Dinosaurs and PJO - March 09

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes it is just weird. A while earlier this year, I found several Montoy™ Toy Dinosaurs down at the recycling room; they were in good condition, so I took them. (Childish, I know, but they are still good, my life sucks, and so I took them). There were five of them – a T-Rex, a Dilophosaurus, a Triceratops, a Velociraptor, and a Pteranodon – I was really lucky, for once.

This is when things got odd. Most of the dinosaurs, (yes, I know that the Pteranodon was not a dinosaur at all, but their cousin, but those are toys, so this doesn’t matter), are realistic enough, and looked just how they were depicted on the box… except for the T-Rex, which is built much… less robust than the Dilophosaurus and the Velociraptor; his head and torso are horizontal, parallel to the ground, and it doesn’t look much like a T-Rex… or how it is depicted on the box.

How do I know how it is depicted on the box? I went looking for the Montoy™ toy block dinosaurs at the local dollar stores… and I found them. I found the Dilophosaurus, the Velociraptor, and the Pteranodon easily enough, but the Triceratops and in particular the T-Rex – with much more effort. Why?

Because those dinosaurs are depicted much less realistically, I guess. They both are smaller than the Dilophosaurus and the Velociraptor… but they are toys. ‘Assemble yourself’ toys for preteen children. Realism does not have anything to do with them, so why Montoy™ is apparently ashamed of them, and is calling them back, I do not know. Real life sucks… but it is also weird.

Another manifestation of this weirdness involves the cobra snake. The YouTube search engine is not very different from an A.I. – it runs on human algorithms… so when you put down just ‘cobra’ you get many videos of… people who give themselves that name as their moniker or something similar. Fair enough, so you put in ‘cobra snake’ as your search and what you get are videos… of king cobras, either by themselves, or as parts of videos that talk about venomous snakes in general, including king cobras – king cobras are still representatives of the elaphid clan of the snakes, it just that now the videos talk about other snake clans as well.

Humans made the term ‘cobra’, and it applies to several snake groups that are related to each other, but are still distinct. The king cobra, in particular, is separate from the ‘other’ cobras… and there might be several snake species in that genus, and not just the default one. That is interesting, but does not explain as to why the king cobra is the ‘default’ cobra on YouTube – to find any other, you need to be even more specific, it is not a bother exactly, but it is still strange.

(Not as strange as the plaster Dilophosaurus I found – it is not as much a toy as a painting model, it had the feet of a raptor and the front claws of a T-Rex – clearly Dr. Wu and his hybrid dinosaurs are more important than how it comes across). Anything else?

Just a point about PJO S2, two points, even. First, in the novel, young Clarisse commanded a crew of the resurrected… Confederate soldiers – and in the TV series, her crew are anyone but the US. Confederate soldiers – Disney might be progressive, but it has a limit, apparently.

And second, in the original novel, Tantalus is banished to Tartarus and Chiron is rehabilitated – and he’s brought back in a much later novel, ‘The Court of the Dead’, where he’s one of the main antagonists. In the TV series, the Lestrygonians kill him instead. Why – I have no idea again, but, clearly, Disney is taking PJO somewhere, we just do not know where… real life sucks, true, but it is also weird.

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

D:BA S1 finale - April 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The debate about the CB wolves being or not being dire has become more subdued and out of the spotlight, but real life still sucks.

The S1 finale of D: BA is as dramatic and well-made, as one expects from Disney/MCU – quite good. Of course, there is the question as to how Fisk is getting away with a de-facto secession from the rest of the U.S., but who cares? The first season of D: BA is over, and the world is ready to move on.

Also, keep in mind, that CA: BNA film is showing events that are happening at the same time, so the greater U.S. government just might not be finding time to deal with Fisk and his Napoleonic complex or whatever, and the Kingpin/Mayor is bribing people like crazy to get away with it, and MCU wants its’ own version of Gotham, so there you have it, folks! Question answered!

In other news, meanwhile, a rebooted version of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (WWD) is coming to you in 2025! The original WWD series is something of a classic by now, (and not only because it was released in 1999 either). The new WWD has some big shoes to fill – and the viewers will go Snowwhite-2025 on its’ ass if it fails.

Finally, back to PBS Nature show about the female empowerment and nature. Last week, the episode was actually done well – it balanced gender politics and wildlife protection… in the U.S., so what did the YouTube channel do? It downplays them in favour of a nature document about Africa. Maybe it was because of the entire dire wolf excitement, maybe not; this week, the show is about South America instead, and PBS Nature is not downplaying it at all. I wonder why…

…In addition The Weather Network is airing a rather nice documentary series about Canada, its’ provinces, and probably territories. It is quite fun to watch, and I advise you to do so – it certainly is better than just to argue about dire wolves…

For now, then, this is it. See you all soon!

Jurassic World Rebirth - Feb 5

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Therefore, I looked at the upcoming JWR movie trailer, (due to come in summer 2025 for now), and it was something else.

What is it, then? A recycled chimera, pun intended. …Well, a recycled and a rebooted chimera, to be fair. In the 2022 film, ‘Dominion’, there were non-avian dinosaurs, (as well as other prehistoric reptiles) all over the Earth once more, and as the mini-movie ‘Battle of the Big Rock’ showed, the JP/W franchise was going with this setting once more.

Time passed, not so much within that universe, as within our real world, and in the ‘Rebirth’ film the non-avian dinosaurs have largely disappeared from our planet again, with just a few select populations within the tropical (and the subtropical?) belt. Put otherwise, this is the situation with had in the second and third Jurassic Park films, where non-avian dinosaurs lived only a couple of ex-lab sites’ islands and nowhere else. The franchise tried re-running itself in a new direction with the second and especially the third Jurassic World film and now that that trilogy is done, they are returning to the original setting – modern world, restrained dinosaurs. Pause.

In the trailer, both the mosasaur and the pterosaurs, (reminiscent of the RL Tapejara or some similar species), are hanging around the island site as well. Why? While the dinosaurs- while the non-avian dinosaurs are restrained by air and sea, the mosasaur can swim all over the globe, while the pterosaurs are fliers. Period. They can go anywhere they want, but they are here, because the movie’s plot is vintage RPG: go there, I know not where, bring back what, I know not. In this case, it is the DNA of the three biggest dinosaur species on the site so that a miracle cure can be made. Didn’t we see something similar in the ‘Dominion’ movie with Maisie and co.? We did, but in ‘Rebirth’ trailer, there are no mention of Owen, Claire, Maisie, Blue, or Beta, so odds are that they will not be mentioned in the actual movie either. Continuity? What continuity?

The new characters are your run-of-the-mill modern stereotypes: a warrior woman, an intelligent and sensitive scholar man, and another man, who is the modern P.O.C. sidekick; (the other two are WASPs, or can pass for them). Together, the three of them must compete the quest, or… they will die, and their superiors will send a new team, most likely. Somehow, ‘Rebirth’ makes ‘Naruto’ (anime and manga) look like a masterpiece, in the terms of the plot…

Anything else? Ah, yes, the actual chimera (chimeras) of the movie – the hybrid/mutant dinosaurs. Somehow, ever since the first JW film, the JP franchise was fiddling with hybrid/mutant dinosaurs in its’ games and like, and now, after a pause in the third JW film, (no mutant/hybrid reptiles there), we’re back with them. The regular theropod dinosaurs (aka most of the dinosaur carnivores) are no longer enough…

Therefore, to recap, we got a JP/W movie that has a recycled plot (from several previous films, but still), clichéd/stereotypical characters, and completely unrealistic monsters. By contrast, the original MC novels that started it all were at least trying to be informational, (if not educational), and entertaining. How it all has ended! As a direct opposite of what it once has been, that is how…

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

About super-sized sauropods

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so we will talk about a magazine – i.e., ‘Scientific American’ – instead.

There is an article in the ‘Scientific American’ Sep 2023 issue, discussing sauropod dinosaurs and as to why some of them got super-big. The author proclaims that it is a mystery; I am no paleontologist, but I feel that I have a theory, here: it was a number of factors.

Why do animals do anything? Moreover, why do they evolve in the wild? To secure an advantage over competitors and predators/prey; a bigger body size is par de course here.

What are the advantages of being big, (super-big)? You get access to food sources that are unavailable to other herbivores, and predators are not as big of a threat to you, (pun intended). Conversely, though, you also need more food than the other herbivores do, and carnivores will eventually evolve their own adaptations, physical or behavioristic, that will even the score between them and a super-big herbivore. Let us widen the query.

What are the factors that allow the initial growth of super-size? An abundance of food, plant matter in the sauropods’ case. Wait. There is an arms’ race between plants and herbivores, just as there is one between them and the carnivores. In addition, just as some herbivores, (i.e. African [and Asian] elephants), get big to escape predators, (i.e. African lions and tigers), so do some plants get big in an attempt to ‘escape’ the elephants, (such as the baobab trees). The twist? This strategy does not work on all of the levels: under right conditions, elephants can bring down a baobab tree, (literally, topple it over), while a pride of lions can bring down an African elephant, (again under right conditions and circumstances). What is absent here?

Space. The more space there is, the more individual specimens of any given species occupy it. True, it does not necessarily mean getting big: a pine tree in a forest grows tall and thin, with its’ top high above the ground – a pine tree in a clearing grows shorter and squatter, with its’ top spread out wider than its’ crowded counterpart’s… but we digress. The point of this discussion is that just as modern elephants, (and baobab trees), got big because of several factors, so did the prehistoric sauropods…and trees, (or tree-like plants), that they ate. What else?

Right, not all of the sauropods evolved into super-sized plant eaters, some remained smaller. What about it?

First: sauropods evolved as bulk-feeders: their teeth and jaws were not designed for chewing, but for stripping foliage from branches, and for uprooting other plants whole. Another part of the reason as to why sauropods became the largest of the dinosaurs, extinct and modern, was because they had to become big to accommodate large and massive digestive systems that were almost constantly busy, because foliage, (as well as grass), isn’t very nutritious at all, and it has to be consumed in large amounts to satisfy not just hunger, but nutritious requirements of an organism.

Well, yes, but again, not all of the herbivorous dinosaurs got so big: even Jurassic ornithischians, such as Stegosaurus, never got as big as the sauropods did. That is correct, and it is competition again: by becoming big, the sauropods overshadowed their competitors: they could feed in places unavailable to the bird-hipped herbivores, and they were relatively immune to attacks to such theropods as Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, and Saurophaganax. That said, there was differentiation between the Jurassic sauropods themselves: some, like Diplodocus, were longer than they were tall, and their hips were taller than their shoulders – these dinosaurs could sit down on their hind legs alone, (forming a tripod with their tails), and be, well, construction cranes.

Other sauropods, like Brachiosaurus, were taller than they were long, and their shoulders were taller than their hips. They probably could also form a fulcrum tripod, but less well than Diplodocus and its’ relatives could, not that they needed too – they already were tall, taller than Diplodocus normally was.

Finally, there were less specialized sauropods, such as Camarasaurus, which were neither too tall nor too long, but just big, and fed on whatever Diplodocus would feed, but less well, and on whatever Brachiosaurus would feed, but less well. What is the moral?

We move on from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous and the world of the dinosaurs’ changes. The single super-continent of the Triassic and part of the Jurassic is gone, there are now two landmasses, Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south, and they are splitting as well. In the north, sauropods are practically gone, with some singular generalized species, such as Alamosaurus, remaining. In the south, they are flourishing, however…

However, Gondwana would eventually fall apart, as did Laurasia. The latter formed Eurasia and North America; the former – Africa, Australia, Antarctic, and South America, and it is in the last continent that the sauropods would reach their last peak of variety. Why? Because there were fewer bird-hipped dinosaurs in South America than elsewhere. In Africa and Australia, for example, there were such dinosaurs as Ouranosaurus and Muttaburrasaurus, smaller plant-eaters that were intermediate between the earlier iguanodonts and the true hadrosaurs, (like Edmontosaurus). If the sauropods depended on their guts to grind down and digest their food, the bird-hipped dinosaurs, (and especially the hadrosaurs and their kin), had more effective chewing systems than the sauropods did; they were better adapted to digest the new plants, (the first flowering plants appeared in the Early Cretaceous, just as the sauropods began to disappear), and they were able to outcompete the sauropods – just enough for them to die-out first, before the theropods and the bird-hipped herbivores, and before the K/T extinction.

In South America, it was slightly different. There, the sauropods remained dominant herbivores, and they began to compete with each other. As a result, some became extra-large, just as the African bush elephants are today. Others remained small; some, like Amargasaurus developed spiny crests, while others, like Saltasaurus, evolved bony armor, reminiscent of Ankylosaurus and co. These adaptations were defense mechanisms against their predators – carnosaurs, (Giganotosaurus and co.), and abelisaurs, (Abelisaurus and co.). Did they work…technically they did, though most paleontological texts give-off a feeling that the South American sauropods died-out before the K/T Extinction, again. Also, the biggest sauropods of them all, such as Argentinosaurus, never developed any bony armor or spikes or anything – it was too big to need this sort of armor, and not even the biggest South American theropods, (Mapusaurus, Giganotosaurus, etc.) were able to take it down…unless the circumstances were just in their favor.

Pause. We have come full circle. A learned person, a publicator in ‘Scientific American’ proclaimed that there is no idea as to why some sauropods became super-sized. For the same reason that some of the mammals did during the Cenozoic – to get advantage over their competitors, over their carnivores, and over their food source… and at the same time, to keep themselves alive and breeding, because bulk-food feeding comes with its own catches. Not such a mystery after all.

End

 

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!

JW: Motion comics part 2 - Dec 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The American government, true, seems to be putting their own spin on it with the impeachment that is authentically impotent; the best you can hope is that Pelosi never implemented it but for the plan that it will keep the Democratic party from turning upon each other and fracturing instead, but won’t know for quite a while yet. On with the show?

Rather, with the ‘motion comic’ – recently the JW franchise released the second installment of its’ motion comic. In it, we meet the rest of the journalist’s family – we are talking the same woman from part 1 – Rebecca Ryan – and learn that her husband, in particular, is working in the U.S. Wildlife department. What is so special about that? This is a good question, because as far as character development aspects of this motion comic go, they are weak. So far, this motion comic is an exposition dump, showing various interactions of humans with dinosaurs, sea reptiles and pterosaurs – nothing more. It is a variant on the closing scenes of both the second JW film and the BBR short feature – humans are interacting with the returned prehistoric beasts of the Mesozoic and so far, there is a national alert and what else have you. The mother of the family – Rebecca seems to be sceptical of this whole hysteria for some reason, but we never see it in this installment, because it focused on the still-nameless father of the family, and he encounters a couple of fighting dinosaurs on his own. (The rest of his family is elsewhere, on the route to school or wherever). I.e., it is less of an exposition dump and more of a shock-and-awe dump instead. Yay!

Ok, let us talk about dinosaurs. So far, from BBR onwards, humans are little more than cardboard features: the family in BBR did not even have names; as I said before, the cast certainly has names and you could see them in the credits, but the characters – nope. The first installment of the motion comic actually had named human characters – Rebecca Ryan, the journalist mother of the family – and Beau, the newspaperman from Hawaii – but here no go. That is somewhat weak and dehumanizing, so let us try to focus on dinosaurs instead. The news showed us a pteranodon harassing an airplane, (probably because it never seen one before back in Isla Nublar), a pack of compys’ running around someone’s backyard, and a pair of boy scouts encountering a stegosaurus. Again, we have seen variations of these encounters all over the franchise, so let us go for the main event: Mr. Ryan’s encounter with the battling dinos. There are two of them: a Triceratops and an Ankylosaurus, and-

And Ankylosaurus is depicted incorrectly. Sigh. Since there are no professional paleontologists in our audience, let us just go with the statement that there were two main groups of armored dinosaurs: the Jurassic stegosaurs and the Cretaceous ankylosaurs. Clear? If it is, let us move onto the team Cretaceous in particular. It was also divided into two main groups: one that had clubbed tails and one that does not.

Back in 1999, Impossible Pictures™ released the ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ mini-series. The final episode featured an Ankylosaurus – several of them. It had a tail club, and its’ scuted armor was relatively smooth, almost like that of an armadillo, for example. However, in the fourth episode of WWD, there was another dinosaur – Polacanthus – that was more closely related to Ankylosaurus than to Stegosaurus, but it had no tail club, and its body armor was much less smooth and spikier. It belonged to the nodosaur branch of the Cretaceous armored dinosaurs.

Yes, actually, the Polacanthus is a bad example of a nodosaur – the nodosaur branch of the Cretaceous armored dinosaurs were studied, and are known, much less than their ankylosaur cousins were, but basically? Ankylosaurs had tail clubs and small spikes on their body armor, if any. Nodosaurs had no tail clubs, but their body armor was much more formidable looking. The armored dinosaur that featured in JW’s second motion comic had both notable body spikes and a tail club, making it a chimera.

Pause. Yes, Dr. Wu admitted directly in the first JW film that none of their dinosaurs were authentic; they were homunculi, concocted in the labs by Dr. Wu and his fellows. That is fair, but it also rather undercuts JW’s intended messages – that life finds a way and that people now have to co-exist with the Mesozoic animals. They do not and it does not. Since all of the dinosaurs were initially created in labs, they could have been made incapable of surviving on their own in the wild – in fact, the first JP novel made them so, supposedly: they were incapable of manifesting Lysol and had to take it as a dietary supplement instead. The novel ended with Costa Rica possibly being invaded by a force of animals that needed supply of foods rich in Lysol – beans and chickens – but which were quite independent of surviving on their regardless. Of course, they were raptors too – but we digress. The point is that the rebooted JW franchise could’ve made its’ dinosaurs like this within its’ canon – artificial homunculi that gained independence of their own and which now run amok like a bunch of Frankenstein monsters… period. Instead, we still got a horde of artificial dinosaur-shaped homunculi running the world and no one is acknowledging it.

Is this distinction important? Yes, even though it really should not. The truth is, test-tube animals are still seen as inauthentic, especially within sci-fi genre, and are treated very differently from ‘authentic’ or ‘real life’ animals. TLK, for example, is not a sci-fi movie, even though it features talking animals, for example. The online game ‘Jurassic World Evolution’ actually features official hybrid dinosaurs, made by Dr. Wu, so artificial dinosaurs are JW canon even beyond the I-Rex and the Indoraptor, so why haven’t the American military and/or government try to use someone like Dr. Wu to create some sort of a virus that would target those ‘artificial’ dinosaurs, (all of them, really) and rid the world of them?

…Yes, this probably will not happen – wherever the JW-3 movie will take the narrative for the conclusion, this will not be this, most likely, and for good reasons: artificial viruses are bad. Natural viruses are not much better, but still. That said, given how stupid the American government (and its’ military) are running USA in real life, it would not be too surprising either if they were to make or to do something just as stupid in the upcoming JW-3 movie, (2021). As it is, we will just have to wait for both its’ release and the release of the next JW motion comic installments. Considering that right now we got human characters that are as developed as cardboard cut-outs and dinosaurs that are completely unrealistic, (come on, Ankylosaurus is not obscure, it is almost as well known as the Tricerotops and the T-Rex are), and are executing something that seems to be somewhat reminiscent of 'The Day that the Dinosaurs Died' documentary from the Discovery channel (2010), I'm not keeping my hopes are. ('The Day' has its own flaws, but we'll talk about it some other time).

This is it for now. See you all soon!

PBS Eons Bats - Sep 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about some real life animals, the bats. Why? Because the YouTube channel PBS Eons have started a discussion on them, or rather – on their evolutionary history, as to how they have evolved, as well as from what ancestor, and what other mammals did they share their ancestor with. Those are some genuinely interesting questions, so let us begin.

First, what has evolved… well, first: the bats’ echolocation, their power of flight, or both? That is an interesting question, made complex further by the fact that there is a group of bats, the so-called megabats or flying foxes that do not really use echolocation at all. Why? Because they do not need it – they are fruit-eating mammals, as well as nectar-eating. What next?

Well, the tricky thing is that if previously megabats were something of a sister group to all the other bats, (which do use echolocation, in one way or another), now they are proven to be close relatives of false vampire bats, (which are called that because they don’t suck blood, but are active carnivores instead) and of horseshoe bats and their relatives, all of which have elaborate nasal leaves or similar structure that they use in echolocation instead. The rest of the bats mostly lack such elaborate nasal structures and even if they do, they still echolocate using their mouths instead. So what?

…Well, it can mean that echolocation could have evolved in the bat order at least twice, following two different evolutionary lines. Is it a stretch? No more so than the theory that states that the pinnipeds consist of two mammal superfamilies, each with its own affiliation – true or earless seals one way, the walrus and the eared seals another – instead, but we digress. Even professional scientists aren’t entirely sure as to how echolocation has evolved – as it is usual with fossils, fossil bats lack soft tissues, and without them it’s hard to trace the anatomical evolution of bats’ echolocation, as well as the bats’ evolution properly – the first bat fossils appear to be largely similar to the modern species, and their differences (that people can see) aren’t connected to echolocation. Therefore, let us turn to the evolution of flight.

How did the bats’ flight evolved? Was it from the ground level up or from the tree tops down? Here, we can safely say that it was the former. Why? Because it is active, or true flight. …As opposed to the passive or the gliding flight, utilized by the flying squirrels, the colugo, the marsupial gliders and so on. Those animals do not have front legs modified into wings, what they have instead is an organ named the pataglia that connects their front and back legs; it isn’t exactly a handicap, but all of the gliding animals – mammals, reptiles, amphibians, etc. – live in tree tops, or in case of the flying fish – in the water instead…

Wait. Don’t bats live there too? (Just not in the water?) Well yes, which brings us to the matter of the bat evolution in general – until recently, they were considered the members of the so-called Archonta group that includes primates, tree shrews, colugos or flying lemurs (but they are certainly not lemurs at all) and etc., but now that group is obsolete, (it has expanded and now includes also rodents and lagomorphs, aka rabbits, hares and pikas as well), and bats, instead, belong to the Laurasiatheria clade instead. This means that they are more closely related to European insectivores like shrews and hedgehogs, as well as to the true carnivores such as cats and dogs, as well as hooved mammals and cetaceans, among others. Pause.

…A while back I came across the concept of Afrotheria – a clade of mammals that includes elephants and their cousins – sea cows and rodent-like hyraxes, as well as the various African insectivores, (which are not related to their European counterparts at all) and the aardvark. It is a motley group of mammals, but still nowhere as motley as the Laurasiatheria clade instead. The Afrotheria clade appeared in the Palaeocene, the very beginning of the Cenozoic, the Age of Mammals. The Laurasiatheria again has done one better – scientists claim that it arose 99 MYA, which puts into the Cretaceous, aka the Mesozoic, the age of the dinosaurs and various other reptiles, extinct and extant. A second pause.

One of the initial advantages of science over religion, (we are talking eighteenth/nineteenth/early twentieth centuries here), was its’ clarity and straightforwardness. Just how good this quality is is another question, true, but the thing is that those days science seems to be going too far in the other direction instead. In particular, most scientists themselves differentiate the Mesozoic mammals from their Cenozoic cousins and keep them separate; to pronounce that at that time – aka the Mesozoic, 99 MYA – bats had a common ancestor with European hedgehogs (plus gymnures), shrews, whales, and hooved animals, for example, is simply pretentious and deliberately obscure, nothing good can come out of this take on science. But we have digressed.

…The evolutionary origins of bats are obscure, no matter what the keen scientific minds behinds the Laurasiatheria and the Afrotheria and the other such clades (whatever they are) might proclaim. However, we can safely assume that the evolution of the bats’ wings came from the ground level upwards, just as the birds’ did. In the first half of the twentieth century and beyond there were plenty of arguments regarding the birds’ evolution, there were many people claiming that the ‘protobirds’ had been tree-dwelling animals that learned to glide first and then to glide; Zdenek Burian, who was the founding father of paleoart in Europe, (that’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it), has even painted a, well, painting, of this theoretical animal; the result was… a more subdued version of the real life Microraptor. If anyone doesn’t know yet, this was a tree dwelling dinosaur with a gliding flight, wings on its front and rear legs, and though it was a ‘raptor’ it wasn’t a close relative of either the ‘true’ raptors – Velociraptor, Deinonychus, Utahraptor and etc. -  or the first birds. Yes, the evolution of birds itself is still a tangled mess, for example Archaeopteryx, which, for a long time, had been something of a canon ‘first bird’, has now been rather demoted or sidelined… but regardless, Microraptor wasn’t a part of it, it wasn’t, or isn’t, the ancestor of modern avians – but it glided, it lived in trees, and by now scientists are certain that the various family branches of theropod dinosaurs evolved various versions of flight several times throughout the Mesozoic. Period. Where does it leave bats?

Well, basically, lucky that they were able to evolve at all – Bruce Wayne might be their mascot, but birds are still the true masters of the sky that bats are not. There is a reason as to why almost all bats are active at night, (except for the fruit bats aka flying foxes, again, which can be active around the clock), and it’s because otherwise they’d be outcompeted by birds. This raises a question again as to how did the bats evolve their wings, as well as why. Possibly, because they could not compete with other small insect-eating mammals of the early Cenozoic, and birds, seeing how they are real life modern dinosaurs do not function so well at night. All birds are theropod dinosaurs, baseline daytime hunters as their cousins the raptors did, (by contrast, tyrannosaurs had a very evolved sense of smell, so maybe they could hunt at night as well), so at night they are at a disadvantage; the proverbial owl hunts during the day as well as at night, (it might be a case of case by case preference of when to hunt, because there’s plenty of footage showing owls not being intimidated by falcons and hawks and similar birds of prey at all), and the other birds that are active at night are oilbirds, nighthawks and their relatives… essentially, bird counterparts of bats. Nature does love its’ ironies, it appears. The ancestral bats found an ecological niche in the early Cenozoic ecosystem – the same one that they are still occupying in modern times, that of a flying mammal – and have stuck with it. That is the generalization; the details still must be hammered out and uncovered, which brings us back to echolocation.

…We have no idea per se just how and when did echolocation evolve in bats, as fossils so far haven’t yielded a clear-cut answer to the scientists, and neither do the modern bats – as we’ve discussed, they can be grouped into two major groups: bats that echolocate using their mouths…and those bats that don’t. This raises the possibility that echolocation evolved in different ways in different bat groups and that complexes the picture further. Ah well, this is what science is for – to give us the common folk answers to question that we did not know about. Good luck to them and good luck to PBS Eons with their thought-provoking videos! (Seriously, check out their YouTube channel. It is truly impressive!)

… This is it for now, see you all soon!

Truth about Killer Dinosaurs II - July 13

Now, to conclude the matter on ‘TTAKD’. As it was written in the previous installment, the program already broke the canon by depicting Tyrannosaurs as not being invulnerable and unbeatable – it could be defeated…especially if you were a Triceratops. Other dinosaurs…who knows?

However, the Tyrannosaurus-Triceratops conflict was small fry compared to what the program did to the other ‘killer dinosaur’ – the Velociraptor. Yes, by now, it is accepted that the raptors from ‘JP’ franchise are not ‘real’ but fictional, make-believe animals that just look realistic, like their real-life counterparts could’ve looked like, but back in 2005 this knowledge wasn’t as widespread as it is now; back then the epiphany that the Velociraptors were feathered and were the size of a small turkey – not as big or scaly as they were in the JP franchise.

Later on, by 2010, other raptor species were discovered, especially the Deinonychus and the Utahraptor – more ancient species of raptors, who were much bigger than the Velociraptor was, and less feathered than it, too, (probably).

Now, the feathers and dinosaurs… Yes, birds are dinosaurs and are feathered; yes, the odds that at least some of the non-avian dinosaurs – the raptors, the troodontids, the alvarezsaurids – were also feathered are good; but nowadays paleontologists and paleoartists tend to stick feathers on most of the dinosaurs regardless of any other evidence.

Just compare the skeletons of a Velociraptor and a Tyrannosaurus, for example. Yes, the Velociraptor’s bones are very light, almost bird-like: this was a predator built for speed, not physical power…but Tyrannosaurus was. Built for power, that is. There is no sensible reason to depict it as feathered…yet some scientific programs do just that, (via CGI). God knows why,

Again, birds are dinosaurs – well, theropod dinosaurs, to be more precise. Yet, as the existence of Archaeopteryx shows, the family trees of birds and non-avian theropods (from Composognathus to Tyrannosaurus and co.) have begun to split during the Jurassic, and by the early Cretaceous there already were birds on Earth, just not modern ones. Raptors and their relatives had feathers; some even had wings and could glide (think flying squirrels rather than bats or birds), but they were not birds. Many therapods – spinosaurs, carnosaurs, abelisaurs – were not very bird-like, (including the tyrannosaurs, likely), and this goes double for sauropods and the bird-hipped dinosaurs (whether or not we are talking about a Triceratops or an Ankylosaurus, for example).

End rant, return to the ‘TTAKD’-related discussion. The second part of the program put a Velociraptor against an ankylosaur: not an Ankylosaurus itself, just a general armored dinosaur. For the greater percentage of time, the second part of the program went rather like the first, comparing two dinosaurs…with guest stars: Tarbosaurus and Protoceratops. Tarbosaurus was the Asian version of Tyrannosaurus (in the program – Tyrannosaurus with a different skin color), while Protoceratops was an older, and much smaller, relative of Triceratops (without any brow horns).

Okay, this alone made the second part of ‘TTAKD’ more interesting (and sort-of diverse) than the first. However, the decisive factor were the raptors’ killer claws – according to the program, the raptors did not slice with them – just stabbed, as if they were some strange rapiers (rather than swords). They did not have a cutting edge – just a sharp point, and as such, they were not dangerous to adult ankylosaurs – just to their young.

Okay, this sounds rather anthropomorphic – for all of its flaws, AFO was never anthropomorphic – but compared to the JP franchise, for example, or the JFC show, this is not a really severe case. Yet ‘TTAKD’ was buried…because it broke through the clichés and depicted raptors from a different P.O.V. – not slicers but stabbers. Paleontologists, (and paleoartists), don’t like apocrypha, and while they couldn’t renounce ‘TTAKD’ (you don’t mess with BBC), they probably made sure that ‘TTAKD’ never became mainstream and remained on periphery, replaced by more canonical programs and shows, like JFC. Of course, JFC itself did not last for too long…but that is another story.

For now, let us just say good-bye to ‘TTAKD’, which tried to take over where AFO left and failed, because by the times that the Velociraptor and the ankylosaurs came onto the screen, the AFO format was too tight for the new program, and go and talk about something else.

Truth about Killer Dinosaurs I - July 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dinosaurs & little ponies: law of marketing & selling in action

1) In 2005 BBC released a two-part show called The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs. It was an amazing documentary, much better than the later dinosaur shows such as Jurassic Fight Club and was conveniently forgotten by the dinosaur fan crowd after its’ release for showing some unorthodox conclusions about Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor dinosaurs. Now, in 2013, BBC decided to reanimate the documentary by giving their DVD a brand new cover that has nothing to do with the actual documentary: it features T-Rex attacking a long-necked sauropod, even though this documentary had no sauropods in it.

The textual description is completely misleading as well: “New research has led to novel ways of seeing some of the most brutal killers in history. The ubiquitous Tyrannosaurus rex: was he king of the dinosaurs or a mediocre scavenger? The feared Velociraptor: six-foot tall like in the movies or small and covered in feathers?” No offence, but in paleontology an 8 year gap means that the research used in this documentary is no longer new, and the show doesn’t focus on Tyrannosaurus’ lifestyle, all that mattered was could it defeat Triceratops or get gored instead? That is just pure misdirection and completely unnecessary: The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs is a very impressive documentary that does not need misleading images and text to be sold. But that is the law of the market for you.

2) Some time ago, a brony with too much time on his hands made a five-minute presentation on YouTube about alicorns – Twilight & Cadence vs. Celestia & Luna, claiming that Celestia & Luna have had to ascend as Twilight & Cadence did or it would make no sense other than to make money for Hasbro. Well, guess what, comrade: that is the bottom line for Hasbro: MLP: FIM has to make money for them, otherwise it is cancelled (which does not discount reruns, I admit). 

Let me briefly elaborate. The wise brony pointed out that ever since LF sold her rights of the show to Hasbro her canon – Celestia & Luna were born alicorns, not made – is no different from his own. He is correct: Hasbro know can tweak the canon however it likes – LF is unlikely to take them to court, the outcome is too unpredictable, but...

But the audience of the show does not care. Do not forget – most of them are girls (presumably) around 12 years of age on average. At this point of age they do not care as to how the ponies on the show get their wings – they just want to see more of them... or less. Hasbro – who has to make money – will do its best to ensure that the audience will buy those new winged alicorns, but it is unlikely that this will require any sort of explanation as to how Twilight & Cadence are different from Celestia & Luna. All four are pony princesses, so they all are winged, simple enough and the buyers will buy them.

Or not, you never know with teen and preteen children. Cadence has already appeared less than half-a-dozen times in the entire show up to date (that is 66 episodes, so she appeared roughly in 1/11^th of the entire show alongside Shining, so not a lot) and if Twilight with wings is less popular than Twilight without them, then Twilight will lose them (in a great, dramatic episode, no doubt) and Hasbro will... if not make money, then stop losing it – no pony-brony logic here, just the law of the market.

End

Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators. Review.

Few days ago I have watched a DVD: “Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators”. What conclusions can be drawn from it?

Firstly, Beyond T-Rex: this program deals with the discovery of two of T-Rex’s biggest competitors: giganotosaurus and carcharodontosaurus, two closely related carnosaur cousins. As such, they were closely related to the allosaurus of the Jurassic time period, meaning that they were more primitive than the T-Rex, in some ways, mainly in regards to smarts. T-Rex itself had an IQ somewhere between the American alligator and the common house cat, and the carnosaurs were even less intelligent.

Furthermore, size for size, the carnosaurs had a weaker bite than the T-Rex’s but stronger – and larger - forearms with bigger claws to compensate this relatively weaker bite; if T-Rex and its cousins acted like modern crocodiles do, bit down hard and tore deep, gaping wounds, the carnosaurs acted more like the sharks’, inflicting shallower, but heavily bleeding wounds – hence the difference in their teeth. If the T-Rex’s teeth were ‘railroad spikes’, then the carnosaurs’ teeth were more like blades, more easily broken and which slashed rather than stabbed.

This was demonstrated in both Beyond T-Rex and Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator, which featured yet another carnosaur: acrocanthosaurus (acro). At 8 meters in length it was smaller than the carcharodontosaurus and giganotosaurus, but still larger than the T-Rex with much more developed forelimbs yet a slimmer, and relatively weaker, snout. That said, this weaker bite was compensated by its neck and backbone ridge that allowed acrocanthosaurus to clamp on, like a vise, onto its prey – giant sauropods like paluxysaurus, now apparently re-named into sauroposeidon. T-Rex could not do that for all of its awesomeness, if it bit down, it would bite right through, unlike the carnosaurs, which could not bite through bone.

On the other hand, at the end of the Cretaceous, when T-Rex walked the Earth, there were little to no sauropods in North America, so who knows how tyrannosaurus would have handled them overall.

Finally, there was Clash of the Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators, which focused on T-Rex, deinonychus and quetzalcoatlus. The latter, incidentally, is a pterosaur – a flying reptile, not a dinosaur. This feature showed clips of the predators hunting herbivores, including paluxysaurus/sauroposeidon, and it was done by deinonychus the raptor, (also featured in Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator), not tyrannosaurus.

In other words, here is how the cookie crumbled. The carnosaurs, featured in Beyond T-Rex and Monsters Resurrected: Giant American Predator had remained relatively basic, somewhat primitive creatures, only growing larger in size and specializing in feeding only on sauropods: when acrocanthosaurus, for example, had to deal with an armored dinosaur called sauropelta, it failed completely, and when the sauropods died out, so did the carnosaurs.

The tyrannosaurs and the raptors, on the other hand, were more specialized. Size for size, tyrannosaurs – especially T-Rex itself – were more stocky and robust than the carnosaurs, probably ambush hunters than long-distance chasers. Their forelimbs were smaller, especially in proportion to the rest of the body, but their heads and jaws were much larger and their bite – much stronger.

The raptors, on the other hand, had well-developed claws both on front and especially on the hind legs, but their teeth, though sharp, were small and probably relatively ineffective as killing tools, especially for smaller species such as velociraptors. (An utahraptor, easily 6 m long, was probably a somewhat different story.)  Thus they used their claws to deliver the killing blows, as Clash of the Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators demonstrated. So...

So, the DVD “Dinosaurs: Perfect Predators” demonstrated three ways that the evolution of dinosaur predators occurred. One was the basic design of the carnosaurs, similar to that of the original carnivorous dinosaurs, but blown to gigantic proportions. The second – that of the tyrannosaurs – was the increasing specialization of jaw power. And the third – that of the raptors – was the increased specialization of claws instead. Put otherwise, the carnosaurs were the biggest, the tyrannosaurs – the strongest, and the raptors – the fastest. Neat.

As for the DVD itself, it is well put together and the viewing quality is quite good. The images on the cover, admittedly, belong to none of the features mentioned inside, but that is beside the point. I rate this DVD 4.5 stars out of 5.