Quarantine entry #9 - March 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the weather only makes it worse. So, let us try to turn to something else – say, to the previously mentioned movie, ‘When Dinosaurs Roamed America’. This time, we will be talking about the Late Cretaceous segment, (66 MYA, no duh), though not really because of the T-Rex, but because of its’ most known arch nemesis, the Triceratops.

The good old ‘Three-Horned Face’ is, of course, almost as well established in popular mass media, as the Tyrannosaurus itself is. Its’ iconic, well, three-horned face is known even to absolute ignoramuses of the dino world, and justly so – it is just that well recognizable, with its’ three horns, (of various sizes), and its’ parrot-like beak.

A note on those horns, of course – Triceratops belonged to the branch of the ceratopsid family that had large brow horns and small nasal horns, such as the already mentioned Triceratops and Torosaurus. The second branch usually had large nasal horns, but their brow horns were small or even absent, as in case of Monoclonius or Styracosaurus. On top of this, there were other, more primitive ceratopsians, often completely hornless, such as the previously discussed Protoceratops – such dinosaurs had frills and beaks, but no horns – the horns were a later addition.

Just as the other iconic dinosaurs of the Cretaceous, the ceratopsids appeared during the Jurassic: they were small, bipedal dinosaurs with beaks rather than jaws and with small frills at the back of their heads – features that lasted until the end of the Mesozoic, becoming only more and more derived.

Did these frills, not to mention horns, help against such carnivores as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Dakotasaurus? No more so than the modern horns and antlers help against wolves, hyenas, big cats and/or bears. Many of the modern herbivores sport such headgear… but it works mostly in inner species’ conflicts, between the males in mating fights, and against the carnivores…it is a mixed bag.

If taken by itself, however, Triceratops appears to be a very formidable dinosaur, the Late Cretaceous’ answer to the rhinoceros, or at least the African buffalo – animals that can fight-off even the modern African lions, (sometimes), but not because of their horns, but because of their physical strength. Their horns, (or antlers, as in case of the moose and elk), are only extensions of their physical strength, in a manner of speaking.

Remember, when we discussed the two-part series called ‘The Truth about the Killer Dinosaurs’? The first episode was centered precisely on the T-Rex vs. Triceratops conflict, and during this episode, it was established that Triceratops could fight-off and even kill a T-Rex, if it was a fair fight. And if it wasn’t?

Well, both WDRA and WWD avoided the entire T-Rex vs. Triceratops conflict entirely – in WWD, we see a single Triceratops that is already dead, probably from the T-Rex in question, but there are always versions; and in WDRA, a Tyrannosaurus tried to harass a Triceratops herd, but failed. It probably happened back in the Cretaceous. Instead, in both WWD and WDRA, the Tyrannosaurs went after the duck-billed hadrosaurs instead, (i.e. the Anatotian), with much more success, and this is where we return to the modern period – in WDRA, Tyrannosaurs’ hunted in a family pack, not unlike how modern lions of Africa and Asia do. Did that happen?

Hard to say. JFC once claimed that Tyrannosaurus Rex was not quite as smart as a modern house cat is, but considering that the house cats have largely taken over our houses, this might be an underestimation of the house cats instead. On the other hand, not only tyrannosaurid dinosaurs were found in mass burials, but also the more basic carnosaurs, (such as Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus), as well. Were they as smart as the modern lions are? Probably not, certainly mammalian and reptilian brains are wired different for all sorts of anatomical reasons- pause. Dinosaurs, especially theropod dinosaurs – tyrannosaurs, carnosaurs, raptors, etc. – were closer to birds than to snakes and lizards, for comparison.

…True, but among the modern raptors, aka birds of prey, (which are a mixed bag themselves, but let us ignore this for now), only the Harris’ hawk of North America hunts in packs/family groups. The true social hunters among the modern birds are the corvids, mostly various crows and magpies, (the bigger ravens are more solitary instead). Were the tyrannosaurs, carnosaurs, raptors, etc. as smart as the modern crows and ravens, (which are among the smartest modern birds, period)? So far, no one has asked this question or answered it. Anything else?

And what about the Triceratops itself? Well, ‘The Truth’ established that Tyrannosaurus Rex was actually quite dumb, and Triceratops even dumber. Therefore, it is rather doubtful that Triceratops was able to launch defensive maneuvers in the manner of, say, modern wildebeest or reindeer…or that the Tyrannosaurus could launch offensive maneuvers as the modern lions, spotted hyenas, grey wolves and wild dogs do. Still, they probably had something, and not all fights were only one on one either. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, I would bet. Anything else?

Regrettably, yeah. These days, real life is not very condoning to long discussions, and I think that I have largely exhausted my interest in dinosaurs, at least for the next day or so. Therefore – this is it for now. I will see you all soon!

MBW, AFO, JFC & co. - July 19

Now, we shall briefly switch our attention from AFO onto ‘Monster Bug Wars’ (MBW). No, I am not talking about how Kim and Kanye tried to double-team Taylor Swift and it backfired upon them; meanwhile, Kim’s sister Khloe tried to take-on Chloe Bennet, and it also backfired, while others, like Snooki from ‘Jersey Shore’ and Selena Gomez are trying to put their two cents in without getting involved in this for real. I am talking about an actual show, which went down in 2011-2012, instead. It would depict two sorts of invertebrates (well, arthropods – insects, arachnids, centipedes, etc.) in a stimulated natural environment, where they would fight each other as gladiators would. Put otherwise, this is AFO, only with invertebrates, and for real.

And? And, perhaps, MBW was a show that could be considered as good as AFO. Yes, there was less science, (proportionally), but there was less entertainment as well, paradoxically. By showing live subjects, MBW introduced the element of chaos into their fights, so to speak. The combatants’ behavior is unpredictable, as is the outcome, for MBW shows how a tarantula can lose to a giant cricket, for example, or how a spitting spider can overwhelm a jumping spider. Size and strength do not matter…okay, they do, but not exclusively, not unlike how these qualities were being depicted in AFO back in 2004. Here, between venom, silk, swarming, etc., a smaller arthropod can overwhelm a bigger one…sometimes. The ants, using their swarm tactic, win over their individually larger opponents, as they do in real life…

What about the flaws? Well, from a technical P.O.V., MBW has no flaws. It was (one of) the final evolutions that such a show as AFO could evolve into. The other ‘branch’ was JFC, mentioned in some earlier post, when a show is done away with the actual science altogether, and all that is left is speculation: whether or not an Utahraptor can defeat a Gastonia; a Ceratosaurs – an Allosaurus; and a(n prehistoric American) lion – a (prehistoric short-faced) bear. The last one even sounds slightly like an AFO episode, but it was nowhere as professional or precise. AFO was done…scientifically, especially the season’s/series’ finale, (which is definitely a separate discussion), while JFC wasn’t – it was more like ‘The Future is Wild’, (TFW), which discussed speculative animals of the future, (which is neither here nor there), and JFC discussed speculative fights between dinosaurs, and between other prehistoric animals, and for their season’s/series’ conclusion, they discussed the K-T mass extinction…in a very unprofessional way. Period. MBW, AFO, and TTAKD – they all have professionalism in their composition, in one way or another. JFC did not. As a result, it lasted only one season, (though its host, Dinosaur George, hanged around for some time in the future), while MBW lasted for at least two. The moral?

The years 2011 and 2012 had more scientifically integral shows on TV than 2016 does. Very sad. However, that is life. Did team Kimye win, or did Taylor? Who knows?

PS: Who cares?

Truth about Killer Dinosaurs II - July 13

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.

Truth about Killer Dinosaurs I - July 12

After the entire ‘lion vs. tiger’ debacle, I grew tired of AFO for a while, and decided to look at another classic – ‘The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs’ (TTAKD). It was a two-part TV program of BBC’s, aired back in 2005. In some cases it was known as ‘Dinosaur Face-off’ instead – yeah, the connotations and connections to AFO are not obvious, but they are there.

What was TTAKD about, (if someone has forgotten)? Well, in the first part of the program, the narrator – Bill Oddie – compared and contrasted Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops in a very AFO-like manner too, complete with biomechanical models of the two dinosaurs, and a CGI stimulation of what would, or could, have happened if a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops have fought each other. In the more recent dinosaur-related programs (Jurassic Fight Club comes to mind), Tyrannosaurus is often depicted as invincible as it is in the movies (Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise), a creature that cannot be stopped by anything else (except for the main hero of the movie, for example).

TTAKD showed that that was not necessarily so; it showed that a Triceratops had a chance to defeat a Tyrannosaurus, especially in a fair fight – so far so good. In fact, this was BBC beating AFO, (an American program) at its own game – it had everything that AFO did: biomechanical models, CGI fight, scientists to consult with and to root for ‘their’ character – everything but the live footage, because now-a-days the only dinosaurs around are birds, and the crocodilians are close cousins of the extinct dinosaurs instead – not dinosaurs proper.

Of course, if you look at a Tyrannosaurus’ skull, the family traits with the crocodiles and the caimans will be very obvious: not unlike them, Tyrannosaurus was built for power – not just in its skull (odds are, being bitten by a Tyrannosaurus was one of the worst things to happen to anyone or anything), but in its entire body. Unlike a similarly sized dinosaur, such as an Allosaurus (or any other carnosaur), a Tyrannosaurus (and its close cousins – Tarbosaurus, Daspletosaurus, even Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus) was much more robust and built for power: a lion, or even a bear, as opposed to a tiger (or even a leopard). The alternate predator – one that is built for speed and/or finesse is a raptor; not so much ‘just’ a velociraptor, but its’ entire family…

Back to Tyrannosaurus. It was a great, powerful predator, but was it unbeatable? No more so than the modern lions and bears are: just think back to AFO’s ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ or ‘African lion vs. Nile crocodile’ episodes – there is always someone bigger and stronger lurking in the shadows, alas!

This is especially true for carnivore vs. herbivore interactions – whether we are talking about modern times or the Mesozoic, or any other time period. There is proof of buffalos successfully fighting-off lions, and if the lions are smaller than the buffalos are, it still does not stop them from having that buffalo meal fairly regularly. Of course, as we have talked about the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ episode of AFO, it is the same old story all over: the predator is usually ‘just’ fighting for its’ lunch, the prey – for its’ life. Of course, if the predator really needs a good meal to go on living, things will be different, but usually the herbivore has a good chance of escaping…or not. It is a case-by-case scenario, especially in real life.

However, in dinosaur documentaries, the carnivores are usually depicted winning – or just fighting each other instead. Yes, this goes great over in fiction, but in real life? It is unrealistic, which is why something like JFC (Jurassic Fight Club) is also unrealistic. Of course, JFC has plenty of other reasons why it was unrealistic, and in the end, cancelled after a single season (apparently cancelled, or maybe it was initially designed to be a single-season show), but it still had 12 episodes in it. TTAKD was largely a single-shot, (two-parter or not), and while it became fairly popular on YouTube and the rest of Internet, it never got to be aired very often…at least in Canada. AFO, for comparison, also really flourished even in its original run of 2004, but various episodes got to be aired in the future years, (during Shark Week and similar tripe, but still). TTAKD? Not really. Why?

Because it did not go for the stereotypes. JFC did. Tyrannosaurus is supposed to be invincible, especially in fiction, and so it is – on screen. The movie ‘Jurassic World’ has certainly delivered it, and while Tyrannosaurus was tougher than a carnosaur was, (which is what the Indominus was, period), a fictional Tyrannosaurus is something else. People expect a certain something when the ‘tyrant lizard king’ comes on air, and it has nothing to do with facts. It is slightly like the case with the lion – everyone expects a lion, (at least a fictional one) to be a hero rather than a villain, and so it happens! As a rule…

Yet back in 2005 TTAKD actually ‘measured’ a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops against each other, fair and square, very much in the vein of AFO, and proved to the audience that a Tyrannosaurus was not invincible after all. Perhaps this is why TTAKD has not made much of a return?..

Perhaps. Yet ‘The Truth’s’ take on Tyrannosaurus, (and Triceratops), is nothing compared to the second part of the program, which focused on Velociraptor – but that is a story for another time…