Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 8 (click to see context) from:
* Prehistoric animals being shown as [[BiggerIsBetter much larger than they really were]].
to:
* Prehistoric animals being shown as [[BiggerIsBetter much larger than they really were]]. There's also forgetting that not all dinosaurs and prehistoric animals are big.
Deleted line(s) 35 (click to see context) :
* Forgetting that not all dinosaurs are big.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Forgetting that not all dinosaurs are big.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Deleted line(s) 198 (click to see context) :
* Small ornithischians having scaly skin. Thanks to ''Tianyulong'' and ''Kulindadromeus''
Added DiffLines:
* Rhamphorhynchids with bendy tails. They actually had stiffened tails to act as rudders when flying.
* Skim-feeding pterosaurs is unlikely, as no pterosaur jaw is built for skimming plus the high energy costs from dragging too much.
* Skim-feeding pterosaurs is unlikely, as no pterosaur jaw is built for skimming plus the high energy costs from dragging too much.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Small ornithischians having scaly skin. Thanks to ''Tianyulong'' and ''Kulindadromeus''
Added DiffLines:
* ''Quetzalcoatlus'' with a crestless head and blunt bill, rather than crested head and pointed bill we now it had.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 76 (click to see context) from:
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or completely smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the underside of the body had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (feathers, if present, would have been restricted to the dorsal region) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
to:
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or completely smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the underside of the body underside, tail, and legs had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (feathers, if present, would have been restricted to the dorsal region) head, neck, and back) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 76 (click to see context) from:
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the majority of the body had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (small amounts of very sparse feathers, however, are not out of the question.) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
to:
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or completely smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the majority underside of the body had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (small amounts of very sparse feathers, however, are not out of (feathers, if present, would have been restricted to the question.) dorsal region) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 64 (click to see context) from:
[[folder:''T. rex'' and other tyrannosaurs]]
to:
[[folder:''T. rex'' and other tyrannosaurs]]Tyrannosaurs]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Mosasaurs depicted without [[http://oceansofkansas.com/SDSMT/sd452-3.jpg palatal teeth]] (a second smaller set of teeth on their top jaw behind the normal set, so that they would have had three sets in total). It's also very likely that the teeth wouldn't have been visible when the mouth was closed, similar to modern snakes and lizards.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Changed line(s) 124 (click to see context) from:
* ''Hesperornis'' being portrayed walking upright like a penguin. Actually, ''Hesperornis'''s legs were too weak to support its body on land, therefore it moved on its belly like modern loons. Also, ''Hesperornis'' would have had lobed feet rather than webbed feet like in some depictions.
to:
* ''Hesperornis'' being portrayed walking upright like a penguin. Actually, ''Hesperornis'''s legs were too weak to support its body on land, therefore it moved on its belly like modern loons. Also, ''Hesperornis'' would have had lobed feet rather than webbed feet like in some depictions.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Deleted line(s) 62 (click to see context) :
* Primitive birds like ''Archaeopteryx'' and many species of enanthiornithines possessing toothy beaks or worse-toothless beaks. In real life, they had toothy snouts similar to other paravians like dromaeosaurs and troodontids. Having both a beak and teeth would be impossible and even in the case of birds that possess both at the same time (e.g. ''Hesperornis''), they don't occupy the same space.
Added DiffLines:
* Primitive birds like ''Archaeopteryx'' and many species of enanthiornithines possessing toothy beaks or worse-toothless beaks. In real life, they had toothy snouts similar to other paravians like dromaeosaurs and troodontids. Having both a beak and teeth would be impossible and even in the case of birds that possess both at the same time (e.g. ''Hesperornis''), they don't occupy the same space.
* ''Hesperornis'' being portrayed walking upright like a penguin. Actually, ''Hesperornis'''s legs were too weak to support its body on land, therefore it moved on its belly like modern loons. Also, ''Hesperornis'' would have had lobed feet rather than webbed feet like in some depictions.
* ''Hesperornis'' being portrayed walking upright like a penguin. Actually, ''Hesperornis'''s legs were too weak to support its body on land, therefore it moved on its belly like modern loons. Also, ''Hesperornis'' would have had lobed feet rather than webbed feet like in some depictions.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 9,10 (click to see context) from:
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]] This type of thinking probably comes from the idea that "prehistory" as just one single, vague time period, not considering that the scale of the geological timescale is unfathomably vast.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation (for example, think of how many depictions of ''Deinonychus'' hunting ''Tenontosaurus'' you may have seen). That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation (for example, think of how many depictions of ''Deinonychus'' hunting ''Tenontosaurus'' you may have seen). That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
to:
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]] This type of thinking probably comes from the idea that "prehistory" as is just one single, vague time period, not considering that the scale of the geological timescale is unfathomably vast.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation (for example, think of how many depictions of ''Deinonychus'' hunting ''Tenontosaurus'' you may have seen). That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not onlyplague plagued the public perception but even the Paleontology paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation (for example, think of how many depictions of ''Deinonychus'' hunting ''Tenontosaurus'' you may have seen). That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 9,10 (click to see context) from:
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]]
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation. That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation. That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
to:
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]]
years[[/note]] This type of thinking probably comes from the idea that "prehistory" as just one single, vague time period, not considering that the scale of the geological timescale is unfathomably vast.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it wasspeculation.speculation (for example, think of how many depictions of ''Deinonychus'' hunting ''Tenontosaurus'' you may have seen). That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was
Changed line(s) 21 (click to see context) from:
** Additionally, such animals used as potential explanations for cryptids hinge on the notion that the animal in question has never changed due to evolution for thousands or millions of years. While it isn't impossible for an animal to remain relatively unchanged over tens, or even hundreds of millions of years, it's relatively rare. This would be especially true when said cryptid is reported in an environment that is radically different than the environment it is said to have evolved in. For instance, while the giant ground sloth ''Megatherium'' lived in grasslands and open plains, the Mapinguari of Brazilian folkore, whom some Cryptozoologists theorize is a ''Megatherum'' is said to exist in swamps and rainforests. Such a creature would have to radically alter its feeding habits and behavior to the point where it would probably look only tangentially familiar to a ''Megatherium''. And that's still a less radical change than the notion that a megalodon could go from open ocean hunter to a deep-sea fish and remain unchanged.
to:
** Additionally, such animals used as potential explanations for cryptids hinge on the notion that the animal in question has never changed due to evolution for thousands or millions of years. While it isn't impossible for an animal to remain relatively unchanged over tens, or even hundreds of millions of years, it's relatively rare. This would be especially true when said cryptid is reported in an environment that is radically different than the environment it is said to have evolved in. For instance, while the giant ground sloth ''Megatherium'' lived in grasslands and open plains, the Mapinguari of Brazilian folkore, whom some Cryptozoologists theorize is a ''Megatherum'' ''Megatherium'' is said to exist in swamps and rainforests. Such a creature would have to radically alter its feeding habits and behavior to the point where it would probably look only tangentially familiar to a ''Megatherium''. And that's still a less radical change than the notion that a megalodon could go from open ocean hunter to a deep-sea fish and remain unchanged.
Changed line(s) 38 (click to see context) from:
* Dinosaurs having the wrong postures. Most notable examples are long-limbed bipeds like ''Tyrannosaurus'' walking in a tripodal stance with an upwards-slanting spine and quadrupeds like ''Triceratops'' having sprawled limbs like lizards. Dinosaurs couldn't walk with a sprawled posture; their weight mandated that they walk with their legs straight under them, because no muscle could support it sprawled. Bipedal dinosaurs with long limbs and tails held their spines parallel to the ground; if they walked in a tripodal stance, they would suffer strain or even dislocation in their joints.
to:
* Dinosaurs having the wrong postures. Most notable examples are long-limbed bipeds like ''Tyrannosaurus'' walking in a tripodal stance with an upwards-slanting spine and quadrupeds like ''Triceratops'' having sprawled limbs like lizards. Dinosaurs couldn't walk with a sprawled posture; their weight mandated that they walk with their legs straight under them, because no muscle could support it sprawled. Bipedal dinosaurs with long limbs and tails held their spines parallel to the ground; if they walked in a tripodal stance, they would suffer strain or even dislocation in their joints. The tripodal posture thinking likely stemmed from observations of the only large bipeds with long tails that still exist, macropods (kangaroos, wallabies etc.), something that also led to the idea some "hypsilopodonts" were tree-dwelling animals.
Changed line(s) 62 (click to see context) from:
* Primitive birds like ''Archaeopteryx'' and many species of enanthiornithines possesing toothy beaks or worse-toothless beaks. In real life, they had toothy snouts similar to other paravians like dromaeosaurs and troodontids. Having both a beak and teeth would be imposssible and even in the case of birds that possess both at the same time (e.g. ''Hesperornis''), they don't occupy the same space.
to:
* Primitive birds like ''Archaeopteryx'' and many species of enanthiornithines possesing possessing toothy beaks or worse-toothless beaks. In real life, they had toothy snouts similar to other paravians like dromaeosaurs and troodontids. Having both a beak and teeth would be imposssible impossible and even in the case of birds that possess both at the same time (e.g. ''Hesperornis''), they don't occupy the same space.
Changed line(s) 68 (click to see context) from:
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' making a loud thud when it walked, when its feet most likely had fatty pads to silence it's tread and make it inconspicuous to it's intended quarry.
to:
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' making a loud thud when it walked, when its feet most likely had fatty pads to silence it's its tread and make it inconspicuous to it's its intended quarry.quarry, since [[FridgeLogic it'd be hard to sneak up on prey when one shakes the earth as they walk]].
Changed line(s) 71 (click to see context) from:
* ''T. rex'' hunting fully-grown giant sauropods. Although sauropods did exist in North America during ''T. rex'''s period, none have been found in the bonebeds that bear ''Tyrannosaurus'' fossils. Most of its prey, as confirmed in the fossil record, is comprised of hadrosaurs like ''Edmontosaurus'' and ceratopsians like ''Triceratops''. Theropods with crushing jaws and puncturing teeth (like ''T. rex'') are more specialized in hunting armored prey.
to:
* ''T. rex'' hunting fully-grown giant sauropods. Although sauropods did exist in North America during ''T. rex'''s period, none have been found in the bonebeds that bear ''Tyrannosaurus'' fossils.fossils (although some tyrannosaur teeth that may or may not belong to ''T. rex'' are known from the same formations). Most of its prey, as confirmed in the fossil record, is comprised of hadrosaurs like ''Edmontosaurus'' and ceratopsians like ''Triceratops''. Theropods with crushing jaws and puncturing teeth (like ''T. rex'') are more specialized in hunting armored prey.
Changed line(s) 73 (click to see context) from:
* Tyrannosaurs (and occasionally other saurischians) with short, box-shaped heads that have a squared-off snout. This is generally very prevalent in animation and illustration, and is good sign that they didn't care, as no known dinosaur had any head that even looked close to this.
to:
* Tyrannosaurs (and occasionally other saurischians) with short, box-shaped heads that have a squared-off snout. This is generally very prevalent in animation and illustration, and is good sign that they didn't care, nobody involved bothered to do any research at all, as no known dinosaur had any head that even looked close to this.
Changed line(s) 96 (click to see context) from:
* Also, any spinosaurid that is depicted as an entirely terrestrial predator. All evidence of spinosaurid meals found consists of fish, a young planteating dinosaur (''Iguanodon''), and a fish-eating pterosaur (either caught while fishing or scavenged on the shore). As a rule, any theropod with non-serrated teeth is not a sauropod killer, because sauropods require a very specific hunting method. While it is still very likely they could have ambushed other dinosaurs by attacking like a crocodile, killers of sauropods and armored dinosaurs, they were not.
to:
* Also, any spinosaurid that is depicted as an entirely terrestrial predator. All evidence of spinosaurid meals found consists of fish, a young planteating plant-eating dinosaur (''Iguanodon''), and a fish-eating pterosaur (either caught while fishing or scavenged on the shore). As a rule, any theropod with non-serrated teeth is not a sauropod killer, because sauropods require a very specific hunting method. While it is still very likely they could have ambushed other dinosaurs by attacking like a crocodile, killers of sauropods and armored dinosaurs, they were not.
* Depictions of ''Stegosaurus'' with the thagomizer spikes facing upward, while they more likely faced horizontally, a position that would have made them far easier to use as an offensive weapon.
Changed line(s) 183 (click to see context) from:
* No, hadrosaurs were not aquatic animals. They are especially hit with this misconception because certain hadrosaurs resemble ducks (hence their nickname "duckbilled dinosaurs") and a ''very'' erroneous misconception that land plants were too tough for them to eat. They were land animals like modern day cows or bison.
to:
* No, hadrosaurs were not aquatic animals. They are especially hit with this misconception because certain hadrosaurs resemble ducks (hence their nickname "duckbilled dinosaurs") and a ''very'' erroneous misconception that land plants were too tough for them to eat. They were land animals like modern day cows or bison.bison and they had thousands of specialized grinding teeth making up tightly-packed dental batteries that were continuously replaced, arguably one of the most sophisticated chewing mechanisms of any known animals.
Added DiffLines:
* Hadrosaurs being portrayed with a literal duckbill. In actuality, this was only the shape of the hard bone, and there was a curved beak made of keratin that covered up the broad duckbill-shape so that it actually looked like [[https://static.scientificamerican.com/blogs/assets/Image/duckbills-no-more-LA-Edmontosaurus-with-rhamphotheca-montage-600-px-tiny-April-2018-Darren-Naish-Tetrapod-Zoology.jpg this]].
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 297,298 (click to see context) from:
* Speaking of ''Arthropleura'', thanks to RuleOfScary they are sometimes shown as being centipede like in shape even though they more resembled millipedes.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) order. Classification can be weird sometimes.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) order. Classification can be weird sometimes.
to:
* Speaking of ''Arthropleura'', thanks to RuleOfScary they are sometimes shown as being centipede like in shape even though they more resembled millipedes.
were a type of gigantic millipede.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion)order.order, which are actually more closely related to horseshoe crabs (which aren't a type of crab either). Classification can be weird sometimes.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion)
Added DiffLines:
* Often, ammonites will be depicted with dull, brownish-grey shells, as if they were wearing their actual rock fossils. Of course, nautiloids and marine gastropods also have dull, brownish-grey fossil shells, but we know from living species that their shells are often very colourful and vibrantly patterned. Most ammonites probably also had very colourful and vibrantly patterned shells, but they just don't preserve in the fossils.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 29 (click to see context) from:
* A very common element of LostWorld settings featuring prehistoric life seems to presume that just because the fauna has been "forgotten by time" that it means they will literally not change at all for millions of years (a very common example is living dinosaurs in [[StockDinosaurs immediately recognizable genera]] like ''Stegosaurus'' or ''Tyrannosaurus''). Obviously in reality, just because a life-form inhabits an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world doesn't mean it'll stop evolving. It's extremely rare for a species to remain completely unchanged for tens of millions of years (even many so-called "living fossils" are actually recently evolved species that happen to belong to very old 'lineages''), particularly for large terrestrial animals like dinosaurs, which may evolve into another species within a few hundred-thousand years in some cases.
to:
* A very common element of LostWorld settings featuring prehistoric life seems to presume that just because the fauna has been "forgotten by time" that it means they will literally not change at all for millions of years (a very common example is living dinosaurs in [[StockDinosaurs immediately recognizable genera]] like ''Stegosaurus'' or ''Tyrannosaurus''). Obviously in reality, just because a life-form inhabits an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world doesn't mean it'll stop evolving. It's extremely rare for a species to remain completely unchanged for tens of millions of years (even many so-called "living fossils" are actually recently evolved species that happen to belong to very old 'lineages''), ''lineages''), particularly for large terrestrial animals like dinosaurs, which may evolve into another species within a few hundred-thousand years in some cases.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 29 (click to see context) from:
* A very common element of LostWorld settings featuring prehistoric life seems to presume that just because the fauna has been "forgotten by time" that it means they will literally not change at all for millions of years (a very common example is living dinosaurs in immediately recognizable genera like ''Stegosaurus'' or ''Tyrannosaurus''). Obviously in reality, just because a life-form inhabits an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world doesn't mean it'll stop evolving. It's extremely rare for a species to remain completely unchanged for tens of millions of years, particularly for large terrestrial animals like dinosaurs, which may be replaced by another species within a few hundred-thousand years in some cases.
to:
* A very common element of LostWorld settings featuring prehistoric life seems to presume that just because the fauna has been "forgotten by time" that it means they will literally not change at all for millions of years (a very common example is living dinosaurs in [[StockDinosaurs immediately recognizable genera genera]] like ''Stegosaurus'' or ''Tyrannosaurus''). Obviously in reality, just because a life-form inhabits an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world doesn't mean it'll stop evolving. It's extremely rare for a species to remain completely unchanged for tens of millions of years, years (even many so-called "living fossils" are actually recently evolved species that happen to belong to very old 'lineages''), particularly for large terrestrial animals like dinosaurs, which may be replaced by evolve into another species within a few hundred-thousand years in some cases.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* A very common element of LostWorld settings featuring prehistoric life seems to presume that just because the fauna has been "forgotten by time" that it means they will literally not change at all for millions of years (a very common example is living dinosaurs in immediately recognizable genera like ''Stegosaurus'' or ''Tyrannosaurus''). Obviously in reality, just because a life-form inhabits an environment that is isolated from the rest of the world doesn't mean it'll stop evolving. It's extremely rare for a species to remain completely unchanged for tens of millions of years, particularly for large terrestrial animals like dinosaurs, which may be replaced by another species within a few hundred-thousand years in some cases.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Giving ''Spinosaurus'' an alligator-like overbite. Much like crocodiles, spinosaurs had teeth that interlock with each other, and they also had a notch in the toothrow used for trapping fish.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 64 (click to see context) from:
[[folder:''T. rex'']]
to:
[[folder:''T. rex'']]rex'' and other tyrannosaurs]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 192 (click to see context) from:
* Similarly to ceratopsians, packycephalosaurs didn't look the same throughout their entire lives. Hatchlings had flat, if somewhat knobby heads, growing domes as they aged. Also like the ''Triceratops-Torosaurus'' debate, it's debatable if ''Dracorex'' and ''Stygimoloch'' weren't the growth stages of ''Packycephalosaurus''.
to:
* Similarly to ceratopsians, packycephalosaurs pachycephalosaurs didn't look the same throughout their entire lives. Hatchlings had flat, if somewhat knobby heads, growing domes as they aged. Also like the ''Triceratops-Torosaurus'' ''Triceratops''-''Torosaurus'' debate, it's debatable if ''Dracorex'' and ''Stygimoloch'' weren't the growth stages of ''Packycephalosaurus''.''Pachycephalosaurus''.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 80,83 (click to see context) from:
* The oft-stated myth that chickens are the closest living relative of ''T. rex''. Really, ''Tyrannosaurus'' isn't any more closely related to chickens than to any other modern bird species.
** Even worse, that T. rex evolved ''into chickens''. The group that includes the modern chicken and other fowl (the Galloanseres) were already around at the time, long since diverged from the tyrannosaur line. It should also be noted that, however many feathers a ''T. rex'' may or may not have had, it really wouldn't look at all like a chicken or any other bird.
* ''Albertosaurus'' looking like a down-sized adult ''T. rex'', when it was more lightly-built and built for speed.
** Even in the case of ''T. rex'' itself, the juveniles and subadults having the same leg proportions and heavily-built body as the adults is inacurrate. Like ''Albertosaurus'', they should be more lightly built and likely occupied different niches than the fully-grown adults.
** Even worse, that T. rex evolved ''into chickens''. The group that includes the modern chicken and other fowl (the Galloanseres) were already around at the time, long since diverged from the tyrannosaur line. It should also be noted that, however many feathers a ''T. rex'' may or may not have had, it really wouldn't look at all like a chicken or any other bird.
* ''Albertosaurus'' looking like a down-sized adult ''T. rex'', when it was more lightly-built and built for speed.
** Even in the case of ''T. rex'' itself, the juveniles and subadults having the same leg proportions and heavily-built body as the adults is inacurrate. Like ''Albertosaurus'', they should be more lightly built and likely occupied different niches than the fully-grown adults.
to:
* The oft-stated myth that chickens are the closest living relative of ''T. rex''. Really, ''Tyrannosaurus'' isn't any more closely related to chickens than to any other modern bird species. \n** Even worse, that T. rex tyrannosaurs evolved ''into chickens''. The group that includes the modern chicken and other fowl (the Galloanseres) were already around at the time, long since diverged from the tyrannosaur line. It should also be noted that, however many feathers a ''T. rex'' may or may not have had, it really wouldn't look at all like a chicken or any other bird.
* ''Albertosaurus'' looking like a down-sized adult ''T. rex'', when it was more lightly-built and built forspeed.
**speed. Even in the case of ''T. rex'' itself, the juveniles and subadults having the same leg proportions and heavily-built body as the adults is inacurrate. Like ''Albertosaurus'', they should be more lightly built and likely occupied different niches than the fully-grown adults.
* ''Albertosaurus'' looking like a down-sized adult ''T. rex'', when it was more lightly-built and built for
**
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* ''Albertosaurus'' looking like a down-sized adult ''T. rex'', when it was more lightly-built and built for speed.
** Even in the case of ''T. rex'' itself, the juveniles and subadults having the same leg proportions and heavily-built body as the adults is inacurrate. Like ''Albertosaurus'', they should be more lightly built and likely occupied different niches than the fully-grown adults.
** Even in the case of ''T. rex'' itself, the juveniles and subadults having the same leg proportions and heavily-built body as the adults is inacurrate. Like ''Albertosaurus'', they should be more lightly built and likely occupied different niches than the fully-grown adults.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* Primitive birds like ''Archaeopteryx'' and many species of enanthiornithines possesing toothy beaks or worse-toothless beaks. In real life, they had toothy snouts similar to other paravians like dromaeosaurs and troodontids. Having both a beak and teeth would be imposssible and even in the case of birds that possess both at the same time (e.g. ''Hesperornis''), they don't occupy the same space.
Added DiffLines:
* ''Lambeosaurus'' being described as 15m long and the largest hadrosaur. What was once thought to have been a species of ''Lambeosaurus'' had been renamed to ''Magnapaulia'', which is now thought to have been 12m long rather than 15. The two valid species of the former, ''L. lambei'' and ''L. magnucristatus'' are "only" 9-10m long, the same size as most hadrosaur.
Added DiffLines:
* Similarly to ceratopsians, packycephalosaurs didn't look the same throughout their entire lives. Hatchlings had flat, if somewhat knobby heads, growing domes as they aged. Also like the ''Triceratops-Torosaurus'' debate, it's debatable if ''Dracorex'' and ''Stygimoloch'' weren't the growth stages of ''Packycephalosaurus''.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* ''Amargasaurus'' has been traditionally portrayed with two parallel sails, due to its distinctive neck spines resembling those of sail-backed pelycosaurs such as ''Dimetrodon''. This hypothesis is no longer considered likely, since the spines are rounded rather than flattened, there was little space between them, and possessing sails would limit neck movement. Instead ''Amargasaurus'''s spines would have been solitary structures sheathed in keratin, making them effective for display and combat.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
* In a similar case with mosasaurs above, it's becoming increasingly likely that plesiosaurs had tail fins due to the way their caudal neural spines are shaped, in contrast with the tapering tails they are commonly portrayed with.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 205 (click to see context) from:
* Mosasaurs with dorsal fringes and no tail flukes.
to:
* Mosasaurs with dorsal fringes and no or crocodilian armor. The dorsal fringes were due to misidentification of tracheal cartilages preserved on mosasaur fossils. Mosasaurs actually had streamlined bodies, with small overlapping scales similar to on a snake. Also, a well-preserved specimen of ''Platecarpus'' revealed that advanced mosasaurs had tail flukes.flukes, and therefore swam in a shark-like manner rather than eel-like as traditionally portrayed.
* Mosasaurs without forked tongues. Mosasaurs had paired fenestrae in their palates similar to a monitor lizard, which strongly suggest the presence of a forked tongue.
* Mosasaurs without forked tongues. Mosasaurs had paired fenestrae in their palates similar to a monitor lizard, which strongly suggest the presence of a forked tongue.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Ornithomimosaur wings are up for debate (Foth et al. 2014).
Changed line(s) 116 (click to see context) from:
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. We know ornithomimosaurs were covered in feathers due to many specimens being preserved with them or signs that they had them. ''Ornithomimus'' in particular was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
to:
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. We know ornithomimosaurs were covered in feathers due to many specimens being preserved with them or signs that they had them. ''Ornithomimus'' in particular was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 116 (click to see context) from:
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. Several specimens showed evidence of plumage; ''Ornithomimus'' was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
to:
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. Several We know ornithomimosaurs were covered in feathers due to many specimens showed evidence of plumage; being preserved with them or signs that they had them. ''Ornithomimus'' in particular was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
Added DiffLines:
[[folder:Ostrich-dinosaurs (Ornithomimosaurs)]]
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. Several specimens showed evidence of plumage; ''Ornithomimus'' was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
* Ornithomimids with teeth. Early ornithomimosaurs such as ''Pelecanimimus'' possessed teeth, but they were absent in advanced ones.
[[/folder]]
* Featherless ornithomimosaurs. Several specimens showed evidence of plumage; ''Ornithomimus'' was known to have ostrich-like feathering, including wings.
* Ornithomimids with teeth. Early ornithomimosaurs such as ''Pelecanimimus'' possessed teeth, but they were absent in advanced ones.
[[/folder]]
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 6 (click to see context) from:
* ''Every'' 1950s monster film with a PrehistoricMonster. Partly due to ScienceMarchesOn, but other times because laziness (especially when a {{Slurpasaur}} is involved).
to:
* ''Every'' 1950s monster film with a PrehistoricMonster. Partly due to ScienceMarchesOn, but other times also because of laziness (especially when a {{Slurpasaur}} is involved).
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
!!Common Inaccuracies In Media
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Paleontology in General]]
* ''Every'' 1950s monster film with a PrehistoricMonster. Partly due to ScienceMarchesOn, but other times because laziness (especially when a {{Slurpasaur}} is involved).
* On that note, any work claiming that prehistoric reptiles like dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles were all "giant lizards". Out of all Mesozoic megafauna, only mosasaurs, the Late Cretaceous lizard ''Palaeosaniwa'' and snakes like ''Sanajeh'' (snakes are technically lizards) fit that description; dinosaurs and pterosaurs were as far from being lizards as it was possible to be while still remaining saurian reptiles; in fact lizards (including snakes) are ''further away'' on the evolutionary line from dinosaurs than birds (and crocodylians) are. The relationships of marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs to other reptiles are less certain but they were certainly ''not'' lizards.[[note]]It's worth noting that this tends to be due to a taxonomic term mix-up; put simply, despite the ubiquity of the Greek word ''sauros'', "lizard" and "reptile" are NOT synonyms.[[/note]]
* Prehistoric animals being shown as [[BiggerIsBetter much larger than they really were]].
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]]
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation. That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* The act of "shrinkwrapping"; more prevalent in late 1980s-mid 2000s paleoart, shrinkwrapping is basically when artists draw dinosaurs with thin skin that the bones continue to show through, as if their skin has been draped over their bones and there's nothing in between. For comparison, almost no animal in the modern day, including birds and crocodilians (the animals most closely related to dinosaurs) looks like a walking anatomy diagram, so we can be pretty sure that dinosaurs and their neighbors definitely had much more meat on their bones than that. Lately, people have been avoiding this more often. To sum up just how WRONG shrinkwrapping would look, [[http://pre11.deviantart.net/58c0/th/pre/f/2014/095/2/d/shrink_wrapped_kitteh_by_zanizaila-d7d6kfe.jpg this ugly thing]] is what a domestic cat would look like if it was reconstructed with only minor additions of skin and flesh on the skeleton, completely ignoring fur and soft tissues.
* Confusing paleontology and archaeology. Paleontology studies remains of past life forms (and their activity). Archaeology studies past human cultures. It doesn't help that ''paleo'' and ''archaeo'' both mean "ancient".
* It’s a common held belief that the discovery of ''Megalosaurus'' and ''Iguanodon'' was the first documented fossil finds; the truth is they weren’t. ''Mosasaurus'', ''Megatherium'', ''Pterodactylus'', ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were all found before them as far back as 50 years. It isn’t any less significant considering they were the first dinosaur finds and arguably where paleontology really took off [[note]]The term "paleontology" was even coined around the time of their discovery[[/note]]; they were just not the first fossil discoveries.
* Complete fossils are not found most of the time; occasionally we find really well preserved skeletons, which is more common for smaller animals, but for bigger animals most of the time it’s just bits and pieces. This is the [[ScienceMarchesOn reason older prehistoric animal reconstructions]] look drastically different from today. They only had so much to work on back then compared to the massive amounts of fossils we have today.
* The fossils at museums are not always the original specimens; sometimes they are, but even then models are often used to fill in the blanks (see above). Most of the time it’s reconstructions of the bones rather than the bones themselves. This has to do with how fragile a lot of the fossils are.
* Any time a fossil find is called a "prehistoric crime scene". Yes, paleontology and forensics have a few superficial similarities, but, leaving aside the fact that predators, by definition, do not commit murder, paleoecology is not just about "who killed whom". A fossilised animal may have died from any number of causes, from disease, drowning or even old age, rather than predation, and the layout of a fossil site can reveal far more about a local environment than just the animals in it, from the plant life to the temperature to whether it was by a lake, river or sea.
* People often mess up classification of extinct animals; for example, calling all dinosaurs birds. To put this in perspective, this is like saying all mammals are apes. Birds are a subgroup of dinosaurs, not the other way around.
* Cryptozoology is prone to this
** Any time someone claims that any types of large animals actually survived and is out there. While it is true we have found some creatures that we thought went extinct but actually survived (most famously coelacanths), it is very unlikely we wouldn’t know about the really large ones like plesiosaurs, megalodon, ''Gigantopithecus'', and various other prehistoric animals.
** Thanks to ScienceMarchesOn a lot of accounts of these animals don’t add up in hindsight. For example the Loch Ness monster has plenty of eyewitnesses claiming that the animal got out of the water and walked on land. The problem is we now know plesiosaurs simply couldn’t do that. Another is Bigfoot which is sometimes theorized to be a ''Gigantopithecus'', even though ''Gigantopithecus'' most likely did not walk upright like Bigfoot.
** Additionally, such animals used as potential explanations for cryptids hinge on the notion that the animal in question has never changed due to evolution for thousands or millions of years. While it isn't impossible for an animal to remain relatively unchanged over tens, or even hundreds of millions of years, it's relatively rare. This would be especially true when said cryptid is reported in an environment that is radically different than the environment it is said to have evolved in. For instance, while the giant ground sloth ''Megatherium'' lived in grasslands and open plains, the Mapinguari of Brazilian folkore, whom some Cryptozoologists theorize is a ''Megatherum'' is said to exist in swamps and rainforests. Such a creature would have to radically alter its feeding habits and behavior to the point where it would probably look only tangentially familiar to a ''Megatherium''. And that's still a less radical change than the notion that a megalodon could go from open ocean hunter to a deep-sea fish and remain unchanged.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Evolution in General]]
* A lot of people think evolution equals improvement, that’s not entirely true. While evolution can improve an animal's survivability and success (just look at us humans) it can also lead to CripplingOverspecialization. One examples is the saber-tooth cats, They evolved their sharp teeth and strength to overpower and cut through animals hides. unfortunately this made them too slow to capture more agile prey once their main food source died out.
* Any time prehistoric animals are shown to be evolutionary dead ends that [[TooDumbToLive deserved to die out.]] A lot of this comes from earlier works in paleontology up until the Dinosaur Renaissance. Now that we know a lot more about evolution and the history of Earth this is seen as a shallow assumption especially comparing it to dinosaurs. If anything, dinosaurs are probably one of the most successful animal groups to ever live, dominating the earth for about 165 million years, only being replaced by mammals due to a random and sudden global catastrophe, and still existing today as birds.
* The idea that of evolution is simply [[TheSocialDarwinist strong survive and the weak die out.]] While stronger animals usually benefit in the short term, [[{{Irony}} in the long term a lot of those weaker animals last a lot longer,]] This is because being smaller they need less food to survive, are more adaptable and don’t suffer from CripplingOverspecialization. In fact when things start to get tough a lot of animals will get smaller over generations. When mass extinctions occur, it is invariably the "weakest" animals that survive. No animal above 25 kg in size survived the K-Pg extinction, for instance.
* Evolution isn't just about competition. Natural selection takes any strategy that works, and that includes cooperation. Everything from the mitochondria in our cells (which were originally bacteria-like organisms that infected our ancient, single-celled ancestor) to ants farming aphids to clownfish living in anemones is literally living proof of this. There's even a word for it: symbiosis, specifically mutualism (both benefit) and commensalism (one benefits, the other doesn't mind) which are the positive sides of symbiosis. Predation and parasitism would be the common antagonistic flavours.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Dinosaurs in General]]
* Anything being called a dinosaur that isn't: Pterosaurs such as ''Pterodactylus''; giant sea reptiles such as plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs; pre-dinosaur reptiles like ''Scutosaurus''; synapsids such as ''Dimetrodon'' (which were not, strictly speaking, even ''reptiles'', but proto-mammals); ''any'' modern reptiles (even closely related extinct giant species like ''Deinosuchus'' or ''Megalania''); fish or, Darwin forbid, mammals.
* Anything being called ''not'' a dinosaur that ''is'', such as ''Archaeopteryx'' or modern birds. Birds being regarded as different from dinosaurs is acceptable for 1980s/1990s works, but not today.
* Cold-blooded dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Particularly, dinosaurs are often depicted as being slow, sluggish and unable to function let alone survive in cold climates, when there's evidence that some genera thrived just perfectly in snowy environments (which are often said not to have existed in the Mesozoic era). Even the anatomy of dinosaurs and pterosaurs suggests dinosaurs led active, endothermic lifestyles.
* Dinosaurs dragging their tails along the ground. An old idea, essentially derived from "Well, crocodiles do it, so they must have". In fact, dinosaurs walked with their tails held rigid. This early misconception led to the academically approved vandalism of several dinosaur skeletons, to the point of even breaking the bones of some to make the tails drag as desired.
** Dinosaur tails are often shown to be extremely bendy as if they are made of rubber. In real life, dinosaurs had relatively stiff tails, and the bipedal ones even used them for balance. However, some studies have suggested stegosaurids have a higher tail dexterity than previously thought.
* Dinosaurs having the wrong postures. Most notable examples are long-limbed bipeds like ''Tyrannosaurus'' walking in a tripodal stance with an upwards-slanting spine and quadrupeds like ''Triceratops'' having sprawled limbs like lizards. Dinosaurs couldn't walk with a sprawled posture; their weight mandated that they walk with their legs straight under them, because no muscle could support it sprawled. Bipedal dinosaurs with long limbs and tails held their spines parallel to the ground; if they walked in a tripodal stance, they would suffer strain or even dislocation in their joints.
* Dinosaurs only colored grey, green or brown. Another ancient trope derived from the "they were just huge crocodiles" line of reasoning. Crocodilians are grey, green or brown because they are adapted as semi-aquatic ambush predators that depend on camouflage, but in fact, most reptiles today have a wide range of skin colorations and rely heavily on visual communication (having a wider spectrum of color vision than mammals). It is likely that at least some dinosaurs had vibrant colors and patterns. That is not to say no Mesozoic dinosaurs were comparatively drably colored, but brightly-colored representatives probably weren't rare.
** It was once thought the coloration of dinosaurs would be something that could never be truly known. A few years ago a method to figure it out was [[ScienceMarchesOn discovered at long last.]] What had been assumed to be just dirt or bacteria in fossils turned out to be preserved melanosomes, which could be compered to the melanosomes of living animals to figure out the color they would have been when the animal was alive. There now is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_coloration complete and highly accurate restorations of the colors and patterns of several dinosaur species]], an extinct penguin, and another bird (incompletely), with more currently being researched. Several of them have turned out to have vibrant colors.
* Dinosaur eggs will often be shown as gigantic, often over six feet tall. In reality larger eggs require thicker shells, but the shell has to stay air-permeable. This limits the size of porous calcium carbonate eggshell for dinosaurs and recently-extinct large birds to about 15 liters in volume and 35 centimeters in diameter -- not much bigger than a basketball. No larger eggs have ever been ever found. Eggs from less rigid materials were even smaller. Not to mention that a six-foot egg would also be implausible due to the SquareCubeLaw. Funnily enough, the largest dinosaur egg known was laid by a bird that went extinct less than a millennium ago: Madagascar's elephant bird (''Aepyornis maximus'').
* Dinosaurs and pterosaurs with an unnatural number of fingers, toes and/or claws. Archosaurs (the broader group in which dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodilians and their relatives belong) by default have four toes on the back feet, and five on the front feet, but only three of which have claws (as seen [[http://www.florida-everglades-airboating.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/3-575-5371251873_60db6873a0_o-gator-foot-Flickr-usr-Tim-Pearce.jpg here]]); therefore all dinosaurs can only have this amount or less (the other extreme is some advanced titanosaurs, which have no fingers, toes, or claws, their limbs end in fleshy stumps). The most common errors include giving ''Tyrannosaurus'' too many fingers, giving herbivores too many claws, and giving pterosaurs too many elongated fingers and too little wing claws (or too many wing claws in the case of nyctosaurids, which are known for ''lacking'' those).
* The belief that an ice age killed the dinosaurs. Not only were they dead for 60 million years before the start of the ice age, but the time immediately following the dinosaurs' extinction was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum actually substantially warmer.]]
* The popularity of the film ''Film/JurassicPark'' led to a pan-medial explosion in use of the term "Jurassic" to describe the dinosaurs' time period. Actually, the Jurassic Period only comprised the middle third of the dinosaurs' era (in between the earlier Triassic and later Cretaceous), which in its entirety is called the Mesozoic. This was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] frequently in Creator/MichaelCrichton's [[Literature/JurassicPark original novel]]; probably because he didn't want to seem scientifically illiterate but wasn't about to give up such a cool name.
* The Age of the Dinosaurs is often depicted as a dark, impenetrable jungle from end to end. In fact, the Mesozoic was a vast span of time encompassing a huge range of temperatures which, while all warmer than today, led to a plethora of different climates. The Early Triassic, thanks to Pangaea, was one huge desert, while the Late Cretaceous, the time of ''T. rex'', was surprisingly cold and may have seen snow in some areas. Many time periods in the Mesozoic, such as the Mid-Jurassic and Mid-Cretaceous, do fit the tropical stereotype, though many of the plants we associate with the tropics are flowering broadleafs and so didn't come to dominate the landscape until the age of the dinosaurs was nearly at an end.
* Dinosaurs constantly making noise such as roaring and shrieking. Needless to say [[NoisyNature real animals don't vocalize nearly as much]]. Evidence currently suggests that dinosaur vocalizations were potentially more like those of crocodilians than the complex vocalizations of many modern birds (which make them with a specialized organ known as a syrinx, so far unique to birds). Depictions of ''T. rex'' having a MightyRoar is more RuleOfCool than based on any evidence. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpipaUfcnmM Still, that doesn't mean the sounds it actually made wouldn't have freaked you out.]]
* It's increasingly likely that dinosaurs had lips that covered their teeth so when their mouth was closed the teeth would not be visible like in lizards or mammals as opposed to the exposed teeth of crocodiles (or [[http://img06.deviantart.net/4600/i/2016/161/5/2/lipped_tirex_by_malvit-da5p5yo.jpg this]] compared to [[http://img14.deviantart.net/84a0/i/2012/064/c/8/tyrannosaurus_rex_head_by_malvit-d4rrr0r.jpg this]]). By extension this is also probably true for ancient crocodile relatives that lived on land, with the modern lipless condition being a derived trait.
* It’s often said that we have no idea what killed all non-avian dinosaurs; the truth is we are pretty sure that the meteorite was the final nail in the coffin for them, though it was the climax to a lot of other events beforehand (See below).
* A lot of people think it was just the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs, but really it was just the end for a really bad day for them. The Cretaceous saw a dropoff in the number of dinosaurs, usually blamed on the changing climate and other factors. It’s often speculated if the meteor had hit at any of the time the dinosaurs would have been able to bounce back, but the mini-extinction they were enduring at the time meant that the meteorite was their final end (except the birds of course).
* It would be logical that dinosaurs might have shed their old skin as all reptiles (including birds, which are technically reptiles) do it, but expect this to be portrayed as molting large patches of skin in the same manner as snakes or lizards. In real life, dinosaurs would have shed individual scales like crocodiles, especially given that birds molt this way (feathers are modified scales after all, plus the scales on birds' feet and legs are shed as well).
** Technically speaking, the "scales" of dinosaurs (and, by extension, archosaurs in general) are not actual scales like on lizards and snakes but rather scutes.
* Dinosaurs do not perform autotomy with their tails and regenerate them like lizards, in contrast to how some works portray.
* Dinosaurs having pronated hands i.e. the palms of the hands facing backwards toward the body. In real life, dinosaur hands faced each other like a person about to clap. If they tried to pronate their hands, they would break their wrists as a result.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Theropods in General]]
* Whenever a theropod's skull is drawn without the antorbital fenestra, which is a common occurrence in animation and illustration. Also, the antorbital fenestra is often mistaken for the eye socket, which results in certain theropods like ''Tyrannosaurus'' being portrayed with a shorter snout than in real life.
* Not all theropods held their spines parallel to the ground. The reason for horizontal stances in theropods is due to the center of gravity being placed in their hips coupled with long hindlegs. Theropods with more upright stances such as therizinosaurs and penguins tend to be top-heavy with shorter hindlegs. Some paleontologists concluded that ''Spinosaurus'' had this sort of posture because of its short hindlegs.
* The popular depiction of theropods with their teeth sticking out of their jaws is actually, according to recent research, also inaccurate. The very fact that their teeth had enamel indicates theropods had reptile-esque lips covering the teeth; enamel needs to be kept moist to protect the teeth from rotting. The very function of lips is to protect enamel-coated teeth from rotting, so since dinosaurs had enamel-covered teeth...well, they certainly had lips. However, this claim has been challenged in 2017 by the discovery of a ''Daspletosaurus'' skull with detailed preservation of the jaw bones, which studies found to be more analogous to crocodilian jaws than lizard jaws. However, some paleontologists disagree with this, claiming that said preservation does not indicate lack of lips.
* Some people think all theropods were carnivores. Many were, but some (like therizinosaurs) actually ate plants, or at least had an omnivorous diet (like ornithomimosaurs). And of course today’s theropods, birds, include many herbivores, like ostriches, swans and turkeys.
* Improbable feathering in coelurosaurs. Some of the most common errors are giving too sparse a coat, wrong types of feathers, and giving them the wrong wing shape. In maniraptoriformes (the group that includes dromaeosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and birds, among others), the primary feathers (the outermost feathers on the wings) emerge from the second finger so that it and the third finger are covered, but it's ''very'' common to reconstruct them without primaries or with the primaries emerging from the wrist or third finger.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''T. rex'']]
Main Page: TyrannosaurusRex
* Any time ''TyrannosaurusRex'' is depicted with three functional fingers or more.
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' making a loud thud when it walked, when its feet most likely had fatty pads to silence it's tread and make it inconspicuous to it's intended quarry.
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' emitting a mammalian roar. Neither birds nor crocodilians can emit roars, so tyrannosaurs almost certainly couldn't roar either.[[note]] Although crocodilians (and therefore possibly some dinosaurs) can make a sound that would be reasonably described as a "roar", it doesn't sound anything like something a lion, tiger or bear would give off. So most roars featured in dinosaur media are right out.[[/note]]
* Any time ''T. rex'' is spelled "T-rex" or some variation thereof (even "T. Rex" is unacceptable). ''T. rex'' is an abbreviation for the scientific name ''Tyrannosaurus rex'', just like ''E. coli'' is an abbreviation for ''Escherichia coli'', so the hyphen is not applicable. Scientific names are given with genus capitalized and species not, and are traditionally italicized.
* ''T. rex'' hunting fully-grown giant sauropods. Although sauropods did exist in North America during ''T. rex'''s period, none have been found in the bonebeds that bear ''Tyrannosaurus'' fossils. Most of its prey, as confirmed in the fossil record, is comprised of hadrosaurs like ''Edmontosaurus'' and ceratopsians like ''Triceratops''. Theropods with crushing jaws and puncturing teeth (like ''T. rex'') are more specialized in hunting armored prey.
* Referring to ''T. rex'' as a carnosaur. Before the 1990s, "carnosaur" was a blanket term for any large, hulking theropod, like ''T. rex'', ''Allosaurus'' or ''Albertosaurus''. But today, thanks to fossil evidence, we now know that carnosaurs were a distinct group that centred around ''Allosaurus'' and its relatives (sometimes called allosauroids instead due to Carnosauria’s historical baggage), and that ''T. rex'' was in fact a freakishly large coelurosaur, a member of the same group that includes raptors, ornithomimosaurs, and birds.
* Tyrannosaurs (and occasionally other saurischians) with short, box-shaped heads that have a squared-off snout. This is generally very prevalent in animation and illustration, and is good sign that they didn't care, as no known dinosaur had any head that even looked close to this.
** Similarly, tyrannosaurs are often depicted with heads that are smoothed over on the top, lacking the keratinous crests or bosses they most likely had in real life.
* Tyrannosaur arms described as weak. Short, yes. Weak, no.
* Tyrannosaurs having shallow-rooted teeth. Unlike the teeth of other theropods, which have roots the same length as the crown, tyrannosaur teeth have roots that are twice the length of the crown. This enables tyrannosaurs to grip onto struggling prey and not have their tooth fall out all the time.
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the majority of the body had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (small amounts of very sparse feathers, however, are not out of the question.) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
** Some palaeontologists have suggested that [[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs-ancient-fossils-new-discoveries/liaoning-diorama/a-feathered-tyrant/ baby tyrannosaurs had feathers, but lost them as they grew into adults.]] However, since feathers are basically highly evolved scales, if that assumption is true, then adult tyrannosaurs would have had bare, scaleless skin rather than scales and would have looked less like dragons than giant plucked chickens.
* ''Tyrannosaurus''' vision being based only on movement. This was popularized by ''Film/JurassicPark'', despite the [[Literature/JurassicPark original novel]] explaining that the motion-based vision was the result of the frog DNA used to recreate the park dinosaurs. It's actually believed that ''T. rex'' had excellent vision, probably better than humans and even that of modern birds of prey like hawks.
* Sue is often mistaken as the first ''T. rex'' found. It’s the most completely-preserved ''T. rex'' but it wasn’t the first. The first one was found 85 years before then.
* The oft-stated myth that chickens are the closest living relative of ''T. rex''. Really, ''Tyrannosaurus'' isn't any more closely related to chickens than to any other modern bird species.
** Even worse, that T. rex evolved ''into chickens''. The group that includes the modern chicken and other fowl (the Galloanseres) were already around at the time, long since diverged from the tyrannosaur line. It should also be noted that, however many feathers a ''T. rex'' may or may not have had, it really wouldn't look at all like a chicken or any other bird.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Raptors (Dromaeosaurs)]]
Main Page: RaptorAttack
* Whenever raptors (aka [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae dromaeosaurids]]) are depicted as [[RaptorAttack scaly, lizard-eyed dragon men with claws]]. This is ScienceMarchesOn for works before the late 1990s, but is inexcusable in the 2000s. While it is debatable whether all coelurosaurs (such as ''T. rex'') were feathered, there is ''no debate'' about the raptors. And no, raptors were not just ''Jurassic Park''-style [[http://popcultureasylum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/velociraptor-mongoliensis1.jpg scaly monsters that had been tarred and feathered;]] they had [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_cENvLXAAAib0P.jpg wings, tail-feathers and feathers surrounding their eyes]]. If you saw one from a distance, or even with its mouth closed, you would mistake it for a large, predatory bird. Which is exactly what it was.
* Whenever ''Velociraptor'' is depicted as resembling ''Deinonychus''. ''Deinonychus'' was a roughly wolf-sized predator that lived in North America, while ''Velociraptor'' was a dog-sized lone predator that lived in Mongolia. The confusion is quite deliberate, and can be laid at the feet of two individuals: paleontologist/paleoartist Gregory Paul, who placed them in the same genus (the guy has some fairly idiosyncratic personal views on taxonomy) and ''Jurassic Park'' author Creator/MichaelCrichton, who liked the name ''Velociraptor'' so much he didn't care if Paul was literally the ''only paleontologist on Earth'' who considered them the same. When creating "''Velociraptors''" for the first ''Jurassic Park'' film, the crew used ''Deinonychus'' as a model even as they kept the wrong name in the script(since it sounded cooler and more iconic to them), and one of the most enduring public misconceptions about dinosaurs was born.
* The form of the raptor's hands is often shown wrong. While real raptors had hands which paralleled each other and were wing-like in appearance, most raptors in media have paw-like hands, as shown [[http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/wp-content/blogs.dir/474/files/2012/04/i-4dffe6f22eaa7a5e43c95743b341a793-Raptor-hands.jpg here]].
* ''Utahraptor'' being portrayed as an oversized ''Deinonychus'' in post-2014 works. ''Utahraptor'' is now known to have a bulky body, shorter legs and tail, and procumbent jaws.
* Referring to the famous "two-clawed raptor" ''Balaur bondoc'' as a dromaeosaur. While it was initially believed to be a very unusual member, notably having only two fingers instead of three, further studies have now reclassified it out of Dromaeosauridae and plonked it right into Avialae, containing modern birds as well as some primitive, toothed avians. Note that both Dromaeosauridae and Avialae are within the broader group Paraves, meaning that despite appearances, ''Balaur'' was not actually moved very far on the family tree!
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Spinosaurs]]
* ''Spinosaurus'' with an allosaur or tyrannosaur-like skull and four-fingered hands. ScienceMarchesOn for works from before the late 1980s, but otherwise unacceptable.
* Also, any spinosaurid that is depicted as an entirely terrestrial predator. All evidence of spinosaurid meals found consists of fish, a young planteating dinosaur (''Iguanodon''), and a fish-eating pterosaur (either caught while fishing or scavenged on the shore). As a rule, any theropod with non-serrated teeth is not a sauropod killer, because sauropods require a very specific hunting method. While it is still very likely they could have ambushed other dinosaurs by attacking like a crocodile, killers of sauropods and armored dinosaurs, they were not.
* Now some new ''Spinosaurus'' fossils make ''everything'' pre-August 2014 inaccurate. For reference, it had hilariously short legs and was more aquatic than previously thought. Just how short the legs were, however, is unclear. However, some paleontologists have expressed skepticism over this model, suggesting the short-legged fossils might be either chimeras or from a different species. Additionally, the assumption that it was quadrupedal is not based on any definitive evidence. Any and all known information on ''Spinosaurus'' is in flux at the time of this writing, but it seems it most likely was semi-aquatic and had short legs albeit still bipedal, since the arms are unable to support constant quadrupedal movement on land since it can't pronate its hands.
* ''Spinosaurus'' (or any other spinosaurid) with its nostrils at the end of its snout. Spinosaurids have their nostrils farther back on the snout, which helped them breathe as they fished or submerged their jaws in the water.
* Portraying ''Baryonyx'' without the enlarged claw on its first finger, despite said claw being ''where the genus got its name from''.
* Spinosaurids are usually portrayed without the triangular crest above the eyes. Alternatively, they would have two ''Allosaurus''-like crests, which was invented by ''Film/JurassicParkIII''.
* The two crests above ''Spinosaurus'' eyes are actually located further front to the snout, and as such some depictions actually have ''the eyes far too front, in the wrong set of fenestrae!''
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Ceratosaurs]]
* ''Carnotaurus'' (or any other abelisaurid) with tyrannosaur or allosaur-like arms. They had ridiculously small arms that were actually invisible as they lay flush against the body and probably completely useless.
* Any time ''Carnotaurus'' is shown with a full covering of feathers. Despite the increasing evidence that most theropods had feathers, ''Carnotaurus'' is the only theropod that we have any definitive proof of no feathering thanks to a really well-preserved fossil with skin impressions. Or at least not on most of its body; a sparsely-feathered ''Carnotaurus'' still wouldn't be out of the question.
* Any time ''Ceratosaurus'' is portrayed with only one horn, namely just its trademark nasal horn. ''Ceratosaurus'' actually had three horns, including two small ones over each eye. These horns were also fairly laterally-flat and resembled blades, in contrast to the broad horns that befall most depictions.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Oviraptorosaurs]]
* Egg-stealing ''Oviraptor''. Yes, its name means "egg stealer", and oviraptorosaurs appear to have been omnivorous, but it is unacceptable if eggs are stated to be the main or ''only'' source of their diets. The name was chosen by Roy Chapman Andrews, who discovered ''Oviraptor'' in 1924 near a nest of eggs, but even he felt it might be misleading. Discoveries of related species since then have pretty much confirmed that those eggs were the ''Oviraptor'''s, and she/he was likely brooding them, not stealing them.
* Oviraptorosaurs without feathers. They were so heavily feathered that they were essentially indistinguishable from modern birds. They even had beaks.
* ''Oviraptor'' refers only to a single, poorly preserved specimen unearthed by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1924. Subsequently discovered "''Oviraptors''" have all eventually been placed in separate genera, usually ''Khaan'', ''Conchoraptor'' or ''Citipati''. Restorations of "''Oviraptor''" tend to be based on these other, less well known dinosaurs.
* [[https://chasmosaurs.blogspot.ca/2012/06/vintage-dinosaur-art-illustrated.html Thanks to John Sibbick]], ''Avimimus'' was often portrayed as a flightless clone of ''Archaeopteryx'', namely as a bizarre lizard-bird hybrid complete with a mouth full of teeth. ''Avimimus'' actually had a short head with a toothless beak and, like any other oviraptorosaur, was practically identical to modern birds.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Birds]]
* The flightless bird ''Gastornis'' being portrayed as a carnivore in post-2014 works. Calcium isotopes in the bones of ''Gastornis'' have confirmed it was a herbivore, not to mention it lacks other predatory features such as sharp talons (based on footprints discovered in 2012) or a hooked beak. With that said, treating it as a harmless gentle giant because of this info is also a case of artistic license, as given its large size and powerful beak, it was very likely ''not'' a bird you would want to mess with, any more so than the equally herbivorous ostrich or cassowary.
* The dodo is popularly described as stupid; in fact the dodo was a member of the pigeon family, which is noted for its intelligence. The reason it died out was because it had no learned fear of humans and no defence against introduced species, particularly rats.
* Any post-2006 work that depicts phorusrhacids (aka, the famous "terror birds") with clawed hands like those of non-avian theropods. This came from the fact that the North American genus ''Titanis'' had unusually bent wings that initially suggested this. However, it was pointed out that seriemas, the terror birds' closest living relatives, have similarly bent wings, and still lack wing claws.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Theropods]]
* Depicting allosauroids as being able to easily kill completely armored dinosaurs such as ankylosaurs, an impossible feat since they have weak bites and cutting teeth. Hence this is why tyrannosaurs are more built for attacking armored prey. These two groups are opposite ends of the specialization spectrum.
* Any time ''Allosaurus'' is depicted looking like a three-fingered, downsized ''Tyrannosaurus'' (i.e. bulky body, no brow horns).
* Frilled, venom-spitting ''Dilophosaurus''. The venom was made up by the ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' novel, the frill by TheFilmOfTheBook and there is absolutely no evidence for either.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Sauropods in General]]
* Whenever sauropods are depicted up to their necks in water. This is more commonly seen in older depictions, because paleontologists initially couldn't believe that such huge creatures could exist without being supported in water. However, we now know that sauropods could not breathe in such a situation, and so it is thankfully a slowly dying trope. In fact, studies on the flotation dynamics of sauropods show that they would have floated unsteadily on the water surface rather than walk along the bottom were they to take a dip beyond wading depth.
* As mentioned above, the very belief that sauropods were too heavy to exist on land. We now know sauropods have light yet powerful skeletons with air-filled chambers, which allowed them to grow at such a large size while stabilizing their weight.
* Sauropods chewing their food. They couldn't; they didn't have cheeks or chewing molars. In fact, their long necks were only possible because they didn't need to chew- no chewing means no big jaw muscles, ergo small, light head, ergo long neck.
* Sauropods having their nostrils on the top of their heads. This is because of their nasal openings being positioned on the apex of the skull, which led to the idea that the nostrils were placed there and thus were used as snorkels or to help them breathe as they ate. We now know the nostrils were placed lower down near the tip of the snout.
* Sauropods with elephant feet. In actuality, most had one visible claw on each front foot, and three claws on each hind foot. Some had clawless front feet.
* Sauropods singing like whales is unlikely.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''Brontosaurus'']]
* Confusing ''Brontosaurus'' with ''Apatosaurus''. Before 2015, people were most likely to call an ''Apatosaurus'' a ''Brontosaurus''; however, these days it could just as easily be the other way around. Up until 2015, anyone remotely versed in palaeontology would have told you that the word ''Brontosaurus'' had as much scientific meaning as the word "unicorn", since the creature never existed. Rather, the name, meaning "thunder lizard", was given to a misidentified older specimen of ''Apatosaurus''. Why and how the word "Brontosaurus" survived is too complicated to explain quickly (in essence, big egos), but regardless, the RuleOfCool knows no statute of limitations, and the Thunder Lizard persisted to this day. And it turned out that was lucky, because in 2015 studies of ''Brontosaurus'' skeletons led scientists to conclude that yes, ''Brontosaurus'' was its own genus after all, and so the name was brought back from legend into natural history. It's still wrong to use it for all sauropods though.
* As noted in the comic books section below, the common story about ''Brontosaurus'' being just an ''Apatosaurus'' reconstructed with ''Camarasaurus''-like head was in fact incorrect even before 2015 revision of ''Apatosaurus'', as the synonymization of ''Brontosaurus'' with ''Apatosaurus'' was an issue unrelated to the original incorrect restoration of ''Brontosaurus excelsus''. Also, even when both genera were synonymized, their [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_species type species]] ''Apatosaurus ajax'' and ''Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus excelsus'' were retained as distinct species; just because they were classified in the same genus for a while doesn't mean they were the same animal - just like, say, assigning lions, tigers, jaguars and leopards to the single genus ''Panthera'' doesn't mean they are all the same animal.
* Any time ''Brontosaurus'' or ''Apatosaurus'' are portrayed with longer, thinner necks and more lightly-built frames than in real life. Apatosaurine sauropods are known for having a heavy build with very thick necks. [[https://svpow.com/2015/09/14/so-what-were-apatosaurs-doing-with-their-crazy-necks/ And because the necks were so robust they might have been used for fighting, and the placement of the cervical ribs suggest the presence of thickened pads or keratinous spikes]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Sauropods]]
* As noted above, referring to any sauropod as a ''Brontosaurus'' or even an ''Apatosaurus'', unless, of course, it actually is one. ''Brachiosaurus'' and ''Diplodocus'' are both common victims of this.
* ''Brachiosaurus'' with a diplodocid-like body. Brachiosaurids (or at least those for which forelimbs & tails are known) have longer forearms and shorter tails. In fact, ''Brachiosaurus'' got its name ("arm reptile") for having longer forelimbs than hindlimbs.
* Diplodocids with shorter tails like that of a brachiosaurid. Their tails were actually very long and whip-like.
* Brachiosaurids being able to rear up on their hind legs like other sauropods is unlikely, because their center of gravity was too far from their hips. It was also probably unnecessary, because the increase in height they'd gain from it would be minimal compared to other sauropods.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''Stegosaurus'']]
* Whenever ''Stegosaurus'' is said to have a walnut-sized brain and a second brain in its hip.
* The plates of ''Stegosaurus'' were arranged alternatively in real life, but good luck seeing a portrayal with this arrangement. Usually the plates would be paired or, in the most extreme example, arranged in a single row. Said plates will also be misshapen, often as triangles or half-circles as opposed to pentagonal.
* Any time ''Stegosaurus'' is portrayed with the wrong number of tail spikes, from lacking any to having up to eight. Said tail spikes may also be too short, when the fossil spikes shown they were at least 60-90 cm (2 to 3 feet) long[[note]]When the animal was alive, the spikes would have been covered in a layer of keratin, making them even longer and thicker[[/note]].
* Any depiction of ''Stegosaurus'' that has a fat body, a dragging tail, a stubby neck, and splayed limbs. This is excusable if this is seen in older portraits, but not in modern ones.
* ''Stegosaurus'' with an unrealistically long neck. While its neck wasn't exactly short (according to a recently-discovered young adult named "Sophie", which is the most complete specimen to date), it was far from the sauropod-like necks some depictions portray it with. Although ''Miragaia'', a long-necked stegosaur, was discovered in 2009.
* It's been recently established that the plates of stegosaurs were covered in horny sheaths, based on well-preserved tissues on the plates of ''Hesperosaurus'', which would make the portrayals of ''Stegosaurus'' with skin-covered plates unlikely. This would also mean the plates could not have turned red by flushing blood, as ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' demonstrated.
* Also, stegosaurs using their plates as armor. While some studies suggest the plates were covered in horn, they are still irregularly placed for protection and keep the animal's sides unprotected. Instead, stegosaurs more likely used the chainmail-like scutes underneath their skin as protection against predators. Although the plates may have impeded a predator from attacking the stegosaur's back or leaping onto it.
* Any time ''Stegosaurus'' is portrayed as being too slow and sluggish to defend itself from predators. Stegosaurs have front legs shorter than their back legs; while this limited their speed, it put the center of gravity in their hips. This enabled stegosaurs to rapidly turn their bodies around, giving them opportunity to strike predators with their tails and keep them away from their weak spots. It helps that ''Stegosaurus'' lived alongside swift, fleet-footed predators such as ''Allosaurus'', so maneuverability would have been necessary for its defensive mechanism to be more effective in spite of its size and bulk.
* ''Stegosaurus'' having feet like an elephant or a rhino. In real life, stegosaurs have five toes on each forefoot, four of which being slightly long (though only two possess claws) while the fifth is hidden underneath the skin, and three short toes on each hindfoot.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Ceratopsians]]
* ''Triceratops'' with a gigantic frill. While it possessed one of the largest skulls of any land animal, its frill was relatively short especially by the likes of ''Chasmosaurus'' or ''Pentaceratops''.
* ''Styracosaurus'' with no frill and the long spikes protruding from the nape. And to a lesser extent, it may be depicted with long, ''Triceratops''-like brow horns (there ''was'' a ceratopsian that sort of looked like that--''Medusaceratops''--but don't expect to see it even in a documentary).
* Ceratopsians are often victims of being confused for other [[MixAndMatchCritters ceratopsians.]] Often putting whatever head on to whatever body and calling it whatever (usually ''Triceratops'') or just giving it a completely made up and inaccurate skull [[RuleOfCool because it would look more cool.]]
* Ceratopsians did not look the same throughout their lives, we once thought this but [[ScienceMarchesOn thanks to new discoveries]] We now know their heads generally changed over the course of of their lives. In fact some are debating whether ceratopsians like ''Triceratops'' and ''Torosaurus'' were the same species.
* It has been said that ceratopsian horns were not used for combat as they were too brittle and might not have been pointed enough to gore through flesh, plus they might not have been able to charge into its opponents as the skull would break upon impact. These both conflict with the fact that when the animal was alive the skull would have been reinforced by strengthening tissues and the horns would have also a layer of keratin, better shaping them for combat and preventing bone breakage.
* Basal ceratopsians with no quills or feathers. In RealLife, they had a lot of quill-like integument on the tail, particularly ''Psittacosaurus'' which was preserved with them. It is debatable whether the advanced ceratopsians have them, though.
* Big ceratopsids having feet like rhinos, hippos, and elephants. In actuality, they had four long toes on each hindfoot, one of which dangles uselessly, and five on each front foot, two of which don't support the weight and lacking claws, either.
* ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' with a horn on its nose. ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' is known for ''lacking'' one.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Hadrosaurs]]
* Hadrosaurs with visible fingers that may or may not be webbed for swimming. Their fingers were actually embedded underneath skin, bounded into a single thickened "hoof" built for walking on dry land.
* No, hadrosaurs were not aquatic animals. They are especially hit with this misconception because certain hadrosaurs resemble ducks (hence their nickname "duckbilled dinosaurs") and a ''very'' erroneous misconception that land plants were too tough for them to eat. They were land animals like modern day cows or bison.
* Adult hadrosaurs (or similar ornithopods such as ''Iguanodon'') being perpetually bipedal. Young hadrosaurs start off walking on two legs, but as they grew their forelimbs became stronger while their hind legs became less robust forcing them to walk mainly on all fours. They would only become bipedal when rearing up or running. However, there are some large ornithopods which probably would have been mainly bipedal, like ''Mantellisaurus'' [[note]]previously known as ''Iguanodon atherfiledensis''[[/note]], ''Camptosaurus'' and ''Muttaburasaurus'' [[note]]some debate if it could even walk on four legs[[/note]].
* Hadrosaurs being too weak to defend themselves from predators. This is due to the misconception that if dinosaurs have horns, sharp teeth, claws, tail clubs, or spikes then they are guaranteed to be dangerous, and hadrosaurs have none of those things. But given large ornithopods have [[LightningBruiser muscular bodies]] and [[TailSlap powerful tails]], it would be hard to imagine they would be defenseless in real life.
* Related to the above inaccuracy, hadrosaurs being drawn with skinnier bodies than they would have had in real life.
* ''Tsintaosaurus'' having a unicorn's horn-like crest in post-2013 works. We now know its crest pointed backwards and had rhomboid facets on the upper part.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Ornithischians]]
* Ornithischians having lizard-like mouths, with lips instead of a beak and no cheeks.
* ''Ankylosaurus'' is often depicted with the wrong body shape, such as resembling a tortoise with a club tail, lacking the two horns that point backwards from the back of its head and the two others below that point downwards and back, or being too thin in width. Its armor is hardly portrayed correctly, namely having big spikes along its sides, sharpened osteoderms, and the oval scutes all being the same size. Its tail club will also be incorrectly shaped, either two-lobed like on ''Euoplocephalus'' or having spikes protruding from it like a mace [[note]]''Scolosaurus'' was a victim of this, often portrayed with a pair of spikes pronging from its tail club, but thankfully this is no longer in practice[[/note]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Pterosaurs]]
Main Page: PteroSoarer
* Plenty of works featuring a pterosaur will use the generic term {{ptero|Soarer}}dactyl (usually reserved for the short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs or the genus ''Pterodactylus'') for any kind of pterosaur. Also, said pterosaur is likely to be [[PteroSoarer highly inaccurate]], not closely resembling any known species.
* Pterosaurs launching bipedally. Forgivable if it's ScienceMarchesOn, inexcusable otherwise. Also, pterosaurs being bipedal in general.
* Pterosaurs [[KidnappingBirdOfPrey carrying prey off with their feet]], which are often inexplicably [[MixAndMatchCritters transformed into eagle-like talons]]. Sometimes they would even use them to [[AllFlyersAreBirds perch]].
* Much like with raptors, pterosaurs are common victims of nudism in media, lacking pycnofibres or fur-like structures that all pterosaurs were coated with in life.
* Any time female ''Pteranodon'' are portrayed looking the same as the males, being just as large and having long crests. Real ''Pteranodon'' had BizarreSexualDimorphism, with the females being shorter than the males and having short crests or no crest at all.
* ''Quetzalcoatlus'' and any other azhdarchid being vulture-like scavengers or seagull-like fish-eaters in post-2008 works.
* Portraying ''Pteranodon'' with [[ToothyBird teeth]]. This is a particularly egregious example since the animal's name literally means "toothless wing".
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Aquatic Reptiles]]
* Plesiosaurs, the long-necked sea reptiles, almost always have bendy necks. In some old books, they are even described as "snake-like". In reality, their necks were relatively stiff and had limited mobility, though they were far from being ramrod-straight.
* Plesiosaurs or any other marine reptiles coming onto land to lay eggs, as we now know they would die if they tried this and instead gave live birth, probably practising parental care.
* Mosasaurs with dorsal fringes and no tail flukes.
* ''Liopleurodon'', thanks to ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'', is often thought to be bigger than it actually was. It was 7 meters long not 25, which they show in the documentary. The biggest pliosaur we know about was ''Pliosaurus funkei'' (aka "Predator X"), which was 13 meters at best. The ''Liopleurodon'' in "Walking With Dinosaurs" was based on the "Monster of Aramberri", a very incomplete specimen found in Mexico in 1985; early reports had suggested that it was a juvenile and 18 m in length, leading to speculation of how big it could get as an adult. Despite being initially identified as a ''Liopleurodon'', the Monster has since lost that designation and is currently unclassified.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Crocodilians]]
* Crocodilians are not descended from dinosaurs. While fairly closely related to true dinosaurs, crocodylomorphs (including extant crocodilians) are in fact [[http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G104/handouts/104Archosauria.pdf a different type of archosaur.]]
* People often think crocodiles and alligators lived alongside Mesozoic dinosaurs, but they didn’t. It is true that crocodyliforms existed for about as long as the dinosaurs have, and that close relatives to today's crocodiles and alligators, like ''Deinosuchus'' and ''Sarcosuchus'', lived alongside them and filled the same niches, but the crocodilians we see today didn’t appear until 55 and 37 Million years ago, respectively.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Megalodon Shark]]
* No, {{megalodon}}s were not a hundred feet long. Since the only fossils we have of them are their, admittedly big, teeth, reconstructions of megalodon have varied wildly in both size and shape over the years, but most palaeontologists agree that megalodons probably were between 45 and 60 feet long. Additionally, whether or not megalodon is a great white relative is also in dispute, so its common depiction as a giant great white is likely, if not wrong, than at least partially inaccurate. Some have argued that, due to its larger size, megalodon may have required a different body form and [[https://pre00.deviantart.net/5fcc/th/pre/f/2017/271/2/e/that_giant_shark_everyone_talks_about_by_qbliviens-dbott82.jpg likely more resembled a whale shark or basking shark than a white]].
* Megalodons did not eat dinosaurs. They're actually a relatively recent species, evolving about 23 million years ago and only dying out about 2.6 million years ago, meaning our hominid ancestors just missed them.
* Despite what [[Literature/{{Meg}} incredibly stupid fiction]] or [[http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/megalodon-monster-shark/ outrageous hoaxes]] may tell you, no one has found even the tiniest shred of evidence that megalodons are still alive.
* Any time "megalodon" is spelled as capitalized ("Megalodon" or even "''Megalodon''"). It's commonly thought to be a genus name, but is actually a species name (the full scientific name is ''Carcharocles megalodon'').
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Fish]]
* ''Helicoprion'' is often seen by many as one of the [[https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/primeval-fanon/images/1/14/Helicoprion.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111113153854 most bizarre prehistoric sharks of all time.]] But it didn’t actually look like that. [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Helicoprion_NT_small.jpg It was actually more subdued in its appearance.]] It also wasn’t a shark but a ratfish.
* ''Leedsicthys'' has likewise been depicted with [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Leedsi%26Liopl_DB.jpg exposed bone plates on its head, with said head having a sloped shape]]. It's believed that ''Leedsicthys'' had an [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Leedsichtys092.jpg elongated, smooth head.]] And contrary to what some sources say, it did not grow more than 16 meters long.
* ''Cretoxyrhina'' restored resembling a carbon-copy of the modern great white shark. While similar in size, its proportions were actually more similar to a thresher shark, although more rotund and with a shorter heterocercal (upper part of the tail fin).
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Synapsids in General]]
* There is some confusion about what actually classifies a synapsid.
** Some use "synapsid" to describe only the early ones like ''Dimetrodon''. In reality this term also includes mammals of today like us.
** The name "mammal-like reptiles" isn’t an accurate description of early synapsids. This term was once in wide use, as the term "reptile" was used to refer to any amniote (land vertebrate that either lays hard-shelled eggs or gives live birth) outside of mammals and birds (in addition to fossil taxa closer to amniotes than to modern amphibians), but in modern nomenclature paleontologists prefer to define taxonomic groups based on phylogeny (evolutionary relationships) rather than phenetics (superficial similarities). Under modern phylogenetic definitions, "reptile" is only used to refer to modern reptiles (lepidosaurs, turtles, and crocodylians) and the animals more closely related to them than to mammals, thus synapsids of any kind are no longer considered to be reptiles. A more accurate term for non-mammalian synapsids would be stem-mammals or proto-mammals. However "mammal-like reptile" is still used in some circles.
* Any time early synapsids are shown with dinosaur or reptile anatomy and lacking the more mammal like features. ''Dimetrodon'' suffers heavily from this, a lot of times being shown as just a lizard with a sail on it’s back. A real ''Dimetrodon'' (and other basal synapsids) might have had naked skin like a mammal's coupled with pseudo-scales (of a completely different structure than those of true reptiles) on the underside.
* In 2012, neural spines of ''Dimetrodon'' were reported to be commmonly bent at the tips, indicating that the tips may have been exposed. As such, it became a bit of a paleoart meme to depict Dimetrodon as having ''only half a sail''. However, what the study had actually concluded was that while the extreme tips of the spines indeed were exposed, the rest of the spines (about nine-tenths of it) were covered in a sail, and such would have looked much more like the traditional depiction.
* Synapsids being depicted with scaly skin like a lizard or crocodile. While it's debatable what body covering they had, it's unlikely that they had osteoderms. A preseved specimen of the skin impressions of [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estemmenosuchus Estemmenosuchus]] (a strange therapsid resembling a cross of a hippo and a moose) revealed it to have smooth leathery skin, covered in pores that may have housed skin glands similar to mammals of today. (However, it's unclear whether this trait was common on all therapsids, or if others indeed had hair and ''Estemmenosuchus'' secondarily lost its fur.)
* Early synapsids being shown living alongside dinosaurs like ''T. rex''. While the mammals of course survived, a lot of the earlier synapsids at best only made it to the Triassic and didn’t live alongside the dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous. The few stem mammal groups that did survive past the end of the Triassic (certainly tritylodontids, tritheledontids, and docodonts, questionably [[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1518/985 dicynodonts]]) are unheard of in fiction and probably would have been more or less indistinguishable to a layman from a true mammal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Mammals in General]]
* Any medium (including a few documentaries) that suggests that mammals either didn't evolve until after dinosaurs died out or had barely done so when they did. In fact, mammals coexisted with the dinosaurs throughout most of the Mesozoic and may be present in the fossil record as far back as the Late Triassic, which would make them almost as old as the dinosaurs.
* Conversely, any medium that suggests that non-avian dinosaurs coexisted with giant extinct mammals, such as mammoths, sabertoothed cats, or neanderthals. The largest mammals alive during the Mesozoic, or age of the dinosaurs, were about the size of opossums. They didn't start getting big until the dinos weren't around to clog their niches.
* That said, the idea that all mammals during the time of dinosaurs were insignificant shrew-like animals that only lived in their shadow is now considered not completely true, as recent finds suggest that they evolved a wide variety of forms during the Mesozoic, including aquatic species, gliding species, burrowing species, grazing species, arboreal species, and even species that ate dinosaurs. '''Very small''' dinosaurs.
* There is a misleading belief that the mammalian form is somehow "superior" to the dinosaurian, and that mammals are inherently more successful and adaptable. In fact, dinosaurs, in the form of birds, currently outnumber mammal species by nearly two to one, and many species, such as crows and parrots, are of comparable intelligence to primates. Indeed, mammals only became dominant over dinosaurs after literal cosmic intervention wiped out most of them, and had it not occurred, it's likely non-avian dinosaurs would still rule the Earth today.
* There is a tendency (largely carried over from earlier times) to refer to extinct mammals as "X [insert modern mammal's name here]." For instance, referring to a ''Smilodon'' as a "sabre-toothed tiger", ''Thylacoleo'' as the "marsupial lion", or the thylacine as the "Tasmanian wolf" or "Tasmanian tiger". The marsupial predators of Australia were not at all closely related to wolves, lions, tigers or indeed any other placental predators.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Sabre-toothed cats]]
* Referring to sabre-toothed cats as "saber-toothed tigers". Machairodontines, or true sabretooths, were an entire subfamily of cats that were no more closely related to the pantherines (tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars) than they were to the felines (pumas, cheetahs, lynxes and domestic cats).
* Any time saber-toothed cats are depicted with long ''Panthera''-like tails. ''Primitive'' saber-toothed cats have proportions similar to non-sabertoothed cats, including shorter canines and long tails. As they become specialized, their fangs grow longer, but so do their necks and front legs, while their hind legs become shorter, giving them a loosely hyena-like profile, and their tail becomes stubby like in a bobcat. ''Smilodon'', the most famous sabertooth cat, [[NewerThanTheyThink is also the last in the series]] and the one where these features are the most exaggerated. Biomechanical studies have shown that this configuration is better to knock down and hold the prey on the ground before "stabbing" it with the fangs in a meaty, well irrigated area. If ''Smilodon'' and co. attacked without securing the prey with their paws first, as they are often seen in fiction, their fragile sabers could break in half.
* Any time sabretooth cats are fast and agile. They were actually among the slowest predators in RealLife, relying on ambush and strength, not speed or agility. Sabretooth cats could never chase prey. The one big exception to this is ''Homotherium'', the scimitar cat, but it rarely shows up in media anyways.
* ''Smilodon'', a [[WeAllLiveInAmerica strictly American genus]], placed in any other continent, and often long after every other sabertooth had gone extinct there.
* Similarly, ''Smilodon'' living in a snowy environment alongside woolly mammoths, despite ranging farther south in warmer climates. The South American species ''S. populator'' was known to have lived in a savannah-like environment which spread much of the Amazon was during the Ice Age. On the other hand, the North American species ''S. fatalis'' would have seen snow during winter, given California's colder climate at the time.
* Every sabertooth (as well as similar synapsids such as the thylacosmilids and the gorgonopsids) is always portrayed as having their sabers exposed, despite many genera having huge jaw extensions which their teeth fit inside, suggesting they kept their sabers hidden inside their mouths. ''Smilodon'' is most likely an exception to this due its sabers extending far below the jawline.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Mammoths and Mastodons]]
* Mammoths were not the ancestors of modern elephants. Asian elephants are more related to mammoths than to African elephants, but mammoths were direct ancestors of neither.
* Mammoths were [[SmallTaxonomyPools not all woolly]]. There were several species of mammoths, the woolly one (''Mammuthus primigenius'') being only one of them, and it is possible that others were as naked as elephants because they lived in warmer climates. Mammoths appeared in the Pliocene, roughly at the same time as hominids, and the woolly mammoth was the last of them, evolving its thick pelt as protection against the cold, from ancestors that were "naked" instead of the other way around.
* Mammoths were not all prehistoric. The last ones died out in Wrangel Island, Siberia, around 1700 BC, [[NewerThanTheyThink when the Egyptians were already building pyramids]], though no one knew of them at the time.
* Mastodons looking the same as mammoths, despite being shorter and stockier and having a low-domed skull.
* Mammoths and mastodons are regular victims of BiggerIsBetter, to the point that "mastodontic" is a synonym of "gigantic" in some languages. There were some truly gigantic mammoths and mastodons: the Steppe Mammoth, ''Mammuthus trogontherii'', was the fourth largest land mammal ever, and one of a handful that routinely surpassed the four meters on shoulder height. It was only itself surpassed by the Indian straight-tusked elephant ''Palaeoloxodon namadicus'' and the giant Tertiary [[MixAndMatchCreatures rhino-giraffe]]s ''Paraceratherium'' and ''Dzhungariotherium''. However, the species usually depicted in media, the woolly mammoth and the American mastodon, were actually smaller than living elephants. In fact, one theory about the American mastodon's extinction is that it was displaced by a newly arrived immigrant to the Americas - the moose.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Proboscideans]]
* Referring to elephants or any elephantine creature as a "pachyderm". Despite being cute, the name is now completely outdated and should be forgotten (it arguably would have been if ''Disney/{{Dumbo}}'' hadn't remained so popular). It originally referred to a taxonomic group that included elephants, rhinos and hippos. But now, thanks to anatomical and genetic evidence, we know that, other than being placental mammals, these animals have literally nothing to do with one another. In fact, rhinos are more closely related to horses and tapirs than they are to elephants, and hippos are more closely related to ''whales''.[[note]]Though hippos and rhinos are still more closely related to one another than any of them are to elephants.[[/note]]
* If the gomphothere ''Platybelodon'' ever makes an appearance, it will usually be portrayed with a [[http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0909/reynolds_d.jpg big, flap-like trunk]] to match with its famous shovel-like lower jaw. In real life, ''Platybelodon'' and its similar-looking relatives most likely had long, flexible trunks like modern elephants. The flappy trunk might have been due to the outdated belief ''Playbelodon'' was a swamp-dweller using its lower tusks to scoop up food, before its teeth were found to have wear patterns suggesting it ate tough plant material as opposed to soft water plants [[note]]the swamp-dweller hypothesis also never considered the fact amebelodonts also have upper tusks[[/note]]. Thus, if ''Platybelodon'' was a terrestrial browser, [[http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/extinct-elephant-likely-sawed-not-shoveled-with-its-mouth/ it would have required an elephant-like trunk to grasp branches while it used its tusks to cut up the tree]].
* The term "elephant" being used for any extinct proboscidean, such as mastodons and gomphotheres, despite being in different families. Conversely, there's also mammoths being treated as separate from elephants despite the fact that, being in the Elephantidae family, they technically ''are'' elephants.
* ''Deinotherium'' has been recently portrayed with a shorter trunk, due to deinothere skulls lacking attachment marks for trunk muscles. But since it's been discovered elephants don't have these marks either, it's seems more likely that ''Deinotherium'' and its kin had long trunks as well. Especially given while their necks are longer than those of elephants, their legs are also longer meaning they would have difficulty kneeling (and therefore unable to drink). It should also be noted ''Deinotherium'' has a large nasal bone suggesting it had a powerful trunk, and a longer trunk would endure more strain than a shorter one.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Humans]]
* No, humans did not "evolve from apes". Humans and modern apes share a recent common ancestor from which they diverged. But that even that statement is actually inaccurate; humans have not diverged from apes- humans still are apes. Modern genetic classification defines the family Hominidae as including not only humans but all "great apes" (chimps, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas). Works from before the 80s or so restrict Hominidae to humans and use the now-discredited Pongidae for the other great apes.
** There is a lot of confusion about what "evolve from apes" means. Neither "ape" nor "monkey" is a taxonomic term, but everyone has a general idea of what an "ape" or "monkey" looks like. Distant human ancestors include animals that an average observer would describe as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierolapithecus an ape]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proconsul_(primate) a monkey]]. Humans don't descend from any ''modern'', currently existing ape or monkey, however. We don't descend from chimpanzees, or gorillas, or macaques.
* Despite what [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Human_evolution_scheme.svg certain pictures may tell you]], humans did not evolve from chimpanzees either. Recent finds like ''Ardipithecus'' have suggested that chimpanzees' quadrupedal posture is in fact a highly derived form, and that the ancestral "missing link" may look more like us than them.
* There is no archaeological evidence that early man used clubs; in fact, the earliest spears are thousands of years older than the earliest clubs. And while many early humans definitely sheltered in caves, there is no way that they ''all'' did. Caves are rare, and unlikely to be found on ice age steppeland. Most early men sheltered in huts, much like modern day hunter gatherers.
* [[AllCavemenWereNeanderthals Neanderthals are not the ancestors of modern humans.]] While the genetic relationship between humans and neanderthals is somewhat complicated (nearly everyone not from Africa has a little neanderthal DNA in their makeup), neanderthals were a specifically Eurasian species that evolved to live in the harsh northern Ice Age climate. Modern humans may have interbred with neanderthals when they reached their territory, but they did not evolve from them, since they first appeared in Africa, and no one in Africa has any neanderthal DNA.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Mammals]]
* Cave bears will usually be portrayed as carnivores in the media, when their dentition and isotope analysis suggest they were herbivores. That said, they probably would eat meat if the opportunity arises much like the giant panda.
* Any time ''Gigantopithecus'' is portrayed walking upright like a human, mainly in order for it to associate with [[BigfootSasquatchAndYeti Bigfoot]]. While ''Gigantopithecus'' is only known from teeth and jawbones, its close relationship with modern apes, particularly the orangutan, strongly suggests it walked on all fours (it was once thought to be very closely related to humans, but this seems to be incorrect).
* Similarly, whenever a ''Megatherium'', or giant ground sloth, appears, expect it to be in a perpetual upright stance. In real life, while they would rear up from time to time in order to browse, their limb structure suggests ground sloths walked on all fours.
* ''Megatherium'' is often portrayed with a horse-like head or a dog-like nose, and the oldest portraits even gave it a tapir-like trunk. But since today's sloths have pig-like noses or just two forward-facing nostrils, it seems most likely ''Megatherium'' and the other ground sloths have those kinds of noses as well.
* ''Andrewsarchus'' was initially thought to have been a relative of mesonychids due to similarities in teeth and skull, and ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'' perpetrated this [[http://walkingwith.wikia.com/wiki/Andrewsarchus?file=AndrewsarchusBook.jpg portrayal]]. Recent studies have shown it was actually an artiodactyl closely related to entelodonts as well as hippos and cetaceans; it would have most likely looked more like [[https://romanyevseyev.deviantart.com/art/Andrewsarchus-mongoliensis-504911425 a pig with the head of a wolf]] as opposed to simply a wolf with hooves. With that said, its exact appearance is currently impossible to clarify since it is only known from the aforementioned teeth and skull.
* Glyptodonts are often portrayed withdrawing their heads into their shells like turtles, which they couldn't in real life. They were actually more like ankylosaurs, having body armor that covers only the topside of the body leaving their undersides unprotected.
* The giant short-faced kangaroo ''Procoptodon'' being portrayed hopping as a mode of transportation just like its modern-day relatives. In real life, ''Procoptodon'' was unable to hop due to its weight and instead walked bipedally like a human would.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Invertebrates]]
* Thanks to them being BigCreepyCrawlies the giant arthropods of the past (particularly the Carboniferous, the era of big bugs) suffer a lot from the PrehistoricMonster trope. Some of them were predators yes, but some were pretty harmless herbivores. ''Arthropleura'' is probably the biggest victim of this; despite the fact it was a herbivore a lot of works involving it show it as a scary predatory animal.
* Speaking of ''Arthropleura'', thanks to RuleOfScary they are sometimes shown as being centipede like in shape even though they more resembled millipedes.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) order. Classification can be weird sometimes.
* Portraying ''Megarachne'' as a GiantSpider any time after 2005. This was one of the big issues with ''Series/WalkingWithMonsters''--the show was in mid-production right when it was discovered that ''Megarachne'' wasn't actually a spider. They couldn't remove it from the show, so they kept it in and just called it a "Mesothelae", a hypothetical member of a primitive spider group.
[[/folder]]
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Paleontology in General]]
* ''Every'' 1950s monster film with a PrehistoricMonster. Partly due to ScienceMarchesOn, but other times because laziness (especially when a {{Slurpasaur}} is involved).
* On that note, any work claiming that prehistoric reptiles like dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles were all "giant lizards". Out of all Mesozoic megafauna, only mosasaurs, the Late Cretaceous lizard ''Palaeosaniwa'' and snakes like ''Sanajeh'' (snakes are technically lizards) fit that description; dinosaurs and pterosaurs were as far from being lizards as it was possible to be while still remaining saurian reptiles; in fact lizards (including snakes) are ''further away'' on the evolutionary line from dinosaurs than birds (and crocodylians) are. The relationships of marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs to other reptiles are less certain but they were certainly ''not'' lizards.[[note]]It's worth noting that this tends to be due to a taxonomic term mix-up; put simply, despite the ubiquity of the Greek word ''sauros'', "lizard" and "reptile" are NOT synonyms.[[/note]]
* Prehistoric animals being shown as [[BiggerIsBetter much larger than they really were]].
* {{Anachronism stew}}ing is endemic with popular depictions of paleontology, whether it is humans using ''Triceratops'' to plough fields, or depicting ''T. rex'' and ''Stegosaurus'' [[Disney/{{Fantasia}} living alongside each other]], despite the fact that they never would have met in real life. In fact the time between ''Tyrannosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' is significantly greater than that of ''Tyrannosaurus'' and human beings.[[note]]The time between ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Tyrannosaurus'' is roughly eighty million years, while that of ''T. rex'' and humans is about sixty-six million years[[/note]]
* Paleoart Memes is a term used to describe when artists assume previous artistic depictions are 100% on point and copy it despite the fact that a large portion of it was speculation. That one picture or interpretation become the status quo despite the fact there is no proof of that characteristic. This has not only plague the public perception but even the Paleontology community itself. Recently there have been steps to avoid this in Paleoart.
* The act of "shrinkwrapping"; more prevalent in late 1980s-mid 2000s paleoart, shrinkwrapping is basically when artists draw dinosaurs with thin skin that the bones continue to show through, as if their skin has been draped over their bones and there's nothing in between. For comparison, almost no animal in the modern day, including birds and crocodilians (the animals most closely related to dinosaurs) looks like a walking anatomy diagram, so we can be pretty sure that dinosaurs and their neighbors definitely had much more meat on their bones than that. Lately, people have been avoiding this more often. To sum up just how WRONG shrinkwrapping would look, [[http://pre11.deviantart.net/58c0/th/pre/f/2014/095/2/d/shrink_wrapped_kitteh_by_zanizaila-d7d6kfe.jpg this ugly thing]] is what a domestic cat would look like if it was reconstructed with only minor additions of skin and flesh on the skeleton, completely ignoring fur and soft tissues.
* Confusing paleontology and archaeology. Paleontology studies remains of past life forms (and their activity). Archaeology studies past human cultures. It doesn't help that ''paleo'' and ''archaeo'' both mean "ancient".
* It’s a common held belief that the discovery of ''Megalosaurus'' and ''Iguanodon'' was the first documented fossil finds; the truth is they weren’t. ''Mosasaurus'', ''Megatherium'', ''Pterodactylus'', ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were all found before them as far back as 50 years. It isn’t any less significant considering they were the first dinosaur finds and arguably where paleontology really took off [[note]]The term "paleontology" was even coined around the time of their discovery[[/note]]; they were just not the first fossil discoveries.
* Complete fossils are not found most of the time; occasionally we find really well preserved skeletons, which is more common for smaller animals, but for bigger animals most of the time it’s just bits and pieces. This is the [[ScienceMarchesOn reason older prehistoric animal reconstructions]] look drastically different from today. They only had so much to work on back then compared to the massive amounts of fossils we have today.
* The fossils at museums are not always the original specimens; sometimes they are, but even then models are often used to fill in the blanks (see above). Most of the time it’s reconstructions of the bones rather than the bones themselves. This has to do with how fragile a lot of the fossils are.
* Any time a fossil find is called a "prehistoric crime scene". Yes, paleontology and forensics have a few superficial similarities, but, leaving aside the fact that predators, by definition, do not commit murder, paleoecology is not just about "who killed whom". A fossilised animal may have died from any number of causes, from disease, drowning or even old age, rather than predation, and the layout of a fossil site can reveal far more about a local environment than just the animals in it, from the plant life to the temperature to whether it was by a lake, river or sea.
* People often mess up classification of extinct animals; for example, calling all dinosaurs birds. To put this in perspective, this is like saying all mammals are apes. Birds are a subgroup of dinosaurs, not the other way around.
* Cryptozoology is prone to this
** Any time someone claims that any types of large animals actually survived and is out there. While it is true we have found some creatures that we thought went extinct but actually survived (most famously coelacanths), it is very unlikely we wouldn’t know about the really large ones like plesiosaurs, megalodon, ''Gigantopithecus'', and various other prehistoric animals.
** Thanks to ScienceMarchesOn a lot of accounts of these animals don’t add up in hindsight. For example the Loch Ness monster has plenty of eyewitnesses claiming that the animal got out of the water and walked on land. The problem is we now know plesiosaurs simply couldn’t do that. Another is Bigfoot which is sometimes theorized to be a ''Gigantopithecus'', even though ''Gigantopithecus'' most likely did not walk upright like Bigfoot.
** Additionally, such animals used as potential explanations for cryptids hinge on the notion that the animal in question has never changed due to evolution for thousands or millions of years. While it isn't impossible for an animal to remain relatively unchanged over tens, or even hundreds of millions of years, it's relatively rare. This would be especially true when said cryptid is reported in an environment that is radically different than the environment it is said to have evolved in. For instance, while the giant ground sloth ''Megatherium'' lived in grasslands and open plains, the Mapinguari of Brazilian folkore, whom some Cryptozoologists theorize is a ''Megatherum'' is said to exist in swamps and rainforests. Such a creature would have to radically alter its feeding habits and behavior to the point where it would probably look only tangentially familiar to a ''Megatherium''. And that's still a less radical change than the notion that a megalodon could go from open ocean hunter to a deep-sea fish and remain unchanged.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Evolution in General]]
* A lot of people think evolution equals improvement, that’s not entirely true. While evolution can improve an animal's survivability and success (just look at us humans) it can also lead to CripplingOverspecialization. One examples is the saber-tooth cats, They evolved their sharp teeth and strength to overpower and cut through animals hides. unfortunately this made them too slow to capture more agile prey once their main food source died out.
* Any time prehistoric animals are shown to be evolutionary dead ends that [[TooDumbToLive deserved to die out.]] A lot of this comes from earlier works in paleontology up until the Dinosaur Renaissance. Now that we know a lot more about evolution and the history of Earth this is seen as a shallow assumption especially comparing it to dinosaurs. If anything, dinosaurs are probably one of the most successful animal groups to ever live, dominating the earth for about 165 million years, only being replaced by mammals due to a random and sudden global catastrophe, and still existing today as birds.
* The idea that of evolution is simply [[TheSocialDarwinist strong survive and the weak die out.]] While stronger animals usually benefit in the short term, [[{{Irony}} in the long term a lot of those weaker animals last a lot longer,]] This is because being smaller they need less food to survive, are more adaptable and don’t suffer from CripplingOverspecialization. In fact when things start to get tough a lot of animals will get smaller over generations. When mass extinctions occur, it is invariably the "weakest" animals that survive. No animal above 25 kg in size survived the K-Pg extinction, for instance.
* Evolution isn't just about competition. Natural selection takes any strategy that works, and that includes cooperation. Everything from the mitochondria in our cells (which were originally bacteria-like organisms that infected our ancient, single-celled ancestor) to ants farming aphids to clownfish living in anemones is literally living proof of this. There's even a word for it: symbiosis, specifically mutualism (both benefit) and commensalism (one benefits, the other doesn't mind) which are the positive sides of symbiosis. Predation and parasitism would be the common antagonistic flavours.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Dinosaurs in General]]
* Anything being called a dinosaur that isn't: Pterosaurs such as ''Pterodactylus''; giant sea reptiles such as plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs; pre-dinosaur reptiles like ''Scutosaurus''; synapsids such as ''Dimetrodon'' (which were not, strictly speaking, even ''reptiles'', but proto-mammals); ''any'' modern reptiles (even closely related extinct giant species like ''Deinosuchus'' or ''Megalania''); fish or, Darwin forbid, mammals.
* Anything being called ''not'' a dinosaur that ''is'', such as ''Archaeopteryx'' or modern birds. Birds being regarded as different from dinosaurs is acceptable for 1980s/1990s works, but not today.
* Cold-blooded dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Particularly, dinosaurs are often depicted as being slow, sluggish and unable to function let alone survive in cold climates, when there's evidence that some genera thrived just perfectly in snowy environments (which are often said not to have existed in the Mesozoic era). Even the anatomy of dinosaurs and pterosaurs suggests dinosaurs led active, endothermic lifestyles.
* Dinosaurs dragging their tails along the ground. An old idea, essentially derived from "Well, crocodiles do it, so they must have". In fact, dinosaurs walked with their tails held rigid. This early misconception led to the academically approved vandalism of several dinosaur skeletons, to the point of even breaking the bones of some to make the tails drag as desired.
** Dinosaur tails are often shown to be extremely bendy as if they are made of rubber. In real life, dinosaurs had relatively stiff tails, and the bipedal ones even used them for balance. However, some studies have suggested stegosaurids have a higher tail dexterity than previously thought.
* Dinosaurs having the wrong postures. Most notable examples are long-limbed bipeds like ''Tyrannosaurus'' walking in a tripodal stance with an upwards-slanting spine and quadrupeds like ''Triceratops'' having sprawled limbs like lizards. Dinosaurs couldn't walk with a sprawled posture; their weight mandated that they walk with their legs straight under them, because no muscle could support it sprawled. Bipedal dinosaurs with long limbs and tails held their spines parallel to the ground; if they walked in a tripodal stance, they would suffer strain or even dislocation in their joints.
* Dinosaurs only colored grey, green or brown. Another ancient trope derived from the "they were just huge crocodiles" line of reasoning. Crocodilians are grey, green or brown because they are adapted as semi-aquatic ambush predators that depend on camouflage, but in fact, most reptiles today have a wide range of skin colorations and rely heavily on visual communication (having a wider spectrum of color vision than mammals). It is likely that at least some dinosaurs had vibrant colors and patterns. That is not to say no Mesozoic dinosaurs were comparatively drably colored, but brightly-colored representatives probably weren't rare.
** It was once thought the coloration of dinosaurs would be something that could never be truly known. A few years ago a method to figure it out was [[ScienceMarchesOn discovered at long last.]] What had been assumed to be just dirt or bacteria in fossils turned out to be preserved melanosomes, which could be compered to the melanosomes of living animals to figure out the color they would have been when the animal was alive. There now is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_coloration complete and highly accurate restorations of the colors and patterns of several dinosaur species]], an extinct penguin, and another bird (incompletely), with more currently being researched. Several of them have turned out to have vibrant colors.
* Dinosaur eggs will often be shown as gigantic, often over six feet tall. In reality larger eggs require thicker shells, but the shell has to stay air-permeable. This limits the size of porous calcium carbonate eggshell for dinosaurs and recently-extinct large birds to about 15 liters in volume and 35 centimeters in diameter -- not much bigger than a basketball. No larger eggs have ever been ever found. Eggs from less rigid materials were even smaller. Not to mention that a six-foot egg would also be implausible due to the SquareCubeLaw. Funnily enough, the largest dinosaur egg known was laid by a bird that went extinct less than a millennium ago: Madagascar's elephant bird (''Aepyornis maximus'').
* Dinosaurs and pterosaurs with an unnatural number of fingers, toes and/or claws. Archosaurs (the broader group in which dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodilians and their relatives belong) by default have four toes on the back feet, and five on the front feet, but only three of which have claws (as seen [[http://www.florida-everglades-airboating.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/3-575-5371251873_60db6873a0_o-gator-foot-Flickr-usr-Tim-Pearce.jpg here]]); therefore all dinosaurs can only have this amount or less (the other extreme is some advanced titanosaurs, which have no fingers, toes, or claws, their limbs end in fleshy stumps). The most common errors include giving ''Tyrannosaurus'' too many fingers, giving herbivores too many claws, and giving pterosaurs too many elongated fingers and too little wing claws (or too many wing claws in the case of nyctosaurids, which are known for ''lacking'' those).
* The belief that an ice age killed the dinosaurs. Not only were they dead for 60 million years before the start of the ice age, but the time immediately following the dinosaurs' extinction was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum actually substantially warmer.]]
* The popularity of the film ''Film/JurassicPark'' led to a pan-medial explosion in use of the term "Jurassic" to describe the dinosaurs' time period. Actually, the Jurassic Period only comprised the middle third of the dinosaurs' era (in between the earlier Triassic and later Cretaceous), which in its entirety is called the Mesozoic. This was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] frequently in Creator/MichaelCrichton's [[Literature/JurassicPark original novel]]; probably because he didn't want to seem scientifically illiterate but wasn't about to give up such a cool name.
* The Age of the Dinosaurs is often depicted as a dark, impenetrable jungle from end to end. In fact, the Mesozoic was a vast span of time encompassing a huge range of temperatures which, while all warmer than today, led to a plethora of different climates. The Early Triassic, thanks to Pangaea, was one huge desert, while the Late Cretaceous, the time of ''T. rex'', was surprisingly cold and may have seen snow in some areas. Many time periods in the Mesozoic, such as the Mid-Jurassic and Mid-Cretaceous, do fit the tropical stereotype, though many of the plants we associate with the tropics are flowering broadleafs and so didn't come to dominate the landscape until the age of the dinosaurs was nearly at an end.
* Dinosaurs constantly making noise such as roaring and shrieking. Needless to say [[NoisyNature real animals don't vocalize nearly as much]]. Evidence currently suggests that dinosaur vocalizations were potentially more like those of crocodilians than the complex vocalizations of many modern birds (which make them with a specialized organ known as a syrinx, so far unique to birds). Depictions of ''T. rex'' having a MightyRoar is more RuleOfCool than based on any evidence. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpipaUfcnmM Still, that doesn't mean the sounds it actually made wouldn't have freaked you out.]]
* It's increasingly likely that dinosaurs had lips that covered their teeth so when their mouth was closed the teeth would not be visible like in lizards or mammals as opposed to the exposed teeth of crocodiles (or [[http://img06.deviantart.net/4600/i/2016/161/5/2/lipped_tirex_by_malvit-da5p5yo.jpg this]] compared to [[http://img14.deviantart.net/84a0/i/2012/064/c/8/tyrannosaurus_rex_head_by_malvit-d4rrr0r.jpg this]]). By extension this is also probably true for ancient crocodile relatives that lived on land, with the modern lipless condition being a derived trait.
* It’s often said that we have no idea what killed all non-avian dinosaurs; the truth is we are pretty sure that the meteorite was the final nail in the coffin for them, though it was the climax to a lot of other events beforehand (See below).
* A lot of people think it was just the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs, but really it was just the end for a really bad day for them. The Cretaceous saw a dropoff in the number of dinosaurs, usually blamed on the changing climate and other factors. It’s often speculated if the meteor had hit at any of the time the dinosaurs would have been able to bounce back, but the mini-extinction they were enduring at the time meant that the meteorite was their final end (except the birds of course).
* It would be logical that dinosaurs might have shed their old skin as all reptiles (including birds, which are technically reptiles) do it, but expect this to be portrayed as molting large patches of skin in the same manner as snakes or lizards. In real life, dinosaurs would have shed individual scales like crocodiles, especially given that birds molt this way (feathers are modified scales after all, plus the scales on birds' feet and legs are shed as well).
** Technically speaking, the "scales" of dinosaurs (and, by extension, archosaurs in general) are not actual scales like on lizards and snakes but rather scutes.
* Dinosaurs do not perform autotomy with their tails and regenerate them like lizards, in contrast to how some works portray.
* Dinosaurs having pronated hands i.e. the palms of the hands facing backwards toward the body. In real life, dinosaur hands faced each other like a person about to clap. If they tried to pronate their hands, they would break their wrists as a result.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Theropods in General]]
* Whenever a theropod's skull is drawn without the antorbital fenestra, which is a common occurrence in animation and illustration. Also, the antorbital fenestra is often mistaken for the eye socket, which results in certain theropods like ''Tyrannosaurus'' being portrayed with a shorter snout than in real life.
* Not all theropods held their spines parallel to the ground. The reason for horizontal stances in theropods is due to the center of gravity being placed in their hips coupled with long hindlegs. Theropods with more upright stances such as therizinosaurs and penguins tend to be top-heavy with shorter hindlegs. Some paleontologists concluded that ''Spinosaurus'' had this sort of posture because of its short hindlegs.
* The popular depiction of theropods with their teeth sticking out of their jaws is actually, according to recent research, also inaccurate. The very fact that their teeth had enamel indicates theropods had reptile-esque lips covering the teeth; enamel needs to be kept moist to protect the teeth from rotting. The very function of lips is to protect enamel-coated teeth from rotting, so since dinosaurs had enamel-covered teeth...well, they certainly had lips. However, this claim has been challenged in 2017 by the discovery of a ''Daspletosaurus'' skull with detailed preservation of the jaw bones, which studies found to be more analogous to crocodilian jaws than lizard jaws. However, some paleontologists disagree with this, claiming that said preservation does not indicate lack of lips.
* Some people think all theropods were carnivores. Many were, but some (like therizinosaurs) actually ate plants, or at least had an omnivorous diet (like ornithomimosaurs). And of course today’s theropods, birds, include many herbivores, like ostriches, swans and turkeys.
* Improbable feathering in coelurosaurs. Some of the most common errors are giving too sparse a coat, wrong types of feathers, and giving them the wrong wing shape. In maniraptoriformes (the group that includes dromaeosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, and birds, among others), the primary feathers (the outermost feathers on the wings) emerge from the second finger so that it and the third finger are covered, but it's ''very'' common to reconstruct them without primaries or with the primaries emerging from the wrist or third finger.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''T. rex'']]
Main Page: TyrannosaurusRex
* Any time ''TyrannosaurusRex'' is depicted with three functional fingers or more.
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' making a loud thud when it walked, when its feet most likely had fatty pads to silence it's tread and make it inconspicuous to it's intended quarry.
* ''Tyrannosaurus'' emitting a mammalian roar. Neither birds nor crocodilians can emit roars, so tyrannosaurs almost certainly couldn't roar either.[[note]] Although crocodilians (and therefore possibly some dinosaurs) can make a sound that would be reasonably described as a "roar", it doesn't sound anything like something a lion, tiger or bear would give off. So most roars featured in dinosaur media are right out.[[/note]]
* Any time ''T. rex'' is spelled "T-rex" or some variation thereof (even "T. Rex" is unacceptable). ''T. rex'' is an abbreviation for the scientific name ''Tyrannosaurus rex'', just like ''E. coli'' is an abbreviation for ''Escherichia coli'', so the hyphen is not applicable. Scientific names are given with genus capitalized and species not, and are traditionally italicized.
* ''T. rex'' hunting fully-grown giant sauropods. Although sauropods did exist in North America during ''T. rex'''s period, none have been found in the bonebeds that bear ''Tyrannosaurus'' fossils. Most of its prey, as confirmed in the fossil record, is comprised of hadrosaurs like ''Edmontosaurus'' and ceratopsians like ''Triceratops''. Theropods with crushing jaws and puncturing teeth (like ''T. rex'') are more specialized in hunting armored prey.
* Referring to ''T. rex'' as a carnosaur. Before the 1990s, "carnosaur" was a blanket term for any large, hulking theropod, like ''T. rex'', ''Allosaurus'' or ''Albertosaurus''. But today, thanks to fossil evidence, we now know that carnosaurs were a distinct group that centred around ''Allosaurus'' and its relatives (sometimes called allosauroids instead due to Carnosauria’s historical baggage), and that ''T. rex'' was in fact a freakishly large coelurosaur, a member of the same group that includes raptors, ornithomimosaurs, and birds.
* Tyrannosaurs (and occasionally other saurischians) with short, box-shaped heads that have a squared-off snout. This is generally very prevalent in animation and illustration, and is good sign that they didn't care, as no known dinosaur had any head that even looked close to this.
** Similarly, tyrannosaurs are often depicted with heads that are smoothed over on the top, lacking the keratinous crests or bosses they most likely had in real life.
* Tyrannosaur arms described as weak. Short, yes. Weak, no.
* Tyrannosaurs having shallow-rooted teeth. Unlike the teeth of other theropods, which have roots the same length as the crown, tyrannosaur teeth have roots that are twice the length of the crown. This enables tyrannosaurs to grip onto struggling prey and not have their tooth fall out all the time.
* Either portraying large-bodied tyrannosaurids as having crocodilian scutes, lizard-like scales, or smothering it in a heavy coat of feathers. Neither is correct, thanks to a 2017 paper, which suggested the majority of the body had miniscule scales, similar to those seen on a bird's feet (small amounts of very sparse feathers, however, are not out of the question.) The scales are so small, the skin would look naked at a distance, though the facial region probably had thick dermal armour, a feature yet to be incorporated into mainstream culture.
** Some palaeontologists have suggested that [[http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs-ancient-fossils-new-discoveries/liaoning-diorama/a-feathered-tyrant/ baby tyrannosaurs had feathers, but lost them as they grew into adults.]] However, since feathers are basically highly evolved scales, if that assumption is true, then adult tyrannosaurs would have had bare, scaleless skin rather than scales and would have looked less like dragons than giant plucked chickens.
* ''Tyrannosaurus''' vision being based only on movement. This was popularized by ''Film/JurassicPark'', despite the [[Literature/JurassicPark original novel]] explaining that the motion-based vision was the result of the frog DNA used to recreate the park dinosaurs. It's actually believed that ''T. rex'' had excellent vision, probably better than humans and even that of modern birds of prey like hawks.
* Sue is often mistaken as the first ''T. rex'' found. It’s the most completely-preserved ''T. rex'' but it wasn’t the first. The first one was found 85 years before then.
* The oft-stated myth that chickens are the closest living relative of ''T. rex''. Really, ''Tyrannosaurus'' isn't any more closely related to chickens than to any other modern bird species.
** Even worse, that T. rex evolved ''into chickens''. The group that includes the modern chicken and other fowl (the Galloanseres) were already around at the time, long since diverged from the tyrannosaur line. It should also be noted that, however many feathers a ''T. rex'' may or may not have had, it really wouldn't look at all like a chicken or any other bird.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Raptors (Dromaeosaurs)]]
Main Page: RaptorAttack
* Whenever raptors (aka [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromaeosauridae dromaeosaurids]]) are depicted as [[RaptorAttack scaly, lizard-eyed dragon men with claws]]. This is ScienceMarchesOn for works before the late 1990s, but is inexcusable in the 2000s. While it is debatable whether all coelurosaurs (such as ''T. rex'') were feathered, there is ''no debate'' about the raptors. And no, raptors were not just ''Jurassic Park''-style [[http://popcultureasylum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/velociraptor-mongoliensis1.jpg scaly monsters that had been tarred and feathered;]] they had [[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_cENvLXAAAib0P.jpg wings, tail-feathers and feathers surrounding their eyes]]. If you saw one from a distance, or even with its mouth closed, you would mistake it for a large, predatory bird. Which is exactly what it was.
* Whenever ''Velociraptor'' is depicted as resembling ''Deinonychus''. ''Deinonychus'' was a roughly wolf-sized predator that lived in North America, while ''Velociraptor'' was a dog-sized lone predator that lived in Mongolia. The confusion is quite deliberate, and can be laid at the feet of two individuals: paleontologist/paleoartist Gregory Paul, who placed them in the same genus (the guy has some fairly idiosyncratic personal views on taxonomy) and ''Jurassic Park'' author Creator/MichaelCrichton, who liked the name ''Velociraptor'' so much he didn't care if Paul was literally the ''only paleontologist on Earth'' who considered them the same. When creating "''Velociraptors''" for the first ''Jurassic Park'' film, the crew used ''Deinonychus'' as a model even as they kept the wrong name in the script(since it sounded cooler and more iconic to them), and one of the most enduring public misconceptions about dinosaurs was born.
* The form of the raptor's hands is often shown wrong. While real raptors had hands which paralleled each other and were wing-like in appearance, most raptors in media have paw-like hands, as shown [[http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/wp-content/blogs.dir/474/files/2012/04/i-4dffe6f22eaa7a5e43c95743b341a793-Raptor-hands.jpg here]].
* ''Utahraptor'' being portrayed as an oversized ''Deinonychus'' in post-2014 works. ''Utahraptor'' is now known to have a bulky body, shorter legs and tail, and procumbent jaws.
* Referring to the famous "two-clawed raptor" ''Balaur bondoc'' as a dromaeosaur. While it was initially believed to be a very unusual member, notably having only two fingers instead of three, further studies have now reclassified it out of Dromaeosauridae and plonked it right into Avialae, containing modern birds as well as some primitive, toothed avians. Note that both Dromaeosauridae and Avialae are within the broader group Paraves, meaning that despite appearances, ''Balaur'' was not actually moved very far on the family tree!
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Spinosaurs]]
* ''Spinosaurus'' with an allosaur or tyrannosaur-like skull and four-fingered hands. ScienceMarchesOn for works from before the late 1980s, but otherwise unacceptable.
* Also, any spinosaurid that is depicted as an entirely terrestrial predator. All evidence of spinosaurid meals found consists of fish, a young planteating dinosaur (''Iguanodon''), and a fish-eating pterosaur (either caught while fishing or scavenged on the shore). As a rule, any theropod with non-serrated teeth is not a sauropod killer, because sauropods require a very specific hunting method. While it is still very likely they could have ambushed other dinosaurs by attacking like a crocodile, killers of sauropods and armored dinosaurs, they were not.
* Now some new ''Spinosaurus'' fossils make ''everything'' pre-August 2014 inaccurate. For reference, it had hilariously short legs and was more aquatic than previously thought. Just how short the legs were, however, is unclear. However, some paleontologists have expressed skepticism over this model, suggesting the short-legged fossils might be either chimeras or from a different species. Additionally, the assumption that it was quadrupedal is not based on any definitive evidence. Any and all known information on ''Spinosaurus'' is in flux at the time of this writing, but it seems it most likely was semi-aquatic and had short legs albeit still bipedal, since the arms are unable to support constant quadrupedal movement on land since it can't pronate its hands.
* ''Spinosaurus'' (or any other spinosaurid) with its nostrils at the end of its snout. Spinosaurids have their nostrils farther back on the snout, which helped them breathe as they fished or submerged their jaws in the water.
* Portraying ''Baryonyx'' without the enlarged claw on its first finger, despite said claw being ''where the genus got its name from''.
* Spinosaurids are usually portrayed without the triangular crest above the eyes. Alternatively, they would have two ''Allosaurus''-like crests, which was invented by ''Film/JurassicParkIII''.
* The two crests above ''Spinosaurus'' eyes are actually located further front to the snout, and as such some depictions actually have ''the eyes far too front, in the wrong set of fenestrae!''
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Ceratosaurs]]
* ''Carnotaurus'' (or any other abelisaurid) with tyrannosaur or allosaur-like arms. They had ridiculously small arms that were actually invisible as they lay flush against the body and probably completely useless.
* Any time ''Carnotaurus'' is shown with a full covering of feathers. Despite the increasing evidence that most theropods had feathers, ''Carnotaurus'' is the only theropod that we have any definitive proof of no feathering thanks to a really well-preserved fossil with skin impressions. Or at least not on most of its body; a sparsely-feathered ''Carnotaurus'' still wouldn't be out of the question.
* Any time ''Ceratosaurus'' is portrayed with only one horn, namely just its trademark nasal horn. ''Ceratosaurus'' actually had three horns, including two small ones over each eye. These horns were also fairly laterally-flat and resembled blades, in contrast to the broad horns that befall most depictions.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Oviraptorosaurs]]
* Egg-stealing ''Oviraptor''. Yes, its name means "egg stealer", and oviraptorosaurs appear to have been omnivorous, but it is unacceptable if eggs are stated to be the main or ''only'' source of their diets. The name was chosen by Roy Chapman Andrews, who discovered ''Oviraptor'' in 1924 near a nest of eggs, but even he felt it might be misleading. Discoveries of related species since then have pretty much confirmed that those eggs were the ''Oviraptor'''s, and she/he was likely brooding them, not stealing them.
* Oviraptorosaurs without feathers. They were so heavily feathered that they were essentially indistinguishable from modern birds. They even had beaks.
* ''Oviraptor'' refers only to a single, poorly preserved specimen unearthed by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1924. Subsequently discovered "''Oviraptors''" have all eventually been placed in separate genera, usually ''Khaan'', ''Conchoraptor'' or ''Citipati''. Restorations of "''Oviraptor''" tend to be based on these other, less well known dinosaurs.
* [[https://chasmosaurs.blogspot.ca/2012/06/vintage-dinosaur-art-illustrated.html Thanks to John Sibbick]], ''Avimimus'' was often portrayed as a flightless clone of ''Archaeopteryx'', namely as a bizarre lizard-bird hybrid complete with a mouth full of teeth. ''Avimimus'' actually had a short head with a toothless beak and, like any other oviraptorosaur, was practically identical to modern birds.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Birds]]
* The flightless bird ''Gastornis'' being portrayed as a carnivore in post-2014 works. Calcium isotopes in the bones of ''Gastornis'' have confirmed it was a herbivore, not to mention it lacks other predatory features such as sharp talons (based on footprints discovered in 2012) or a hooked beak. With that said, treating it as a harmless gentle giant because of this info is also a case of artistic license, as given its large size and powerful beak, it was very likely ''not'' a bird you would want to mess with, any more so than the equally herbivorous ostrich or cassowary.
* The dodo is popularly described as stupid; in fact the dodo was a member of the pigeon family, which is noted for its intelligence. The reason it died out was because it had no learned fear of humans and no defence against introduced species, particularly rats.
* Any post-2006 work that depicts phorusrhacids (aka, the famous "terror birds") with clawed hands like those of non-avian theropods. This came from the fact that the North American genus ''Titanis'' had unusually bent wings that initially suggested this. However, it was pointed out that seriemas, the terror birds' closest living relatives, have similarly bent wings, and still lack wing claws.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Theropods]]
* Depicting allosauroids as being able to easily kill completely armored dinosaurs such as ankylosaurs, an impossible feat since they have weak bites and cutting teeth. Hence this is why tyrannosaurs are more built for attacking armored prey. These two groups are opposite ends of the specialization spectrum.
* Any time ''Allosaurus'' is depicted looking like a three-fingered, downsized ''Tyrannosaurus'' (i.e. bulky body, no brow horns).
* Frilled, venom-spitting ''Dilophosaurus''. The venom was made up by the ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' novel, the frill by TheFilmOfTheBook and there is absolutely no evidence for either.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Sauropods in General]]
* Whenever sauropods are depicted up to their necks in water. This is more commonly seen in older depictions, because paleontologists initially couldn't believe that such huge creatures could exist without being supported in water. However, we now know that sauropods could not breathe in such a situation, and so it is thankfully a slowly dying trope. In fact, studies on the flotation dynamics of sauropods show that they would have floated unsteadily on the water surface rather than walk along the bottom were they to take a dip beyond wading depth.
* As mentioned above, the very belief that sauropods were too heavy to exist on land. We now know sauropods have light yet powerful skeletons with air-filled chambers, which allowed them to grow at such a large size while stabilizing their weight.
* Sauropods chewing their food. They couldn't; they didn't have cheeks or chewing molars. In fact, their long necks were only possible because they didn't need to chew- no chewing means no big jaw muscles, ergo small, light head, ergo long neck.
* Sauropods having their nostrils on the top of their heads. This is because of their nasal openings being positioned on the apex of the skull, which led to the idea that the nostrils were placed there and thus were used as snorkels or to help them breathe as they ate. We now know the nostrils were placed lower down near the tip of the snout.
* Sauropods with elephant feet. In actuality, most had one visible claw on each front foot, and three claws on each hind foot. Some had clawless front feet.
* Sauropods singing like whales is unlikely.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''Brontosaurus'']]
* Confusing ''Brontosaurus'' with ''Apatosaurus''. Before 2015, people were most likely to call an ''Apatosaurus'' a ''Brontosaurus''; however, these days it could just as easily be the other way around. Up until 2015, anyone remotely versed in palaeontology would have told you that the word ''Brontosaurus'' had as much scientific meaning as the word "unicorn", since the creature never existed. Rather, the name, meaning "thunder lizard", was given to a misidentified older specimen of ''Apatosaurus''. Why and how the word "Brontosaurus" survived is too complicated to explain quickly (in essence, big egos), but regardless, the RuleOfCool knows no statute of limitations, and the Thunder Lizard persisted to this day. And it turned out that was lucky, because in 2015 studies of ''Brontosaurus'' skeletons led scientists to conclude that yes, ''Brontosaurus'' was its own genus after all, and so the name was brought back from legend into natural history. It's still wrong to use it for all sauropods though.
* As noted in the comic books section below, the common story about ''Brontosaurus'' being just an ''Apatosaurus'' reconstructed with ''Camarasaurus''-like head was in fact incorrect even before 2015 revision of ''Apatosaurus'', as the synonymization of ''Brontosaurus'' with ''Apatosaurus'' was an issue unrelated to the original incorrect restoration of ''Brontosaurus excelsus''. Also, even when both genera were synonymized, their [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_species type species]] ''Apatosaurus ajax'' and ''Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus excelsus'' were retained as distinct species; just because they were classified in the same genus for a while doesn't mean they were the same animal - just like, say, assigning lions, tigers, jaguars and leopards to the single genus ''Panthera'' doesn't mean they are all the same animal.
* Any time ''Brontosaurus'' or ''Apatosaurus'' are portrayed with longer, thinner necks and more lightly-built frames than in real life. Apatosaurine sauropods are known for having a heavy build with very thick necks. [[https://svpow.com/2015/09/14/so-what-were-apatosaurs-doing-with-their-crazy-necks/ And because the necks were so robust they might have been used for fighting, and the placement of the cervical ribs suggest the presence of thickened pads or keratinous spikes]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Sauropods]]
* As noted above, referring to any sauropod as a ''Brontosaurus'' or even an ''Apatosaurus'', unless, of course, it actually is one. ''Brachiosaurus'' and ''Diplodocus'' are both common victims of this.
* ''Brachiosaurus'' with a diplodocid-like body. Brachiosaurids (or at least those for which forelimbs & tails are known) have longer forearms and shorter tails. In fact, ''Brachiosaurus'' got its name ("arm reptile") for having longer forelimbs than hindlimbs.
* Diplodocids with shorter tails like that of a brachiosaurid. Their tails were actually very long and whip-like.
* Brachiosaurids being able to rear up on their hind legs like other sauropods is unlikely, because their center of gravity was too far from their hips. It was also probably unnecessary, because the increase in height they'd gain from it would be minimal compared to other sauropods.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:''Stegosaurus'']]
* Whenever ''Stegosaurus'' is said to have a walnut-sized brain and a second brain in its hip.
* The plates of ''Stegosaurus'' were arranged alternatively in real life, but good luck seeing a portrayal with this arrangement. Usually the plates would be paired or, in the most extreme example, arranged in a single row. Said plates will also be misshapen, often as triangles or half-circles as opposed to pentagonal.
* Any time ''Stegosaurus'' is portrayed with the wrong number of tail spikes, from lacking any to having up to eight. Said tail spikes may also be too short, when the fossil spikes shown they were at least 60-90 cm (2 to 3 feet) long[[note]]When the animal was alive, the spikes would have been covered in a layer of keratin, making them even longer and thicker[[/note]].
* Any depiction of ''Stegosaurus'' that has a fat body, a dragging tail, a stubby neck, and splayed limbs. This is excusable if this is seen in older portraits, but not in modern ones.
* ''Stegosaurus'' with an unrealistically long neck. While its neck wasn't exactly short (according to a recently-discovered young adult named "Sophie", which is the most complete specimen to date), it was far from the sauropod-like necks some depictions portray it with. Although ''Miragaia'', a long-necked stegosaur, was discovered in 2009.
* It's been recently established that the plates of stegosaurs were covered in horny sheaths, based on well-preserved tissues on the plates of ''Hesperosaurus'', which would make the portrayals of ''Stegosaurus'' with skin-covered plates unlikely. This would also mean the plates could not have turned red by flushing blood, as ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' demonstrated.
* Also, stegosaurs using their plates as armor. While some studies suggest the plates were covered in horn, they are still irregularly placed for protection and keep the animal's sides unprotected. Instead, stegosaurs more likely used the chainmail-like scutes underneath their skin as protection against predators. Although the plates may have impeded a predator from attacking the stegosaur's back or leaping onto it.
* Any time ''Stegosaurus'' is portrayed as being too slow and sluggish to defend itself from predators. Stegosaurs have front legs shorter than their back legs; while this limited their speed, it put the center of gravity in their hips. This enabled stegosaurs to rapidly turn their bodies around, giving them opportunity to strike predators with their tails and keep them away from their weak spots. It helps that ''Stegosaurus'' lived alongside swift, fleet-footed predators such as ''Allosaurus'', so maneuverability would have been necessary for its defensive mechanism to be more effective in spite of its size and bulk.
* ''Stegosaurus'' having feet like an elephant or a rhino. In real life, stegosaurs have five toes on each forefoot, four of which being slightly long (though only two possess claws) while the fifth is hidden underneath the skin, and three short toes on each hindfoot.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Ceratopsians]]
* ''Triceratops'' with a gigantic frill. While it possessed one of the largest skulls of any land animal, its frill was relatively short especially by the likes of ''Chasmosaurus'' or ''Pentaceratops''.
* ''Styracosaurus'' with no frill and the long spikes protruding from the nape. And to a lesser extent, it may be depicted with long, ''Triceratops''-like brow horns (there ''was'' a ceratopsian that sort of looked like that--''Medusaceratops''--but don't expect to see it even in a documentary).
* Ceratopsians are often victims of being confused for other [[MixAndMatchCritters ceratopsians.]] Often putting whatever head on to whatever body and calling it whatever (usually ''Triceratops'') or just giving it a completely made up and inaccurate skull [[RuleOfCool because it would look more cool.]]
* Ceratopsians did not look the same throughout their lives, we once thought this but [[ScienceMarchesOn thanks to new discoveries]] We now know their heads generally changed over the course of of their lives. In fact some are debating whether ceratopsians like ''Triceratops'' and ''Torosaurus'' were the same species.
* It has been said that ceratopsian horns were not used for combat as they were too brittle and might not have been pointed enough to gore through flesh, plus they might not have been able to charge into its opponents as the skull would break upon impact. These both conflict with the fact that when the animal was alive the skull would have been reinforced by strengthening tissues and the horns would have also a layer of keratin, better shaping them for combat and preventing bone breakage.
* Basal ceratopsians with no quills or feathers. In RealLife, they had a lot of quill-like integument on the tail, particularly ''Psittacosaurus'' which was preserved with them. It is debatable whether the advanced ceratopsians have them, though.
* Big ceratopsids having feet like rhinos, hippos, and elephants. In actuality, they had four long toes on each hindfoot, one of which dangles uselessly, and five on each front foot, two of which don't support the weight and lacking claws, either.
* ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' with a horn on its nose. ''Pachyrhinosaurus'' is known for ''lacking'' one.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Hadrosaurs]]
* Hadrosaurs with visible fingers that may or may not be webbed for swimming. Their fingers were actually embedded underneath skin, bounded into a single thickened "hoof" built for walking on dry land.
* No, hadrosaurs were not aquatic animals. They are especially hit with this misconception because certain hadrosaurs resemble ducks (hence their nickname "duckbilled dinosaurs") and a ''very'' erroneous misconception that land plants were too tough for them to eat. They were land animals like modern day cows or bison.
* Adult hadrosaurs (or similar ornithopods such as ''Iguanodon'') being perpetually bipedal. Young hadrosaurs start off walking on two legs, but as they grew their forelimbs became stronger while their hind legs became less robust forcing them to walk mainly on all fours. They would only become bipedal when rearing up or running. However, there are some large ornithopods which probably would have been mainly bipedal, like ''Mantellisaurus'' [[note]]previously known as ''Iguanodon atherfiledensis''[[/note]], ''Camptosaurus'' and ''Muttaburasaurus'' [[note]]some debate if it could even walk on four legs[[/note]].
* Hadrosaurs being too weak to defend themselves from predators. This is due to the misconception that if dinosaurs have horns, sharp teeth, claws, tail clubs, or spikes then they are guaranteed to be dangerous, and hadrosaurs have none of those things. But given large ornithopods have [[LightningBruiser muscular bodies]] and [[TailSlap powerful tails]], it would be hard to imagine they would be defenseless in real life.
* Related to the above inaccuracy, hadrosaurs being drawn with skinnier bodies than they would have had in real life.
* ''Tsintaosaurus'' having a unicorn's horn-like crest in post-2013 works. We now know its crest pointed backwards and had rhomboid facets on the upper part.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Ornithischians]]
* Ornithischians having lizard-like mouths, with lips instead of a beak and no cheeks.
* ''Ankylosaurus'' is often depicted with the wrong body shape, such as resembling a tortoise with a club tail, lacking the two horns that point backwards from the back of its head and the two others below that point downwards and back, or being too thin in width. Its armor is hardly portrayed correctly, namely having big spikes along its sides, sharpened osteoderms, and the oval scutes all being the same size. Its tail club will also be incorrectly shaped, either two-lobed like on ''Euoplocephalus'' or having spikes protruding from it like a mace [[note]]''Scolosaurus'' was a victim of this, often portrayed with a pair of spikes pronging from its tail club, but thankfully this is no longer in practice[[/note]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Pterosaurs]]
Main Page: PteroSoarer
* Plenty of works featuring a pterosaur will use the generic term {{ptero|Soarer}}dactyl (usually reserved for the short-tailed pterodactyloid pterosaurs or the genus ''Pterodactylus'') for any kind of pterosaur. Also, said pterosaur is likely to be [[PteroSoarer highly inaccurate]], not closely resembling any known species.
* Pterosaurs launching bipedally. Forgivable if it's ScienceMarchesOn, inexcusable otherwise. Also, pterosaurs being bipedal in general.
* Pterosaurs [[KidnappingBirdOfPrey carrying prey off with their feet]], which are often inexplicably [[MixAndMatchCritters transformed into eagle-like talons]]. Sometimes they would even use them to [[AllFlyersAreBirds perch]].
* Much like with raptors, pterosaurs are common victims of nudism in media, lacking pycnofibres or fur-like structures that all pterosaurs were coated with in life.
* Any time female ''Pteranodon'' are portrayed looking the same as the males, being just as large and having long crests. Real ''Pteranodon'' had BizarreSexualDimorphism, with the females being shorter than the males and having short crests or no crest at all.
* ''Quetzalcoatlus'' and any other azhdarchid being vulture-like scavengers or seagull-like fish-eaters in post-2008 works.
* Portraying ''Pteranodon'' with [[ToothyBird teeth]]. This is a particularly egregious example since the animal's name literally means "toothless wing".
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Aquatic Reptiles]]
* Plesiosaurs, the long-necked sea reptiles, almost always have bendy necks. In some old books, they are even described as "snake-like". In reality, their necks were relatively stiff and had limited mobility, though they were far from being ramrod-straight.
* Plesiosaurs or any other marine reptiles coming onto land to lay eggs, as we now know they would die if they tried this and instead gave live birth, probably practising parental care.
* Mosasaurs with dorsal fringes and no tail flukes.
* ''Liopleurodon'', thanks to ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'', is often thought to be bigger than it actually was. It was 7 meters long not 25, which they show in the documentary. The biggest pliosaur we know about was ''Pliosaurus funkei'' (aka "Predator X"), which was 13 meters at best. The ''Liopleurodon'' in "Walking With Dinosaurs" was based on the "Monster of Aramberri", a very incomplete specimen found in Mexico in 1985; early reports had suggested that it was a juvenile and 18 m in length, leading to speculation of how big it could get as an adult. Despite being initially identified as a ''Liopleurodon'', the Monster has since lost that designation and is currently unclassified.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Crocodilians]]
* Crocodilians are not descended from dinosaurs. While fairly closely related to true dinosaurs, crocodylomorphs (including extant crocodilians) are in fact [[http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G104/handouts/104Archosauria.pdf a different type of archosaur.]]
* People often think crocodiles and alligators lived alongside Mesozoic dinosaurs, but they didn’t. It is true that crocodyliforms existed for about as long as the dinosaurs have, and that close relatives to today's crocodiles and alligators, like ''Deinosuchus'' and ''Sarcosuchus'', lived alongside them and filled the same niches, but the crocodilians we see today didn’t appear until 55 and 37 Million years ago, respectively.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Megalodon Shark]]
* No, {{megalodon}}s were not a hundred feet long. Since the only fossils we have of them are their, admittedly big, teeth, reconstructions of megalodon have varied wildly in both size and shape over the years, but most palaeontologists agree that megalodons probably were between 45 and 60 feet long. Additionally, whether or not megalodon is a great white relative is also in dispute, so its common depiction as a giant great white is likely, if not wrong, than at least partially inaccurate. Some have argued that, due to its larger size, megalodon may have required a different body form and [[https://pre00.deviantart.net/5fcc/th/pre/f/2017/271/2/e/that_giant_shark_everyone_talks_about_by_qbliviens-dbott82.jpg likely more resembled a whale shark or basking shark than a white]].
* Megalodons did not eat dinosaurs. They're actually a relatively recent species, evolving about 23 million years ago and only dying out about 2.6 million years ago, meaning our hominid ancestors just missed them.
* Despite what [[Literature/{{Meg}} incredibly stupid fiction]] or [[http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/videos/megalodon-monster-shark/ outrageous hoaxes]] may tell you, no one has found even the tiniest shred of evidence that megalodons are still alive.
* Any time "megalodon" is spelled as capitalized ("Megalodon" or even "''Megalodon''"). It's commonly thought to be a genus name, but is actually a species name (the full scientific name is ''Carcharocles megalodon'').
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Fish]]
* ''Helicoprion'' is often seen by many as one of the [[https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/primeval-fanon/images/1/14/Helicoprion.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111113153854 most bizarre prehistoric sharks of all time.]] But it didn’t actually look like that. [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Helicoprion_NT_small.jpg It was actually more subdued in its appearance.]] It also wasn’t a shark but a ratfish.
* ''Leedsicthys'' has likewise been depicted with [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Leedsi%26Liopl_DB.jpg exposed bone plates on its head, with said head having a sloped shape]]. It's believed that ''Leedsicthys'' had an [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Leedsichtys092.jpg elongated, smooth head.]] And contrary to what some sources say, it did not grow more than 16 meters long.
* ''Cretoxyrhina'' restored resembling a carbon-copy of the modern great white shark. While similar in size, its proportions were actually more similar to a thresher shark, although more rotund and with a shorter heterocercal (upper part of the tail fin).
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Synapsids in General]]
* There is some confusion about what actually classifies a synapsid.
** Some use "synapsid" to describe only the early ones like ''Dimetrodon''. In reality this term also includes mammals of today like us.
** The name "mammal-like reptiles" isn’t an accurate description of early synapsids. This term was once in wide use, as the term "reptile" was used to refer to any amniote (land vertebrate that either lays hard-shelled eggs or gives live birth) outside of mammals and birds (in addition to fossil taxa closer to amniotes than to modern amphibians), but in modern nomenclature paleontologists prefer to define taxonomic groups based on phylogeny (evolutionary relationships) rather than phenetics (superficial similarities). Under modern phylogenetic definitions, "reptile" is only used to refer to modern reptiles (lepidosaurs, turtles, and crocodylians) and the animals more closely related to them than to mammals, thus synapsids of any kind are no longer considered to be reptiles. A more accurate term for non-mammalian synapsids would be stem-mammals or proto-mammals. However "mammal-like reptile" is still used in some circles.
* Any time early synapsids are shown with dinosaur or reptile anatomy and lacking the more mammal like features. ''Dimetrodon'' suffers heavily from this, a lot of times being shown as just a lizard with a sail on it’s back. A real ''Dimetrodon'' (and other basal synapsids) might have had naked skin like a mammal's coupled with pseudo-scales (of a completely different structure than those of true reptiles) on the underside.
* In 2012, neural spines of ''Dimetrodon'' were reported to be commmonly bent at the tips, indicating that the tips may have been exposed. As such, it became a bit of a paleoart meme to depict Dimetrodon as having ''only half a sail''. However, what the study had actually concluded was that while the extreme tips of the spines indeed were exposed, the rest of the spines (about nine-tenths of it) were covered in a sail, and such would have looked much more like the traditional depiction.
* Synapsids being depicted with scaly skin like a lizard or crocodile. While it's debatable what body covering they had, it's unlikely that they had osteoderms. A preseved specimen of the skin impressions of [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estemmenosuchus Estemmenosuchus]] (a strange therapsid resembling a cross of a hippo and a moose) revealed it to have smooth leathery skin, covered in pores that may have housed skin glands similar to mammals of today. (However, it's unclear whether this trait was common on all therapsids, or if others indeed had hair and ''Estemmenosuchus'' secondarily lost its fur.)
* Early synapsids being shown living alongside dinosaurs like ''T. rex''. While the mammals of course survived, a lot of the earlier synapsids at best only made it to the Triassic and didn’t live alongside the dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous. The few stem mammal groups that did survive past the end of the Triassic (certainly tritylodontids, tritheledontids, and docodonts, questionably [[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1518/985 dicynodonts]]) are unheard of in fiction and probably would have been more or less indistinguishable to a layman from a true mammal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Mammals in General]]
* Any medium (including a few documentaries) that suggests that mammals either didn't evolve until after dinosaurs died out or had barely done so when they did. In fact, mammals coexisted with the dinosaurs throughout most of the Mesozoic and may be present in the fossil record as far back as the Late Triassic, which would make them almost as old as the dinosaurs.
* Conversely, any medium that suggests that non-avian dinosaurs coexisted with giant extinct mammals, such as mammoths, sabertoothed cats, or neanderthals. The largest mammals alive during the Mesozoic, or age of the dinosaurs, were about the size of opossums. They didn't start getting big until the dinos weren't around to clog their niches.
* That said, the idea that all mammals during the time of dinosaurs were insignificant shrew-like animals that only lived in their shadow is now considered not completely true, as recent finds suggest that they evolved a wide variety of forms during the Mesozoic, including aquatic species, gliding species, burrowing species, grazing species, arboreal species, and even species that ate dinosaurs. '''Very small''' dinosaurs.
* There is a misleading belief that the mammalian form is somehow "superior" to the dinosaurian, and that mammals are inherently more successful and adaptable. In fact, dinosaurs, in the form of birds, currently outnumber mammal species by nearly two to one, and many species, such as crows and parrots, are of comparable intelligence to primates. Indeed, mammals only became dominant over dinosaurs after literal cosmic intervention wiped out most of them, and had it not occurred, it's likely non-avian dinosaurs would still rule the Earth today.
* There is a tendency (largely carried over from earlier times) to refer to extinct mammals as "X [insert modern mammal's name here]." For instance, referring to a ''Smilodon'' as a "sabre-toothed tiger", ''Thylacoleo'' as the "marsupial lion", or the thylacine as the "Tasmanian wolf" or "Tasmanian tiger". The marsupial predators of Australia were not at all closely related to wolves, lions, tigers or indeed any other placental predators.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Sabre-toothed cats]]
* Referring to sabre-toothed cats as "saber-toothed tigers". Machairodontines, or true sabretooths, were an entire subfamily of cats that were no more closely related to the pantherines (tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars) than they were to the felines (pumas, cheetahs, lynxes and domestic cats).
* Any time saber-toothed cats are depicted with long ''Panthera''-like tails. ''Primitive'' saber-toothed cats have proportions similar to non-sabertoothed cats, including shorter canines and long tails. As they become specialized, their fangs grow longer, but so do their necks and front legs, while their hind legs become shorter, giving them a loosely hyena-like profile, and their tail becomes stubby like in a bobcat. ''Smilodon'', the most famous sabertooth cat, [[NewerThanTheyThink is also the last in the series]] and the one where these features are the most exaggerated. Biomechanical studies have shown that this configuration is better to knock down and hold the prey on the ground before "stabbing" it with the fangs in a meaty, well irrigated area. If ''Smilodon'' and co. attacked without securing the prey with their paws first, as they are often seen in fiction, their fragile sabers could break in half.
* Any time sabretooth cats are fast and agile. They were actually among the slowest predators in RealLife, relying on ambush and strength, not speed or agility. Sabretooth cats could never chase prey. The one big exception to this is ''Homotherium'', the scimitar cat, but it rarely shows up in media anyways.
* ''Smilodon'', a [[WeAllLiveInAmerica strictly American genus]], placed in any other continent, and often long after every other sabertooth had gone extinct there.
* Similarly, ''Smilodon'' living in a snowy environment alongside woolly mammoths, despite ranging farther south in warmer climates. The South American species ''S. populator'' was known to have lived in a savannah-like environment which spread much of the Amazon was during the Ice Age. On the other hand, the North American species ''S. fatalis'' would have seen snow during winter, given California's colder climate at the time.
* Every sabertooth (as well as similar synapsids such as the thylacosmilids and the gorgonopsids) is always portrayed as having their sabers exposed, despite many genera having huge jaw extensions which their teeth fit inside, suggesting they kept their sabers hidden inside their mouths. ''Smilodon'' is most likely an exception to this due its sabers extending far below the jawline.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Mammoths and Mastodons]]
* Mammoths were not the ancestors of modern elephants. Asian elephants are more related to mammoths than to African elephants, but mammoths were direct ancestors of neither.
* Mammoths were [[SmallTaxonomyPools not all woolly]]. There were several species of mammoths, the woolly one (''Mammuthus primigenius'') being only one of them, and it is possible that others were as naked as elephants because they lived in warmer climates. Mammoths appeared in the Pliocene, roughly at the same time as hominids, and the woolly mammoth was the last of them, evolving its thick pelt as protection against the cold, from ancestors that were "naked" instead of the other way around.
* Mammoths were not all prehistoric. The last ones died out in Wrangel Island, Siberia, around 1700 BC, [[NewerThanTheyThink when the Egyptians were already building pyramids]], though no one knew of them at the time.
* Mastodons looking the same as mammoths, despite being shorter and stockier and having a low-domed skull.
* Mammoths and mastodons are regular victims of BiggerIsBetter, to the point that "mastodontic" is a synonym of "gigantic" in some languages. There were some truly gigantic mammoths and mastodons: the Steppe Mammoth, ''Mammuthus trogontherii'', was the fourth largest land mammal ever, and one of a handful that routinely surpassed the four meters on shoulder height. It was only itself surpassed by the Indian straight-tusked elephant ''Palaeoloxodon namadicus'' and the giant Tertiary [[MixAndMatchCreatures rhino-giraffe]]s ''Paraceratherium'' and ''Dzhungariotherium''. However, the species usually depicted in media, the woolly mammoth and the American mastodon, were actually smaller than living elephants. In fact, one theory about the American mastodon's extinction is that it was displaced by a newly arrived immigrant to the Americas - the moose.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Proboscideans]]
* Referring to elephants or any elephantine creature as a "pachyderm". Despite being cute, the name is now completely outdated and should be forgotten (it arguably would have been if ''Disney/{{Dumbo}}'' hadn't remained so popular). It originally referred to a taxonomic group that included elephants, rhinos and hippos. But now, thanks to anatomical and genetic evidence, we know that, other than being placental mammals, these animals have literally nothing to do with one another. In fact, rhinos are more closely related to horses and tapirs than they are to elephants, and hippos are more closely related to ''whales''.[[note]]Though hippos and rhinos are still more closely related to one another than any of them are to elephants.[[/note]]
* If the gomphothere ''Platybelodon'' ever makes an appearance, it will usually be portrayed with a [[http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0909/reynolds_d.jpg big, flap-like trunk]] to match with its famous shovel-like lower jaw. In real life, ''Platybelodon'' and its similar-looking relatives most likely had long, flexible trunks like modern elephants. The flappy trunk might have been due to the outdated belief ''Playbelodon'' was a swamp-dweller using its lower tusks to scoop up food, before its teeth were found to have wear patterns suggesting it ate tough plant material as opposed to soft water plants [[note]]the swamp-dweller hypothesis also never considered the fact amebelodonts also have upper tusks[[/note]]. Thus, if ''Platybelodon'' was a terrestrial browser, [[http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/extinct-elephant-likely-sawed-not-shoveled-with-its-mouth/ it would have required an elephant-like trunk to grasp branches while it used its tusks to cut up the tree]].
* The term "elephant" being used for any extinct proboscidean, such as mastodons and gomphotheres, despite being in different families. Conversely, there's also mammoths being treated as separate from elephants despite the fact that, being in the Elephantidae family, they technically ''are'' elephants.
* ''Deinotherium'' has been recently portrayed with a shorter trunk, due to deinothere skulls lacking attachment marks for trunk muscles. But since it's been discovered elephants don't have these marks either, it's seems more likely that ''Deinotherium'' and its kin had long trunks as well. Especially given while their necks are longer than those of elephants, their legs are also longer meaning they would have difficulty kneeling (and therefore unable to drink). It should also be noted ''Deinotherium'' has a large nasal bone suggesting it had a powerful trunk, and a longer trunk would endure more strain than a shorter one.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Humans]]
* No, humans did not "evolve from apes". Humans and modern apes share a recent common ancestor from which they diverged. But that even that statement is actually inaccurate; humans have not diverged from apes- humans still are apes. Modern genetic classification defines the family Hominidae as including not only humans but all "great apes" (chimps, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas). Works from before the 80s or so restrict Hominidae to humans and use the now-discredited Pongidae for the other great apes.
** There is a lot of confusion about what "evolve from apes" means. Neither "ape" nor "monkey" is a taxonomic term, but everyone has a general idea of what an "ape" or "monkey" looks like. Distant human ancestors include animals that an average observer would describe as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierolapithecus an ape]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proconsul_(primate) a monkey]]. Humans don't descend from any ''modern'', currently existing ape or monkey, however. We don't descend from chimpanzees, or gorillas, or macaques.
* Despite what [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Human_evolution_scheme.svg certain pictures may tell you]], humans did not evolve from chimpanzees either. Recent finds like ''Ardipithecus'' have suggested that chimpanzees' quadrupedal posture is in fact a highly derived form, and that the ancestral "missing link" may look more like us than them.
* There is no archaeological evidence that early man used clubs; in fact, the earliest spears are thousands of years older than the earliest clubs. And while many early humans definitely sheltered in caves, there is no way that they ''all'' did. Caves are rare, and unlikely to be found on ice age steppeland. Most early men sheltered in huts, much like modern day hunter gatherers.
* [[AllCavemenWereNeanderthals Neanderthals are not the ancestors of modern humans.]] While the genetic relationship between humans and neanderthals is somewhat complicated (nearly everyone not from Africa has a little neanderthal DNA in their makeup), neanderthals were a specifically Eurasian species that evolved to live in the harsh northern Ice Age climate. Modern humans may have interbred with neanderthals when they reached their territory, but they did not evolve from them, since they first appeared in Africa, and no one in Africa has any neanderthal DNA.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Other Mammals]]
* Cave bears will usually be portrayed as carnivores in the media, when their dentition and isotope analysis suggest they were herbivores. That said, they probably would eat meat if the opportunity arises much like the giant panda.
* Any time ''Gigantopithecus'' is portrayed walking upright like a human, mainly in order for it to associate with [[BigfootSasquatchAndYeti Bigfoot]]. While ''Gigantopithecus'' is only known from teeth and jawbones, its close relationship with modern apes, particularly the orangutan, strongly suggests it walked on all fours (it was once thought to be very closely related to humans, but this seems to be incorrect).
* Similarly, whenever a ''Megatherium'', or giant ground sloth, appears, expect it to be in a perpetual upright stance. In real life, while they would rear up from time to time in order to browse, their limb structure suggests ground sloths walked on all fours.
* ''Megatherium'' is often portrayed with a horse-like head or a dog-like nose, and the oldest portraits even gave it a tapir-like trunk. But since today's sloths have pig-like noses or just two forward-facing nostrils, it seems most likely ''Megatherium'' and the other ground sloths have those kinds of noses as well.
* ''Andrewsarchus'' was initially thought to have been a relative of mesonychids due to similarities in teeth and skull, and ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'' perpetrated this [[http://walkingwith.wikia.com/wiki/Andrewsarchus?file=AndrewsarchusBook.jpg portrayal]]. Recent studies have shown it was actually an artiodactyl closely related to entelodonts as well as hippos and cetaceans; it would have most likely looked more like [[https://romanyevseyev.deviantart.com/art/Andrewsarchus-mongoliensis-504911425 a pig with the head of a wolf]] as opposed to simply a wolf with hooves. With that said, its exact appearance is currently impossible to clarify since it is only known from the aforementioned teeth and skull.
* Glyptodonts are often portrayed withdrawing their heads into their shells like turtles, which they couldn't in real life. They were actually more like ankylosaurs, having body armor that covers only the topside of the body leaving their undersides unprotected.
* The giant short-faced kangaroo ''Procoptodon'' being portrayed hopping as a mode of transportation just like its modern-day relatives. In real life, ''Procoptodon'' was unable to hop due to its weight and instead walked bipedally like a human would.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Invertebrates]]
* Thanks to them being BigCreepyCrawlies the giant arthropods of the past (particularly the Carboniferous, the era of big bugs) suffer a lot from the PrehistoricMonster trope. Some of them were predators yes, but some were pretty harmless herbivores. ''Arthropleura'' is probably the biggest victim of this; despite the fact it was a herbivore a lot of works involving it show it as a scary predatory animal.
* Speaking of ''Arthropleura'', thanks to RuleOfScary they are sometimes shown as being centipede like in shape even though they more resembled millipedes.
* Portraying eurypterids (sea scorpions) only as scorpions that know how to swim. [[https://i2.wp.com/bioteaching.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/systematics.jpg For one thing the creatures came in more shapes and sizes than just scorpion-like.]], For another they had several differences, most notably their tails didn't have stingers. And while they’re closely related to scorpions and other arachnids, they are not part of the arachnid group. In fact one of the closest known ancestors to scorpions, ''Brontoscorpio'', an actual aquatic scorpion, isn’t actually part of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) order. Classification can be weird sometimes.
* Portraying ''Megarachne'' as a GiantSpider any time after 2005. This was one of the big issues with ''Series/WalkingWithMonsters''--the show was in mid-production right when it was discovered that ''Megarachne'' wasn't actually a spider. They couldn't remove it from the show, so they kept it in and just called it a "Mesothelae", a hypothetical member of a primitive spider group.
[[/folder]]
----
