YMMV / When Dinosaurs Roamed America

• Common Knowledge Prior to the 2019 description of Suskityrannus hazelae (first discovered in the '90s), various sources (including, at times, The Other Wiki) identified the raptors from the Zuni Basin segment as Dromaeosaurus, Deinonychus, or Saurornitholestes, even though none of them lived anywhere close to 90 mya. It probably didn’t help that the raptor models were repurposed for the Saurornitholestes in Valley of the T-Rex (which reused many models and even scenes from When Dinosaurs Roamed America). After 2019 though, it has become more widely known that both the raptors and the little Zuni coelurosaur were actually based on the then-unnamed fossils of Suskityrannus (which are even shown during the talking heads segments), making them an accidental Decomposite Character.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dilophosaurus in the Early Jurassic segment is pretty well-received due to having a more accurate design compared to its depiction in Jurassic Park (1993), not to mention its cool yet terrifying vocals.
• Funny Moments: The way the Nothronychus (earlier described as looking like a half-plucked turkey and walking like a pot-bellied bear) moves when running must be seen to be believed.
• I Knew It!: The show portrayed Ornithomimus as feathered a decade before it was confirmed.
• Narm:
  • Enter Allosaurus, the top predator of the Jurassic, hunting for prey... and uttering arguably the most pathetic, impotent vocalization in the entire show.
  • As mentioned above, the otherwise horrific forest fire is briefly interrupted by the sight of the Nothronychus running in the silliest way imaginable.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • All of the large theropods, except for Nothronychus.
  • The Dilophosaurus roar is one of the most memorable things about the show. Though for some, it's actually a Most Wonderful Sound.
  • While they might not have aged well, the raptors were an early example of how feathered dinosaurs could be quite terrifying. Their blackish-red plumage combined with pale faces and piercing yellow eyes give them a very creepy and ghoulish appearance.
• Special Effect Failure: Quite a number:
  • When the Rutiodon lunges out of the water, its tail goes above the surface, but there aren't any splashes or ripples.
  • As the "Syntarsus" pack prowls the forest, one shot has them walking in air.
  • The Dilophosaurus mother eating the Anchisaurus corpse is actually the reversed footage of her killing the animal, thus the Anchi's head rises up into the mouth of the predator by itself. You can also see the reversal clearly by looking at the Dilo.
  • For a single shot before an intruding Dilophosaurus arrives to steal the Anchisaurus kill, the blood that stained the face of the mother is gone.
  • As a young Triceratops playfully rolls through the vegetation, its neck-frill passes into the ground.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The series completely skipped the early Cretaceous, which could have been a good chance to show some of the fauna of the time such as Acrocanthosaurus or Deinonychus. The most likely reason (besides time and budget) is because it would have felt redundant, as they already had a large allosaur and a dromaeosaur in the cast (even if the latter turned out to be a misidentified tyrannosaur), and going with the Zuni dinosaur allowed them to also include a therizinosaur.

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