Trivia / Walking with Dinosaurs

• Accidentally Correct Zoology: While WWD was hit by Science Marches On hard, some of the speculative ideas presented in it were justified by future discoveries.
  • "New Blood":
    • Evidence of cynodonts in the Chinle Formation was slim at the time, being mostly isolated teeth and other fragments (all of which couldn't be confidently assigned to cynodonts by later researchers), and the main inspiration for the cynodonts in the episode were two large teeth, later named as Kraterokheirodon (which was later deemed an indeterminate tetrapod). In 2020, however, we named Kataigidodon venetus based on a partial dentary, the first properly named cynodont from Chinle (though it was only rat-sized).
    • At the time, no pterosaur fossils were confidently identified from Triassic North America (beyond some fragments tentatively attributed to Eudimorphodon). In 2018, however, we described the dimorphodontid Caelestiventus from the Late Triassic of Utah.
  • "Time of the Titans":
    • The North American Anurognathus was a case of Misplaced Wildlife. In 2007, the Morrison pterosaur Mesadactylus became classified as an anurognathid (although the classification is rather tentative, as it's based only on a single set of fused vertebrae).
  • "Cruel Sea":
    • The European theropod Eustreptospondylus is inaccurately shown living at the end of the Jurassic and is a Palette Swap of Allosaurus (despite being a megalosaur). Coincidently, in 1999 (when WWD debuted), paleontologists in Portugal described fossil material of Allosaurus itself from the Late Jurassic Lourinhã Formation, which would later be named Allosaurus europaeus (2006).
    • The German Rhamphorhynchus is shown coexisting with Oxford Clay Formation in England, likely based off fragmentary fossils from the site previously classified within the genus (and Rhamphorhynchus being thought to have a much bigger geographical range at the time due to scrappy Jurassic pterosaur fossils from around the world ascribed to it), but have since been determined to be dubious and likely represent unrelated rhamphorhynchoids (on top of the fact the episode is set more than ten million years after all the Oxford Clay fauna died out). However, an actual English Rhamphorhynchus was discovered in 2002 (named Rhamphorhynchus etchesi in 2015), and lived at the exact time the episode is set to boot (in the younger Kimmeridge Clay Formation).
  • "Giant of the Skies":
    • Several scenes show a generic midsized pterosaur with a Pteranodon-like crest, most notably the one who gets its fish stolen by the Ornithocheirus (Tropeognathus) in Europe. At the time, no such animals were known from the Lower Cretaceous, but then in 2003, we named Ludodactylus, a midsized anhanguerid with a Pteranodon-like crest that lived in Brazil at roughly the same time as its larger cousin Tropeognathus, and two years later, we also described the similar-looking Caulkicephalus, who lived in Britain during the Barremian (when “Giant of the Skies” takes place).
    • The tapejarids are depicted as having black bodies and red crests. In 2017, a tapejarid was discovered with preserved melanosomes (pigment cells). Guess what colors its body and crest were.
    • An unnamed large pliosaur briefly appears in the episode. A tie-in video game claims that it's Plesiopleurodon (a case of both Informed Species and major Anachronism Stew). In 2018, however, we described Sachicasaurus, a very large pliosaurid from Barremian Colombia, which fits the former's profile quite perfectly.
    • Iberomesornis an enantiornithine is depicted with a tail fan, which until the the discovery of enantiornithines with fan-shaped tail feathers and elaborate tail displays, it was thought that all enantiornithines instead possessed ribbon like tail feathers.^note Though it is not known if Iberomesornis itself possessed such a structure.
  • "Death of a Dynasty":
    • The temporally displaced Deinosuchus has a gharial-esque head and is described as weighing about one ton, is actually very similar to the largest crocodylomorph actually known from the Hell Creek area: Thoracosaurus.
    • The Dinilysia is live-acted by a boid snake and unnamed. There is an actual, unnamed boid in the Hell Creek Formation (the earliest boid in the fossil record, in fact).
    • Though fossil discoveries disproved the show's depiction of a stocky, badger-like Didelphodon, it also turned to be a largely true portrait of Repenomamus by sheer coincidence (although Repenomamus didn't live anywhere close, geographically or temporally, to the Hell Creek Formation).
    • At the time the series premiered, the inclusion of Torosaurus in "Death of a Dynasty" (set in Hell Creek at the time of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction) was considered a minor example of an Anachronistic Animal. While Torosaurus was indeed part of the Hell Creek biota, it was at the time only known from the middle Maastrichtian about 1-2 million years earlier than the setting of the episode. However, late Maastrichtian Torosaurus material has been uncovered since then and confirms that the genus really was still around to witness the K-Pg event^note That said, the late Maastrichtian Torosaurus material comes mainly from the Scollard Formation in Canada. We don't actually know whether it was still present in Hell Creek at this point (given the overall extreme rarity of Torosaurus fossils from Hell Creek, the idea they were there at the time and we just haven't found their fossils is highly plausible)..
• Actor Allusion: From the 3D movie, this wouldn't be the first time John Leguizamo played a prehistoric animal, although this time he's playing a bird. And not the first time he's been surrounded by dinosaurs. Humorously enough, his Ice Age costar, Ray Romano was picked to host the Discovery Channel premier of "Walking With Beasts" in order to promote Ice Age. This was an America only thing however, Canada was Romano free. Also amusing, Skyler Stone, the voice of Scowler, would later be the new voice actor for Diego in The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild.
• California Doubling: For obvious reasons, with one or two exeptions, none of the episodes were shot anywhere close to where they are supposed to take place, but in various exotic locations that more closely match the climate and flora from various points in the Mesozoic, and which also lack grass (which Tim Haines cited as one of the most frustrating factors).
  • All of "New Blood" (Late Triassic Arizona) was filmed on the shrublands of New Caledonia, and its coasts were used for parts of “Cruel Sea” (Late Jurassic Oxfordshire) while the rest of it was filled in the Bahamas.
  • "Giant of the Skies" (Early Cretaceous Brazil, North America, and Western Europe) and “Spirits of the Ice Forest” (Mid Cretaceous Antarctica/Australia) were filmed at various sites in Tasmania and New Zealand.
  • The ash fields and araucaria forests of Conguillío National Park in Chile served as the backdrop for “Death of a Dynasty” (set in Montana just before the K-T extinction). The site would be revisited for the T. rex episode of Prehistoric Park.
  • "Time of the Titans" (Late Jurassic Colorado) was the most elaborate, as parts of it were shot in Conguillío, while other bits were shot back in Tasmania, and others still, were shot in the redwood forests of California, including the famous Fern Canyon (which was also used in The Lost World: Jurassic Park). At least the last location is close to Colorado.
• Colbert Bump: Outside of the already well-known Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Rhamphorhynchus, Iguanodon, Utahraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex, and Ankylosaurus, all the other featured animals gained much public attention thanks to their inclusion in this series, especially those that don't really stand out much compared to many of their relatives.
  • Peteinosaurus was just one of several Triassic pterosaurs known at the time, and it wasn't even the most complete, yet its inclusion in "New Blood" gave it a major boost in notoriety.
  • Ornitholestes was seen as just a generic small coelurosaur, and likely would have been eclipsed in popularity by other Jurassic coelurosaurs named down the line, like its larger and sympatric relative Tanycolagreus (named in 2005), and Gregory Paul's interpretation of the animal sporting a nasal crest would likewise have been buried by the sands of time, if not for its appearance in "Time of Titans".
  • Liopleurodon gained some minor notoriety among researchers at the time as one of the largest (then) known pliosaurs together with the Australian Kronosaurus, but during the 2000s, the largest known Liopleurodon species were placed into the genus Pliosaurus, which itself gained a further boost in fame around that time due to the discovery of a third giant species, Pliosaurus funkei (Predator X). Though its portrayal here isn't the most accurate, WWD is the main reason Liopleurodon hasn't faded into obscurity as just another "small" pliosaur.
  • Eustreptospondylus was just one of several Jurassic theropods known from Europe at the time, fairly run-of-the-mill, and more obscure than its larger and more iconic relative Megalosaurus (even if the former is more complete). Its appearance in "Cruel Sea" changed that.
  • Polacanthus was just a typical Early Cretaceous nodosaur and known from fairly incomplete material. Following a boom of new early nodosaur taxa being described from the late '90s onward and from more complete material (most famously its cousin Gastonia), it likely would have faded into obscurity if not for its inclusion in "Giant of the Skies". By extension, the episode is the only reason anyone has heard about Hoplitosaurus and Dakotadon, as they were the basis for the American Polacanthus and Iguanodon shown in the episode respectively.
  • As its cousin Triceratops outnumbers it in the fossil record by around ten to one, Torosaurus wasn't particularly well known to the general public, but that changed after it was featured as the token horned dinosaur in ''Death of a Dynasty".
• Creator Killer: The box office failure of the 2013 film caused one of it's production companies, Evergreen Films,^note  The same studio that made When Dinosaurs Roamed America and Dinosaur Planet among other documentaries. to go bankrupt.
• Development Gag: The Plesiopleurodon from "Giant of the Skies" uses the Liopleurodon model used in "Cruel Sea", but the coat is the same as the Liopleurodon in the unaired test pilot.
• Creator Provincialism: It's a British documentary and "Cruel Sea" and "Giant of the Skies" focus heavily on British fossil animals. Though their depiction of Ornithocheirus was mainly based on the Brazilian Tropeognathus (as the British fossils are very fragmentary) and Liopleurodon originated in France (where it was first named from teeth but proper skeletal remains come from Oxford Clay).
• Executive Meddling:
  • For the Walking with Dinosaurs movie, 20th Century Fox decided to add voices to the dinosaurs to help kids get the film, but the decision was made really late in production to the point where there isn't even lip syncing. The majority of viewers disliked the change, as they found the voices annoying and distracting. The 3D Blu-ray release thus contains an exclusive "Cretaceous cut", which cuts out all the voices.
  • The makers first intended to do a series on prehistoric mammals and continue with one about dinosaurs, moving further back in time with every episode. However, the producers thought dinosaurs were cooler, which is why this series came first and the others were technical spin-offs instead of new seasons.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: For all the Science Marches On, certain things claimed in the series were unambiguously wrong even for 1999.
  • “Time of Titans”:
    • Brachiosaurus is said to be the largest land animal ever to have lived, a popular notion for most of the 20th century, but it was already surpassed in size by Argentinosaurus by 1993 (when the latter was described). This gets corrected in Chased by Dinosaurs.
    • Even though Allosaurus was known from numerous well-preserved skulls, even back in the late '90s, the series erroneously showed its "brow horns" as being placed above its eyes instead of in front of them, making it look as if it has permanent Angry Eyebrows. Fortunately, this was fixed with the updated model in The Ballad of Big Al.
  • "Cruel Sea" has several examples:
    • This size of the show's Liopleurodon. Back in the '90s, workers would have cited Liopleurodon, based on fragmentary remains from Oxford Clay and younger fossils from Kimmeridge Clay subsequently assigned to Pliosaurus, as reaching a max length of maybe 15 meters (improved understanding of pliosaurid anatomy would place such specimens at around 10-12 meters). The larger size in the series was based on very fragmentary remains (namely a large vertebra) which yielded length estimates of anywhere between 16 to 20 meters. Even the tie-in book Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence admits that no expert truly thought that 25-meter pliosaurids existed. Tellingly, the American cut of WWD shrunk down the Liopleurodon to 60 feet, which was more in line with the initial estimates for the large Oxford Clay fossils.
    • Bizarrely, when comparing the locomotion of Ophthalmosaurus and Cryptoclidus in "Cruel Sea", the narrator states that the latter represents the "norm" for marine reptiles by using its four flippers for propulsion, even though most other marine reptiles such as mosasaurs and sea crocs used their tails for propulsion just like ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs were actually the odd ones out.
    • In “Cruel Sea”, the narrator claims that large dinosaurs are rare in Late Jurassic Europe and that the 5-meter Eustreptospondylus is one of the biggest (at least in England). This is simply not true, as some of the first large dinosaurs ever named, like Dacentrurus, Cetiosaurus, and Megalosaurus (the first non-avian dinosaur ever named) all come from Late Jurassic England, and others, like the Portuguese Lustotitan (then lumped into Brachiosaurus) were also known at the time. This is especially odd since the unaired pilot shows Cetiosaurus coexisting with Eustreptospondylus.
  • "Giant of the Skies":
    • The Polacanthus was an unfortunate example of new information being published while the series was in production. In the '90s, the fragmentary Hoplitosaurus was considered so similar to Polacanthus that some workers synonymized them, and more complete fossils similar to Polacanthus had been found alongside Utahraptor in the Cedar Mountain Formation. However, in 1998 (a year before WWD aired), the Utah fossils were described as a distinct genus, Gastonia, and its describers criticized the proposed synonymization of Hoplitosaurus with Polacanthus, showing that the anatomical similarities between them were plesiomorphic traits that were widespread across early nodosaurs in general. The more complete Gastonia also revealed several anatomical errors in WWD's Polacanthus, most notably its head shape (which is addressed in Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence as an example of Science Marches On). The 2000 American cut of WWD, unsurprisingly, renamed the American Polacanthus as Gastonia.
  • Death of a Dynasty:
    • While the exact cause of the non-avian dinosaurs' extinction was still debated in the '90s and a gradual extinction was still considered possible, WWD opted to go with a minority opinion saying that dinosaurs were dying out specifically due to living on a "sick planet" poisoned by constant volcanic activity, even though we already had ample evidence, based on the various wildlife such as fish, insects, amphibians, and small crocodiles, as well as the local flora, that Hell Creek was a lush floodplain more similar to the Everglades than anything. Yet here, it's depicted as a barren, ashy wasteland with only patches of forests dotted across it. This was very much an artistic license, as even the novelization downplays this aspect and shows a more accurate version of the Hell Creek environment (while still keeping volcanism as a threat to the local dinosaurs), and Walking with Dinosaurs: The Evidence acknowledges that evidence for excessive volcanism at the time of the K-Pg extinction is slim.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The inception for the series came about due to the incredible success of Jurassic Park and riding the '90s wave of dino-mania, making it the best possible time for a scientific series with dinosaurs brought to life with special effects to be viable. Notably, the Diplodocus is shown making whale-like calls, much like JP's Brachiosaurus.
  • After Walking With Dinosaurs, there came a whole onslaught of documentaries with CGI dinosaurs. When Dinosaurs Roamed America, Dinosaur Planet, and Jurassic Fight Club, to name a few.
  • Every post-WWD toy of Liopleurodon has been given the colour scheme it had in WWD.
  • It's impossible to see the Coelophysis and not think of the Compsognathus swarm in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. However, this was based on a Procompsognathus swarm in the original novel, Jurassic Park, which was likely based in turn in the great numbers of Coelophysis skeletons found together in Arizona and New Mexico, since both Compsognathus and Procompsognathus are known from single, isolated skeletons. Same goes for the Explosive Breeder plot, which is reminiscent of the book's Velociraptor plot.
  • The climax of Jurassic World is virtually identical to the Signature Scene in "Cruel Sea".
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Many of the sounds the Allosaurus makes in the original series are the exact same sounds the Velociraptors make in Jurassic Park, just with a slightly lowered pitch.
• Genre-Killer: An odd case in which two works from the same franchise both launched the genre and killed it. The original miniseries was followed by a wave of imitators, and Walking With Dinosaurs-inspired dinosaur documentaries became a genre in their own right in the 2000s. The failure of the movie in 2013, however, was followed by the well of other dinosaur documentaries drying up almost overnight— almost none were made in subsequent years until the release of Prehistoric Planet.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The cut down two-hour long presentation of the original miniseries narrated by Avery Brooks that initially aired in the U.S. on the Discovery Channel has never been released on home video.
  • The pilot episode of the series was never released on home video and assumed to have been lost forever. For a long time, only clips from the pilot used in DVD documentaries for the series were available. Fortunately, a crew member who kept a real of said episode on DVD eventually found his copy and allowed it to be uploaded online.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • The European Utahraptor wound up being one due to never being given a sufficient explanation for being geographically misplaced by the narrator. This was meant to reference a controversial theory that Early Cretaceous Europe and North America shared the same dinosaur genera, based on the apparent presence of Iguanodon, Polacanthus and Hypsilophodon on both sides of the Atlantic (a case of Science Marches On), however, in the actual episode "Giant of the Skies", the only indicator that this is the case is Iguanodon and Polacanthus being present in both North America and Europe, and yet we only see Utahraptor in Europe, and the flying Ornithocheirus having to cross the Atlantic further muddies things.
  • The 'Cretaceous Cut' (the dialog-free version) of The Movie leaves in a few gags that make no sense without dialog:
    • In the theatrical cut, Alex explains some Gorgosaurus stats to the viewer with close up shots and diagrams (and he keeps getting distracted by its tiny arms). The visuals for this scene are left in the Cretaceous Cut.
    • The film gets inexplicably re-wound when Patchi falls in the river (originally, Alex questions Patchi's claim of diving in to save Juniper)
    • There is a close up of one of the knocked-out gorgosaurus teeth (which becomes the fossil in the present day scenes)
    • The closing credits pop music starts to Fade In and is interrupted by the gorgosaurus fourth wall break, but the actual credits with that song have been cut.
• Permanent Placeholder: Walking with Dinosaurs was intended to just be the Working Title (it was based on the director misremembering the title of Dances with Wolves), but it was kept as the final product.
• Prop Recycling: The small ornithopod from "Death of a Dynasty" is simply the Othnielia model reused, as it includes the same colors.
• Re-Cut:
  • The format of the original series lends itself well to this.
    • The American Discovery Channel version which, in addition to alternative narration, was cut to make room for commercial breaks, had a new opening title sequence, and features short paleontologist interviews next to the Ad Bumpers.
    • The Highlights: a 30-minute promotional VHS released in the UK.
    • Short Bites: ten-minute clip shows, each focusing on a specific animal, and narrated by british actor Sean Barrett. Released on VHS in the UK and Australia.
    • Prehistoric Planet (not to be confused with the 2022 series, or the film listed below): another Discovery Channel version, this time aimed specifically at children and narrated by Ben Stiller.
    • A three-part version with hour-long episodes; the time-lapse footage from the opening of the series is used as a transition between the original half-hour episodes.
    • A 90-minute Compilation Movie, which also uses the time-lapse between episodes and replaces the modern day ending with footage from Walking with Beasts. This version is used on the Reader's Digest DVD of the series.
  • The 2013 movie:
    • The Cretaceous Cut: removes the modern day opening, and all of the dinosaurs' telepathic dialogue.
    • Walking with Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Planet: a 50-minute version that features narration in a similar style to the original series. It's only available in IMAX cinemas.
• Referenced by...:
  • Homestar Runner: The Strong Bad Email "myths & legends" has an Easter Egg that the CG Dinosaur Channel airs "Walking with Trogdor", a reference to the series.
  • The Simpsons episode "The Book Job" has the family going to see Sitting with Dinosaurs, a parody of the arena show based on the series.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • Most obvious is the humongous Liopleurodon, as the main source of inspiration for its colossal size was a giant pliosaur vertebra around 25 cm in width described in 1996 from Oxford Clay (though it might actually belong to a sauropod).^note  Though estimates for that specimens were initially placed at 17-20 meters, not 25. The episode justified the latter by claiming the main Liopleurodon is an unusually large individual, the hypothetical max limit for its species. This is also true for its comeback in 2003's Sea Monsters, as it coincided with the description of the "Monster of Aramberri", a fragmentary Mexican pliosaur specimen originally described as a 15-meter juvenile (which the tie-in books tried to link to the former)
  • Diplodocus (and later Apatosaurus in The Ballad of Big Al) having horizontal, relatively inflexible necks was a theory sauropod expert Kent Stevens (the main advisor for "Time of Titans") was developing while the series was in production, so its inclusion in "Time of Titans" was very cutting-edge for its time (but later research on diplodocid biomechanics would heavily criticize it). Diplodocus having iguana-like spines was also a very new idea, thanks to the 1990 discovery of the "Howe Quarry diplodocid", which preserved impressions of long, keratenous spines.
  • Female T. rex being larger and More Deadly Than the Male is another clear-cut example, as this theory only came about during the early to mid '90s, with workers arguing that the more robust specimens represented the female of the species based on features such as a wider pelvis and an alleged reduced chevron in order to more effectively lay their eggs. However, for numerous reasons, this interpretation was heavily criticized by subsequent studies, ironically starting back in 2005 (when the WW series wrapped up).
  • A large chunk of “Giant of the Skies", including the discovery of the giant Tropeognathus specimen MN 6594-V during the '80s (who remains the largest known pterosaur next to giant azhdarchids), the 1993 description of Utahraptor (the first giant dromaeosaur to be found, just as a certain movie made raptors famous) and the 1997 description of giant Tapejara specimens (now Tupandactylus). The early bird Iberomesornis was also only described in 1992 and was seen as an important "missing link" in avian evolution (until enantiornithines became a dime a dozen).
  • "Spirits of the Ice Forest" was certainly this for 1999, due to the then-recent boom of fossil finds from the Dinosaur Cove site in Victoria during the late 1980s and '90s, which helped boost our understanding of South Pole dinosaurs, not to mention the 1997 description of Koolasuchus, a giant temnospondyl amphibian that survived long past its kin’s glory days.
• Same Voice Their Entire Life: In the 3D movie, Patchi, Juniper, and Scowler keep the same exact voices they had as kids when they turn into adults by the middle of the movie. This is mostly thanks to the creators not having enough time to find other voice actors for the dinosaurs.
• Shrug of God: The small ornithopod from "Death of a Dynasty" is not named. Common fan speculation is that it is meant to be Thescelosaurus, a small ornithopod from the same place and time. This is somewhat supported, though not confirmed, by Thescelosaurus being name-dropped in the book's entry about Anatotitan.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The series was originally envisioned as merely chronicling the history of palaentology with some occasional cuts to CG dinosaurs, but it was quickly decided that this wasn't nearly ambitious enough for what was intended to be a "landmark" documentary series.
  • A concept that was conceptualized and used in the pilot was occasional cutaways to the animals' skeletons to show how their anatomical features work in more detail. This aspect was scrapped to focus more on making the world seem natural. The idea was reused for the prequel series Walking with Monsters, however, and was also used for Discovery Channel's When Dinosaurs Roamed America.
  • The director initially wanted Industrial Light & Magic to do the effects for the series, as they had recently worked on the groundbreaking CGI of Jurassic Park. However, their estimated cost of $10,000 per second of dinosaur footage was infeasible for a series that needed three hours of footage. This briefly led to the possibility of the series focusing more on the landscape of the Mesozoic, with only dinosaur cameos, before Framestore, which had initially turned the job down, agreed to take up the project (Walking with Dinosaurs was still the most expensive per-minute documentary ever made, at over $61,000 per minute of footage).
  • Baryonyx and Cetiosaurus were to appear in the main series, but they were replaced with Utahraptor and scrapped entirely, respectively. The Cetiosaurus is also portrayed with a high-arched neck, but this was abandoned for sauropods in the franchise, due to a consultant who stated that horizontal poses were more likely (although this has since been heavily disputed).
  • The pilot episode used far more specific dates for each episode, in this case stating the time of the setting was 146,398,431 BC, while the series and all the followups only use broad dates (in this case it was changed to merely 149,000,000 BC).
  • When the pilot was retooled into the "Cruel Sea" episode, there were some minor changes aside from the ones already specified. The Eustreptospondylus was bright green instead of a dull brown, the Liopleurodon had a uniform bluish-grey colouration instead of blotchy black and white, and Liopleurodon is depicted hunting Cryptocleidus, a predator-prey relationship which is told but not seen in the episode proper.
  • In the original pilot episode, the Liopleurodon was depicted at a somewhat more realistic 60 feet long and weighing 60 tonnes (still the very upper limits of size estimates at the time), but still noted as the largest predator that ever lived. Apparently that still wasn't good enough for the producers, who increased the size to the infamous and monstrously unrealistic 82 feet long and 150 tonnes in the final program, with the Hand Wave that the Liopleurodon we were following was an unusually large specimen, over a hundred years old.
  • The series was originally to be narrated by David Attenborough, but he turned down the part, unwilling to support a fictitious, fake wildlife documentary. 23 years later, he would narrate Prehistoric Planet.
  • One backstory told for the series was that the producers initially advocated for a series centring on prehistoric mammals, but were only given the O-K for a series on dinosaurs. This ended up being for the better, the predominantly scaly skin of dinosaurs and other reptiles were much easier to animate than the furry bodies of mammals.
• Word of Saint Paul: Dinosaur Worlds, a tie-in video game to the series, claims that the unnamed pliosaur that briefly shows up in "Giant of the Skies" is Plesiopleurodon. However, this would be a major case of both Informed Species and Anachronism Stew, as Plesiopleurodon was a very small taxon that lived 30 million years after the setting of the episode, and this isn't supported in the novelization or any of the tie-in books (which don't mention it at all).

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