide and heavy builds among sauropods. The cladogram itself places them as being related to diplodocids (which actually were slenderly built), but we now consider titanosaurs related to brachiosaurs.

** Also underneath the cladogram, tyrannosaurs are described as only having appeared in the Cretaceous and megalosaurs as being the most successful and long-lasting group of "carnosaurs". Tyrannosaurs dating from the Mid Jurassic are now known[[note]]Or technically, they were already known for long time, but only much more recently identified as primitive tyrannosaurs.[[/note]], while (rather ironically) megalosaurids are now the only group of giant predatory theropod (including spinosaurs, allosaurs, and tyrannosaurs) not known to have survived into the Cretaceous (a possible megalosaur femur is known from the late Cretaceous of Antarctica but has not been evaluated in detail).

*** Interestingly, the "megalosaur" is noted to have similarities to the "megalosaurs" that lived in prehistoric Gondwana. ''Megalosaurus'' is now only known from England, which would've been part of Laurasia. Gondwanan ''Megalosaurus'' species are now believed to represent abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, or even crocodyliforms, none of which are closely related to megalosaurs. On the other hand, the crocodile-headed spinosaurs, many of which did live in Gondwana, are typically considered members of the megalosaur group, and a megalosaur-like femur is known from the latest Cretaceous of Antarctica.

*** The megaraptorans are also not mentioned even once despite being one of the three groups of large predatory dinosaurs (alongside tyrannosaurids and abelisaurids) known to have survived to the very end of the Cretaceous. This is of course logical, because the book was written in the 80s, it wasn't until the late 90s that ''Megaraptor'' was discovered, and not until 2010 that they were established as a group.
*** Interestingly, the "megalosaur" is noted to have similarities to the "megalosaurs" that lived in prehistoric Gondwana. ''Megalosaurus'' is now only known from England, which would've been part of Laurasia. Gondwanan ''Megalosaurus'' species are now believed to represent abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, or even crocodyliformes, none of which are closely related to megalosaurs. On the other hand, the crocodile-headed spinosaurs, many of which did live in Gondwana, are typically considered members of the megalosaur group.

** The zwim, an aquatic mammal with a paddle-like tail, evokes the Cretaceous proto-mammal ''Castorocauda''.

** It's stated that in the mid-Tertiary (as mentioned, a now-defunct geological classification), many "primitive" mammals died out and were replaced by modern forms. An example given is the "creodont" predator ''Sarkastodon''. "Creodonts" are now widely considered a wastebasket taxon of unrelated fossil carnivorous mammals. By the 1990s, the group was reduced to just hyaenodonts and oreodonts, and even then they were considered an evolutionary grade to carnivorans. Technically meaning creodonts never really died out and got replaced by carnivorans, they evolved ''into'' carnivorans.

*** Coelurosaurs are also referred to as "coelurids", which was another wastebasket taxon many random small theropods (including several now considered noasaurid ceratosaurs) were inserted into in popular dinosaur texts of 1980s into the 90s. Nowadays, the only species definitively considered a coelurid is ''Coelurus'' itself.

** Long-necked, long-legged running pterosaurs like the Lank became reality once better remains of azhdarchids were discovered. They were, however, still carnivores as opposed to the herbivorous Lank, as pterosaurs lacked any means of grinding vegetation and likely had simple digestive tracts. With the possible exception of the tapejarids, all known pterosaurs were carnivores.
** Small arboreal coelurosaurs, such as microraptorians and scansoriopterygids, especially the Nauger, which is depicted as using an elongated finger to fish out insects like real-life scansoiriopterygids did.

** Filter-feeding plesiosaurs: ''Morturneria''.
** A pterosaur diving like a penguin: ''Alcione elainus''.

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age. In 1991, the fossils of the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaur ''Dravidosaurus'' were assigned to a plesiosaur, and thus stegosaurs were believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era. But then in 2004, Peter Galton noted the bones of ''Dravidosaurus'' do not match those of any plesiosaur (especially not the skull, plate and spike), and he reaffirmed ''Dravidosaurus'' to be a stegosaur in 2017.

** The pterosaurs are often far too bird-like, standing bipedally on long digitigrade legs and capable of grabbing things with their feet. They also have many other errors, such as mammal-like heterodont dentition (completely unknown in pterosaurs, not even counting the fact there are no toothed pterosaurs known from near the end of the Late Cretaceous), incorrect wing anatomy (membrane is too thin, too many joints, and no pteroid bones) and aren't referred to any specific group, which may be just as well, since they don't resemble species from any known pterosaur groups. Ironically, the Lank, which was one of the most criticized designs of the book back when it was released, is actually the most accurate one.

** Many dinosaur tails have been reduced to rod-thin poles, which is often explained as that the animal no longer needs it as a counterbalance, so it became reduced. However, what it ''does not'' seem to touch upon is that the thick tail base of dinosaurs contains many important muscles attached to the thigh, important for locomotion (even birds, which have highly reduced tails, kept the condensed butt, which is used to assist maneuvring in flight).

*** The book flip-flops on how warm-blooded the large dinosaurs are, frequently describing them as becoming sluggish when the weather gets cool, slow-moving, or stating their metabolisms are not efficient enough to survive in the tundra (and then, as aforementioned, showing two species of ''bird'' that live there), despite earlier noting how sauropods had bone growth on par with birds and mammals. This can likely be attributed to the theory of dinosaur endothermy being relatively new at the time and the image of the tail-dragging evolutionary relic still fresh in pop culture.

** There's also the issue of [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0012.jpg Dixon's]] [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0014.jpg cladograms]] being rather out of date, even for their time (things like the coelurosaur-carnosaur dichotomy of theropod classification and pachycephalosaurs as ornithopods had been disproven by then, and some of the names of groups, such as "saurornithoids" and "segnosaurs" are now considered defunct). Other errors include the inclusion of "fabrosaurs" at the base of the ornithischian tree (a group now considered obsolete), the ceratosaurs as a short-lived group that became extinct in the Jurassic (ceratosaurs are now known to include the abelisaurs, meaning they survived, and were very successful, up until the very end of the Cretaceous), therizinosaurs being considered carnosaurs (like tyrannosaurs, they are now considered giant coelurosaurs), heterodontosaurids dying out in the Triassic (they're now known to have survived into the Early Cretaceous or possibly even the end of the Cretaceous if they evolved into pachycephalosaurus), triconodonts and symmetrodonts dying out at the end of the Jurassic (both groups are now known to have survived until the end of the Cretaceous, on top of the traditional symmetrodont group being considered paraphyletic nowadays), placental mammals and marsupials diverging in the Cretaceous (newer fossil and genetic studies indicate they split during the Early to Mid Jurassic) and "camptosaurs" being a distinct branch (Camptosauridae still only contains one genus, ''Camptosaurus'', and is now considered a subgroup of iguanodonts).

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age. In 1991, the fossils of the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaur ''Dravidosaurus'' were assigned to a plesiosaur, and thus stegosaurs were believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era. But then in 2004, Galton noted the bones of ''Dravidosaurus'' does not match those of any plesiosaur (especially not the skull, plate and spike), and he reaffirmed ''Dravidosaurus'' to be a stegosaur in 2017.

*** The lack of differentiation beyond "coelurosaur" ancestry is also telling, as no specific coelurosaur subgroups are mentioned to have survived or focused on beyond "saurornithoids" (read: troodontids). This can attributed to the lack of knowledge regarding groups such as ornithimimids and oviraptorosaurs at the time beyond one-note stereotypes.

** The introductory information states mammals evolved from "mammal-like reptiles", which is a term that is rarely used anymore because mammals are not considered to have evolved from reptiles under modern cladistic taxonomy (the umbrella of all living reptiles and their most recent common ancestor would exclude mammals).
** There's also the issue of [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0012.jpg Dixon's]] [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0014.jpg cladograms]] being rather out of date, even for their time (things like the coelurosaur-carnosaur dichotomy of theropod classification and pachycephalosaurs as ornithopods had been disproven by then, and some of the names of groups, such as "saurornithoids" and "segnosaurs" are now considered defunct). Other errors include the inclusion of "fabrosaurs" at the base of the ornithischian tree (a group now considered obsolete), the ceratosaurs as a short-lived group that became extinct in the Jurassic (ceratosaurs are now known to include the abelisaurs, meaning they survived, and were very successful, up until the very end of the Cretaceous), therizinosaurs being considered carnosaurs (like tyrannosaurs, they are now considered giant coelurosaurs), heterodontosaurids dying out in the Triassic (they're now known to have survived into the Early Cretaceous), triconodonts and symmetrodonts dying out at the end of the Jurassic (both groups are now known to have survived until the end of the Cretaceous, on top of the traditional symmetrodont group being considered paraphyletic nowadays), placental mammals and marsupials diverging in the Cretaceous (newer fossil and genetic studies indicate they split during the Early to Mid Jurassic) and "camptosaurs" being a distinct branch (Camptosauridae still only contains one genus, ''Camptosaurus'', and is now considered a subgroup of iguanodonts).
** The tree also depicts ornithomimosaurs diverging from other coelurosaurs during the Late Triassic or Early Jurassic, likely reflecting the fact ''Elaphrosaurus'' was at the time considered an early ornithomimosaur (it is currently considered a noasaurid ceratosaur with ornithomimosaur-like traits convergently evolved). All ornithomimosaurs are still currently only known from the Cretaceous.

*** The concept of the "saurornithoid" Jinx hunting by disguising itself as the "hypsilophodont" Coneater, aside from relying on superficial similarities between the two groups being exaggerated (the forelimb and skull anatomy of the Jinx in particular being fudged in order to make it work) it wouldn't make sense at all with the current knowledge that "saurornithoid" dinosaurs (read: troodontids) were as fully feathered as birds, including having wings (some may have even been able to fly).

*** Interestingly, the "megalosaur" is noted to have similarities to the "megalosaurs" that lived in prehistoric Gondwana. ''Megalosaurus'' is now only known from England, which would've been part of Laurasia. Gondwanan ''Megalosaurus'' species are now believed to represent abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, or even crocodyliformes, none of which are closely related to megalosaurs. On the other hand, the crocodile-headed spinosaurs, many of which did live in Gondwana, have turned out to be members of the megalosaur group.

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age. In 1991, the fossils of the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaur ''Dravidosaurus'' were assigned to a plesiosaur, and thus stegosaurs were believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era. But then in 2004 Galton noted the bones of ''Dravidosaurus'' does not match those of any plesiosaur, and he reaffirmed ''Dravidosaurus'' to be a stegosaur again in 2017.

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age. In 1991, the fossils of the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaur ''Dravidosaurus'' were assigned to a plesiosaur, and thus stegosaurs were believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era. However, Galton reaffirmed ''Dravidosaurus'' as a stegosaur due to its remains not matching any plesiosaur.

** A large number of modern dinosaurs are said to be descended from "coelurosaurs" or "hypsilophodonts", but as far as it is known, generic primitive coelurosaurs didn't exist in the Late Cretaceous (with the possible exceptions of the strange South American ''Bicentenaria'' and the carnosaur-like megaraptorans), and, from the 2000s onward, Hypsilophodontidae is now generally considered paraphyletic. This is similar to Dixon's use of "insectivores" in ''Literature/AfterMan''.

** In the Bricket entry, it's stated that crested hadrosaurs (lambeosaurines) never managed to reach Asia during the Cretaceous, and only managed to get there during the recent ice ages. Not that there weren't already lambeosaurines known from Asia already (such as ''Tsintaosaurus''), but numerous discoveries later on have found a great diversity of lambeosaurines present in Asia at the end of the Late Cretaceous, and ironically, very little evidence of them in North America.

** Plesiosaur classification is very simplistic, only containing the long-necked elasmosaurs and the short-necked pliosaurs. Ignoring that pliosaurs are now believed to have become extinct near the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, we know not all short-necked plesiosaurs were part of one group (the polycotylids had pliosaur-like builds but were probably more closely related to elasmosaurs). This simplistic classification of plesiosaurs by neck length was completely discarded by the 2000s, with elasmosaurs now considered a much more inclusive subgroup.

*** Interestingly, the "megalosaur" is noted to have similarities to the "megalosaurs" that lived in prehistoric Gondwana. ''Megalosaurus'' is now only known from England, which would've been part of Laurasia. Gondwanan ''Megalosaurus'' species are now believed to represent abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, or even crocodyliformes, none of which are closely related to megalosaurs.

** Subverted with the cribrum It recalls a hypothesis from the early 2000s which suggested that ornithomimids were flamingo-like filter feeders, but which has since been debunked.

** The cribrum recalls a hypothesis from the early 2000s that ornithomimids were flamingo-like filter feeders. Subverted in that this interpretation has been discredited.

** The description of dinosaur evolution is extremely out of date, as it states that the distinct archosaur lineages evolved from aquatic "thecodonts" (a group now considered a wasketbasket taxon and therefore useless for biological classification) and even implies that dinosaurs are not monophyletic, as it states ornithischians evolved from different thecodont ancestors than saurischians. By the 1990s, the use of "thecodont" classification was completely discarded.
*** The description of Archosauria as being comprised of five orders (saurischians, ornithischians, pterosaurs, crocodilians, and "thecodonts"). Archosaurs were revised into a node-based clade in the 1990s, and most modern taxonomic classifications tend to discard the use of "orders" for being rather arbitrary. And also, there are now numerous archosaur species known which don't exactly fit into any of the traditional five orders.

** "Hypsilophodonts" are described as being extremely successful at the end of the Cretaceous. However, so far the only non-iguanodont ornithopods known from this period are the North American thescelosaurids and orodromines and the South American ''Gasparinisaura'', so the "success" of the group is debatable as they were entirely absent from the Old World by then (in Europe they seemed to be replaced by rhabdodontid iguanodonts).

** A large number of modern dinosaurs are said to be descended from "coelurosaurs" or "hypsilophodonts", but as far as it is known, generic primitive coelurosaurs didn't exist in the Late Cretaceous (with the possible exception of the strange South American ''Bicentenaria''), and, from the 2000s onward, Hypsilophodontidae is now generally considered paraphyletic. This is similar to Dixon's use of "insectivores" in ''Literature/AfterMan''.

** "Hypsilophodonts" are described as being extremely successful at the end of the Cretaceous. However, so far the only non-iguanodont ornithopods known from this period are the thescelosaurids (from North America), elasmarians (known from South America and Antarctica, although this group is often considered iguanodontian) and the South American ''Gasparinisaura'' (sometimes considered an elasmarian, but this is uncertain), so the "success" of the group is debatable as they were entirely absent from the Old World by then (in Europe they seemed to be replaced by rhabdodontid iguanodonts).

** Carnosaurs are described as having descended from "teratosaurs" in the introduction; this was the result of erroneously assigning dinosaur fossil fragments to a carnivorous Triassic archosaur known as ''Teratosaurus'', leading to the popular notion in 20th century dinosaur books, such as this one, that carnosaurs descended from teratosaurs. In the later 1980s, ''Teratosaurus'' was found to be more closely related to crocodilians than dinosaurs.

** "Hypsilophodonts" are described as being extremely successful at the end of Cretaceous. However, so far the only non-iguanodont ornithopods known from this period are the thescelosaurids (from North America) and elasmarians (known from South America and Antarctica), so the "success" of the group is debatable as they were entirely absent from the Old World by then (in Europe they seemed to be replaced by rhabdodontid iguanodonts).

** There's also the issue of [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0012.jpg Dixon's]] [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0014.jpg cladograms]] being rather out of date, even for their time (things like the coelurosaur-carnosaur dichotomy of theropod classification and pachycephalosaurs as ornithopods had been disproven by then, and some of the names of groups, such as "saurornithoids" and "segnosaurs" are now considered defunct).
*** Other errors include the inclusion of "fabrosaurs" at the base of the ornithischian tree (a group now considered obsolete), the ceratosaurs as a short-lived group that became extinct in the Jurassic (ceratosaurs are now known to include the abelisaurs, meaning they survived, and were very successful, up until the very end of the Cretaceous), therizinosaurs being considered carnosaurs (like tyrannosaurs, they are now considered giant coelurosaurs), heterodontosaurs dying out in the Triassic (they're now known to have survived into the Early Cretaceous), triconodonts and symmetrodonts dying out at the end of the Jurassic (both groups are now known to have survived until the end of the Cretaceous, on top of the traditional symmetrodont group being considered polyphyletic nowadays), placental mammals and marsupials diverging in the Cretaceous (newer fossil and genetic studies indicate they split during the Early to Mid Jurassic) and "camptosaurs" being a distinct branch (Camptosauridae still only contains one genus, ''Camptosaurus'', and is now considered a subgroup of iguanodonts).

** Also underneath the cladogram, tyrannosaurs are described as only having appeared in the Cretaceous and megalosaurs as being the most successful and long-lasting group of "carnosaurs". Tyrannosaurs dating from the Mid Jurassic are now known[[note]]Or technically, they were already known for long time, but only much more recently identified as primitive tyrannosaurs.[[/note]], while (rather ironically) megalosaurids are now the only group of giant predatory theropod (including spinosaurs, allosaurs, and tyrannosaurs) not known to have survived into the Cretaceous.

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age; in reality stegosaurs are now believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era, and the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaurs have been discredited.
** Similarly, several groups presented to have survived into the modern day (most egregiously the Jurassic ''Megalosaurus'', not just a megalosaur, but the genus itself) or in the cladograms as having survived into the Cenozoic, belong to lineages that didn't make it close to the end of the Cretaceous (pliosaurs, spinosaurids, diplodocids, camarasaurids, toothed pterosaurs, etc.).

** Many dinosaur tails have been reduced to rod-thin poles, which is often explained as that the animal no longer needs it as a counterbalance, so it became reduced. However, what it ''does not'' seem to touch upon is that the thick tail base of dinosaurs contains many important muscles attached to the thigh, important for locomotion (even birds, which have highly reduced tails, kept the condensed butt, which is used to assist manoeuvring in flight).
** The birdsnatcher is a species of long-necked plesiosaur which specializes in preying on birds and pterosaurs which it plucks out of the sky, but it is now thought that it would be physically impossible for plesiosaurs to raise their necks far out of the water, never mind fast enough to catch a bird in flight, which were also rather inflexible.

** Relating to this, the Gourmand is presented as an exclusive scavenger, which was part of a hypothesis at the time that carnosaurs (which, as stated above, included tyrannosaurs at the time) were simply growing bigger, slower, and bulkier. The Gourmand was presented as the ultimate culmination of this, a fifteen-ton, cumbersome, armoured scavenger. This idea has not been taken seriously for a long time now, for multiple reasons (aside from the aforementioned fact tyrannosaurs are not carnosaurs, it's since been concluded tyrannosaurs were certainly active hunters, they were actually built for speed, and the unlikelihood of such a huge and slow animal somehow subsisting entirely off of bodies lying around). This firmly dates the book's publication to the late 1980s or early 1990s, when the "Was ''T. rex'' a predator or a scavenger?" debate was a big deal in pop culture, and was inevitably brought up in discussions of the animal. For some reason, the megalosaur is also described as being exclusively carnivorous, as though it were impossible for any large theropod to be a hunter.

** On many of the entries, it's stated how this species has changed very little from its Mesozoic ancestor (such as the Numbskull, the Rajaphant, the Monocorn, the Coneater, and numerous others). This can probably be ascribed due to the fact that dinosaur evolutionary trends back in the 1980s were poorly understood (as seen with numerous more specific examples already noted here) with many traits in different species wrongly interpreted as homologous, giving the false perception that lineages remained similar for long periods (resulting in now obsolete "traditional" groupings such as carnosaurs, hypsilophodonts, iguanodonts, and prosauropods) so the book went for a very conservative view of their future development.
** Many dinosaurs and pterosaurs are depicted as nearly one-to-one {{Fantastic Fauna Counterpart}}s of modern birds and mammals, but many later studies indicate that they were very different ecologically. In particular, it's now known many non-avian dinosaur and pterosaur species occupied different niches as they aged, changing their diet and habitat as they grew up. Hence why most pterosaur and dinosaur species were enormous by the end of the Cretaceous and there were very few small ones: there's not much need for small or medium-sized species if the huge species could occupy those niches as juveniles and adolescents. However, here, most modern dinosaur species are relatively small, and many giant prehistoric species evolved into smaller forms seemingly for no other reason than to make them more similar to real life modern animals.

** In the Bricket entry, it's stated that crested hadrosaurs (lambeosaurines) never managed to reach Asia during the Cretaceous, and only managed to get there during the recent ice ages. Not that there weren't already lambeosaurines known from Asia already (such as ''Tsintaosaurus''), but numerous discoveries later on have found a great diversity of lambeosaurines present in Asia at the end of the Late Cretaceous, and ironically, no conclusive evidence of them in North America.

** Long-necked, long-legged running pterosaurs like the Lank became reality once better remains of azhdarchids were discovered. They were, however, still carnivores as opposed to the herbivorous Lank, as pterosaurs lacked any means of grinding vegetation and likely had simple digestive tracts, with all known pterosaurs being carnivorous (the tapejarids being the only possible exception.)

** Also underneath the cladogram, tyrannosaurs are described as only having appeared in the Cretaceous and megalosaurs as being the most successful and long-lasting group of "carnosaurs". Tyrannosaurs dating from the Mid Jurassic are now known[[note]]Or technically, were already known for long time, but only much more recently identified as primitive tyrannosaurs.[[/note]], while (rather ironically) megalosaurids are now the only group of giant predatory theropod (including spinosaurs, allosaurs, and tyrannosaurs) not known to have survived into the Cretaceous.

** The birdsnatcher is a species of long-necked plesiosaur which specializes in preying on birds and pterosaurs which it plucks out of the sky, but it is now thought that it would be physically impossible for plesiosaurs to raise their necks, which were also rather inflexible.

** Relating to this, the Gourmand is presented as an exclusive scavenger, which was part of a hypothesis at the time that carnosaurs (which, as stated above, included tyrannosaurs at the time) were simply growing bigger, slower, and bulkier. The Gourmand was presented as the ultimate culmination of this, a fifteen-ton, cumbersome, armoured scavenger. This idea has not been taken seriously for a long time now, for multiple reasons (aside from the aforementioned fact tyrannosaurs are not carnosaurs, it's since been concluded tyrannosaurs were certainly active hunters, they were actually built for speed, and the unlikelihood of such a huge and slow animal somehow subsisting entirely off of bodies lying around). This firmly dates the book's publication to the late 1980s or early 1990s, when the "Was ''T. rex'' a predator or a scavenger?" debate was a big deal in pop culture, and was inevitably brought up in discussions of the animal.
** In the Neotropical section, it's noted how hadrosaurs never reached South America, allowing sauropods to continue dominating. It has since become known that hadrosaurs had already dispersed into South America before the end of the Cretaceous (never mind that sauropod and hadrosaur coexistence was already known from several other continents), in genera such as ''Secernosaurus'' and ''Bonapartesaurus''.

** The digit anatomy of many of the dinosaurs is inaccurate in most cases, with too many fingers or claws. This is especially egregious with the titanosaurs, which have standard elephant-like feet when they shouldn't even have digits on their front feet at all!

** A few times it's suggested that dinosaurs lack the intelligence had by mammals in our timeline; in the afterword, Dixon suggests that if intelligence were to develop among dinosaurs, it would only be savage cunning, rather than any sophisticated learning capabilities. Overall, the book's narrative is presented during the awkward period of pop culture palaeontology where the image of tail-dragging, PrehistoricMonster DumbDinos still persisted, and that of agile, warm-blooded animals presented by the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_renaissance dinosaur renaissance]] were only just starting to replace it (it would be another five years before ''Film/JurassicPark'' hit theatres).

** Many dinosaurs and pterosaurs are depicted as nearly one-to-one {{Fantastic Fauna Counterpart}}s of modern birds and mammals, but many later studies indicate that they were very different ecologically. In particular, it's now known many non-avian dinosaur and pterosaur species occupied different niches as they aged, changing their diet and habitat as they grew up. Hence why most pterosaur and dinosaur species were enormous by the end of the Cretaceous and there were very few small ones: there's not much need for small or medium-sized species if the huge species could occupy those niches as juveniles and adolescents. However, here, most modern dinosaur species are relatively small, and many giant prehistoric species evolved into smaller forms.