Re: Follow-up: the truth about killer dinosaurs

[Luis Rey <luisrey@ndirect.co.uk>]

On 30 Aug 2005, at 09:38, John Hunt wrote:
> Not sure why Luis was thankful the animation was not from WWD.  It  
> really
> needs a makeover to keep up with the latest finds - mainly adding  
> feathers,
> but the WWD T. rex was much more lifelike than the new one, and had  
> also not
> just been to the dentist!


Can't agree, I'm afraid. First I would always advocate diversity and  
keep away from cliches (and WWD could become a cliche very easily) so  
any new reconstruction  seen from a different artistic point of view  
is almost always refreshing (unless it is deadly wrong, and despite  
the long strides, wide skull and some minor defects in the animation,  
the T.rex from "The Truth of the Killer Dinosaurs" looked pretty  
decent to me).
Secondly,  It has always been difficult to me to understand how - 
after so many good specimens and perfect, completely restored  
Tyrannosaurus skulls and anatomical treaties-  a professional can  
still get it wrong. And that is exactly what they did in Walking With  
Dinosaurs: get the back of the skull (including the area of the  
temporal fenestrae and the muscular attachments of the lower jaw to  
the skull) completely >wrong<. The T. rex there is a  chimera: the  
proportions are not quite right and the attachment of the skull to  
the neck looks also completely artificial.
To me, the general look of the WWD T.rex is more like a  
sophisticated, glorified version of one of the vilest T.rex puppets  
ever to star in a publication (namely "Tyrannosaurus, On The Trail Of  
The Ferocious Meat-Eating Dinosaur", Dorling Kindersley 1992). The  
WWD team took a while to get their dinosaurs completely right...  the  
Allosaurus from "Ballad of Big Al" was pretty decent  at last.

Luis Rey.

Visit my website
http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~luisrey