Trivia / When Dinosaurs Ruled

• Duelling Works: With Walking with Dinosaurs. Both not only aired the same year for six episodes each, but featured some of the same animals (giant Tropeognathus, "polar allosaur"). However, Walking with Dinosaurs was an enormous success and is still fondly remembered, whereas When Dinosaurs Ruled is all but forgotten even among paleontology enthusiasts. Given that Walking with Dinosaurs was the first Narrative-Driven Nature Documentary to bring prehistoric wildlife to life via (then) state-of-the-art CGI and practical effects, whiles When Dinosaurs Ruled is a traditional No Budget paleo-documentary spun off from Paleoworld, it's easy to see why.
• Science Marches On: As this was made at the tail-end of the '90s, inevitably, a lot of the info presented in it has become very dated.
  • The scaly coelurosaurs are the most obvious issue. Though the episode on Asian dinosaurs acknowledges the then-recent finds of Sinosauropteryx and Caudipteryx, which showed that non-avian coelurosaurs could have feathers, the Velociraptor and Oviraptor from the same episode are still depicted as entirely scaly, despite being much younger and more derived forms than the former two, and Caudipteryx being a basal oviraptorosaur (though its classification was contested at the time, due to its very bird-like nature), and the same is true for the basal therizinosaur Alxasaurus. At least they do mention the (likewise basal) therizinosaur Beipiaosaurus (named in 1999) at the end of the episode and suggest that feathers might have been widespread among theropods.
  • Massospondylus is illustrated as a quadruped but anatomical research has since shown that it and many other early sauropodomorphs (though not all) couldn’t pronate their hands and were in fact obligate bipeds. It’s also said to have lived during the end of the Triassic when it actually lived in the Early Jurassic, right after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction.
  • Brachiosaurus brancai is included among the African dinosaurs, but since 2009, this giant sauropod has been put in its own genus, Giraffatitan brancai.
  • The midsized theropod Deltadromeus is depicted as a conventional predatory dinosaur, which some argue is accurate (who classify it as a neovenatorid or some other carnivorous tetanuran) but several phylogenetic studies have alternatively recovered it as a giant noasaurid◊ (a unique group of abelisaurs). Due to the incomplete nature of its remains, its identity remains a source of debate.
  • Needless to say, their depiction of Spinosaurus has aged very poorly, being depicted as a generic, long-legged theropod with a sail on its back. Paleontologists are shown digging for new Spinosaurus fossils in the Sahara and finding teeth, bits of the skull, and other fragments, with would eventually lead to better material, including more complete skulls that turned out to be similar to those of Baryonyx and Suchomimus, and later discoveries between 2014-2020 further revealed that in addition to conical teeth and a crocodile-like head, Spinosaurus also had very short back legs and a flattened tail, meaning that it was an amphibious piscivore and full-blown crocodile analogy◊ (as it was the most derived of the riparian spinosaurids). On the upside, it is at least accurately described as a swamp-dwelling fish-hunter and is given a (comparatively) conservative length of 49 feet (unlike the monstrous 60-foot estimates touted during the 2000s).
  • Carcharodontosaurus is said to have stretched 50 feet in length, when it was actually about the same length as T. rex (circa 40-43 feet) and might have been less heavily built.
  • Majungasaurus and Majungatholus are treated as two separate abelisaurids, but by 2007, after more specimens were recovered from Late Cretaceous Madagascar, researchers determined that the latter is a synonym of the former. It’s also depicted with rather long legs, when in reality, they were rather short◊ (shorter than in most of its cousins), and overly long, overly developed arms, when abelisaurids had tiny, vestigial ones.
  • The Isle of Wight segment shows a yet unnamed midsized theropod from the site, which the narrator describes as a big dromaeosaur (despite the accompanying illustration not resembling one). Two years later, it would be described as a basal tyrannosaur, the aptly named Eotyrannus. ^note  If this is referencing an initial misidentification of the specimen, it wouldn't be the only one of its kind, as fellow basal tyrannosaur Suskityrannus was famously mistaken for a dromaeosaur around the same time (the '90s).
  • Carnotaurus is shown to have lived 105 mya, which was accurate for the time, as the one known specimen was originally thought to have come from the Mid Cretaceous Cerro Barcino Formation, but reevaluations of its age in the 21st century showed that it actually came from the Late Cretaceous La Colonia Formation, being only a few million years older than T. rex. It’s also suggested that it might have used its distinct horns for killing prey, but that hypothesis is now considered far-fetched, as the horns were likely used for display and possibly for agonistic behavior.
  • Megaraptor is depicted as a massive Deinonychus-like dromaeosaur, as back then it was only known from a foot-long sickle-shaped claw, which was assumed to be the toe claw of a raptor dinosaur. But in 2004, it was discovered that the massive claw was actually attached to its hand, leaving its identity in limbo until 2009, when the discovery of an Australian relative (Australovenator) helped identify it, and gave rise to a wholly new group of theropods called the megaraptorans.
  • Pterosaurs are said to have hunted fish via skim-feeding, a common theory at the time, but later biomechanical studies have cast doubt on any piscivorous pterosaur having been capable of skim-feeding.
  • Like in Walking with Dinosaurs, Tropeognathus is given a 40-foot wingspan based on the largest specimen, but this was just a preliminary description of it, and once it was properly described in 2013, its wingspan was downsized to 28-29 feet. It’s also referred to by the obsolete name “Criorhynchus” and the narrator suggests that pterosaurs never stopped growing throughout their lives, which is rather unlikely for an endothermic tetrapod.
  • Cryolophosaurus is depicted with a boxy, allosaur-like skull but that restoration is likely inaccurate, and its skull was more similar to that of other Early Jurassic theropods, like Dilophosaurus.
  • The ankylosaur Minmi is represented by a remarkably complete and articulated skeleton, but in 2015, that specimen was reassigned to its own genus; Kunbarrasaurus.
  • Muttaburrasaurus is no longer the largest dinosaur known from Australia, as several sauropods from Queensland, most of all the enormous Australotitan, have since surpassed it by a wide margin. The latter also debunks the notion that Australian dinosaurs did not get very big, as claimed in the episode.
  • The “polar allosaur” from Victoria, here referred to as dwarf species of Allosaurus, is listed among the Australian dinosaurs. Though only known from an ankle bone, later research has rejected the allosaurid identification and instead believes that it represents an indeterminate megaraptoran (which were common in Australia).
  • Timimus (known only from two femora) is no longer considered an ornithomimosaur but rather an indeterminate coelurosaur, and it’s unlikely that ostrich dinosaurs can trace their roots to Australia, as we have no unambiguous evidence of their existence in the Southern Hemisphere.