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!

Hawkeye, 'Echoes' - Dec 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so after this week’s, my blog entries will be more irregular than before, so you’ve been warned, and apologized for, in advance. Now onto the episode 1x03 of ‘Hawkeye’?

…Well, there isn’t much to go on about here and now; this week’s episode main entry was Echo slash Maya Lopez; in the Marvel comics, she was the adopted daughter of Wilson Fisk slash Kingpin, but since the latter’s defeat in Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’ series, the man was a no show in MCU, so here she was given a different backstory instead, one that is Wilson Fisk free. Pity, since Kingpin’s reappearance in MCU would have been interesting, but not really surprising, as MCU really prefers things neat and avoids anything uncomfortable, especially in RL.

For example, take a look at the AoS: in the initial seasons, especially the second and the third, the titular characters had to battle two threats – Hydra, and later on the InHumans and their ‘pureblood’ alien superiors. Initially, the show dealt with them ‘separately’ – one mini-story arc would deal with Hydra, the next with the InHumans, and so on. Eventually, of course, the two plotlines blurred into one – and this is what is happening on ‘Hawkeye’: we got two plotlines blurring into one: Maya Lopez and her Tracksuit Mafia, and William the Swordsman, or whatever his moniker is.

Pause. While we’re on the subject of Marvel, I have to admit that I disagree with the decision to combine the ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ and ‘Hit-Monkey’ cartoon series into one universe – aka Earth-1226; as I said before, the two shows are different enough for this decision to be wrong, and moreover, what do they have in common aside from the basic and the obvious? That Hulu made both of them? Then should not Hulu’s ‘Runaways’ series be added as well? I daresay that these three Marvel shows are different enough to be similar, so there is that-

Sorry. We were talking about ‘Hawkeye’ instead. Sadly, aside from Maya/Echo’s official entry into MCU, (she’s getting her own TV series… for the moment), there’s nothing new to talk about – this episode was action-packed, otherwise: Kate and Clint escaped from Maya-Echo and her tracksuit bros…they ran into William the Swordsman, who’s about to fight with Hawkeye…the end. Where were we?

Ah yes, the issue of MCU’s comfort. AoS has been swept under the rug because it has evolved slash devolved into an unwieldy monstrosity that did not fit into MCU at all in the end, while ‘Daredevil’ and co. fared the same fate because Marvel was ‘sharing’ them with Netflix, and Disney/Marvel/MCU does not like to share. Yes, Phase 4 is introducing the multiverse, more or less, but it certainly took its’ time, and its’ heaviest hitter – the upcoming Spider-Man movie, ‘No Way Home’ – is being made because the Spider-Man franchise is passing from Disney/Marvel/MCU onto Sony, and this way some sort of a compromise was made, in a form of a grand movie: this way, Disney/Marvel/MCU, gets (still gets) a piece of Spidey, and so does Sony and its’ Sony Universe of Marvel Characters, (plus a nice send-of gift in regards to its’ Spidey franchise). ‘Hawkeye’ doesn’t get that; in fact, we have Clint and Kate running around NYC and no sign of Marvel’s Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, even though he is THE hero when it comes Marvel’s NYC, you know? Disney/MCU hates lawsuits; it hates losing money, (it loves to make money), but it hates lawsuits even more, and so it would rather share than sue… usually, but regularly. So what?

So now we got a ‘standard’, ‘paint-by-numbers’, ‘Hawkeye’ mini-series, since by now the rumors are that it’ll end after 6 episodes are swirling. Well, fair enough. Clint Barton/Hawkeye was the most underwhelming of all the Avengers; the most underappreciated, but also the most underwhelming, and rightly so. This episode reminded why that is so; there is style and flash, but little substance, and this combo carries only so far. So, onto the JW: D prologue?

Eh, by now the internet has recognized and admitted that not only a T-Rex vs. Giganotosaurus face-off in RL would’ve been impossible, but the entire dino mockumentary portion of the prologue was a pastiche: we got Cretaceous ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, we got Jurassic brachiosaurs, we got an Oviraptor-type dinosaur that is stealing eggs – an incorrect and outdated stereotype – and both Jurassic & Cretaceous pterosaurs to list only the obvious. The JP/JW franchise may be more realistic in its’ depictions of dinosaurs, but little else.

Well, this is it for now. Everyone, enjoy your first day of the official winter in the Northern Hemisphere. I will see you all… eventually.

Loki 'The Variant' - June 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the JP franchise seems to be doing its’ best to make it even moreso, if the rumors about the upcoming JW: Dominion movie are correct.

What are they about? In it, a T-Rex will be fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong, and on several levels too. Let us go there.

…However, you may ask, what about Loki? And – ‘Loki’? Sadly, nothing. This week’s episode, ‘The Variant’, was a fun watch, as we saw the titular Loki suffer by trying to adjust to being the straight guy of the show/in the TVA, and suffering from it…within his soul, while people all around him aren’t impressed.

To elaborate, Loki is a showman; for him, a large part of his trickery is in pretending to be someone that he isn’t; the problem here is that he may be too chaotic on one hand: he switches allegiances and disguises at a moment’s notice, always trying to come up one step ahead regardless of what he was trying to do in the past and whoever he tried to trick earlier. He is inconsistent, he is selfish, and he is petty.

Only he is not. In the very first ‘Thor’ movie, when Loki appeared in MCU for the first time, Loki had a clear goal: first, he was trying to prove to Odin and the rest of Asgard that he was better than Thor, and then, when he learned that he was actually a frost giant rather than an Asgardian himself, he… remained constant to that goal, his epiphany just took him in an unexpected direction – genocide, by using Bifrost; the first ‘Thor’ film was done on a cosmic scale with a cosmic scope, and Loki was a worthy villain of that movie. And now?

And now Loki is depicted as a failure as both a character and a villain. In part, this is justified – Loki’s act as a trickster wore thin by the time of ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie, as Hela, who is his female counterpart in the Marvel universe, took over from him there, and died in it, but since Loki died quickly soon afterwards, in the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ film, this does not really matter.

Or does it? This Loki variant in a blonde-haired woman, while the show’s main character is a dark-haired man, of course. Yes, he is gender-fluid, but since we are talking about Disney/MCU here, this may not amount to much, because Disney wants to make money, first and foremost. To do so, it’ll be ‘progressive’ to appeal to the native, U.S. audience, but it will also be ‘retrograde’ to the audiences overseas, including RF and China, so let’s leave Loki’s sexcapades to the fans, and going back to the canon…

Going back to the canon, we got nothing. Loki is reduced to being a glorified goofball, and then he meets the ‘variant Loki’, aka the series’ main villain, for now, and follows her to see how the other half lives and whether or not he can get his own mojo back. Spoiler alert: he cannot. Not until he commits to being either a hero or a villain completely, and that is not something that he is ready to do so; he is much happier being a selfish and self-serving asshole instead – such a fall for a once great villain. I hope that the show will stop assassinating his character soon enough and begin to rebuild it instead. Now onto the JW movie?

Of that, much less is known, but, again, we are talking about a T-Rex fighting a Giganotosaurus, and that is just wrong.

First, because of realism: Tyrannosaurus Rex lived at the very end of the Mesozoic, precisely 66 MYA, in North America. Giganotosaurus lived almost 30 million before that, during the Mid-Cretaceous period, in South America. The lineages of the two dino species have never crossed paths.

Secondly – and yes, I understand that I sound completely prejudiced here, but I honestly cannot help it – but Tyrannosaurus Rex would have won. Out of the two dinosaurs, it was the more derived carnivore and the better fighter as well. Yes, like the rest of the Cretaceous carnosaurs, the Giganotosaurus was bigger than the T-Rex…but with a much weaker bite. Like its’ African cousin the Carcharodontosaurus, the Giganotosaurus aimed to rip and tear the flesh with its scissor-like jaws and thin, blade-like teeth, whereas the jaws and teeth of a Tyrannosaurus evolved to bite through flesh and bone, (not to mention armored skin of some of the herbivores that it lived next to). Ergo, as soon as it got a grip on Giganotosaurus, the latter was doomed, as the Rex would literally bite and rip it into pieces, rather than bite and claw with forelimbs in order for Rexy to bleed to death, as the Giganotosaurus would aim to do.

This brings us to Spinosaurus, which already had killed a T-Rex…back in the JPIII movie, which has aggravated many dino-fans since then. As Dr. Wu would point out in the first ‘Jurassic World’ film, their dinosaurs are not exactly real, but here we need to talk about repetition: the third JW film seems to be repeating the third JP film, and as we have talked about in our discussions regarding the now-finished AoS, this sort of recycling is just bad.

…So, to recap. The third JW movie is about to dismiss all sort of scientific integrity that the franchise tried to cloak itself in, in the initial films, it seems to be recycling plot ideas from those initial films, (which means that it is becoming bankrupt in its’ ideas, not unlike how AoS became in its’ own later seasons), and that means that the JW franchise really is heading towards its’ own ultimate conclusion, at least for the immediate future. Sad, but that is real life. It sucks, as I have always said in my obligatory disclaimer.

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!

Quarantine entry #19 - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Not only COVID-19 is still going on strongly, this morning we had a very nasty snowstorm. Fortuitously, we stayed inside, and now the storm is over, (it is the beginning of April, after all), and nature is coming back out – the birds are flying, singing, fighting over their nesting territories en masse, showing just how resilient life on Earth. The storm passed and is over; COVID-19 too will pass and be over and life will return to normal. …Well, relatively so, seeing how the politicians, businessmen, and who else have you, are trying to take advantage of the lockdown and all, are trying to take advantage of the lockdown, and it is all coming down like a great big mess; people are fleeing into the literal woods to escape both COVID-19 and everything else. What next?

Let us talk about the giraffe. Why the giraffe? Because it is unique. There is no other mammal on the modern planet like it. If the modern elephants represent the last scions of an ancient dynasty of herbivorous mammals that fell due to the competition with the artiodactyl mammals, then the modern giraffe is one of those evolutionary cousins of the main dynasty – aka the antelopes, gazelles, wild cattle, sheep and goats – that had its’ heyday in the past, (the Miocene & the Pliocene epochs), but is largely gone, these days.

Pause. The entire taxonomic-biological family of the giraffe consists of the giraffe, and the okapi, aka the forest giraffe. Frankly, the latter name is not used very often, because the okapi is only like the giraffe in the most generic ways; you can see the family similarity, but nothing more. With an effort, you can confuse an Asian elephant with an African one, or an Asian rhinoceros with an African one, but an okapi with a giraffe? Just no. …The families of the okapi and the giraffe have diverged during the Miocene slash the Pliocene, around 11.5 MYA, and the two have never been in contact since.

The okapi family is represented by a single species – the okapi itself. The giraffe, on the other hand, is murkier, as people in charge of biological classification still have not made their mind as to if there is just a single giraffe species, or four of them, or what. Even if there is just a single giraffe species, it may have up to nine subspecies, which is a lot. …Of course, with humans hunting them for all sorts of reasons, or even without any reasons at all, because we humans can be assholes, they may not be around for much longer, but that is not a good thing.

…Yes, COVID-19 has hit humans, even in Africa, hard, so they may not be up for the giraffes, but no one knows exactly how it affects other animals; for example, a tiger in Bronx zoo was discovered to have it; and with giraffes slash okapis, it is anyone’s guess.

So, why is the giraffe so unique? Because it is a very specialized animal – it is not big: it is tall. A good portion of the giraffe is its’ disproportionally long neck and legs; the neck, I think, amounts for about half of the giraffe’s body length, (while in case of the okapi it is about 30%, on average). Just like a human’s, the okapi’s and the giraffe’s neck consist of only 7 vertebra, but the giraffe’s are the most massive one out of the three by far, both in size and in weight. Isn’t trivia fun?

What next? …Um, aside from the humans, the main enemies of the giraffe are the African lion and the Nile crocodile; no one else really wants to tackle and fully-grown giraffe – compared to an elephant or a rhinoceros they may look like great big fragile land kites or something, but their head-butts are painful, and their kicks can be deadly. African lions, however, are known to tackle African bush elephants, (not fully grown, but not just calves either), who are even stronger than the giraffes are, and so they do overpower giraffes by working as a team, on occasion.

The Nile crocodile, on the other hand, is more of a case by case situation – it is a solitary hunter; crocodiles of these species may gather together to feed, (their anatomy of jaws and teeth makes it easier for them to feed together, rather than separately, on something bigger than what they can just swallow whole)… where were we?

Ah yes, unlike the African lion, the Nile crocodile is a solitary hunter, but a social feeder, especially if the prey is big – say, a dead African hippo. Then the not-quite-social crocodiles gather and tolerate each other, more or less, as they feed – with ‘tolerate’ being the key word here. The African lions hunt together, (though there is plenty of case-by-case variation there), and their society is quite complex, (cough, TLK is full of baloney, cough), but they and the Nile crocodiles do not have anything in common aside from both of them living in Africa.

…Yes, we have discussed the ‘African lion vs. Nile crocodile’ AFO episode a while back, and spoiler alert – the lion lost, (and the giraffe was not involved at all), which is fair: a male African lion is a fighter, but it is a team fighter, and on its own, it rather has a disadvantage against the crocodile. Plus, on that episode team AFO really did its’ homework, and their deduction that the Nile crocodile was a better fighter than the African lion was justified, so there!

Back to the giraffe? Er, did it leave while we were dealing with the lion and the crocodile? Why, we have not even mentioned the non-avian theropod dinosaurs, aka the meat-eaters, are the goal of a real discussion of whether they did hunt together as the African lions do, or just fed together, as the Nile crocodiles? And what did they feed upon? Sauropods, among other things, just look at the second episode of WWD, or the fifth episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ (2013), for example! Are sauropods like the giraffe?

No, not exactly. Some are – that is the Brachiosaurus and its’ relatives. Others are not – rather, they are big, (aka the elephant) – that is Argentinosaurus and the rest of the titanosaurs; or they are just long – aka Diplodocus and its’ relatives, (including the Apatasaurus). Yes, we are generalizing here so hard, but the thing is that many of the sauropods were built different from the giraffe, and many of them were not built like it.

Moreover, neither was the extinct Indricotherium, or whatever it is named now, (see the third episode of ‘Walking with Beasts’). Just like the extinct titanosaurs, or the existing elephants, it was big rather than tall, and quite proportionate. Why did it die out? Because not unlike the giraffe it was a specialized mammal, designed to eating foliage, and as the savannas, prairies, steppes, etc. spread, the Indricotherium could no longer survive. With the modern giraffe – it is pretty much the same thing: the giraffe survives alongside all of those antelopes and gazelles by being the best foliage eater in the African grasslands – a very specialized niche, to be sure, but it does allow the giraffe to survive over more of Africa as opposed to the more generalized okapi, which exists only in parts of the African rainforest, and whose overall population is worse off than that of the giraffe. Evolution and ecology sometimes play strange tricks upon animals!..

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

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!

Quarantine entry #6 - March 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life continues to suck as more and more people are getting sick each day. Seriously, this is getting truly intolerable even by my standards, so this time, instead of watching JFC, I went back to DW. For a change, I watched a modern face-off – the ‘IRA vs. Taliban’ episode, and-?

And ever since I have watched it for the first time, I am being constantly struck by how openly prejudiced DW hosts had been on that episode. More specifically, this episode matched the Taliban’s trophy AK-47 vs. the IRA’s AR-15, and the show’s hosts twisted themselves into some amazing knots to justify giving the edge to the IRA’s AR-15. Why? Because on the earlier S1 episode, the Russian Spetsnaz actually took down USA’s Green Berets, fair and square, and the show clearly hadn’t recovered from this – ever. True, they tried to keep their future pro-American bias subtle in S2, but in S3? It came to the fore, and as I have written a long time ago, (when the DW S3 episodes were aired in real life and we were discussing each one individually, as each one was ‘piping hot’, pardon the clumsy pun), it was one of the reasons as to why DW went down for good after the S3. USA isn’t RF, (and even so, the Russians are becoming clearly against Vladimir Putin ruling them until 2036 unopposed, good for them), and for them such blatant propaganda, pro-US or not, was too much. …And yes, there were other reasons as to why DW was cancelled, but still…

…But why was I watching DW to begin with? Somehow, JFC became even more intolerable than when I saw it last, and so instead of it, I watched something else – DW ‘IRA vs. Taliban’ as I said earlier, as well as Impossible Pictures’ ‘Chased by Dinosaurs: The Giant Claw’ episode, and – ‘Mulan-1998’.

What can I say? Ming-Na Wen was already awesome as a voice actress, (and these days she is an actress-actress, staring as Melinda May in AoS, though at the end of S6 finale she got temporarily killed-off or at least – incapacitated). That said, the Shan-Yu and his horde were some of the least impressive villains of animated Disney. Why? In the movie, none of the Shan-Yu’s lieutenants really had names; yes, the various Wikis who specialise in this sort of thing, have their names, but the movie never acknowledges this. Harsh!

Moreover, the Shan-Yu himself… It seems that he had invaded China because he decided that the Great Wall of China is an insult to his manhood or something. Seriously? What is this? A reality show, ancient Chinese version? The Shan-Yu and his horde serve no other function than to be the distraction; the real adversary, of course, were the gender roles and norms in the society, and Fa Mulan proved that a woman could do a man’s job easily, etc. etc. How very 20^th century of her! (‘Mulan’ was released in 1998, remember? Technically, it was the 20^th century still, rather than the 21^st). It will be interesting to see how ‘Mulan-2020’ stacks up against this film.

…Yes, it was evident – Hell, Disney outright told its’ viewers that this was going to be more along the lines of the new ‘Dumbo’ film than TLK-2019 or the rebooted L&T. Fair enough, and hopefully the new villain, Borikhan or whatever his name is, will have a better motivation than his 1998’s counterpart did, but for now, it is too early to make premonitions – or too late, but in any case, thanks to COVID-19, now isn’t the right time. Moreover, what about ‘The Giant Claw’?

Not unlike JFC, this was a mix of education and entertainment, but more honest – it involved Nigel Marvin travelling through time – literally – to the Late Cretaceous Mongolia, 70 MYA, or so, in search of the titular creature. Spoiler warning – it was Therezinosaurus, one of the biggest purely herbivorous theropods, whose cousin the Nothronychus was mentioned earlier, when we were discussing Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And where was this dinosaur in ‘The Giant Claw’? Why, nowhere at all – it had not evolved in Late Cretaceous North America yet. Instead, this 30 minute special featured its’ cousin, Tarbosaurus bataar.

…Ever since this dinosaur was discovered, there was plenty of discussion, as to how it was related to Tyrannosaurus. These days the scientific community believes that while the two species were cousins, Tarbosaurus was more distantly related to Tyrannosaurus than some other North American tyrannosaurid species, such as Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus and Gorgosaurus; Tarbosaurus’ bones, especially in its’ skull, prove that. That is fair, but ecologically wise, Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus played the same role – that of an alpha predator; not even Velociraptors stood up to the Tarbosaurus.

What about the Velociraptors? They were depicted in ‘The Giant Claw’ as well, but they were much smaller and proportionally more realistic than they are in the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise – turkey-sized predators, rather like modern coyotes with an attitude. They were shown hunting other smaller dinosaurs – the herbivorous Protoceratops, which about the size of a modern sheep, but had attitude of their own, and a powerful beak to back it up. (Something of the Protoceratops-Velociraptor interaction was shown in ‘The Giant Claw’, FYI).  Put otherwise, all of the Impossible Pictures’ series did their best to educate, or at least to inform, rather than to entertain – and did a much better job than the JFC did, in my frank opinion.

By the way, JFC did not have Velociraptors to begin with – instead, it had three of their cousins: the Deinonychus, the Utahraptor, and the Dromaeosaurus. The first two were bigger than the Velociraptor was; alongside the lesser-known Dakotaraptor, they were the biggest members in their family, comparable in size to their fictional counterparts from the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise. By contrast, the Dromaeosaurus was the Velociraptor’s counterpart in the Late Cretaceous North America, but as I said earlier, it was not the contemporary of the T-Rex, so here the JFC lied…but we talked about it last time, so let us drop it.

Anything else? COVID-19 continues to march across the face of the planet, more and more public figures are continuing to get ill, and I have no idea as to when it all will end. The Donald is not entirely wrong when he is focusing on the economical aspect of it all, but he is not truly right either. Did I mention that the real life sucks? Because it does. Sad face emoji.

…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!

JW: Motion comics part 3 - Dec 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so sometimes when you go online and find a really great story that helps you get through the day – then you are quite lucky. And sometimes you go online and see the next installment of JW’s online motion comic, and that is something else. So, let us talk about it.

…Well, first let us make a shout-out to Netflix’s upcoming ‘The Witcher’ series. It is shaping up to be the next GoT series and rightly so, because it’s author, Mr. Sapkowski, had written the original ‘Witcher’ as a series of books, not unlike Martin’s ASOIAF series, but with some differences: for one thing, the first book (or two) of ‘Witcher’ are more like series of stories and novellas rather than proper novels. For another – Sapkowski has actually finished his ‘Witcher’ series, while Martin’s ASOIAF, (which separate from HBO’s GoT, FYI), remain unfinished, for all sorts of reasons, but still unfinished.

…Will I be watching Netflix’s version of ‘Witcher’? Having actually read the original novels, I’ll probably pass – yes, the goal isn’t unlike that of Martin’s ASOIAF, or the ‘Jupiter Ascending’ film that’d come up to the movie screens few years before now, (i.e. before 2019) – it’s a space/fantasy opera, full of swords and sorceries and politics and plots. There are actual monsters – ghouls, vampires, sirens/mermaids, etc. There are dwarves and gnomes and elves. It is everything that a fantasy fan wants, but you can only read the entire series once before having enough – it will stoke the fires of your inner fan for months to come. That said, I want to point out that the word ‘Witcher’ is nonsense: Sapkowski’s own word for it is ‘wiedzsmin’ or something similar, (I don’t know the Polish language all that well), which roughly means ‘man-witch’ or ‘witch of a male gender’ in other languages, and in English language specifically, there are several words that also have similar meanings, words such as ‘sorcerer’ and ‘warlock’; J-Ro has actually used the latter in her ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’ story anthology, remember? …Probably not, since between ‘the Cursed Child’ and the current Newt Scamander series J-Ro has really muddled her own fandom, but it is there. Why did the English language adaptations of Sapkowski’s series had to create the word ‘Witcher’ and the good old ‘warlock’ could not serve is anyone’s guess. Human logic is one of those reasons as to why real life sucks.

And why does real life suck in this instance? For personal reasons – sometimes your life just changes for the worse and you cannot do anything about it, no matter how much you struggle to figure out a way out – but we digress. In other news, Weinstein – Harvey Weinstein – paid 25 million to get the charges dropped and be a free man – so much for #MeToo, put otherwise.

Listen. Back in 2016+, the whole damn process was supposedly precisely aimed at this sort of thing – for men in power not to be able to buy their way out of their crimes… but this is exactly what Weinstein seems to be achieving… so it all comes back to money. Not surprising – post Cold War, the U.S. philosophy was increasingly dominated by capitalism and it was all about the money, so now that the country is trying to distance itself from the all-mighty dollar – it does not work. It does not work for several reasons, including the one that is that from the 1990s onwards the U.S. increasingly tried to be a utopia and it failed for all sorts of other reasons, but regardless, money and the money cult do not make things any better either. ‘Frozen 2’ is a typical example of that… but we have talked about this movie already. Let us try to talk about the latest installment of JW’s motion comic, as we promised.

…Okay, here we got no money or philosophy, but a direct continuation of the first two parts; it even features Rebecca Ryan the news’ anchor and her nameless husband as well more new characters. Two of those characters are zoo workers – an Afro-American woman named Rachel, (yes, JW seems to have a problem with names that start with the letter R for some reason) and her Anglo-American co-worker, (of male gender), while the third is a journalist reporting to Rebecca, named Julie. Again, by utilizing the motion comic format, JW avoids from giving any characterization to any of its’ human characters at all, and as for the non-human characters…

…As for the non-human characters, this week’s motion comic featured that good old favorite, Rexy the T-Rex. Here, the motion comic picked up where the last JW film ended, (among other things): Rexy confronted Leo the lion at a zoo, and here we get to see what happened next. Nothing much, sadly: Rexy and Leo roared at each other some, and then human-piloted helicopters arrived and led Rexy off into some ravine. Kind of a letdown, especially since Leo was not backing down from a fight: the keepers may have been able to take wives and cubs to safety, but not him, as you can see in the motion comic. Maybe in the future installment he and Rexy will be able to have their final face-off? That would not be bad, especially since the actual franchise was never against blood and death, until now…

…Here I am talking about the pteranodon. The motion comic itself is confused as to how to call them: it calls them both ‘pteranodon’ (as a plural) and ‘pteranodons’ (ditto) within a couple of sentences, so let’s call them pterosaurs instead. In the motion comic, Rebecca wonders if they’re the same pterosaurs that were seen at lake Mead, and then one of them picks up some random guy off the street and drops him into a fountain, (so the shmuck probably survives this fall), and that’s problematic on so many levels.

Firstly, the lake. In the U.S., there is a lake Meade, which is located in Pennsylvania, and is not a lake, but an ‘unincorporated census-designated place’, whatever that means in normal English, and second, there is a Lake Mead, which is a lake, albeit an artificial one, which lies on the Colorado River. Which one was talked about in the motion comic is anyone’s guess.

Next, the pterosaurs themselves. The truth is that Crichton never wrote about pteranodons – his pterosaur species was the Cearodactylus, a flying reptile that looked more like the ornithocheirus from the 4^th episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (1999) – no horn on the head, and the jaws aren’t a toothless beak, but have teeth that function like a fish trap and a keel-like ridge as well. Why the franchise decided to replace them with the pteranodons onwards from ‘The Lost World’ film if not from the original JP one – is anyone’s guess, but by now the pteranodon are firmly a part of the JP franchise. Live with it.

…Living with the fact that the entire JP franchise, starting from the already mentioned ‘Lost World’ film depicted its pterosaurs bipedal like birds at least some of the time is harder. People know that on the ground pterosaurs moved on all fours like bats rather than just on their hind legs as birds do: just look at Hatzegopteryx in the final episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ (2011): the show showed scientific proof that on the ground those aerial monsters moved on all fours. So why are JP pterosaurs bipedal? Let us blame Dr. Wu, I guess.

Finally, the matter of size. Pteranodon was one of the bigger pterosaurs back in the 20^th century, (maybe even the biggest back then), but now Quatzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx shadow it: Pteranodon has only a 9-m wingspan; theirs was much bigger and they were even larger than the pteranodon was. So how did this flying reptile became so much larger than a human as shown in this motion comic, (not in any of the movies, mind)? Again, it is probably the fault of good doctor, so let us move on to the final part of this discussion:

I.e. on one hand, this motion comic is not so bad, the plot is fairly straightforward and the characters are consistent. On the other, the plot is also unsatisfying and tries to have it both ways: there are scary monsters, (I am sorry, but a T-Rex is certainly a monster, albeit a real life one), but also – that no one gets hurt.

Yes, this is the sort of ambiguity that has haunted the Western movies lately, ever since Rose Tico mentioned about defeating the First Order with love, not with violence. This is not how it works; this is not how it worked in the original trilogy, it was more of a ‘speak softly but stand-up for your principles’ instead, so Rosie, you got it all wrong. Still, the SW9 film is almost upon us, so it will be interesting to see as to how team Resistance co. defeats Palpatine and etc. Real life may suck, but often there are movies (and the like) to carry us through…

This is it for now, however – see you all soon.

Battle of Big Rock - Sep 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, just ask the Saudis and the US allies, given how they have just lived through possibly one of the worst attacks on their oil fields…since WWII, maybe. So far, the suspect is supposedly Iran, which raises the question: are we at the start of WWIII? Just like the RF, Iran has had enough of the US hegemony, which grows steadily weaker ever since the US failure in Libya, (and now there are supposedly Russian mercenaries too – double ouch), while its’ European allies squabble with each other over the Brexit. Seriously, people, flip a coin – if it lands on one side, U.K. leaves, period, if it lands on the other – it stays, the end. Kind of like the end of the US/Israel hegemony in Middle East, apparently, as Iran isn’t backing down from a fight with the US and its’ allies anymore. When the G7 meeting took place earlier this year, everybody in the West (and their pro-West allies elsewhere) were extremely happy that Putin had not been there, but a certain high-ranking political representative of Iran was. Where are they now, those wise men and women of statecraft? Clearly, Tehran is just as hostile towards the West as Moscow is, if not more, so where does it leave the leaders of G7 and their allies?

…Yeah, with the Donald in the role of POTUS and a rising crescendo of political hysteria in general in the US, as the elections are coming closer, D.C. party lines are further apart than ever, and no idea of where to go next. If the Saudi Arabia falls before Iran, things will be very bad; the relationship between the two nations had been strained ever since the prophet Muhammed arose in the desert, united the formerly divided Arabian tribes and they conquered… yes, eventually, the Byzantine Christian empire, (what was left of it, eventually), despite the West’s interference, cough, but also the Persian empire of Zoroastrians, the nation that would in modern times become Iran. Now, it seems, the descendants of them Persians are about to unleash some karmic whoop-ass on the descendants of Muhammed’s devotees at last. Oh dear. Moreover, no one can blame it on Putin and the rest of RF either. Ouch.

…Well, this is depressing, so let us try to talk about something – JW ‘Battle of Big Rock’, perhaps? First, though, an honorary mention of AoS and MCU: they are bringing Hydra back officially. And to quote Ambroise Bierce, author and major in the US army (we are talking the American Civil War here of the 19^th century), ‘Why’? In the CA: CW movie Hydra was supposedly gone for good; yes, it came almost on every season of AoS, but AoS’ own relationship with MCU had plenty of problems; and moreover, the second Spider-Man movie seemed to be setting up the Kree as MCU’s next main villains, not Hydra, (which had been mostly human in the MCU so far).

If Hydra is coming back to MCU, this is going to be bad – the first time around it caused a rather nasty split between MCU’s fanbase – whether it was Nazi, or ‘only’ evil. Considering that this version of Hydra is a fictional organization, (rather than a mythical monster, for example), the argument was ridiculous, but there were many bad feelings generated by it until MCU ended Hydra in the CA: CW film. If it brings Hydra back in Phase 4, already burdened with the fallout from Spider-Man’s departure from MCU, as well as the acquiring of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, then MCU might develop new problems on top of the old ones and that is bad, again.

…There are at least two probable reasons regarding this development. The first is that MCU was going to use the Kree in place of Hydra during Phase 4, as set up by the final scenes of Spider-Man II, (remember?), when Spider-Man left, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four came in, and suddenly MCU got shook up by all the new changes, and people in charge decided to scrap the Kree, go back to the tested and true Hydra just because. Too many changes too soon and Disney/Marvel may not control them. As said above, Hydra was more controversial in MCU than it was assumed, so bringing it back in place of the Kree completely might make the MCU situation even worse, so let’s go for the better option: MCU is going to conflate Hydra with the Kree, and then replace Hydra by the Kree as the Phase 4 unfolds, so the AoS S7 will be the final nail in the Hydra coffin…at least in the mainline MCU. What Disney/Marvel will bring out in place of AoS, (probably the Falcon & Bucky show on Disney plus), and whether it will feature Hydra, is another story. What is next?

The ‘Battle at Big Rock’ JW short movie. About 8 to 9 minutes long, it featured a diverse American family in California as they go on a camping trip in some fictional American national park in California, and get involved with the imported wildlife, as an Allosaurus fights it out with a Nasutoceratops family and then turns upon them. Hit the stop button.

Where to begin? First, in that perfect 20/20 hindsight, the Nasutoceratops profile was released by the Jurassic World Evolution game several weeks before today; if any’s interested, a Nasutoceratops is a cousin of Triceratops, but without the nasal horn and with a notable different muzzle from its’ much more famous cousin. Allosaurus, on the other hand, is a well-established dinosaur among paleontologists, dinosaur fans, and ordinary people; for a while, it was second only to Tyrannosaurus in its’ popularity in the West, but now it has been pushed back in favor of its’ cousins, dinosaurs like Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus, but it is still prominent. In BBR, however, it was hopelessly outmatched; no offense to all of the Big Al fans out there, but unlike Tyrannosaurus, who had evolved precisely for this sort of thing – to bite through bone and crush the reinforced skulls and frills of horned dinosaurs, (among other things), Allosaurus’ teeth and jaws were designed for shearing flesh of giant sauropods – just look at ‘Ballad of Big Al’, for example of the “Walking with…” series. When facing a dinosaur like the Nasutoceratops, Big Al was out of his depths.

…Yes, the Nasutoceratops was most certainly not in any of the franchise’s movies so far; in the last JW movie it was the Sinoceratops instead, a different Triceratops cousin. It had no brow horns, but a prominent nasal horn instead – essentially, a reversal of the Nasutoceratops’ arrangement. In the last JW movie, it fought a Carnotaurus; why the people of the JP franchise decided to use an Allosaurus this time is anyone’s guess. Maybe they were trying to change the dressings on what was basically a rehash of the JW: FK Carnotaurus vs. Sinoceratops fight? It is still anyone’s guess…

As for the human element, here we come to the second JP movie, ‘The Lost World’. This is the film in the franchise that the BBR resembles the most. Primarily, its’ second act, when Big Al goes for the family in the trailer is reminiscent of the scene in ‘The Lost World’, where Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding are treating the juvenile Tyrannosaurus in their trailer, and its’ parents begin to object. As it happens in those movies, some of Malcolm and Harding’s entourage got eaten, but they and Malcolm’s daughter, who’s an Afro-American herself, just like the father and daughter in BBR – making, her, Malcolm and Sarah something of a mixed family themselves – survive.

Again, both Tyrannosaurus and Carnotaurus make much better dinosaurs for this sort of smash and grab attack – they both evolved for strength, in two different ways but along similar evolutionary lines, whereas Big Al was proportionally a more gracile hunter among the giant dinosaurs. (Plus, at 9 m in length on average, it was smaller than the Tyrannosaurus was, even if still bigger than the Carnotaurus). It really was not designed for this sort of punishment – being gored and tossed by the Nasutoceratops’ parents, and then being shocked, stabbed, shot and so on by the humans. No wonder that it had enough and just left in the end – and this brings us back to people: where did they go?

The obvious answer would be that they got eaten, but this is wrong: a solitary Allosaurus is precisely the wrong theropod dinosaur to eat several families of humans without making a noise. This dinosaur – and the rest of its’ carnosaur cousins – were pack hunters, working together to bring down giant sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Argentinosaurus, (to use the Impossible Pictures’ examples). When faced with several smaller prey items, an Allosaurus just did not have the mental hardware to deal with them – remember ‘The Ballad of Big Al’? The titular character’s downfall came when he tried to attack a herd of smaller, human-sized dinosaurs – Dryosaurs’ or Othnielias: Big Al chased them, they scattered, Big Al didn’t catch anyone, and actually broke one of his toes, and the fracture eventually got infested and he died. His relative in BBR did better – he didn’t die at the end of this short feature film, but he wasn’t doing very well either… but what about the humans? What happened to them, Greg and co.? The better option is that they got swallowed by a plot hole, but let us go with the other possibility: the Nasutoceratops family scared them away, and the main characters – actually, the only characters, you can say – just did not hear it due to their own noise. Ok, and this brings us to the ‘credit scenes’ and ‘The Lost World’.

Sure, one of the scenes featured a pterosaur eating a white dove released at a wedding and another one the Mosasaur eating a great white shark. Both of those animals escaped from the island and the Lockwood manor in the last movie, (though does it mean that the Mosasaur has reached South Africa or Australia by now, because that is where great white sharks and sea lions live these days; they also live in California, but the island was not off the American west coast, I think, so South Africa & Australia are more realistic here, ironically, but we digress). However, the other two short scenes featured, firstly, a girl chased and attacked by several compys. The same thing happened in the opening of ‘The Lost World’ film, which, in turn, were inspired by the opening scenes of the JP novel. (Read it). And secondly, we have a Stegosaurus attacking a car – again, we are talking ‘The Lost World’ here, where a different Stegosaurus attacked Sarah Harding. What does it all add up to, I have no idea, except that it is evidence that the franchise has lost steam: BBR is a rehash of ‘The Lost World’, the second JP movie, with some ‘Fallen Kingdom’ elements thrown into the mix. Put otherwise, and this is a rehash equal to some of the worst AoS/MCU rehashes, such as the return of Hydra, talked above. Where will this old rotten chestnut take MCU, (AoS is ending in 2020 for good now), is unknown, but proportionally, MCU is much more durable than the JP franchise; it is more likely to survive its’ bad decisions than the JP franchise – its’. Yes, the next JW movie is supposed to end this trilogy, but if it goes out with a whimper, it might be the end of the JP franchise for good, and I hope that that never happens…

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

JW trailer 2 - Feb 5

The second JW trailer was aired. What did we learn?

That this is the official parting of the ways with the original novel duology. As one of the characters tells another one in the trailer, ‘the dinosaurs are old news’, they’re gone – and they most certainly are, as we get a proper glimpse of the Indoraptor this time.

It is decisively anthropomorphic, the proportions are all wrong. The I-Rex was a carnosaur, a RL dinosaur with some supernatural skills, cough, technically speaking. The Indoraptor is thoroughly anthropomorphised, on the other hand, a genuine D&D troll with some reptilian traits on top of everything and anything else.

Here is the thing. The dinosaurs of the JP franchise grew clearly more and more anthropomorphic since, well, the beginning. In the initial JP novel, the dinosaurs were animals, RL animals; science might have returned them back to life, but they were still animals. Crichton’s raptors were reminiscent of tigers, the dilophosaurs – of leopards, and so on. They were intelligent – but then again, RL modern animals are themselves can be quite intelligent, cognizant even – but they had no human DNA in them, period. Frog, (or some other amphibian) DNA – sure, but human? No.

Then came the JP3 film, and while in the first two JP movies the dinosaurs were animals, (though there were some dodgy moments with the tyrannosaurs), in JP3 anthropomorphic traits were appearing, especially in the raptors.

A brief aside about the raptors: part of the reason why they had such… incorrect PR in RL may be in part because of Crichton and his JP novels. You see, in those novels, he officially and publically conflated the generic term of ‘raptor’, (now known scientifically as dromeosaurid dinosaurs…which isn’t much of an improvement, because one of the ‘raptors’ is known specifically as ‘Dromeosaurus’…never mind), with specifically Velociraptor – only it wasn’t the dinosaur that we call the Velociraptor in these modern times, but its’ bigger cousin called Deinonychus. Deinonychus was just as big as the raptors in the first JP movie – at 4 m in length, it was the third-largest raptor in RL, with only the Utahraptor and the more recently discovered Dakotaraptor, being bigger – and it was the star of the JP movies, albeit under an incorrect name…though even in the late 1980s Deinonychus and Velociraptor were scientific synonyms…science can be confusing, in short.

Back to JP3. There, the raptors were decisively anthropomorphic, not only able to deduce that them pesky humans have stolen their precious eggs, but open to communication, literally. Dr. Grant directly communicated with the raptors in JP3, bargaining their safety in return for the return of the dinosaurs’ eggs. RL animals do not behave like that, (unlike fictional ones, as the ones described in medieval bestiaries, for example), but-

But already in the previous JW movie Dr. Wu, (who apparently didn’t die back in the first JP film – maybe S.H.I.E.L.D., or Hydra, or some other shadowy organization saved him back then), admitted/confessed/exposed to the viewers that these dinosaurs aren’t ‘real’, (i.e. realistic), they’re ‘hybrids’, (i.e. chimeras), fictional, artificial creatures.

An aside regarding the chimera. Initially, in ancient Greece and Rome, it was a mythical monster; it was part lion, part goat and part snake, and it breathed fire. It was dragon-like, but also composite, so not even the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves believed it to be real…

In later times, the chimera lost, in part, its’ specific features, and became a composite, generically vague-looking monster instead. Some of the gargoyles on various basilicas and cathedrals were probably considered to be chimeras instead in the older times – but in modern times, while the ‘classical chimera’ is once more a feature of the fantasy genre, in sci-fi the term ‘chimera’ is used to describe various hybrid creatures, whether composite animals, or human-animal hybrids, (and there were some in various sci-fi novels and TV shows over the last few decades). Thus, the ‘new’ dinosaurs of the JW films are not really dinosaurs at all, not even by Crichton’s standards – they are chimeras. The I-Rex supposedly had human DNA, and the Indoraptor certainly has it; even the vague shots of it in the new trailer show it, it even behaves like a human – a stalker, maniac, mad killer, but a human nonetheless. Thus, with the Indoraptor being probably the main villain of the new JW movie, it is safe to suppose that the next JW movie will only loosely be a dinosaur-associated movie, and more of a generic sci-fi one – but we’ll have to wait and see until its’ release properly for further assessment.

That’s it for today; see you all soon!

Christ Packham's T-Rex Christmas Special - Jan 5

Let us talk about the T-Rex Christmas special with Chris Packham. What can be said about it?

…No offence to Mr. Packham, but his special did not invent the bicycle or the wheel – at least two thirds of it, (maybe more), is a rehash of earlier dinosaur specials. The bite power of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, its’ speed, strength, sight and other senses were discussed back in 2005 on ‘The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs (2005) with Bill Oddie; (for an all-American dinosaur Tyrannosaurus is certainly popular across the pond); and the feathers, coloration and growth patterns were discussed on ‘Dinosaurs Decoded’ (2009) with Jack Horner. In other words, the image of Tyrannosaurus Rex has been ‘updated’ from its’ first-half-of-the-20^th-century depiction for years by now, and did this Christmas special -2017-2018 – give it anything new?

The most obvious are the vocalizations: apparently, T-Rex did not roar, but rather bellowed, as the modern Eurasian bittern does. The latter, if people don’t know, is a relative of herons and egrets, but while herons tend to be big and noticeable, (especially in flight), and egrets are often colorful, the bittern is small, short-legged even, and is covered in cryptic-colored plumage, one that blends the bittern with its surroundings: small ponds and lakes overgrown with rushes, cattails, other similar plants. When it stands still and stretches itself upwards, (there are photos of this sort of thing), bitterns are often very hard to spot, period.

However, they are also loud; the aforementioned Eurasian bittern can bellow as loudly as a bull, which is why in parts of east Europe and European Russia it is called ‘the water bull’. Thus, is Tyrannosaurus Rex had behaved as the modern bittern does – a shy, retiring, nocturnal creature with deadly hunting skills, (though more like a tiger than a lion), and a very loud voice. That would be cool, (and hey, Michael Crichton had written in Jurassic Park the novel that ‘Rexy has sensitive skin and sunburns easily’, so there!), but it probably would not be true. Or would it?

The last part was the social life of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Again, it was discussed on television, for example in the 3^rd episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ (2011), when daspletosaurs, cousins of tyrannosaurs, (and contemporaries of albertosaurs mentioned in Packham’s special), were depicted. And also – in the 5^th episode of the 2011 series, which focused not on tyrannosaurs, but on carnosaurs, in particular Mapusaurus, which supposedly also lived in family groups. But-

But the discussions about the social lives of theropods began a while ago; for example, in ‘The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life’ (2006), a companion book to ‘Impossible Pictures’ ‘Walking with…’ series, the Giganotosaurus entry discussed the discovery of several Giganotosaurus skeletons found together, thus raising the possibility that they were a pack that hunted together…or a group of strangers that died in the same spot by an accident, (say – a flash flood).

When discussing the social lives of theropod dinosaurs, the following must be kept in mind. On one hand, these animals were like the modern crocodiles and co. – not exactly social creatures, but creatures that could gather together to feed. For example, the modern Nile crocodiles do not form social bonds as their neighbours the African lions do, but they do feed together, and tolerate one another during these times.

The same goes for the modern dinosaurs – the birds, especially birds of prey. They do not hunt in packs as mammals do (lions & spotted hyenas, grey wolves & wild dogs, killer whales, etc.). They hunt alone, regardless of whether we are talking about a goshawk, a kestrel, or a peregrine-

Pause. Memory helpfully assists: in modern times, Mother Nature has brought forth a so-called Harris’s hawk, a medium to large-sized bird of prey, which might be the only bird of prey that hunts in packs, just as the lions do. A typical Harris’s hawk family consists of a dominant female, her mate, and their young from the previous years, which help not only with hunting, (this bird feeds on smaller birds, lizards, small mammals and large insects), but with raising the next generation as well. Amphibians, reptiles and most other birds do not do that. Thus, it is quite possible that tyrannosaurs, (and carnosaurs, abelisaurs, therizinosaurs, etc.), also behaved so, as modern Harris’s hawks do. Only…

Only Harris’s hawks are exceptions to the rule, not the rule. Most other birds don’t do that, and young birds of many species (owls, diurnal birds of prey, some wading birds, etc.) actually eat each other – inner-species cannibalism, you see – so the odds that the same went for their relatives, the extinct theropod dinosaurs. The modern crocodiles, alligators and co. also have the same problem, as do some of the other modern reptiles. Odds that that most of the theropod dinosaurs behaved like that too.

…And yes, there was at least one different group – the therezinosaurs, because this group of theropods became…herbivores instead, so they probably simply could not eat meat, (aside from an occasion insect, snail or tree frog that they would swallow with foliage). More importantly, they are mentioned here because they were highly derived specialists – as were the tyrannosaurs.

To clarify, this brings us to the issue of Rexy’s metamorphosis: back in 2009, Horner explained just how much the tyrannosaurs changed as they aged. (Ditto for Triceratops’ and etc.). This brings us to ‘Jurassic Fight Club’ (2008) and the Nanotyrannus. Nanotyrannus (‘dwarf tyrant’) is a potentially dubious genus of tyrannosaurs, known only from two or three specimens, and which just may be juvenile Tyrannosaurus’. The problem is that either way the evidence is inconclusive, Nanotyrannus can be just a juvenile T-Rex, or it might be a separate genus, so this was probably why Mr. Packham did not mention it by name, just slid past it, mentioning that juvenile tyrannosaurs were different from the adults, but the front limbs of these dinosaurs remained underdeveloped – and this is worth discussing, but just like the therizinosaurs, the tyrannosaurs were derived specialists.

When compared to carnosaurs, tyrannosaurs show much smaller front legs, much bigger and stronger head and jaws, and overall a much more robust skeleton. Whereas carnosaurs remained unchanged from the Jurassic, just got somewhat bigger, tyrannosaurs got a lot bigger and proportionally stronger: they were better fighters and killers out of the two. Why? Because they evolved. Certainly, there were some differences between the Jurassic carnosaurs like Allosaurus and Sinraptor, (no relation to the ‘true’ raptors of the Cretaceous, BTW), and their Cretaceous descendants, (Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, etc.), but the differences between the last of the tyrannosaurs, (including T-Rex itself and its Asian counterpart Tarbosaurus), and the first ones, like the Dilong, are much bigger.

Dilong is the oldest tyrannosaur currently known to science. It was a fairly small dinosaur, about 1.5 m in length, generic looking, complete with long forelimbs, armed with three fingers. Eotyrannus was bigger – about 4.5 m long – but it also had typical three-fingered forearms of theropods. Sometime during the Cretaceous tyrannosaurs began to specialize into killing machines, and unlike the four-legged mammals that evolved jaws and/or claws, they simply went for the jaws.

Ditto for abelisaurs, distant descendants of the Jurassic Ceratosaurus. They were not very close relatives of the tyrannosaurs, but if you would put an abelisaur, (say, a Majungasaurus), next to a tyrannosaur, (for example, a Daspletosaurus), the similarities created by parallel evolution would be obvious: sturdy hind legs, tiny front limbs, long tail, powerful jaws, head, and neck muscles. A carnosaur, like Carcharodonotosaurus, acted like a shark, inflicting many small wounds, trying to bleed its prey to death, or choosing something that is initially smaller than it was, like a juvenile sauropod. An abelisaur, like Rugops, would wrestle its prey to death, even it is the same juvenile sauropod, because it could not be a ‘land shark’, the carnosaurs already took over the niche.

Among mammals, not all carnivores are specialists; some of them, including most of the bears, are omnivores instead. But none of the carnivorous reptiles can eat plants, and neither can most of carnivorous birds. They are derived specialists, and Tyrannosaurus Rex was their king.

Anything else is left? Not really. BBC’s T-Rex special for Christmas of 2017-18 was…okay. It was not good, it was not bad, it was safe, and when Tyrannosaurus got compared to a Eurasian bittern, it was actually hilarious.

…See you all next time, then!

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!