Zuul the dinosaur

…And so, it is fifth of June already. Yay! In real life, my sister has graduated, and within the summer of 2017, she will have her new job. The two of us do not really get along, and this is all I am going to be talking about her here and now – not in the mood, not at all.

With RL off the table, what else is left there? Okay, there is the new nodosaur dinosaur that was (is?) talked about in May, and now June, of 2017. It is RL, actually, thus-

Thus the thing is that the official NG magazine article (June 2017) is almost downplaying the original excitement about the dinosaur from May. Take a look at the NG magazine archive, and find the October 2014 volume – it deals with Spinosaurus.

…Okay, no. We will actually try to avoid the JP franchise, movie or otherwise – as 2014-present showed, the RL Spinosaurus was a different animal from the one depicted in JP3, which is somewhat ironic, since I talked only last month about it – the RL Spinosaurus – fighting Tyrannosaurus and/or some Cretaceous carnosaur. Right. Here the thing is that back in October 2014 Spinosaurus got front-page coverage, it was the titular article of the volume, and now, in June 2017, this is not the case. The nodosaur is not the focus of the volume, the issue of why people lie is.

Again, so what? In addition, the NG has a point – nodosaurs are not as well-known as the theropod dinosaurs are. The article explains that they are cousins to Ankylosaurus (‘Walking with Dinosaurs’) and the like, but unlike the ankylosaurs in general (think Euoplocephalus, etc.) they had no tail club, but were more often spiked, as Sauropelta from ‘Monsters Resurrected’ was.

…Actually, things are slightly more complex than the lay people believe; apparently, aside from Stegosaurus and its part of the family, the armored dinosaurs consisted of three groups, not two – the ankylosaurs, the nodosaurs, and the polacantines. Polacanthus, from the already mentioned WWD, was a polacantine, not a nodosaur…and this is being disputed, the entire issue of ankylosaurs vs. nodosaurs vs polacantines. So far, scientists still do not know for sure which armored dinosaur belongs in which group, not 100%...

Back to Zuul. Yes, it was the name of one of the monsters in the initial original Ghostbusters movie, and it is the name of the new dinosaur. Only the article avoids this completely for reasons that are not obvious to the readers. Why? No, seriously, why? Has something gone wrong with the dinosaur study and now NG (and co?) are trying to downplay it? Is it something else? Curious minds want to know!

Speaking of minds, ‘River Monsters’ (RM) is over. For good. JW is done with the show and AP. This is seriously depressing. Now AP seems to be left with mainly such shows as ‘My Cat from Hell’ and ‘Tanked’. Such pet shows are not bad, but RM was better, period.

In other news – speaking of AP – I have re-watched the AFO episode ‘Croc vs. Shark’ again, and re-watched the DW episodes ‘Aztec Jaguar vs. Zande Warrior’ and ‘Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu’. Upon seeing them, I concluded that DW was a more complex show, simply because the human warfare was more complex than anything that animals – especially other vertebrate animals (as opposed to such invertebrates as ants, wasps and/or termites) – can come up with. That said, until the human warfare in question began to involve firearms for real, raw physical strength, dexterity, and endurance (‘toughness’) were even more crucial than how they are now – but that is another story.

Getting back to animals, their physical strength, dexterity and toughness…yes, this brings us back to Spinosaurus and Zuul/not Zuul. Yes, in many ways Spinosaurus was the more impressive dinosaur, but most of these ways were physical; behavior-wise I doubt that Spinosaurus was that more advanced in behaviour than a nodosaur – or a modern crocodile – was (is); Tyrannosaurus, it was implied once, wasn’t as intelligent as a domestic cat, but that’s an unfair comparison; cats are very clever, conniving creatures, and now that my own cat has died, (well, it died a while back, but still), we all miss it…

Back to the dinosaurs. Sorry about rumbling in the last paragraph; the truth is, as a semi-aquatic animal, Spinosaurus was probably one of the more intelligent theropods, relatively speaking. It had to be in order to survive in a complex, 3-D, aquatic lifestyle. By contrast, the armored dinosaurs did not live more complex lives than the modern rhinoceroses or buffalos do – they were strong, large, (relatively so), well-armored, capable of defence and attack, as ‘Jurassic Fight Club’ and ‘Monsters Resurrected’ showed in the past, but these shows, and especially JFC, are somewhat suspect when it comes to facts, but they have a point – Zuul (let’s call it this for now) would’ve had to deal with such carnivores as Acrocanthosaurus, which is a carnosaur, (remember?), meaning that while it was huge and strong, it just wasn’t evolved in the right way to deal with a proportionally small and tough and spiky dinosaur as Zuul or Sauropelta, (when compared to a sauropod like Paluxysaurus/Sauroposeidon, for example). Carnosaurs just did not have the right bite power to tackle ankylosaurs and nodosaurs, unlike the last of the tyrannosaurs – Tyrannosaurus and its’ Asian counterpart, Tarbosaurus – but that was another story.

As for the raptors, Zuul possibly had to deal not just with Deinonychus, but also with the biggest raptor known to scientists (for now) – Utahraptor. They were not as powerful as Acrocanthosaurus or the other carnosaurs, but they were intelligent. In addition, they hunted in packs. This made them dangerous to Zuul and its’ relatives, especially if the armored dinosaurs were young, or old, or sick, or wounded or weakened in some other way – just look at some of the footage from the modern African safaris for comparison…

Well, that’s for Zuul so far. Until next time!