JWD trailer 2 - April 29

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk briefly about the latest JWD trailer: what about it?

So far, it is a gorgeous spectacle slash show, but there are always sticky moments, and I came across two of them at least.

Firstly, the pyroraptor. For me, this dinosaur remains ‘colored’ by its’ rendition on ‘Dinosaur Planet’ (2003-4); it was the main character in the miniseries’ European episode. In it, the miniseries’ scriptwriters used the pyroraptor as a vehicle to show the life on proto-Europe’s islands during the late Cretaceous, (80-70 MYA). The new, 2022’s version of pyroraptor is visibly influenced by the previous version, but its’ muzzle is more pointed than the 2003 version on one hand, and on the other – it can swim.

…Yes, the dinosaurs clearly could swim; Mr. Crichton had a T-Rex chase Dr. Grant and the children in his initial novel back in the 1990s; but this version of pyroraptor had DNA of diving birds inserted into it, because Dr. Wu – or his imitators – was, (or were), an artiste! The modern birds, (which are also dinosaurs, yes), have mastered the element of water, true, but the most aquatic of them are the penguins, on one hand, and the loons & the grebes on the other. (The auks and their kin are a close third). Therefore, what is the punchline?

That while the penguins cannot fly, but they can certainly walk on land, the loons and the grebes can fly, but they are nearly helpless & immobile on land. Since the pyroraptor does not appear to be able to fly, but it is certainly mobile on land, I am guessing that it is part penguin, (or maybe auk), instead of being part loon, (or grebe; not that the two bird groups are all that closely related to each other either). What else? (Aside from me waiting for those Carnotaurus/hummingbird hybrids)?

Ah, yes, the giganotosaurus. The trailer proclaims that the latter carnosaur was the biggest land carnivore ever. Sadly, in RL, this title belongs to the Spinosaurus…which was semi-aquatic, true, but still bigger than the T-Rex, and the carnosaurs had been – precisely of its’ semi-aquatic lifestyle, yeah. Therefore, JWD may be fudging the truth somewhat, implying that the Spinosaurus is semi-aquatic and as such – disqualified, but I remain sceptical all the same. These sort of proclamations are a slippery slope, and films like JWD should either embrace the science fully…or not at all.

That is it for now, though. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #68 - May 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. AoS is in its’ home stretch, and I cannot access it – there goes my (almost) perfect streak. Ah well, as we have said before, now AoS is apparently ripping of DC’s LoT series…, which were a rip-off of AoS to begin with.

The other main influence here is Marvel’s ‘Agent Carter’ (AC) series, which were very good themselves…but got cancelled after just two seasons, because the actress behind the titular character, Hayley Atwell, decided to go back to U.K. at that moment in time. I do not know if it was her best call or not, since she continued to be associated with agent Carter the Marvel character on and off since then, but it did throw a wobble into MCU – enter Peggy’s niece Sharon Carter. In ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and ‘Captain America: Civil War’, the ex-‘agent 13’ of S.H.I.E.L.D. was being set-up as Steve Rogers’ new love interest – and then that abruptly stopped, and Steve ended up back with Peggy thanks to the Infinity Stones and time travel. Fun! Anything else?

…Sharon Carter is, or was, going to be one of the main characters on ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ Disney+ show, as we have mentioned it several times in the past, but since we’ve mentioned it because it went down onto a producing hiatus first, it’s anyone’s guess as to how ‘F&WS’ will re-emerge after the COVID-19 lockdown and just who will be on it. From what we have seen of it pre-lockdown, the lines were – our titular heroes, (plus Sharon Carter?) vs. MCU’s version of Zemo, (first introduced in ‘Captain America: Civil War’, remember?) and MCU’s version of John Walker, U.S. Agent, who is something of an anti-Captain America, I suppose. ‘F&WS’ sounded like one of those ‘politically charged’ shows of America by Americans, and it was probably aimed at least some of its’ shots at the Donald’s regime of the U.S., but then real life happened, and ‘F&WS’ (and the rest of Disney+ shows… cough ‘The Mandalorian’ cough) are currently on some sort of an indefinite hiatus instead. Next?

…Since we cannot discuss AoS S7 because of real-life reasons – it sucks – I wanted to return to the yaks, which we have discussed in the not-so-distant past. But then real life happened, and past happened, and everyone is discussing the evidence that at least some of the Jurassic theropods, (aka the carnivorous dinosaurs) were cannibals. Pause.

My reaction to this: so what? The Cretaceous Majungasaurus, (featured on ‘Jurassic Fight Club’, “Dinosaur Revolution’ and ‘Planet Dinosaur’), was a cannibal. Modern dinosaur relatives, namely the crocodilians and the birds of prey, (not that the other avians are such nice guys themselves), are also cannibals. Ergo, people, and especially scientists, should have been aware (and accepting) of the possibility that at least some theropod dinosaurs, (aside from the Majungasaurus), were cannibalistic as well. What is with all the commotion? It about matches the one about Spinosaurus’ true tail!

…Yes, the news about Spinosaurus’ new tail were somewhat cool, but that is Spinosaurus for you – it rivals the T-Rex and the raptors for popularity, especially since the JP3 film. There is no indication that Spinosaurus will return for the third JW film, but who knows… Anything else?

No, not really. The Donald had had his actual birthday yesterday – whoopee. Given how much the U.S. society is getting divided over the lockdown decision as well as over that actual division, he really should be keeping a low profile instead. In the RF, president Putin is going to have an actual, real life parade on June 24 or so about – bully for him! He really should be more concerned about a revolution instead…

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #60 - May 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. On top of whatever other issues I may have, I seem to have developed computer/Internet problems… hopefully, they will be resolved quickly enough. What else? Aside from the fact that the DA has switched and that is the end of that? What next?

So, yesterday, I have watched one of the ‘Monsters Resurrected’ episodes – the ‘Great American Predator’. It dealt with one of the more obscure North American dinosaurs – the Acrocanthosaurus. It existed during the early Cretaceous, millions of years before the T-Rex, and it was not really related to the Rex – rather, it was one of the carnosaurs, a cousin to both the Allosaurus of the Jurassic and the giants of the Cretaceous, such as the Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus, for example. Compared to them, the Acrocanthosaurus was smaller, more like the Allosaurus in size, but unlike Big Al and the rest of the carnosaurs in general, the Acrocanthosaurus had a ridge on its back. It was relatively short, nowhere as impressive as the sail of the Spinosaurus, for example, and when compared, the Acrocanthosaurus was the much more conventional theropod dinosaur out of the two, but it is still worth mentioning, because it is overlooked in favor of the T-Rex and the other latecomers.

…Speaking of T-Rex and the other latecomers, I found the ‘Great American Predator’ to be heavily influenced by Robert Bakker and his ‘Raptor Red’ novel, which depicted the life and times of an Utahraptor and her family in the early Cretaceous North America, with the Acrocanthosaurs’ being regular rivals to the Utahraptors in the first two thirds of the novel. Ergo-?

Ergo, my point is that the Utahraptor is the closest thing that real life had to the JP/JW franchise’s raptor, period, (which was initially based on the Deinonychus, also featured in ‘Raptor Red’). Proportionally, Deinonychus was smaller than the Utahraptor, (and the most obscure Dakotaraptor), but it was still the third largest raptor dinosaur in Earth’s history, and it appeared in the ‘Great American Predator’, while the Utahraptor did not. In particular, Deinonychus was shown harassing younger Acrocanthosaurs and eventually forcing this species into extinction, (though by middle to late Cretaceous, not just Acrocanthosaurus, but also Deinonychus and Utahraptor were extinct on the planet, it should be noted).

Other contributing factors to the Acrocanthosaurus’s extinction included the eventual extinction of large North American sauropods, such as Sauroposeidon/Paluxysaurus, and them being replaced by smaller, tougher prey, such as Sauropelta, a distant cousin to the better-known Ankylosaurus, for example. Whereas the jaws and teeth of the T-Rex and its cousins such as Tarbosaurus bataar and Daspletosaurus evolved precisely to crash through bony armor and skeletal bones of the other dinosaurs, the carnosaurs hadn’t evolved this sort of feature – their teeth were thin but sharp, designed to slice through flesh instead, and their jaws were longer and shallower than those of the tyrannosaurs, and so not as powerful as the latter. …The latter were the more derived theropods, I suppose, but now they are all gone, and how the kriff I am going to manage the new DA site, I have no idea. I am half-tempted to just destroy my pages there and all, and be done with them – I do not really have much of value on that site, so who knows?..

Getting back to theropods, let us talk about swans instead. No, not the extinct giants of the Mediterranean islands that used to harass the pygmy elephants that’d also lived there, but rather the modern species. The best-known species are the four northern ones, which belong to the genera Olor (aka the mute swan) and Cygnus, (the rest of the white swans of the Northern hemisphere), as they’d been immortalized in the various works of art and literature as symbols of purity, chastity, and the like, because appearance matters.

The other two swans, however, are quite different birds: the black swan of Australia, (Chenopis atratus), is all black, of course, but the oldest ‘true’ swan of them all, (Sthenelides melancoryphus), is the black-necked swan of South America, and it is white, with a black head and neck, giving it a rather odd appearance, and making one wonder, as to how the swan evolution has gone, color-wise at least.

…The continent of South America is also home to the so-called coscoroba swan, (Coscoroba coscoroba), which is solid white in color instead, but is considered to be more closely related to geese and shelducks, (especially to the Cape Barren goose of southern Australia), rather than to the true swans, appearances be damned…but we’ve talked about geese (and ducks) before, and right now I don’t want to get back to them.

Well, this is it for now. Real life sucks, and the new DA site is worse, but it doesn’t matter; see you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #39 - April 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks and family is annoying, to put it lightly. In addition, there is more new info about our main man Spinosaurus – this dino really was the first truly aquatic dinosaur, (one that is known to human science, anyhow): not even a wading bird, more like a sail-backed crocodile instead.

Pause. Is there anything else than can be said about this prehistoric reptile? By now, Spinosaurus is about as popular as T-Rex is; the two reptiles are often compared and contrasted, and the JP3 film opened a can of worms, at least for a while, when Spinosaurus had killed T-Rex in a dino face-off. The JP fanbase has never been the same again, and the first JW film tried to address this issue – sort of – by having Rexy smash through a Spinosaurus skeleton and then the entire T-Rex vs. I-Rex vs. velociraptor pack fight, but that wasn’t the same, and not just because the I-Rex was a glorified carnosaur instead. (Think Carcharodontosaurus from ‘Planet Dinosaur’ as an example). Spinosaurus was a very different theropod dinosaur from Carcharodontosaurus and the other carnosaurs, that was quite obvious from the start, so it and the I-Rex do not have much in common either. What next?

The JP franchise has become more inconsistent with its’ reboot, and the second JW movie hadn’t had too much in common with the first; it was more of a reboot instead, so there’s that, and no Spinosaurus. It had a Spinosaurus cousin in one of the scenes, a Baryonyx or a Suchomimus, but it was a minor, episodic character, and so it did not play any important role at all, especially in the second half of the film, when the Indoraptor was introduced. I will say it again: the second JW movie was made out of scripts for two films – one about the end of the Dinosaur Island, (it culminated with the Brachiosaurus scene), and the second one about the Evil E’s dino mansion and the Indoraptor, which was too anthropomorphic for my tastes. Ah well, the third JW film is being delayed, as are the rest of the films, we will just have to wait and see what will come of it, so for now, I suppose, we need to return to the real life, and-?

And nothing. Apparently, Trudeau’s mother was hospitalized not because of COVID-19, but because of an apartment fire. That is fair, especially since comrade Kim’s medical troubles have started not because of COVID-19 either, so Ms. Trudeau Sr. may not be out of the woods yet. What next?

…I honestly wanted to talk about antelopes this time, but speaking of being out of the woods? It is very hard to talk about them – there are 91 species of mammals named ‘antelopes’, which live in Africa and Asia; if they live somewhere else, like the pronghorn in North America or the chamois in Europe, then they aren’t ‘true antelopes’ at all, but are their relatives. That said, all of the bovid ruminants that are not cattle, (like the yaks and the zebu that we have discussed earlier), or sheep and goats, (think mountain goats and bighorn sheep, for example), are antelopes instead.

The antelopes are a mixed bunch on their own. There are dwarf species, such as the royal antelope and the duikers. There are gazelles, such as the blackbuck and the springbok. (The impala belongs to its’ own genus and is somewhat unique, even by antelope standards). There are really big species, like the nyalas and the elands, which are animals that are big and strong enough to stand-up to the lion. There are the wildebeests, and the bontebooks, and the Asian species, such as the nilgai and the four-horned antelopes, and there are plenty of unique-looking species too, such as the gerenuk and the saiga. In short, the antelope animal group is varied and confusing, and not even the Wikipedia, who likes to poke around this sort of confusing info, wants to touch them – but then again, true nature is varied, confusing, and unpredictable: just look at how Spinosaurus has turned out to be, or at the coronavirus-19, as examples!

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Runaways: Fifteen - Dec 7

The fourth episode of Marvel’s ‘Runaways’, ‘Fifteen’, got aired, and what of it?

One of the more important notes was that Old Lace got his proper revealing: the bioengineered dinosaur certainly got character, and-

And here is where the rant about ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ dinosaurs has inserted itself. Let us be fair: both ‘Fallen Kingdom’ and ‘Runaways’ are equal, when it comes to paleontology, neither the movie franchise nor the TV series/comics are concerned with science or education; they just want to entertain, and here the ‘Runaways’ of TV/Hulu have done a very important turn of the plot: they are introducing new, original content into the old, initial plot, as depicted in the comics. They are creating something new that wasn’t there before, just as the JP3 movie did with the initial franchise – as it was written in the past, back then the JP franchise broke the formula that got established by then by introducing Spinosaurus as a newer, bigger, better monster than a T-Rex, and by giving the pterosaurs – Pteranodons – a moment to shine. ‘Fallen Kingdom’ did not introduce anything new, it just recycled the JP3 elements – both the pterosaurs, which now are playing a more active role in the franchise and Spinosaurus’ replacement – that is either Baryonyx or Suchomimus.

The latter is a relative of Baryonyx; even though it lived during the early Cretaceous in Africa, just as Spinosaurus did, right now – 2017 – scientists have established that the two dinosaurs in question, Baryonyx & Suchomimus were more closely related to each other, than to Spinosaurus. That said, Suchomimus was physically very similar to Spinosaurus, only smaller – about 11 m in length on average – and without the trademark sail on its back. Thus, if Rexy were to fight it, this would be the T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus fight from JP3, recycled, revisited, and reset – and that is not good. Lack of original content can be very problematic, for both movies and TV series – just look at AoS: the 5^th season’s premiere has started with some very low numbers, the lowest of any of season premieres ever; as a movie, ‘Fallen Kingdom’ is a very different beast from AoS, but if it continues to recycle old ideas instead of generating new ones, then it will also develop problems, (given the appearance of their Baryonyx, already available to the public, maybe those problems have already begun).

Back to ‘Runaways’? There isn't really anything to criticize - they are actually doing better than ‘Fallen Kingdom’, they have no problems with the original content (and featherless dinosaurs), and they are going strong, (good for them!). Hopefully too, they will continue in this vein and continue to satisfy their viewers…

See you later! 

Baryonyx vs. Tyrannosaurus

Now, it became known last week that the next JW movie is going to have a Baryonyx in it, and naturally, there are already discussions about it, is it going to fight the T-Rex, (Rexy) or what. There are also suggestions that it is something of a remastered rematch of a T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus fight back from the JP3 movie. Does this have any connotations?

Firstly, what is a Baryonyx, (or was). For a while, the popular opinion was that it is a cousin of Spinosaurus, and while that is true, the modern (2017) scientific P.O.V. states that Baryonyx was only a distant relative of Spinosaurus, not a close one, so its’ popular depiction – a smaller version of the Spinosaurus without the sail, but with extra-large claws on its’ ‘thumbs’, something similar to what the raptors had, but on its front legs, rather than the hind ones. It was also quite a bit smaller than the Spinosaurus was, (or the T-Rex) – whereas T-Rex was about 12 m long, and Spinosaurus – approximately 17, Baryonyx was about 7.5-10 m in length, and while people admit that it probably did get bigger than that, it wasn’t that much bigger, making it still smaller than the T-Rex was.

Okay, that is for measurements, how about the X-Factor? (Or whatever it was called on DW). Size issues aside, T-Rex was the better fighter than Spinosaurus was, when it came to intra-species fighting, and if we substitute Baryonyx for Spinosaurus, it is the same thing, except that Baryonyx was smaller and weaker than either T-Rex or Spinosaurus were, and would be overwhelmed by T-Rex and its’ bone-crushing bite all the quicker.

That is not to say that Baryonyx could not win. It could. While Tyrannosaurus’ jaws and teeth were designed to crush and tear, Baryonyx’s were designed to latch on and not let go, just as Spinosaurus’ teeth and jaws were. (Cousins!) Thus, if Baryonyx was able to grab and bite Tyrannosaurus, then regardless of how robust and strong the latter was, it would not be able to escape Baryonyx’s jaws without losing its pound of flesh – and meanwhile, Baryonyx would continue to hit its’ opponent with its’ powerful front legs that had those trademark claws – and if it scored a lucky critical hit on a Tyrannosaurus’ eye or a blood vein, then the ‘tyrant lizard king’ would be in serious trouble.

All that, but keep in mind that Baryonyx did not have Spinosaurus’ superior physical strength and bulk; with just one lucky bite Tyrannosaurus could break Baryonyx’s spine or even tear the smaller carnivore in two, even if Baryonyx would hurt it in the fight, however badly. It would be a clear winner, even if it probably would not want to tackle another Baryonyx anytime soon.

And here the reality raises itself once again. Baryonyx and Tyrannosaurus have never met: Tyrannosaurus lived at the very end of the ‘Age of Reptiles’, the Mesozoic, in the late Cretaceous, while Baryonyx live during the late Jurassic, much earlier than Tyrannosaurus did. In real life, the two reptiles never met – and this brings us to the upcoming ‘Fallen Kingdom’ movie. Technically.

Again, nothing in the JP-franchise was ever educational, even as timorous as it was in AFO or DW, (for example). It was pure fiction, even if the original Michael Crichton novel was actually based on scientific facts, (of its time). Ergo, it must be treated as such, and where does it leave us?

With the realization that until ‘Fallen Kingdom’ comes out anyhow, JP3 was more progressive – as far as fictional movies about dinosaurs go – than the initial JW movie. It introduced a brand new dinosaur ‘villain’ – Spinosaurus – and gave the pterosaurs (Pteranodons) the recognition denied to them in the first two movies. (In the original novel Dr. Grant and the children encountered the ‘dactyls’ – Cearodactyls – big, fish-eating pterosaurs, but let us talk about them another time). The first JW movie also features pterosaurs, Pteranodons and their smaller distant cousins as ‘hazards’ of some sort, while the main monster role passed from Spinosaurus to the imaginary I-Rex, but it came later than the JP3 movie did, meaning that the JP3 movie is the more progressive than the JW one, relatively speaking.

Now we come to the issue – is Baryonyx a substitute Spinosaurus? Odds are very good that it will be, yes. Somehow, the fight between T-Rex and Spinosaurus in JP3 became quite popular, and turned into ‘two dinosaurs fighting each other’ cliché. Movie dinosaurs, movie fictional dinosaurs are kaiju, basically, and the JP3’s Spinosaurus was a textbook example of it; ditto for the JW’s I-Rex. In ‘Fallen Kingdom’, either Baryonyx or the Indoraptors will take that role, but we will talk about the Indoraptors at another time – the point is that ‘Fallen Kingdom’ is a fictional movie with nary much logic, (especially by RL’s standards) and should be treated accordingly.

That is that for this time; see you all soon!

JW rumblings - Sep 17

And so, our ‘Giantslayer’ adventure path is slowly moving towards the final confrontation with the evil giant tyrant/final boss. That is good, and as a sign of my relief – fighting all of these evil giants took proportionally much more time than we expected when we began this entire slog – I feel like ranting about something, again. The issue is – what subject?

Well, there is always Marvel’s current ‘secret empire’ ‘adventure path’, which has ran its’ own length, and is now transforming into ‘Marvel Legacy’ or something like that. Basically, the evil Steve Rogers/Captain America/Hydra Supreme/etc. might’ve escaped, leaving the good Steve Rogers/Captain America/etc. pick up the pieces – or not, in which case, in either case, there are some poor SWAT-type folk who are about to get smashed by a Steve Rogers, which just isn’t fun.

In another plot line, Frank ‘Punisher’ Castle is being ‘groomed’ by Fury in taking down Hydra. This sounds very grand, but again, in another comic series, Punisher just got beat down by Diamondback, making MCU a true multiverse (in a manner of speaking), while in the long run, Hydra is just a too good & conventional plot villain to be completely exterminated, so I’m not being impressed by FC being an asshole to outright villains for a change, let us see what ‘Marvel Legacy’ story arc will deliver. Plus, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow is dead now, apparently, and the Punisher is angsting because of that as well. Seriously, were these two ever a couple, (potentially or otherwise), or is a new thing?

Meanwhile, the preparations for the making (and subsequent release) of JW2 are proceeding. Am I excited about this? No. The original JP movie was good because it was based on the original novel, which was, yes, sci-fi, but with an emphasis on science and realism. Yes, there was suspension of disbelief, especially in the end, when the novel’s velociraptors organized themselves into a proper group and escaped/invaded to the mainland, (Costa Rica), where they vanished into the jungle. They were Lysol-dependant, (in the novel), so they learned to eat chicken (domestic fowl) and beans and similar food sources in the wild instead. What was that cartoon? The raptor was going to acquire a fake ID and live & work in NYC? Yeah, Crichton certainly set the stage for that!

But his movieverse heirs have certainly went beyond him. The first two JP movies were quite good, even if because they followed, (to various extents) the plot of the actual Crichton novels. JP3 film, however, was something else, including the entire T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus controversy. Seriously, it has been established/figured out/understood/etc. by now that both of these JP3 dinosaurs, especially Spinosaurus, are fictional, and are no more RL than MCU’s Iron Man and Captain America are. Does it really matter who would win? In RL, the two dinosaurs lived millions of years apart, on two different continents and never met each other during any point in their evolutionary histories. Talking as to which of the two would win and why, it is less of a ‘lion vs. tiger’ debate and more of a ‘Steve vs. Tony’ one.

Where were we? Well, on the topic of ‘Steve vs. Tony’, JP3’s Spinosaurus showed about as much realism as the crocodile from ‘Peter Pan’ did, (not counting OUAT, where his role was played by Mr. Gold, apparently), while the raptors of that movie did an admirable job of passing as the nastier versions of Neverland’s Lost Boys, so to speak – their intelligence in that movie certainly approached human levels, and when Dr. Grant communicated with them… no, just no. Forget realism. The dinosaurs of JP3 could as well be some aliens – original aliens – in a sci-fi movie and they would work just as well in that capacity…

In JW1, the intelligence of the dinosaurs was toned back down to realistic levels – only not. Enter the I-Rex, the hybrid that looks, and functions like a RL carnosaur for all practical purposes. Just think RL Giganotosaurus or Mapusaurus. Okay, and?

And the I-Rex was able to survive slash endure a direct hit from an Ankylosaurus’ tail. In RL, Ankylosaurus was one of the plant-eating dinosaurs that had evolved to survive and live alongside Tyrannosaurus, a carnivore that evolved one of the most powerful bites on the planet, specifically designed to smash through bone. In response, Ankylosaurus had evolved its’ infamous tail that was also designed to smash through bones, (especially if Ankylosaurus was in proper health). I don’t know what I-Rex was a hybrid of exactly, but just as with Rexy’s bite, there’s no way it could’ve endured Ankylosaurus’ tail strikes to its’ legs or the rest of the body, not unless it had the healing power of Wolverine (the MCU mutant, not the RL animal) as well. (In addition, the way it telepathically communicates and dominates all the other reptiles in the movie? Apparently, there is some Professor X in it as well).

Flash forward, and—

And we got Indoraptors, which is the same old I-Rex, just with different sizes, proportions, and velociraptor, rather than Tyrannosaurus, DNA. Odds are that we are going to see a new depiction of the JP3 super-intelligent raptors are quite high. And?

And where is the JP-franchise going with all of this, in the long run? Yes, the first novel & movie depicted them somewhat like sci-fi monsters, but dinosaurs do not really make good monsters, (especially for grown-ups) – they aren’t particularly monstrous or evil, certainly not kaiju/Godzilla/King Kong/Monarch universe evil. ‘The Land before Time’ franchise had a different take on them – there the dinosaurs were slightly anthropomorphic, and some were ‘good’, and some were ‘evil’, in the same manner that the ‘modern animals’ of Brian Jacques’ novels were – it’s all a fairy tale for children, but the JP-franchise isn’t going for that.

Where is it going? Possibly, to try to become a fully-fledged monster-verse, which is a bad idea, because dinosaurs aren’t really monsters, not even fictional, sci-fi ones. They are just too real and too abstract for us, (unlike giant monsters – the fictional Megalodon has only distant connections to the RL one), to be properly monstrous. Yes, Tyrannosaurus is bizarre – all head and no arms – but is it monstrous by being itself at the end of the day? No. It is scary because it would eat people if it existed in modern times, making it no different from a shark or a lion. Yes, ‘Jaws’ is a movie classic, but not just because it stars a man-eating shark, but some human star actors as well. The same goes for ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’, which is built on a similar premise, except that instead of a single Great White Shark there are two African lions. A good movie about some man-eating animal monsters can be honestly good…just not precisely, because it stars man-eating animal monsters – and the same goes for the dinosaurs.

And yes, we got the news that there’s going to be at least one other dino-hybrid – a stegoceratops, a Stegosaurus & Triceratops hybrid. I have no idea what was the logic behind this one. As BBC’s WWD mini-series (1999) have shown, the RL plant-eating dinosaurs, (i.e. Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Triceratops & Torosaurus, etc.), could be quite formidable themselves, without being augmented by human script writers…

Oh, and another thing. Yes, both Stegosaurus and Triceratops belonged to the bird-hipped branch of the dinosaur family, (let us leave the latest RL revision of the dinosaur family tree out of the equation this time), but they weren’t particularly close relatives; in RL modern terms the JW2 heroes could get confronted by a deer/antelope hybrid – it works the same way… Where is common sense?

In the bizarre appearance of the second hybrid.  Aye, RL herbivorous dinosaurs could be quite bizarre by themselves – just think Nothronychus and kin, the plant-eating cousins of raptors and tyrannosaurs – a typical theropod body, extra-long neck, extra-small head, (as in the sauropods), plus – extra powerful and clawed front legs…you couldn’t get more away from the traditional depiction of a theropod if you’d purposefully tried… but no, we get a bizarre-looking unrealistic hybrid, designed to shock and awe. Yay team (new) JP franchise.

And now, it is time to wind down the rambling. Basically, unbelievingly, but the first two JP movies were actually somewhat educational for purely fictional movies. (I am speaking very loosely here). They were also fairly realistic, (by sci-fi movie standards). Sadly, from JP3 onwards these qualities vanished, which is a pity, because they were what made JP-franchise’s movies’ unique. What will JW2 look like, I do not know yet. However, neither am I enthusiastic about it.

Well, this is it for this time. See you in the future!

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!

Spinosaurus vs. Tyrannosaurus

To continue where we have ended, what if a T-Rex fought a Spinosaurus, rather than a carnosaur did? The simple answer is: the odds are in Tyrannosaurus’ favor. But!

As I have written previously, Tyrannosaurus had a more powerful bite than a carnosaur of its’ size…okay, relatively its’ size, such as the Carcharodontosaurus. When talking about a much bigger carnosaur, such as Mapusaurus, it is another story – yes, Tyrannosaurus is still likely to win, but it would be harder because in fights size does matter – this is something that AFO did get right, just…not entirely right.

Again, Spinosaurus was bigger; Tyrannosaurus had a stronger, more efficient, better bite and jaw power, but Spinosaurus was bigger and stronger, period. Unlike carnosaurs, but more like Tyrannosaurus itself, Spinosaurus took strength and weight over speed, just…in a different manner from Tyrannosaurus’. On land, when Tyrannosaurus went after Spinosaurus, its superior bite (to the carnosaurs’) meant that it would be able to defeat Spinosaurus faster and with more surety than any of the carnosaurs would. The carnosaurs did a ‘death of 1000 cuts’. Tyrannosaurus took far fewer – it needed far fewer, because it was that awesome.

…Yet if Spinosaurus got lucky, pinned down Tyrannosaurus with its own bite and began to pummel Tyrannosaurus with its’ claws, Tyrannosaurus would be defeated just as any carnosaur would, for the two were built much more similarly to each other than to Spinosaurus with basically the same weaknesses – a more fragile skeleton than that of Spinosaurus, for example. Moreover, in the water, where Spinosaurus held the home turf advantage…yeah, it would defeat Tyrannosaurus as well as any carnosaur, just with slightly different odds. Size matters, as well as habitat.

Okay, let us set the dinosaurs aside for now; let Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus figure out which of them is ‘the real king’ and mock the various carnosaurs’ in the process. Can we talk about something else? ‘For Honor’ (FH), for example?

…On May 16, 2017, a new installment of FH was released, featuring two new PCs – the Centurion and the Shinobi. As I have discussed them earlier, both of them could bring more problems to FH than solve them – but still, the two appear to be well designed and neat and with plenty of options, emoji and otherwise. Okay, so where is the commotion?

To elaborate, when FH became available for real for the first time, there was a powerful ad campaign beforehand; even the ‘AWE Me’ YouTube channel was contacted, and its’ members – contracted to forge the Raider’s Dane axe and the Kensai’s Nodachi greatsword by ‘Men At Arms’, while ‘DIY Cosplay…’ presented the Peacekeeper’s outfit. These days, ‘MAA’ has been busy forging such weapons as WW’s shield and the cutlasses from PotC franchise.

A brief note aside: DCEU’s weakest point is probably the movies – while MCU is struggling to put itself together, (and the new movie about the ‘New Mutants’ is a part of the X-Men franchise rather than the Avengers’ isn’t going to make this any easier), on TV, DCEU has got a very good thing with ‘Arrowverse’, and even if the upcoming ‘Black Lightning’ show isn’t going to be a part of it officially, (MCU and ‘Luke Cage’ are so impressed by it – not), this can still change, as it happened to ‘Supergirl’, I reckon. MCU has nothing like this; so far it just has AoS, and by now not too many people remain ‘in love’ with it. (However, I will not rant about AoS right now, no). Other shows are coming forth, of course, but until they become available for real, it is too early to talk about them; and ‘The Defenders’ franchise remains separate from AoS and the MCU films. That is not a problem, except that it means that MCU is still fractured – but its’ movies are still better than those of DCEU are. WW’s shield is precisely this point – it was so borrowed, idea-wise, from Captain America, that it is not even funny. Although, if MCU decides to troll the WW movie with its’ Captain Marvel film, (it could happen), now that would be humorous.

As for PotC? Honestly, the fifth movie already feels like a remake of the first with a rebooted cast, save for Captain Jack, of course. Meh, maybe it is time to retire this character already, however lovable this rascal is.

Back to FH? Here is the thing. Its’ story was not very good, (okay, ‘the campaign mode’, but still). There were plenty of technical flaws, but they got fixed by now, but the campaign/story mode? Not so much. And the fans were griping about it the loudest, and now that ‘Injustice 2’ (I2) is released and it is a game built along the same lines – basically – as FH, the fans and the gamers now have even more options and choices and they are not in FH’s favor. Now would be a perfect time to release something along the lines of ‘MAA’ or ‘DIY Cosplay…’, but no. All we got were some gamer videos centered on the new PCs, and…that is it, really. The new update of FH that took place on May 16, 2017 went down with little commotion; some people may have blinked and missed it, you know?..

So, FH is not doing all that great, while AoS got renewed for its’ fifth season. Good for them and their lawyers! …Except that ‘World’s End’ had the lowest numbers from the 4 seasons’ finales, and generally the numbers were the lowest for AoS ever. If this trend continues for S5, then any legalities might be pointless, for what is the point of a show that no one is watching?..

No, tonight I am not going to rant – about AoS or anything else. Instead, I am just going to tune out, for now. Until next time, everyone!

Spinosaurus vs. Carcharodontosaurus

Let us see. ‘Time’ has been cancelled, ‘Powerless’ – ditto, AoS is over, ‘Blindspot’ – ditto, and ‘Killjoys’ will return only at the end of June. What is there left to talk about? How about dinosaurs?

Not so long ago I came across an online discussion, as to who would win in a face-off: Spinosaurus or Giganotosaurus? For those sticklers of accuracy, you can replace Giganotosaurus with its’ African counterpart, Carcharodontosaurus, but, regardless, who would win?

Here is the thing. Both dinosaurs are different from T-Rex. In case of Tyrannosaurus, evolution went towards raw strength rather than speed; Tyrannosaurus was made to crush bone and armor of such dinosaurs as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, dinosaurs which knew how to fight against T-Rex, and so they did. By nature’s standards, it was a fair fight, just at look at the first episode of ‘The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs’, for example – a Triceratops could defeat a T-Rex if the odds were in its’ favor and vice versa. When the ‘Tyrant Lizard King’ went against the ‘Three-Horned Face’, the battle could go in either way…RL animals hate that.

Next, we have Giganotosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus, and Mapusaurus, and Tyrannotitan, and the rest of the carnosaurs of the Cretaceous – and the earlier Jurassic. The differences between Giganotosaurus and Allosaurus were mainly concerned with size, and their behaviors were similar, as both hunted dinosaurs much bigger than any of the carnosaurs – the sauropods.

Now, I am not going to discuss the issue of the latest version of the dinosaur family tree, i.e. that the theropods are closer related to the ornithopods, and the sauropods may be an independent group of the ‘terrible lizards’ all along – as ‘The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life’ explained, (it was a book published by Impossible Pictures, BTW), the relationships between theropods, sauropodomorpha and ornithishchia dinosaurs are very confusing and scientists hadn’t quite figured out as to who relates to whom. The book was published years ago, but as we can see, this statement continues to ring true.  

Back to the carnosaurs. All of them – Jurassic or Cretaceous – focused primarily on hunting sauropods, most of whom were big enough to run down and trample any theropod in a straight-on fight, unlike Triceratops or Ankylosaurus, which could lose to Tyrannosaurus just as the T-Rex could lose to them. Thus, the carnosaurs never grew as robust as Tyrannosaurus did, not proportionally – they could not afford to be slow, they always had to be fast enough to outmaneuver the sauropods.

And yes, in truth, the sauropods themselves were probably some of the slowest dinosaurs ever, and as it is known by now, throughout the Mesozoic they continued to evolve into ever bigger and stronger beasts – not faster ones. Thus, carnosaurs themselves were not too fast and they grew increasingly bigger themselves – from Allosaurus and Sinraptor to Acrocanthosaurus to Carcharodontosaurus to Giganotosaurus and beyond. Yet due to quirks of their anatomy and DNA they simply could not get as big as the sauropods – speaking generally, sauropods would always be bigger than theropods, regardless of species-by-species case. Thus, even the biggest carnosaurs, such as Mapusaurus and Tyrannotitan, were more gracile than Tyrannosaurus was and they were team fighters – it would take several Giganotosaurs to bring down a single Argentinosaurus, especially if it was closer to its full size (35 m or so in length), for example. In modern terms, this is like a pride of African lions, teaming up to take down a single African bush elephant, as shown by the original ‘Planet Earth’ TV series – there are several lions, there is a single elephant that isn’t fully grown, but still can kill any lion with a one good kick, but if the lions will bring it down, then they will feed on it for weeks, thus it is worth being specialist elephant killers, see?

Now the analogue is not perfect, but it works. Carnosaurs were the lions of the Mesozoic…so does it mean that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the tiger? Perhaps, but there may be an even more apt analogue for the King in the modern world, the American cousin of the lion and tiger, the jaguar. Pound for pound, the jaguar has the strongest bite of the big cats, it is even able to bite through skull bones – and in modern mammals, skull bones are some of the thickest and strongest, for the obvious reasons; in ‘Jaguar: The Year of the Cat’ the feline in question was filmed killing and eating tortoises and armadillos, both of which are armored well enough to be safe from smaller predators, such as the margay and the ocelot, for example. Unlike the lion, the jaguar is a loner, but it is about the same size as a lion, just – not as heavy, as I wrote earlier, during the Nat Geo Wild’s Big Cat week. Thus, the Tyrannosaurus Rex might have been the Cretaceous’ jaguar, a solitary hunter that ‘kills in one leap’ as the modern jaguar supposedly does. In addition, if faced against a lion in a fair, one on one fight, a jaguar could win, however—

However, here we enter the highly polarized land of lion vs. tiger (or anything else, really), and I am not going in there either. As AFO suggested, the lion won due to having a mane, and technically, it was an Asian lion, with a mane that is much smaller and less bushy than its’ African counterpart’s….Where were we?

Right, killer dinosaurs. The Indominus Rex from the ‘Jurassic World’ film might have been God-knows-what, but in game statistics, it was a carnosaur, i.e. a very different beast from a tyrannosaur, cough. Not unlike the African lions, carnosaurs such as Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus had to have some concept of teamwork, because otherwise they would be unable to bring down an Argentinosaurus, even a young one. Thus, individually, a carnosaur would lose to the T-Rex, regardless of its size – it is a worse individual fighter, it has a proportionally weaker bite, designed to wound rather than to kill, and is proportionally weaker as well.

Yes, Rexy would have probably died after a fight with the I-Rex – a one-on-one fight…due to pain shock, and blood loss, and the like. The thing is that the I-Rex would have died first, because Rexy’s bite was much more powerful, and Rexy would probably be strong enough to rip the I-Rex literally into pieces during the fight – it was that powerful, and this brings us to Spinosaurus, and its’ fight with a T-Rex in JP3.

Now, it was established by now that the Spinosaurus in the JP franchise is a biologically incorrect one – in RL, Spinosaurus was front-heavy enough to move on all four legs instead, meaning that its’ front legs were even more muscular and powerful than those of a carnosaur, (Carcharodontosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, etc.), which brings us back to JP3. If you look at the film’s Spinosaurus vs. T-Rex battle, Spinosaurus won not because it had the more powerful bite, (it didn’t, it was more like a crocodile or an alligator, teeth and jaws better suited for holding and gripping than for slicing and tearing), but because it bit down onto T-Rex’s head and used its front legs to break its neck. End the clip.

Now, true, in RL, Spinosaurus probably could not do that – its’ front legs were not pronated enough or something. Of course, until a time machine is invented and we go back to the Cretaceous North Africa to see the Spinosaurus how it was in life rather than as a fossil, we can never be fully certain, but—

A fight between a Spinosaurus and a Carcharodontosaurus is more likely to go in Spinosaurus’ favor; the last time this particular prehistoric predator was featured in a documentary series – ‘Planet Dinosaur’ – it did fight a Carcharodontosaurus, and while the Spinosaurus did succumb to its’ wounds at the end of the episode, it was still able to drive Carcharodontosaurus away and hurt the other dinosaur also very badly in the process. (I.e., the Carcharodontosaurus featured in a later episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ was a different Carcharodontosaurus than the one fighting the Spinosaurus… never mind).

This brings us to the actual fight between Spinosaurus and a carnosaur – any carnosaur, whether it is Carcharodontosaurus or Giganotosaurus. On land, Carcharodontosaurus would have the advantage – it would be faster and more maneuverable than a Spinosaurus would, and thus it would be able to outmaneuver its rival and be able to wear Spinosaurus down and kill it. Of course, if the Spinosaurus got lucky just once and was able to pin down Carcharodontosaurus with one good bite, then it still could win, by beating it to death with its powerful front legs and its superior weight and strength, (proportionally speaking). And in the water, Spinosaurus would win, because it was an aquatic dinosaur, adapted to life – and movement – in water, and Carcharodontosaurus (as well as the rest of carnosaurs) was not. Carcharodontosaurus was slower in the water, probably slow enough for Spinosaurus to ambush and catch it and drag into the watery depths, where the Carcharodontosaurus would drown. (And yes, supposedly, Spinosaurus specialized primarily in fish eating, but since it was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs ever, it surely ate red meat when it could catch it?)

So yes, when you put Spinosaurus against any carnosaur, whether it is Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus, etc., it is not unlike putting a lion against a crocodile. As AFO showed, the smart money goes to the croc… so what about a Tyrannosaurus? What if it were to fight against a Spinosaurus?

Now that is truly another story…