Now, to conclude the matter on ‘TTAKD’. As it was
written in the previous installment, the program already broke the canon by
depicting Tyrannosaurs as not being
invulnerable and unbeatable – it could be defeated…especially if you were a
Triceratops. Other dinosaurs…who knows?
However, the Tyrannosaurus-Triceratops conflict was
small fry compared to what the program did to the other ‘killer dinosaur’ – the Velociraptor. Yes, by now, it is
accepted that the raptors from ‘JP’ franchise are not ‘real’ but fictional,
make-believe animals that just look realistic, like their real-life
counterparts could’ve looked like,
but back in 2005 this knowledge wasn’t as widespread as it is now; back then
the epiphany that the Velociraptors were feathered and were the size of a small
turkey – not as big or scaly as they were in the JP franchise.
Later on, by 2010, other raptor species were
discovered, especially the Deinonychus and the Utahraptor – more ancient
species of raptors, who were much bigger than the Velociraptor was, and less
feathered than it, too, (probably).
Now, the feathers and dinosaurs… Yes, birds are
dinosaurs and are feathered; yes, the odds that at least some of the non-avian dinosaurs – the raptors, the troodontids, the
alvarezsaurids – were also feathered are good; but nowadays paleontologists and
paleoartists tend to stick feathers on most of the dinosaurs regardless of any
other evidence.
Just compare the skeletons
of a Velociraptor and a Tyrannosaurus, for example. Yes, the Velociraptor’s
bones are very light, almost bird-like: this was a predator built for speed,
not physical power…but Tyrannosaurus was. Built for power, that is. There is no
sensible reason to depict it as feathered…yet some scientific programs do just
that, (via CGI). God knows why,
Again, birds are dinosaurs – well, theropod dinosaurs,
to be more precise. Yet, as the existence of Archaeopteryx shows, the family
trees of birds and non-avian theropods (from Composognathus to Tyrannosaurus
and co.) have begun to split during the Jurassic, and by the early Cretaceous
there already were birds on Earth, just not modern ones. Raptors and their
relatives had feathers; some even had wings and could glide (think flying squirrels
rather than bats or birds), but they were not birds. Many therapods –
spinosaurs, carnosaurs, abelisaurs – were not very bird-like, (including the
tyrannosaurs, likely), and this goes double for sauropods and the bird-hipped
dinosaurs (whether or not we are talking about a Triceratops or an
Ankylosaurus, for example).
End rant, return to the ‘TTAKD’-related discussion.
The second part of the program put a Velociraptor against an ankylosaur: not an Ankylosaurus itself, just a
general armored dinosaur. For the greater percentage of time, the second part
of the program went rather like the first, comparing two dinosaurs…with guest
stars: Tarbosaurus and Protoceratops. Tarbosaurus was the Asian version of
Tyrannosaurus (in the program – Tyrannosaurus with a different skin color),
while Protoceratops was an older, and much smaller, relative of Triceratops
(without any brow horns).
Okay, this alone made the second part of ‘TTAKD’ more
interesting (and sort-of diverse) than the first. However, the decisive factor
were the raptors’ killer claws – according to the program, the raptors did not
slice with them – just stabbed, as if they were some strange rapiers (rather
than swords). They did not have a cutting edge – just a sharp point, and as such,
they were not dangerous to adult ankylosaurs – just to their young.
Okay, this sounds rather anthropomorphic – for all of
its flaws, AFO was never anthropomorphic
– but compared to the JP franchise, for example, or the JFC show, this is not a
really severe case. Yet ‘TTAKD’ was buried…because it broke through the clichés
and depicted raptors from a different P.O.V. – not slicers but stabbers. Paleontologists,
(and paleoartists), don’t like apocrypha, and while they couldn’t renounce ‘TTAKD’
(you don’t mess with BBC), they probably made sure that ‘TTAKD’ never became
mainstream and remained on periphery, replaced by more canonical programs and
shows, like JFC. Of course, JFC itself did not last for too long…but that is
another story.
For now, let us just say good-bye to ‘TTAKD’, which
tried to take over where AFO left and failed, because by the times that the
Velociraptor and the ankylosaurs came onto the screen, the AFO format was too
tight for the new program, and go and talk about something else.
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