Quarantine entry #7 - March 28

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and your family, alongside you, are stuck right in the middle of it, and if you do not try to fight- do not want to fight- then your life sucks – see before. Now onto the show?

Sadly, because real life sucks, we are all stuck inside, not just because the weather was nasty all night and all morning, but because COVID-19 continues… just continues. So, to do something about anything and to stop the fighting, I got into the 2001 film, ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’, and so, on this particular day, we will be talking about the Apatosaurus.

Why? Because of the Brontosaurus. The two names and the two dinos had a very tangled relationship – first one name/species was on top, then the other, until, finally, from 2015 onwards to the present it was described that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were two different genera, albeit the ones who were the closest relatives to each other, (with Diplodocus and the diplodocids being the next closest). What next?

Well, what was WDRA? For the beginning of the 21^st century it was very impressive, a movie stitched together out of five segments, something of a responsa to the BBC’s WWD, released in 1999. Only, whereas the U.K. released a six-part mini-series, (re-released and re-edited a couple of times in the future), the US released – in this case – a single film, each one dealing with a separate time in the Mesozoic. The Apatosaurus appeared in the Late Jurassic segment, (aka 150 MYA), and after the Tyrannosaurus, was perhaps the movie’s biggest showpiece.

Here is the punchline: in each of the five segments, the movie’s scriptwriters tried to make a coherent story, but it was a mixed bag; the Early Jurassic bit was especially lackluster, but the Late Jurassic? It was much better.

Well, for one thing, the Late Jurassic segment had much more dinosaurs to work with than the Early Jurassic segment did. The latter only had Dilophosaurus (yes, that one), Megapnosaurus, (another carnivore, which may have been related to Dilophosaurus), and Anchisaurus – a prosauropod, a more gracile and smaller version of Plateosaurus that appeared at the end of the first episode of WWD, (‘New Blood’). And WDRA used the Anchisaurus as a springboard to introduce its’ sauropods – the already-mentioned Apatosaurus and the Camarasaurus.

…It is also worthwhile to mention that WDRA was good enough to depict the two sauropods differently from each other – Apatosaurus might be longer, but Camarasaurus is taller. Moreover, to be honest, sauropod dinosaurs came in three main varieties: those that were long, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus; those that were tall, such as Camarasaurus and Brachiosaurus; and those that were just large, such as Argentinosaurus and the rest of the titanosaur sauropods. …Ok, but what about WDRA?

Well, if we get back to WDRA and its’ Late Jurassic segment, then it features more dinosaurs than just the two sauropods, including the already mentioned dinosaurs – Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus – and the much smaller Dryosaurus; Dryosaurus was a much smaller bird-hipped dinosaur, one that get eaten by a Ceratosaurus, which got killed by an Allosaurus later. Whether or not this happened in real life no one knows, but I suspect that this was the inspiration behind one of JFC’s episode, where an Allosaurus fought and killed a couple of Ceratosaurs. Another segment, one where an Allosaurus pack harasses an Apatosaurus herd and eventually finishes off a hurt sauropod, inspired – or influenced an episode in the ‘Dinosaur Planet’ mini-series, named ‘Alpha’s Egg’. It is all interactive, baby!..

That said, WDRA was a generally good movie, complete with ‘talking scientist heads’ interrupting the dino action, and semi-interactive CGI graphics, helping to get the point across. It was very impressive, truly, especially for the year 2001. It had certainly lifted my spirits up, however briefly as well, COVID-19 or not, and that is it.

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

Quarantine entry #5 - March 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It seems that there is a cat in the neighbourhood, whether stray or not, I do not know – who is keeping all the birds away. Probably. Ah well, this is their business, and I do not really want to mess with Mother Nature. Where were we in terms of JFC?

Today let us try to talk about… the T-Rex. Yes, it is a stupid idea, because as the archetypical theropod dinosaur, everyone knows the T-Rex. Nevertheless, because the lockdown sucks, we are talking about it. First, though, yes, I will acknowledge that other stegosaurid dinosaurs aside from Kentrosaurus lived in what is now modern Europe - Miragaia and etc. Fair enough, my bad, let's try to move onto the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Where do we begin to talk about it? In JFC. Where JFC did began to talk about it? Right in their second episode, where a Tyrannosaur family faced against a Nanotyrannus. Pause.

Yes, that already is a loaded topic, because these days everyone is certain that the Nanotyrannus is a nomen dubium, or whatever – several Tyrannosaur juveniles with deviations – physical, oncological, and otherwise. Essentially, variations on the already-mentioned Tyrannosaur standard. Maybe so, but the problems with JFC’s depiction of the Nanotyrannus – and of the Tyrannosaurus itself, and of the rest of them – were rather anthropomorphic; the narrator, Dinosaur George Blasing and his cohorts – attributed distinctly humanoid motivations to the prehistoric animals that they were depicting, and this isn’t very good.

…Of course, JFC had plenty of other problems – for example, in their penultimate episode, ‘Raptor vs. T-Rex’, we were shown the T-Rex co-existing with dromaeosaurus and edmontosaurus. The punchline is that the T-Rex appeared on Earth when both of those other dinosaurs died out already. Yes, the final episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaur’ showed the tyrannosaurus coexisting both with duckbilled dinosaurs and with raptors, but the former were Anatotitan, different species from the Edmontosaurus, and the latter were Dakotaraptors, (acknowledged in hind sight), rather than the dromaeosaurs; the Dakotaraptors did coexist with Tyrannosaurus Rex, actually, so there.

…Wait, did we skip over something or other? Kind of, yes. Aside from the various references and flashbacks, JFC featured the Tyrannosaurus in three episodes. The first was the one with the Nanotyrannus. The last was the one with the dromaeosaurs. And the middle one was an atypical episode – instead of a face-off, this was a discussion of five of the theropod dinosaurs featured in JFC, to wit Allosaurus, Utahraptor, Majungasaurus, Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. And again, the sensationalism and the flawed information delivered in every JFC episode largely did any educational value that JFC might have had, or intended to have, at the start.

…Do I sound bitter? Yes, well, I am in a bitter mood, and even after watching another three of JFC episodes, my mood is not alleviated much. Everyone is largely stuck within his or her home for at least another week, and no one is getting out. This makes it boring as Hell, even with the availability of JFC to watch – JFC can be outright inane, I am afraid.

‘Allosaurus was the T-Rex before there was a T-Rex’! No, it was not – Tyrannosaurus was a much more derived carnivore than Allosaurus and the rest of its’ carnosaur cousins were. Because carnivorous dinosaurs were bipedal, (except for Spinosaurus and the rest of its’ cousins, maybe), the tyrannosaurs got rid of their forelimbs, (almost), and instead invested in their heads and jaws, making them true killing instruments. On the other end of the scale, we have Nothronychus and the rest of therezinosaur theropods, who went the other way – huge forelegs with massive claws, and tiny heads on long necks, a parody of prosauropod and sauropod dinosaurs, i.e. Sadly, none of the therezinosaurs’ ever appeared on JFC… oh well. Anything else?

Everything is getting delayed by at least another week because of COVID-19, which is proper. Of course, people are getting fed-up with everything COVID-19 related already and are testing the water…and are also getting into fights with one another, primarily over COVID-19…but also about anything else, really. I hope that things will change by the end of the next week, just change, because people cannot remain cooped-up forever in limbo, no matter what the world governments suggest. Until then, we will just have to wait and see, Tyrannosaurs or not. (Life in general is going on as usual, COVID-19 or not – the spring flowers, etc).

…This is it for now, (sorry that it turned out to be so brief, but I am in a curt mood today). See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #4 - March 25

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and yes, I have written about the STVI episode earlier in my blog’s history, and roughly in the same vein. Yes, that is my bad, and no, you cannot really invent my themes and plots about DW episodes, especially if you are talking about them one at a time. So, let us put DW aside, and talk about another blast from the past – ‘Jurassic Fight Club’.

This was a weird one. It was like AFO, but with (mostly) dinosaurs and some other prehistoric animals as well. Not unlike AFO, it authentically tried not just to entertain, but also to educate, or at least – to inform, via CGI, true, but all of AFO’s showdowns were done in CGI too, so you cannot blame JFC for CGI, (aside from the obvious reasons, of course).

What can JFC be blamed for? Good question and part of it is the amateur plot – literally. Somehow, all of JFC’s episodes came down to two CIG dinosaurs, (generally speaking), fighting each other. There was variation too, as it was in the fourth episode, where there were four dino species, rather than the usual two.

As it was, the episode began with a Stegosaurus mother and child going down to a semi-dry lake to drink during a drought and became stuck in the mud. Pause. Here is my true subject for today’s entry:

Stegosaurus. It was a remarkable dinosaur. It is one of the thyreophores, dinosaurs with armored backs and armed tails, and Stegosaurus was the best of the Jurassic variety – the stegosaurids, (duh!). The intriguing part here is that most of the stegosaurids were Asian dinosaurs; there were quite a few dinosaur families that did originate in Asia during the Jurassic, but then moved to North America in the early Cretaceous and flourished there instead. Not so the stegosaurids, however – none of them really made it into Cretaceous, as they were outcompeted by their ankylosaur cousins and died-out… The point is that aside from Stegosaurus, Kentrosaurus, and the much more obscure Hesperosaurus, all of the stegosaurids remained in Asia.

…Yes, technically speaking, during the Jurassic, Eurasia and North America belonged to a single continent – Laurasia, while Africa and South America and Australia formed the second continent – Gondwana. Nevertheless, not only did Stegosaurus was practically the only stegosaurid dinosaur to end up in North America rather than Asia, but its’ cousin Kentrosaurus was also pretty much the only stegosaurid dinosaur that ended up in both Europe and Africa rather than Asia. Weird, eh?

Speaking of Kentrosaurus and Stegosaurus, the two were not too closely related to each other, and they even looked differently: Stegosaurus had more of its’ trademark diamond-shaped plates on its back, while Kentrosaurus had more spikes, and on average was smaller than Stegosaurus was; Stegosaurus wasn’t only one of the last stegosaurids, but it was the biggest – about 9 m in length. Kentrosaurus was notably smaller than that. Pause.

…While the stegosaurid species differed from each other by having differently shaped plates and spikes on their backs, all of them had thagomizers – tail spikes, very large and sharp ones. They were their primary weapons, though unlike the dinosaur Fantasia segment, Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus never met – Stegosaurus lived in the end of the Jurassic, while T-Rex – at the very end of the Cretaceous, just before all the non-avian dinosaurs died out. What next?

Well, who would have won if T-Rex went against Stegosaurus? Hard to tell. Unlike the theropods that co-existed with Stegosaurus, namely Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus, Tyrannosaurus’ teeth and jaws evolved not to slice flesh, but to crash bone, it evolved to go against such dinosaurs as Ankylosaurus, whose arms and armor were superior to Stegosaurus, but on the other hand, Tyrannosaurus and its relatives (such as Tarbosaurus) did die after fighting Ankylosaurus and its relatives, (such as Tarchia).

Now, Ankylosaurus’, Tarchia’s and co. tails were designed to smash bone rather than to pierce flesh, as Stegosaurus’, Kentrosaurus’ and co.’s tails did, but that is something of a semantics issue – which sort of damage would be worse? My point exactly, so Fantasia is unrealistic because of that angle too – after a couple of slaps in the face, Tyrannosaurus would lose enthusiasm, as well as blood and other parts, and back down. Of course, if it did get a good grip with its’ deadly jaws and teeth, Stegosaurus was dead for certain, but in Fantasia we had a long, drawn-out fight, which is a different situation.

And back in ‘JFC’, the situation was different once more: Ma Stegosaurus and her offspring, (there’s no indication whatsoever, that Stegosaurus had parent-child bond; other dinosaur species did, but not Stegosaurus and its’ closest relatives) became stuck in the mud, where a Ceratosaurus ate them, and an Allosaurus stepped on them, and then they died from bloodloss and dehydration, but not before killing one of the Allosaurus with its’ tail spikes.

…And how do we know all of this to be true? We do not; it is all speculation. Dinosaur George Blasing seemed honest enough in his enthusiasm in the show, but apparently, this was not enough – ‘JFC’ ended after one season and twelve episodes, but that is another story…

This is it for now – see you all soon!