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!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Rewind' - Dec 23

AoS has reached the ‘fall finale’. Where does it stand?

…It has achieved the break from the past seasons that it needed to have back in S4 – as Lance has shown Fitz, S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone for good in the MCU universe. Yay?

Firstly, yes – Nick Blood has starred as Lance Hunter once more on AoS, in a manner similar to Dalton (Ward) and Britt (Tripp) back in S4, save that the titular team is out of the framework now, hopefully. (It is still a possibility that Radcliffe betrayed them in S4, and the septet are still in the framework, somehow, just in a different part of it. AoS has been known to remake its plot line with large twists in the past, you know?) That said, Blood’s heart wasn’t in the acting, you could tell – he was still Lance Hunter, but in a much-diminished role, so there’s that… but again, unlike Dalton and Britt, Blood (and Palicki, who played Bobbi Morse on AoS, remember?) ended his RL relationship with MCU in a bad way – his and Palicki’s own Marvel show, ‘Most Wanted’, fell through…and frankly the way their characters, and especially Palicki’s Morse got handled on the show? Not the best way, either. (Cough S2 finale cough).

Speaking of characters, apparently Fitz is going to learn to deal with the darkness within him that got released in the framework. It would be easy to root for him…but AoS has already put Daisy through something similar back in S4, (after she got freed from Hive’s mental control and all), plus there was Robbie Reyes and his own issues as the Ghost Rider, remember?

…Yes, so far there was no mention of the Ghost Rider anywhere in S5, but maybe that’s because back in RL Gabriel Luna is currently working in a film named Hama; so far it is still in the filming stage, so we’ll have to wait and see what it is about in the future – but still, back before S4, MCU and AoS made a big whoop about the Ghost Rider coming to AoS…and he did. Just for nine episodes. That is slightly less than half of an AoS season. Ouch! A change of strategy was required, so this time around, before S5, AoS cast gave only some slight hints about what S5 was going to be around, and…

And it did not work very well – the numbers for AoS S5 are lowest yet, even though the AoS’ cast and crew did do their best this season to win their audience back. However, between DCEU’s ‘Arrowverse’, the ‘Gifted’ TV show about MCU’s mutants, and even another MCU show – about the InHumans, (remember?), AoS has its’ work cut-out for it, and it shows. In the numbers. In addition, the reworking of the main characters does not help either – the FitzSimmons are already going through it, so who is next?..

Mind you, this phenomenon is not restricted to AoS – ‘Blindspot’, having returned for its’ own S3, is going through the same thing as well. Its’ problem is that the first 2 seasons were very, very good, so it decided to go for an S3 – but it has no new ideas of where to go from there, so now ‘Blindspot’ is promptly recycling its’ old ideas – something that AoS has also done, largely in S3 and 4, and it didn’t do anything good for the ‘Agents’. The only new development is the introduction of Rich Dotcom as a main character…and some sort of a comic relief, and…what for? In S1 and 2 ‘Blindspot’ didn’t really have a comic relief…so why now?

Another possibility is that Rich is going to be token gay character, (he is in a same-sex relationship on ‘Blindspot’ already). However, so far we see no evidence of that either, so why is Rich a main/regular character on the show, again? Between this reworking of at least one old character, and the recycling of old ideas, ‘Blindspot’ is beginning to suffer, and that is not good.

Finally… it seems that ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ is going to feature Allosaurus amongst other dinosaurs. Again, Allosaurus was a carnosaur – it was an earlier, (Jurassic), smaller, (about 9 m in length on average), version of Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Mapusaurus and co. of the Cretaceous – and that includes the I-Rex; whatever it was supposed to be, in RL mechanics, the I-Rex was a carnosaur, but it was discussed already… so that’s that.

Put otherwise, this is it for today – see you next time!

JW rumblings - Sep 17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flash forward, and—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Borealopelta, Zuul and NG - Aug 3

And so, it came to my attention that there is yet another new dinosaur discovered in RL – Borealopelta, aka ‘northern shield’. It was an armored dinosaur, and a nodosaur, and… it was related… to Zuul, however distantly.

Wait, to whom?

Zuul, the armored dinosaur, described – and depicted – in the June 2017 issue of NG. It was an armored dinosaur, but unlike, say, Ankylosaurus, (featured in JP franchise and etc.), Zuul did not have a tail club, but it had shoulder spikes – as does Borealopelta. Again, this isn’t a problem, nor a surprise – another armored dinosaurs used to have it, as did other reptiles, like Desmatosuchus, a denizen of the Triassic time period, a distant cousin to the dinosaurs, but a closer cousin to the crocodilians, (although Desmatosuchus itself was a plant-eater, to add further incredulity, just as the armored dinosaurs did). Considering that the two dinosaurs were related, (how closely the paleontologists will figure out in due time), it is not very surprising that the two dinosaurs were physically similar; they did occupy similar econiches, after all. What bothers me is how NG handled them – let us discuss.

As I have written back in June 2017, that issue of NG did not give Zuul the same respect as it did to Spinosaurus in a much earlier issue, and I discussed this issue at length. Now, after reading the online NG article about Borealopelta, I see that NG has added insult to injury – the text of the online article is very similar to the text of the printed (and/or electronic) June 2017 magazine’s article on Zuul. And what is more, the depictions of new Borealopelta dinosaur are exactly that of Zuul (the dinosaur, not the first original Ghostbusters’ movie villain) – NG just recycled them from June 2017 time period and that’s that. Given that right now it is just early August 2017, this means that just about two months passed at most, nowhere near enough time for people to forget about NG descriptive article of Zuul, which makes NG’s decision kind of stupid, not just as in ‘foolish’ and ‘unoriginal’, but also as in ‘unimaginative’ and ‘disrespectful’. Seriously, check out ‘The Making of a Most Extraordinary Fossil’ special feature online, (on NG site), and then seek out the June 2017 issue of NG. The two pieces are similar enough in content and depiction that if anyone else did this sort of thing, NG would be full within its’ right to sue them for copyright infringement; yet when they do it to themselves, it’s fine?

End rant, or at least – put it on hold. NG has and will do ‘bloopers’ in the future; the last was probably in July 2017, when that month’s issue had an article – ‘THE MAKING OF A MASSACRE’. It was written together with ProPublica, ‘an independent, non-profit, investigative newsroom’, and it talked about a massacre in Allende, Mexico. Briefly, DEA got the goods on two drug kingpins, the Trevino brothers – and promptly shared this info with the Mexican police, even though their Mexican counterparts could not be trusted. Sure enough, the Trevinos learned immediately after this that they were sold out – and started the titular massacre.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the people of Allende, and am not impressed by the actions of the Mexican police or the DEA; I don’t know, who there was bribed, and who was just too naïve and idealistic for their own good, but this brings us to NG, who published the article both in paper and online – and then did their best to bury it, metaphorically speaking: the article was quickly made hard-to-access online, (even if one does have an online subscription to the magazine), and the magazine itself was quickly removed from many places where it was sold, (convenience stores, DrugMart, etc.). The online version of the article promised some sort of a supplementary video material to be released online in July – it never did. I do not know what went wrong here, but since the U.S. politics were involved, conspiracy theorists are welcome to make their own theories, of course.

However, as for Zuul and Borealopelta… I think that it was an honest blooper, which is still hard to excuse, as NG is usually a solid and respectful magazine and organisation. Was it really hard to figure out which material belongs to which dinosaur species, and just what the magazine was presenting the first time around (June 2017)? Moreover, once it was done, (the figuring out part), once the initial mistake was realized, how hard would it be to depict Borealopelta anew, from scratch, rather than reuse Zuul’s depictions directly? Apparently too hard, since this is what happened here.

That is it for NG (at the moment); as for Borealopelta itself… Ecologically, it was just like Zuul – a medium to large herbivore that used shoulder spikes to protect itself from various carnivorous dinosaurs; in the Early Cretaceous this meant early raptors (such as Deinonychus and Utahraptor) and carnosaurs, (such as Acrocanthosaurus), carnivores that were more similar to Allosaurus than to T-Rex. Neither group was well-suited to handle an armored dinosaur, as I wrote earlier, (in June 2017), so neither Zuul nor Borealopelta needed a tail club – not yet. Later armored dinosaurs, from the Late Cretaceous, will evolve it, because their top predators will be the tyrannosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus Rex itself…

The point that I am trying to make here is about the camouflage – supposedly, Borealopelta had critical countershading in its coloration; its’ back was darker than its’ belly. I let you in on a secret – many animals have it, from all over the tree of life. The most typical example are fish from the open seas, both bony fish and sharks like the mako and the great white, and somehow no one makes a big deal about this. The land animals too have it, just look at the wild horses and donkeys and their African cousins, the zebras. Their backs are darker than their bellies are, so there is no reason to assume that the dinosaurs did not have the same coloration scheme, but rather than they did.

Well, that is it for now; see you all later!

PS: And as for Killjoys? Let us talk about it for some other time…

Zuul the dinosaur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spinosaurus vs. Tyrannosaurus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spinosaurus vs. Carcharodontosaurus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that is truly another story…