Walking With Dinosaurs was the BEST.

Best modern dinosaur media? by Huinesoron on 2019-01-28 17:00:00 UTC Reply

Hi! I'm here to talk to you about dinosaurs. ^_^

There are, roughly, four eras in the depiction of dinosaurs in the media:

1. Crystal Palace. The wildly-inaccurate depictions from the very early, mid-19th century days. You know, the ones that are all scaly elephants with Iguanodon nose-horns. (There's a beautiful recent piece starring one, generally called Jurassic Park 1854 by Jed Taylor, which I have on a mug, t-shirt, and tote bag... yeah, the Crystal Palace dinos are making a bit of a reappearance, it's awesome.)

2. Great Thunder Lizards. You know, like The Land Before Time. Most stylised depictions still follow this style.

3. The Dinosaur Renaissance, AKA the time dinosaurs picked up their tails and started running. Jurassic Park dinos.

4. Finally, and most recently, what's sometimes called the All Yesterdays movement. This is characterized by the realisation that there's a lot of stuff - famously feathers, but also other soft tissues, and behaviour - that doesn't fossilize. The Dinosaur Renaissance got the behaviour of dinos' bones and muscles pretty perfect - the stuff that goes over them is where things are changing now.

The thing is, most dinosaur media is still either deep in the Renaissance (Jurassic World), or revisiting the Thunder Lizards for cuteness' sake. My question is, what are the best up-to-date, experimenting-with-realistic-appearance-and-behaviour dinosaur things you've run into?

One that I quite like is Saurian, a PC game in which you play as (currently) a Dakotaraptor, from a small hatchling following after your parents, to a young animal hunting lizards, to... well, usually to a poisoned/crocodile-eaten corpse, by my record, but theoretically to an adult. (Survival games are not my specialty.)

They haven't shied away from feathers - you are very bird-like - or speculative behaviour - at a certain age you can use your wings in 'raptor prey restraint', and you can also climb trees while young. They've done their best to be as scientifically accurate as possible - which has included massive redesigns of their T. rex, first to add feathers, then to remove them. The whole thing is set in a similarly-accurate rendition of the Hell Creek area, AKA one of the best known dinosaur formations in the world.

So that's Saurian (available on Steam now!), but being a dromaeosaur isn't the only way to enjoy dinosaurs. What else is out there? Enquiring mes want to know!

hS

My own two cents, plus three recommendations by SkarmorySilver on 2019-01-30 15:24:00 UTC Reply

I assume documentaries are included, yes? 'Cuz I'd like to take this moment for some minor pluggage related to the topic in question, especially since prehistory documentaries have been dear to my heart since childhood - seriously, if you haven't watched the original Walking With Dinosaurs TV miniseries, please do! All episodes are, as of this writing, available on Dailymotion. Of course, the series is quite dated science-wise, so of course more recent docu-series are trying to go for the All Yesterdays style, with varying degrees of success. In particular, there are three of these I wish to highlight which also deserve mention.

BBC's Planet Dinosaur, narrated by John Hurt, takes the more scientific approach to the subject matter, transitioning between CGI renditions of the critters themselves and paleontology findings corresponding to the topic at hand. It should be noted that this series is quite carnivore-centric, and some of the depictions aren't entirely consistent with what we know of today (long-legged Spinosaurus, Troodon without wing feathers on the arms, that venomous Sinornithosaurus hypothesis that got debunked not long after it was suggested...), but the visuals look wonderful, and even my nitpicky self very much enjoyed the series as a whole, with every single episode having its own appeal. I'm most fond of pterosaurs, sure, but Hatzegopteryx sadly got too little screentime and other pterosaurs ended up being canon fodder. Oh well. The Predator X/Pliosaurus segments were definitely my favorite part, and it's nice to see a more sensible depiction than that kaiju-sized Liopleurodon from WWD.

Next on the list is Discovery Channel's Dinosaur Revolution, which has its own set of issues and could stand to be less sensationalist in particular, but hey, properly feathered dromaeosaurs! In general, this has to be the best set of dinosaur depictions on television, and there was clearly a lot of work put into them with proper feathering and even scale patterns based on whatever skin impressions were available. Plus the animals themselves are colorful, lively, entertaining to watch, and most importantly, as accurate as we can imply from the most current evidence. You may even find yourself rooting for a good number of them as the show progresses. This series opted for separating the segments with the creatures themselves with "talking heads" i.e. paleontologists commenting on the critters featured, which is a bit of hit-or-miss for me since we all know what I care for lol. Still, it's a visual treat that certainly lived up to its hype, and is leagues ahead of a number of documentaries which either didn't know better or simply didn't care. I mean, one of them freaking quote-mined one of the people the makers consulted. Eesh.

Last on the list is Sir David Attenborough's Flying Monsters 3D, which I had the pleasure of seeing on the big 3D screen at the local science center at my hometown! Unlike the previous two documentaries, which relegated pterosaurs to bit parts with only one or two segments focusing on them, this one explores them and their evolution in all of this family's glory. This is another relatively well-researched feature, though it's one cinematic film rather than a series of episodes, with Attenborough himself leading us through the whole thing and directly interacting with the paleontologists presented, discussing the evidence we have for what pterosaurs were like - and with their proper coating of pycnofibers (hair-like scales akin to birdy down, if you will) and vibrant colors, the animals presented look utterly glorious. As somewhat expected, there are still a number of minor and occasionally not-so-minor boo-boos that can be spotted by a sharp-eyed viewer. (Of particular note is a segment with Tupandactylus courting, but both males and females have the same tall crest that only the males have in reality. Think about what that means for a second...) For what it's worth, though, the film has impressive visuals, and when it does get something right, it demonstrates it beautifully. As someone who insists on more accurate pterosaurs in media (to the point where I disguised my PPC persona as a terrestrial ground-stalking Quetzalcoatlus on two separate missions), this film is a guilty pleasure for me and my inner paleo-nerd, and while best taken with an amount of salt that can vary between a grain and a whole darn shaker, it's an impressive piece of work nonetheless.

And there you have it, three of my favorite pieces of modern dinosaur media. If anyone has any works they'd like to recommend themselves, feel free to let us know and discuss them as well!

Walking With Dinosaurs was the BEST. by Huinesoron on 2019-02-01 11:17:00 UTC Reply

I have it on DVD, it was amazing, even if as you say the science is a bit old now. (Also, the Walking With Monsters prequel has given me a lifelong vendetta against arthropods, so there's that. ^_^)

I've not seen any of the three you list, though I do remember a few rants about Dinosaur Revolution. Interesting that all three were done about the same time! I suspect a lot of the work they put into their models fed into the live Dinosaurs in the Wild experience, which was AMAZING and hits the same modern-dino notes. (I vividly remember a field full of Dakotaraptor threat-displaying their tails and wings against an oblivious Alamosaurus.) Sadly, DitW has shut down now, but if it ever tours near to you, I heartily recommend it.

As the person with an actual terrestrial-stalking Quetzalcoatlus agent, I think I'm most intrigued by Flying Monsters; I might see if I can figure out a way to watch it in 3D...

hS

Wow, Saurian looks pretty slick. (nm) by 61516 on 2019-01-30 02:13:00 UTC Reply