RE: Sea Monsters (& some other random rants)

["Ivan Kwan" <dino_rampage@hotmail.com>]

I guess in my side of the planet, we won't get to watch this series so soon, 
so my judgements are based on the website...

Yah, like what other members on the list have pointed out, there are some 
(ahem) glaring inaccuracies on the so-called "fact-files"... Coelophysis as 
coelurosaur... Elasmosaurus the dinosaur... Tanystropheus being capable of 
autotomy (not sure whether it's the correct spelling)...

And why didn't they assign the giant mosasaur a specific name like 
Hainosaurus,Tylosaurus or Mosasaurus? Seems so much simpler to me (unless 
they were spoilt for choice ha ha)

And egad! How I wish they'd featured that 'other' giant ichthyosaur, 
Shonisaurus, or even that giant Temnodontosaurus reported a while back...

One more thing I pointed out: In the large view of Hesperornis, the legs 
seem so painfully twisted! I don't think that the legs could articulate this 
way... Any comments? (My image of Hesperornis on land would be to have its 
legs sticking out to the rear uselessly just like the hind flippers of true 
seals... not bent at such an angle that the feet are still flat on the 
ground... besides I think the feet weren't of much use on land)

Personally in my opinion, yes I agree that the standards of the "Walking 
With" series has declined... Beasts was still pretty good (except that they 
sided too much with the 'chill" hypothesis when explaining the Ice Age 
extinctions) I didn't watch Walking With Cavemen (paleoanthropology just 
isn't really my cup of tea and besides, this field is just a tad too 
controversial for me)

I did catch the two Giant Claw and Land of Giants programmes, which were 
pretty good (though WHY no feathered Velociraptors, Mononykus & 
Therizinosaurus???) Ballad of Big Al was alright but too short for my 
liking... And didn't feature enough of the whole variety of Morrison 
fauna... (where's the Ceratosaurs, Torvosaurs, Brachiosaurs, Camarasaurs and 
Ankylosaurs???)

Yet despite all their shortcomings, these BBC productions are leagues ahead 
when I compare them with other wannabe prehistoric life productions like 
"Prehistoric Earth" (god-awful animations of Megantereon, bison & 
megaloceros), the passive mammoths in What Killed the Mega-Beasts? (Yup, 
visualise an adult woolly mammoth standing passively and wailing in pain 
while puny humans fling spears at it) Or what about that horrible Jeff 
Corwin special they did recently (aaaaargh... somebody please kill that 
guy!)

For my rant against that Giants programme hosted by Jeff Corwin, read my old 
rant at http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2003Jul/msg00136.html

Back to lurking...

P.S What's so wrong about When Dinosaurs Roamed America? I don't really see 
what's so bad about it. True, maybe they were a bit too noisy, and the 
sauropods' feet were pretty ugly, I can't really pinpoint anything really 
bad about it.

P.S Just watched Ice Age for the first time, gave my sister a crash course 
on Ice Age megafauna, and hung my head in sorrow when they featured 
brontotheres (in the Pleistocene???) & called them "rhinos". Scratched my 
head as to what a herd of Macrauchenia & Doedicurus was doing in Pleistocene 
North America, as well as to whether the sabre-tooths were Smilodon fatalis 
or populator (haha yup nitpicking again) (Liked the joke about that flying 
glyptodont's "evolutionary breakthrough")
And what? No dire wolves? short-faced bears? giant bison? american lions/ 
cheetahs??? or teratorns or camels or mastodon???

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