Is This The Best Episode Of Prehistoric Planet? | The True Science Behind Ice Worlds

yeah so I guess I forgot about this huh

well it says good a time as ever to

finish up the rest of the prehistoric

Planet episodes so without further Ado

let's get going

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prehistoric planet is now officially

fully out on Apple TV Plus for everyone

to enjoy this whole project was

according to Dr Steve bersatti about 10

years in the making precisely what that

means in regard to exact start times

fundraising and expert collecting all

the way to the finished product is

unknown surprisingly scant are

references to the directors of the show

Andrew Jones and Adam Valdez aside from

the artist doing all the hard Hands-On

work with the dinos and the

paleontologists guiding their hands the

directors are the most important in

regard to how the show is shot how the

animals are portrayed and much more

the show is also produced by BBC's

Studios Natural History unit in

conjunction with John Favreau of Iron

Man Chef Lion King the Mandalorian and

Jungle Book Fame as executive producer

and showrunner the visual effects were

done by the moving picture company with

narration by David Attenborough the

soundtrack was composed by Hans Zimmer

Kara talv and ANS Rosman talv and Rosman

even invented and modded new instruments

for the show in order to make some truly

amazing sounds to mirror the truly

amazing science going into this series

[Music]

foreign

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and I also want to show you the fat

wrecks that we use for our Velociraptor

theme

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everything

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I don't think it is exaggerating to call

prehistoric Planet not just a successor

to Walking with Dinosaurs but a superior

production aided by Hollywood money and

cooperation among everyone involved no

one's expertise was thrown out by

executive meddling or at director's

personal preference

it would be a crime not to shout out the

animators and CGI artists that worked on

this project something apple and BBC

apparently couldn't spare the time to do

with their credits Shashank shakar is a

texture and visual effects artist that

worked on the project for one and a half

years specifically working on the

Velociraptors co-authoraptor

Therizinosaurus bielzebufo ornithomimus

and troodance another artist that went

uncredited is Cameron Clow who is a

creature animator and previz post viz

artist for Marvel HBO nbbc on top of

that he is a part-time animator for

Prehistoric Kingdom hence the quite

lifelike movements he worked on the

Triceratops segment as he has more

expertise in the muscles movement and

life appearance of these guys

taurosaurus is his favorite dinosaur

after all

Sanjay Singh worked on some of the main

animals like the Tarbosaurus

sacernasaurus and more with the moving

picture company Alan bulkus was also

with the moving picture company with

Damian guymano and Anthony seben and

supervised by Dan zelks Michaela Dahl

who goes by silvery Lantern on Twitter

and Sean lack or momentarily Epic on

Twitter where also animators brought on

board the team I'm confident that I'm

missing some people here as this project

was a Monumental effort by a Monumental

team unfortunately there is only so much

I can do to find everyone involved when

the show kinda made very little effort

to highlight those same people so I

apologize to those I have left out

unfortunately the caveat for the whole

series is that it only takes place 66

million years ago however it takes us

all over the world to show us animals

that the general audience has never seen

before it also has to show you animals

you know but thanks to 20 plus years of

new information since Walking with

Dinosaurs these old favorites are

refurbished to show the audience how

much the hard science of paleontology

has changed it also doesn't take place

precisely at 66 million years it is

stated to be 66 million years for

simplification but it takes place

between 72 and 66 million years just for

clarification

these are the most accurate prehistoric

animals ever to be recreated in video

form each episode covers a biome across

the planet rather than a chunk of time

it was a five night event with five

episodes each coming out on each of

those five nights recap

our episode opens up in the darkness of

winter somewhere in the northern

hemisphere the camera tracks along a set

of two-toed Footprints left in the snow

before we cut to a sleeping dinosaur

this guy is a dromosaur your average

Raptor dinosaurs it is stated that this

little guy has survived three months of

near total darkness and the episode

pretty much begins as soon as spring

starts we see this little dromaeosaur

run about for a little bit looking for

something to eat and finds a beetle then

we see two dromeiosaurs snuggle with

each other before getting interrupted by

a herd of Edmontosaurus a small pack of

dromosaurs form and hunt the herd once

the herd reaches an icy River Crossing

The dromy Source takes their chance and

try to kill a juvenile who gets caught

in the river and wash down stream the

mother follows and the baby heaves

himself out of the river the

dromaeosaurs didn't kill anything but

they found a dead edmontosaur anyway we

see the herd move on and we cut to next

segment

the next segment takes place Downstream

of the last more Northern Region our

main characters for this segment are a

colony of male ornithomimus building

nests to attract mates they scratch out

craters in the sediment and cover it in

sticks and leaves here is where we get

to see competition between males to make

the best Nest from there we are whisked

away to the next segment taking place in

what is now Russia or at least the part

of Eurasia that is pretty damn close the

main characters here are a herd of Alora

Titan and their quest to make nests lay

eggs and have their babies in a Northern

volcanic region as it is the warmest

place during the colder winter they

reach their nesting grounds do all the

stuff they need to do and we get to see

a ridiculous time lapse of them grazing

across the freshly greened Lawns of the

volcanic field baby's hatch and we are

treated to some of the cutest dinosaur

babies so far in this series even with a

practical nest and eggs the Khan

conflict of this segment comes out as

fast as mosquitoes start reproducing and

swarming in the area due to the warmth

and water they attack everyone but their

attacks are most severe for the babies

we even get a fake out death of one of

them fun stuff

from Russia we are taken back to

Northern North America probably Canada

to see what occurs when a forest fire

happens the main character here is a

troad daunted with no name as he takes

advantage of the forest fire to catch

prey also he may have started it or at

least is picking up bits of it and

starting more fires to better catch some

food he gets a big fat mammal and then

we go to the next segment which shows

the summer season of the last segment

change into Autumn and then into a polar

winter before swooping to Antarctica

the Antarctica segment is centered

around hibernation and a small group of

juvenile antarcto pelta who struggled to

find some good and safe places to nap

for months on end one of the brothers is

voted out of his brother's burrow so he

goes on a little Journey coming across

some reddish hadrosaurs he finds a

little cave off in the middle of nowhere

that happens to have some glow worms

living on the ceiling and takes the big

nap the next segment takes us back to

Northern North America to see what

happens when the dinosaurs don't migrate

for winter our main characters in this

segment are the Pachyrhinosaurus and

nanoxaurus and their battle for survival

in the blizzards of winter some

pachyrhinosauruses fight each other then

a pack of nanox or slow Pursuit them

until they can get them in the open and

isolate one from the protective Circle

they have formed in the blizzard they

get one of them and have some chilled

dinner that was Ice world tell me what

your favorite segment is from this

episode in the comment section below

onward to the meat and potatoes the

reason you're here

animal accuracies or not the point of

this whole Endeavor was to show what the

public knows as the main characters of

the late Cretaceous dinosaurs pterosaurs

and the marine reptiles in as natural

and accurate a light as modern science

and technology could make possible to

marry the groundbreaking technology

produced for and used in the film

industry to bring back the long Dead

with the help of cutting-edge dinosaur

science as such every single Critter

should be as up to date as studies and

fossils will allow and any sort of soft

tissue structure or behavior should be

backed up with as much parsimony as

possible as prehistoric planets

succeeded in this Venture well in order

to answer this question we must first

painstakingly approach each and every

design with information from the

literature the fossil record and from

the very words of the scientists who

were consulted for the project Kirsten

formoso Professor Steve brusati John

Robert Spicer and Paul Valdez doctors

Darren Nash Mark Whitten Victoria Arbor

Alexander Farnsworth and Scott Hartman

dinosaurs in ice

when we think about a time when

dinosaurs ran the world we often picture

hot humid places in a world that is

vastly different from our own but

prehistoric Planet narrated by Sir David

Attenborough shows that dinosaurs lived

and did well in many different kinds of

places including colder areas where snow

storms freezing fog and sea ice were

typical

when the show's makers first asked

Professor Bob Spicer and Alex Farnsworth

both meteorologists and

paleoclimatologists to help them figure

out what the weather and environment

were like for dinosaurs before they died

out about 66 million years ago they had

to solve a problem that has been around

for decades in paleo climate modeling

that is when scientists use computers to

simulate or model the temperature of

prehistoric Earth the models tended to

make the poles much colder than the

fossils and rocks showed they had been

not only have the researchers made their

models better for prehistoric Planet but

they have also run the computer programs

longer than anyone else has ever done to

get the models as close as possible to

ancient reality

the BBC's Natural History unit which was

in charge of making the show needed to

know about the weather so that they

could film in real world places that

looked like places where dinosaurs lived

in the past but most of what is known

about the climate that long ago comes

from indirect proxy evidence like

fossilized leaves and traces of certain

chemicals and rocks which can only be

used to figure out the average climate

over decades or centuries this is where

the assumption that the Cretaceous world

was much hotter and had more water in it

comes from this inference isn't exactly

wrong but it doesn't tell the whole

story because weather temperature and

climate behave differently for example

even though the world is getting warmer

Texas which is usually hot and muggy can

get a lot of snow geologists will notice

the quick warming of the planet a

million years from now but not the freak

snowstorms still it's important to model

what these snowstorms were like in the

past because we know that one former

worlds will have more extreme weather

and these extremes will have been a big

part of why some places were totally

unlivable for dinosaurs even though

fossils can tell us a lot about how the

weather was in the past most of them

can't tell us what the weather was like

day to day

so how do we know what the weather was

like on May 27th 66 million years ago in

a certain place on Earth

to do this the researchers needed to use

a computer modeling of the climate like

the ones used now to predict how the

climate will change in the future these

models are based on basic biological and

physical processes that don't change

over time so the researchers can change

them to fit past worlds even if they

don't know exact details like where the

mountains were or how high they were or

how much carbon dioxide was in the air

then they can use fossilized leaves

Coral or rocks which have signs of what

the climate was like at the time to

check how accurate these models are if

their model fits the proxies which it

did they could be sure that it is

simulating the weather as it would have

been at the time

so what did they learn from trying to

figure out the weather 66 million years

ago their models showed that there would

have been strong blizzards in Antarctica

Category 6 hurricanes in the mid and low

latitudes which we are likely to see in

our lifetimes and large always present

fog banks that made Winters cloudy under

polar Cloud caps this doesn't sound like

a place where dinosaurs would be happy

but the old idea that dinosaurs were

cold-blooded and needed warm weather to

live has for the most part already been

proven wrong

the new idea is that dinosaurs were

warm-blooded and could control their

body temperature in some ways like

mammals can today

this would be necessary to survive big

changes in temperature caused by

different weather trends especially in

the Arctic and Antarctic

so the modeling backs up recent fossil

finds that show that some dinosaur

species were used to living in cold

environments could see in low light

which would have been helpful in those

big fog Banks and thrived all year near

the poles the scenes of prehistoric

planet with the cold packyrinosaurs were

filmed in Alaska this shows why the

series wanted to use climate models to

check how accurate it was

we know what it was like there 66

million years ago because of the fossils

of plants dinosaurs and other animals

however the old models said it would

have been an extremely cold and lifeless

Tundra instead the model agrees with the

fossil evidence and projects forests all

the way to the edge of the Arctic Ocean

at 82 degrees north which is much

farther north than any trees are today

dinosaur food would have been easy to

find in the summer but it would have

been harder to find in The Long Dark

Winters because fossils and computer

models show that it was very foggy

dinosaurs survived for 165 million years

which is a long time Tyrannosaurus Rex

for example lived much closer to people

than it did to stegosaurus they were

able to survive for so long because they

were strong and could change with the

surroundings just like mammals do today

the research for prehistoric Planet

shows that they were able to live

through bigger temperature Swings

stormier weather and worse droughts than

humans have ever seen at least so far

dromaeosaurus design

s was the first of its evolutionary

lineage to be discovered there may have

been bits and pieces of these dinosaurs

found before dromosaurus was found or

named but it was technically the first

recognized by science it's why its

lineage was given its name after all

despite being the first one named all

the way back in 1922 it wasn't

particularly reflective of an

archetypical Raptor or dromosaur its

body was heavily built having long

grasping foldable arms with super mobile

fingers and Claws long digital grade

hind limbs ending in hyper flexible toes

and Talons a long semi-rigid tail for

counterbalance and a long neck however

it had a much shorter and more robust

skull than many dromosaurs found after

it like Velociraptor it was just a

smidgen larger than Velociraptor and a

touch more robust but pretty much in the

same size range its fossils have been

found in Alberta and across some Western

U.S states it's easily one of the most

well understood of the dromosaurs so how

did prehistoric planet do exceptionally

well as usual

the narration states that these little

guys are dromosaurs proper this is not

that far out as Dr Nash has stated on

Twitter however these snow-covered

segments of the ice worlds episode

technically take place in Alaska where

no dromosaurus fossils have yet been

found

that being said Alaska isn't far enough

away from Alberta to find this that much

of a stretch

the dromaeosauruses are decked out in a

fashionable suit of white underbellies

and a mix of Grays Blues greens and

grayish Browns on top from what I can

see the blues and greens seem to be a

metallic Sheen reflected by a dark

pigmented base color this is a type of

coloring that many animals use called

structural color the microscopic outside

layers of the feathers have little

structures that absorb the light bounce

it around refract it and reflect it back

out at different angles causing a

metallic reflective look that can have

just about any color to it depending on

the exact structures

though I think it's also possible that

the feathers on the dinosaur's tail are

just blue rather than refracting blue as

they don't seem to change color as the

animal moves

fun fact true blue is super hard to make

or evolve with pigments so the majority

of blue animals are using a special type

of refractive structure to make blue you

can learn more about structural color in

the second episode of prehistoric

palettes there is as Darren notes no

doubts whatsoever that these animals

were covered in feathers with plumage as

complete as that of a modern bird

some Chinese fossils of smaller and

similarly sized dromosaurs show that

Raptors of cooler climates had feathers

on their toes and fingers as seen in

most ice World inhabiting dinosaurs

today this is therefore reflected here

in the polar dromaeosauruses they are a

lot fluffier than the Velociraptors of

Mongolia or the Ostro Raptors of South

America

the forearms of these dromosauruses are

fully decked out in all of the complex

to semi-complex feathers we know the

entire group had a ton of dromosaurus

specimens don't preserve their wing

feathers or any feathers for that matter

the vast majority of those that do are

small and were uncovered in China those

being the gliding microraptorines and

the Velociraptor sized ground dwelling

genuine lung

plenty of theropods that are related to

the true dromosaurs are found with

simpler feathers akin to those on emus

or even simpler ones that look like hair

Tyrannosaurs over after a sores their

xenosaurs

scansorioptergids and then a bunch more

advanced bird-like theropods such as

troodons avialins and true Birds there

aren't any large-bodied members of the

eutromyosaurian subgroup that contains

the majority of the things we informally

call Raptors with feathers preserved yet

however there is a single specimen of

velociraptor or something very much like

Velociraptor that contains a series of

notches on the arm bone

these notches are the same thing seen in

Birds quill knobs

their presence directly proves that the

animal had feathers the interpretation

from this is that the majority of these

animals had similarly complex Wing

feathers as Velociraptor and all other

dromeosaur relatives that did have wings

preserved

some have criticized the designers of

the dromosaurs and prehistoric planet

for continuing the complex vein feathers

of the Wings up the arm and onto the

humerus or upper arm as far as I can

tell this is not really the case the

feathers continue up the humerus but not

all the way because there can't really

be anything in the way of the armpit and

the axis of rotation of the shoulder the

majority of the wing is composed of two

major Wings the hand and the forearm

some of the forearm Wing continues for a

bit around the elbow and up the humerus

but decreases in size quickly and does

not continue to cover the entire humors

the type of feathers on the humerus

would have been the coverts and converts

but wouldn't have attached directly to

the humerus bone instead they may have

been attached to the skin of the humerus

as with the Velociraptors the dromeos

sources have a ring of thicker tissues

around the margins of their mouths this

looks somewhat like a beak but is likely

composed of simple lip tissues hardened

skin or partially keratinized skin

easily the best dromaeosaurus ever put

to film barring any minuscule nitpicks

that don't matter that some dromosaur

experts might have

Behavior the first time we see

dromeosaurus in the ice worlds episode

we watch it wake up from a good night's

sleep it stated that it is beginning to

become spring summer and since the

region is quite close to the North Pole

it experiences long periods of dark and

long periods of light just as it does

today before the Raptor awakes it is in

a curled position that is actually not

entirely speculative there are a handful

of specimens of dromaeosaurs and close

relatives that died in their sleep and

therefore preserve the sleeping posture

Mei long a small member of the trodon

today a lightly built family closely

related to the dromaeosaurs has two

specimens preserved in a sleeping

bird-like posture

there is apparently also a specimen of

the trodante Sonoran authorities in the

same posture paleontologist Riley black

noted all the way back in 2012 that

there is even a specimen of the early

sealophysidisorus in someone of a

similar posture with its legs tucked

underneath its body and arms folded in a

resting posture you may think that going

over this very minute to detail is

Superfluous but extinct animals are

almost never preserved in the same

postures they had at the time of death

so finding a few a few so close to birds

and a few in such positions as to

actually expand the understanding of

dinosaur behavior is quite something

if you thought that was unnecessary get

ready for the next little bit of

behavior the dromosaurus does

after getting up from its sleep the

Raptor scratches itself with its foot

there are two ways that birds can and do

scratch themselves one is when they

bring their foot above their wing and do

a little scratch scritch the second is

when they bring their foot underneath

their wing and do a little scritch

crocodilians do the above the wing

maneuver though forelim rather than wing

of course so the prehistoric Planet team

had their little snow Raptor do an

underwing scratch after waking up our

little dromaeosaur friend is hungry and

goes looking for something to eat as Dr

Nash makes clear these animals were

generalists that preyed on anything they

could kill including all manner of small

Critters like bugs arachnids mammals

baby dinosaurs reptiles Turtles Crocs

fish and amphibians this is reinforced

in ice worlds when the dromosaurus

somehow finds a non-frozen beetle

scuttling around and nabs it as a

pre-breakfast snack the next bit of

behavior we see with dromosaurus in ice

worlds is a pair meeting up and doing

some bonding behaviors like touching and

rubbing this is something seen in pretty

much every bird alive today and across

most of the Animal Kingdom so it would

be super weird if dinosaurs never did

this however there is no fossil evidence

for this at all not entirely sure how

there could be the pair are alerted to

an incoming herd of Edmontosaurus and

thus Begins the final bit of behavior we

see performed by the dromeosaurus pack

hunting well pack hunting of a Kind

these Predators were about the size of

today's coyote but with a stronger bite

and far pointier claws it's now

hypothesized that these animals may not

have been capable of coordinated pack

hunting as in some unique social mammals

alive today they were still quite

intelligent but may have hunted more

like some Modern Birds such as Harris's

hawk a pair to a handful of related

animals technically hunting together but

not in a super coordinated hierarchical

structure Komodo dragons do something

similar but even less cooperatively this

is the hypothesis shown in the ice

worlds episode as a pack of three

Raptors startled the edmontosaurs heard

in order to catch and kill a young

individual or spook the herd into

accidentally killing one of their own

this is what ends up happening as a

juvenile Edmontosaurus drowns in the

Panic as the herd crosses an ice-covered

River the end of the segment has the

pack finding the Dead Juvenile and going

to work with their short recurved teeth

Edmontosaurus design

idmatosaurus is probably one of the most

well-known non-avian dinosaurs aside

from triceratops and Tyrannosaurus it is

one of the most common fossils across

Lake Cretaceous North America one of the

most common hadrosaurs and has such a

long and tortuous taxonomic history that

there are at least eight Genera and

species erected to name the remains of

the same Edmontosaurus over the course

of about a hundred years

various fossils of what we now call it

montessaurus were given names such as

agathamus anatasaurus anata Titan Cloud

Source Hadrosaurus despessius and

trachodon only a few of these Genera

would remain intact with most becoming

dubious as the majority of the

fragmentary fossils given to them became

assigned to Edmontosaurus there are now

two known species of Edmontosaurus

Edmontosaurus anaktans named in 1892 but

given to the genus Cloud source and then

Edmontosaurus regalis the first use of

the Edmontosaurus name in 1917. there

are so many fossils of edmontosaurs

known and so many keep eroding out of

outcrops that it's one of the few

dinosaurs that no one really cares about

private companies Excavating and selling

for profit there are a handful of

fossilized mummies of edmontosaurs known

as well as specimens that were not

mummified prior to fossilization but

preserved impressions of the soft

tissues

just for some food for thought there are

currently 22 skulls known for

Edmontosaurus now take into account how

many other dinosaurs are known from

non-skull Bones and assume that there

are far more than 22 skeletal specimens

with no Noggins also known to science

plus the tons and literal tons of

fossils recovered every season by

private and institution-affiliated dig

Crews and you have yourself one of the

most numerous dinosaurs ever even here

however not everything is known or can

be known about the animals did they all

have the fleshy Cox comb of that one

specimen of an Edmontosaurus regalis was

that present in both sexes only males

females the prehistoric Planet

idmontosaurus appears in ice world and

season 2's swamps the design is pretty

much the same in both the model is

reused later on in ice worlds and seems

to be remodeled into the bar's baldia

model in deserts the Edmontosaurus has

an off-white to grayish white underbelly

and what seems to be a dark gray to

brownish top with reddish vertical

patches down the neck and sides the

adult males have an iridescent bluish

green mask on the sides of the face and

along the snout that the females lack

the juveniles seem to have the grayish

top colors replaced by the reddish brown

colors paleo artists like all artists

tend to have their own Styles when it

comes to how they recreate the extinct

and the edmontosauruses are so very of

Gabriel igueto's style that it is almost

distracting he was one of the Paleo

artists that worked on the show so it's

not a surprise just interesting to point

out

the amount of sources of prehistoric

planets are decked out in plenty of

muscle and fat as in modern living

healthy animals their skin is made up of

a pavement of small to medium polygonal

scales broken up now and again by much

larger feature scales some of their skin

also has bulging chicken or turkey-like

lumps and scales along the backs of

prehistoric planets and realities of

Montessori was a ridge of short

laterally compressed rectangular

sub-rectangular to triangular scoots

these have been lost in every

Edmontosaurus specimen that doesn't

preserve soft tissues but are either

present in the specimens with soft

tissues or the spaces where they were

are preserved most experts think all

edmontosauruses had these scoops

the prehistoric Planet Edmontosaurus

design uses new information about the

feet found thanks to the continued work

on the fossil mummy known as Dakota

found in 1999 by then high school

student Tyler Leeson Dakota would not be

fully investigated until 2004 when

Leeson discovered these soft tissue

preservation of the find along with

British paleontologist Dr Phil Manning

the find would be fully excavated in the

following years CT scanned with NASA and

Boeing scanners and described it would

receive further preparation over the

following almost 20 years with a new

discovery made in the early 2020s when

the forelim was fully excavated from the

rock that still encased the specimen in

a 2022 paper Stephanie Drumheller Clint

Boyd Becker Barnes and Mindy householder

described the foot and the fossil

processes that allowed Dakota to become

as well preserved as it was before

fossilization

these guys were walking on the second

third and fourth fingers that were

encased in a fleshy Mitten like a hoof

of sorts on the outside and front of the

foot was a large hoof-like nail that

likely did not contact to the ground the

second finger seems to have had a

spade-shaped claw sticking out to the

side the fifth finger was not included

in the Mitten and may have been

something like a dewclaw or was encased

in the hand higher up this whole

configuration is reflected relatively

well in the prehistoric Planet

Edmontosaurus as well as every other

hadrosaur that appears in the show

another interesting bit of anatomy is

something I've already covered in my

video duck-billed Dinosaurs Aren't

duck-billed in short some hadrosaur

carcasses have bits of what looks like

keratinous beak material preserved on

their faces turns out that these bits of

tissue are most likely sediment that

filled in the mouth and backside of the

beak of the upper jaw after death the

Keratin that covered the beak decayed

way and left behind an impression of the

backside and the extent of the beak on

the actual jaw bones this is seen in

this Edmontosaurus specimen on display

at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural

History this means that the beaks of

these animals were almost like giant

mustaches that hung down from the upper

jaw to completely enclose the lower Jaws

tip and form a better shearing contact

surface this is reflected in prehistoric

planets Hadrosaurus and edmontosaurs

Behavior the Edmontosaurus is shown to

be a herd animal this is backed up by

too much evidence and data to explain in

detail in short extensive bone beds are

known of this animal with groups of them

at various ages as well three quarries

containing Edmontosaurus remains are

identified in a 2007 database of fossil

bone beds from Alberta South Dakota and

Wyoming on top of that nests eggs

nestlings and hatchlings are known from

various sites across Northern North

America and into the polar regions

including Alaska this has been

interpreted to mean that not only were

these animals gregarious herd dwellers

but that they mostly did not Migrate how

could they migrate if they were having

babies and raising them in nests in

areas as far north and chilly as Alaska

instead the narration calls the

edmatosaurs nomads Nomads in that they

are constantly on the move for new food

sources not that they migrate across

huge regions of the continent speaking

of babies Edmontosaurus was like most

other dinosaurs of its size and family

group in that they laid 20 to 30 eggs

per clutch in huge round nests dug into

the Earth they brought plant material to

the nests to cover the eggs that plant

stuff would Decay and produce heat that

would help keep the eggs at the right

temperature these Dino mamas were way

too big to sit on their eggs there is

even evidence for this in fossilized egg

sites most notably from the close

relative myosaura but also some

Edmontosaurus too that have fossil plant

material preserved with the eggs and

mounds the hadrosaurs used a

reproductive strategy that was somewhat

of a mix between what is scientifically

known as R and K selection our selection

animals are those that put the littlest

number of resources into raising their

young but put a lot more into the amount

of young these are your turtles frogs

and mice the opposite are k-selection

animals which produce few offspring that

they put a lot of care into these are

your elephants whales and well us

Hadrosaurus did a mix in that they did

produce quite a lot of Offspring up

front and gave them some moderate care

until they could stand walk and leave

the nest upon which the care was

lessened until The Offspring were big

had their numbers reduced and could tag

along with the herd this is sort of what

is seen in alligators today in the

Edmontosaurus segment of the ice World

episode we see that one of the juveniles

gets Carried Away by the ice River

current and the mother gets panicked and

tries to save her baby or at least make

sure she does not lose it the juvenile

is able to get to Shore and reunites but

we don't exactly see or jump in or grab

her baby like we might see with

elephants we see the again later in the

episode with the ornithomimus herd but

they don't do much and are more so

background animals they appear again in

the swamps episode of season 2 but I

will save any commentary for when I get

to it

ornithomimus design

ornithomimus the bird mimic like most

things named slightly before during and

slightly after the period in American

paleontology known as the bone Wars as a

long and storied history it was named by

othniel Charles Marsh all the way back

in 1890 based on a partial leg and arm

that were found a year or so earlier

over the next few decades up to six or

more species were named of ornithomimus

based on various fossils at various

stages of preservation and from various

regions of North America some species

were sunk back into the originals some

were found to be unique Genera like

struthiomimus and others were found to

belong to Tyrannosaurs the ornithomimus

and prehistoric Planet considers

everything that is known about

ornithaminosaurs in general as well as a

few interesting and recent developments

about ornithomimus specifically one may

wonder how confident any scientist can

be about how feathered these animals

were before any direct fossil evidence

of feather impressions are or in this

case were found one could have used the

science and art of phylogenetic

bracketing to assume that the entire

ornithomimed group had feathers as an

ancestral trait that is all of the

theropod groups that are on either side

of the ostrich dinosaurs on every

evolutionary tree ever made have at

least one piece of direct proof of

feathers if this is true and it is then

it is safe to infer that this feature

was likely present in the common

ancestor that all of these groups shared

and that maybe some lost feathers along

the way I am of course talking about the

long and uteranus of the tyrannosauroids

sinoceropterx of the comsuk nathids the

unplaceable duravenator vapi Outsource

of the therizinoseroids a possible

alvarosaur and too many oviraptorosaurs

and dromosaurus to count semi recently

the giant heavily built humpbacked

spoonbilled dinochyrus was found to have

a fused bit of vertebrae at the end of

its tail that resembled something of the

pigo style seen in Birds if this is a

tiger style then that may indicate it

had a frond of feathers at the end of

the tail as in many dromosaurs the

Spanish pelicanimimus may also preserve

feather Impressions but some have

debated if they are actually the remains

of collagen fibers but then more than

one example of direct fossil evidence

was found for ornithomimus specifically

a 1995 specimen was found with quill

knobs on the arms as you may recall from

my many screeds about dromosaurs quill

knobs are direct evidence that feathers

were present and hooked up to those

knobs if the knobs are missing that

doesn't mean the animal didn't have

feathers as many birds today may be

found without the knobs a 2008 and 2009

discovery of several ornithomimus

skeletons was made these guys preserve

direct impressions of feathers on their

bodies another feathered specimen was

found and then described in 2015. all

told they show that on was covered from

head to toe in what are called

plumalacious feathers these are feathers

that are sort of like Downy feathers or

these simple Downy Dino fuzz of some

dinosaurs but are a little more complex

like flight feathers they are the type

of big poofy things you see on ostriches

emus and cassowaries not quite loose

enough to be down not quite tight enough

to be what is called penacious penacious

feathers are more complex and organized

like flight feathers and were found on

the arms of the adult specimen the

juvenile only had plumalicious feathers

on its body and no arm feathers it's

been hypothesized that this means the

wings are a thing that appeared during a

sexual maturity and may have therefore

been a sexually selected trait aka the

bird mimics thought arm wings were sexy

also of note is that the fourth specimen

preserved skin impressions as well which

showed that halfway down the thigh to

the rest of the leg was bare skin like

ostriches also of note is that some

researchers think that the wing feathers

cannot confidently be called penacious

and may have just been plumalacious like

the wings of emus that was a lot to go

through to tell you that prehistoric

planets ornithamimus like pretty much

every animal in the show is the most

accurate and up-to-date reconstruction

of it ever the ones in the show have a

brownish gray skin tone with light gray

to slate gray feathers on the body tail

arms and neck they have a dark grayish

black fauxhawk of feathers on their

heads not unlike that of the handsome

Visage of Gabriel igueto one of the

Paleo artists that worked on the

dinosaurs in the show Curious that the

males also have huge Scarlet trimmed

wings that are inferred to be a sexually

mature trait as the main young male

character of the segment has just gotten

his these Critters even have feathery

eyelashes like most birds do today

Behavior

in the ice World episode of prehistoric

planet we get to know the ornithomimus

through a segment about their nesting

behaviors these animals are presented

here similarly to what is seen in

lacking bird behaviors as well as Gentoo

Penguins but has also generalized a

little bit based on known dinosaur

nesting behaviors in the episode the

ornithomimus males are gathered together

making up their own nests as the sort of

stage one structure to impress the

females enough to mate and then make the

nest even better essentially nothing is

known of the true nesting behaviors of

the ornithomimosaurs as no nests have

yet been found so the team inferred the

crater shaped above ground base sculpted

nests filled with rotting veggies for

incubation from the behavior of

alligators some birds and direct

evidence from other dinosaur groups

these hypothetical but educated guesses

for ornithomimus or nesting habits

therefore requires a lot of building

materials providing A Perfect Mate

attraction technique for the expert to

work in and to teach the viewer about

the males compile the foundations for

the nests and then help the female to

construct the final product as Dr Nash

noted on Twitter the non-avian dinosaurs

seemed to have been largely egalitarian

both males and females seem to be

roughly similar in size with similarly

elaborate crests horns and spikes it was

once thought that there should be sexual

dimorphism in the crests of dinosaurs as

seen in most animals however there are

some crested dinosaurs known from so

many specimens that all have the same

Crest if it was a strongly sexually

dimorphic feature then there should be

obvious differences among those

specimens sampled there may also be

evidence that males specifically

contributed to nesting and Nest care

in December of 2008 a study found that

male theropod dinosaurs did most of the

work of caring for the eggs in their

nests Dr David varicio of Montana State

University and his colleagues looked at

the fossil nests of three late

Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs City Patty

oviraptor and Troodon formosis the team

used a variety of methods to conclude

that like 90 percent of the living bird

species today male theropods did most of

the parenting work the conclusions were

reached after examining fossils for

evidence of bone cavities associated

with the loss of calcium from the body

in order to produce eggshell these

cavities are called medullary cavities

and in them were stores of calcium such

cavities would be expected to be seen

only in females since none of the fossil

bones showed such cavities it was

suggested that the individual dinosaurs

found in close proximity to a nest of

their own species were most likely male

the number of eggs laid per Nest

compared to the body size of the adult

dinosaurs supported this view as well

the study proposed that theropod

dinosaurs produced unusually large

numbers of eggs per nest for their body

size this pattern is often seen in

living birds when the male alone takes

on the parental duties the female can

afford to lay more eggs as she will not

be looking after them so she can be away

from her maternal duties and get back to

feeding herself up to replenish lost

reserves in her body

so it was concluded that the theropod

males brooded the nest and probably

played a significant role in looking

after the hatchlings

but in 2013 experts from the University

of Lincoln looked at the data used in

the 2008 study and came to a different

conclusion about what the fossils mean

with only the broken fossil record to go

on it's hard to figure out Behavior

especially something as involved as

parenting

several things that are known to affect

egg and clutch sizes in living bird

species were not considered in the 2008

study a newer scaling analysis of the

number of eggs in a bird's nest showed

that it might not be possible to tell

what kind of care the parents give even

though most experts agree that non-bird

theropods and birds evolved from the

same group of animals that doesn't mean

that they raised their young in the same

or similar ways the parents would act

very differently depending on whether

the hatchlings were precocial young that

are already independent or altricial

young that still need their parents the

2013 study found it interesting that

most theropods seemed to show

precociousness which is when hatchlings

are born relatively grown and somewhat

independent from their parents it's

possible that the male theropod

dinosaurs weren't such good parents

after all before trying to figure out

how adult theropods acted around their

nest Dr Charles deeming of the school of

life sciences and his colleagues at

Lincoln University pointed out a number

of things that needed to be considered

Dr Deming is an expert on how birds and

reptiles have babies because of this he

is in a good position to compare ancient

animals with their living descendants

for example some bird species

intentionally put their eggs in the nest

of another bird so they don't have to be

parents at all this will change the size

of some nests which is probably how

theropod dinosaurs acted too

when it comes to getting other people to

do your work there are some natural

benefits Dr Deming and his team looked

at the statistics in a different way

they counted the number of eggs in all

of the ancient nests of the theropod

species that were part of the original

study then they figured out what the

average number of eggs in a clutch was

for each species Dr varicio and the

researchers from Montana State

University did their math based on the

biggest number of eggs laid by each

dinosaur type when the British team

compared their average numbers to the

body mass of adult dinosaurs they found

that theropod dinosaurs were not in the

group of males that only raised their

own young this does not however entirely

rule out the male brooding hypotheses so

showing it once here in ornithomimus is

not scientifically inaccurate but

showing a speculative alternative or

perhaps something that only some groups

of dinosaurs practice in the show our

hero male is shown stealing better

sticks from Rivals nests a good strategy

that doesn't particularly pay off for

him

olura Titan design

after the ornithamine segment of the ice

worlds episode we get to see a

completely different type of hadrosaur

then the Edmontosaurus of the beginning

of the episode the Russian lambusaurine

oloro Titan

the owo Titan was named and described

back in 2003 based on remains found

between 1999 and 2001 in the Amir region

of Russia it's technically the most

complete lambusaurian skeleton known

outside of North America and would have

been a robust animal with the usual

hadrosaur frame but with a big

rectangular flag-shaped Crest on its

head and a laterally compressed face

that expanded quite cartoonishly into

that mustache of a beak prehistoric

planets all red Titan is decked out in a

brownish tan underbelly with a

leopard-like network of dark brownish

gray connected Stripes there are

splotches of bright blue that may have a

little bit of iridescence to them on the

crest these hadrosaurs are decked out in

the ridge of scoots along the back as

seen in Edmontosaurus this is because

this Ridge is seen across a number of

hadrosaurs outside of Edmontosaurus and

in both the saurolophene and

lambiosaurine groups of hadrosaurs the

hands of Alara Titan have been

reconstructed in a similar way to the

Edmontosaurus based on newly prepared

and described soft tissue preserving

hands from Dakota the Edmontosaurus

mummy

found in 1999 by then high school

student Tyler Leeson Dakota would not be

fully investigated until 2004 when

Leeson discovered the soft tissue

preservation of the find along with

British paleontologist Dr Phil Manning

the find would be fully excavated in the

following years CT scanned with NASA and

Boeing scanners and described it would

receive further preparation over the

following almost 20 years with a new

discovery made in the early 2020s when

the Portland was fully excavated from

the rock that still encased the specimen

in a 2022 paper Stephanie Drumheller

Clint Boyd Becker Barnes and Mindy

householder described the foot and the

fossil processes that allowed Dakota to

become as well preserved as it was

before fossilization

these guys were walking on the second

third and fourth fingers that were

encased in a fleshy Mitten like a hoof

of sorts on the outside and front of the

foot was a large hoof-like nail that

likely did not contact to the ground the

second finger seems to have had a

spade-shaped claw sticking out to the

side the fifth finger was not included

in the Mitten and may have been

something like a dewclaw or was encased

in the hand higher up

this whole configuration is reflected

relatively well in the prehistoric

Planet olora Titan and Edmontosaurus as

well as every other hadrosaur that

appears in the show

another interesting bit of anatomy is

something I've already covered in my

video duck-billed Dinosaurs Aren't

duck-billed in short somehow to sore

carcasses have bits of what looks like

keratinous beak material preserved on

their faces turns out that these bits of

tissue are most likely sediment that

filled in the mouth and backside of the

beak of the upper jaw after death the

Keratin that covered the beak decade

away and left behind an impression of

the backside and the extent of the beak

on the actual jaw bones this is seen in

this Edmontosaurus specimen on display

at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural

History as well as a core thesaurus

specimen this means that the beaks of

these animals were almost like giant

mustaches that hung down from the upper

jaw to completely enclose the lower Jaws

tip and form a better shearing contact

surface this is reflected in prehistoric

planets all over a Titan

Behavior

unfortunately there is only one specimen

of olura Titan known to science so

absolutely no Behavior can be inferred

from any direct fossil evidence however

the Prehistoric Kingdom team got to work

referencing other hadrosaurs that have

had Behavior preserved in the fossil

record a substantial amount is known

about the reproduction and nesting

strategies of hadrosaurs in general

mostly because the fossil Nest sites

from hypocrisaurus and myosaura these

sites confirmed that most hadrosaurs

were likely Colonial nesters and

Revisited the same nesting locations

year after year and across decades and

maybe even centuries there have been

dinosaur nesting sites made up of

multiple thin layers of rocks so it's

possible these places were visited over

very long periods of time

prehistoric Planet shows the Allura

Titan arriving at a location where old

nests were already made these nests are

giant crater shaped structures excavated

by The Animals snouts and feet the oloro

Titan have to tidy them up a bit and add

new foliage before laying and incubating

their eggs ice worlds also shows olura

Titan to utilize natural geothermal

areas to increase the ambient

temperatures at which their eggs

incubate

there is direct evidence of this type of

behavior in sauropod dinosaurs at a

fossil Nest site in Argentina that would

have been in the same area that ancient

geothermal vents were if the sort pods

could do this why not other dinosaurs

this is shown here with Alara Titan

because their region the Russian far

east region of Northeast Asia had what

is called the akhatsukotsuka

volcanogenic belt which was one of the

most active volcanic areas of the

Cretaceous world this belt covered a

good 2 000 miles or 3200 kilometers and

was essentially all volcanic and

plutonic material

there was large swaths of volcanism but

the area that the olura Titan visit is

more geothermal and less lava Wasteland

that would be saved for the Badlands of

season 2. another aspect of this segment

of ice world is the timetable of

hadrosaur growth there are so many

hadrosaur specimens across the handful

of fossil Nest sites that entire growth

series from embryo to adult are known

this also allowed past researchers to

plot how these animals grew over time

incubation of Hadrosaurus seems to have

been quite quick at three to six months

meaning that the ulura Titan could lay

their eggs in Spring and take advantage

of the 24-hour daylight and verdant

plant growth that would occur throughout

late summer autumn and maybe even into

early winter as well the fossil evidence

suggests these dinosaurs took moderate

care of their babies for a few weeks

after they hatched the parents would

bring back food for them to help them

get big and strong in ice Worlds the

where Titan are shown eating and

bringing back horsetails to fuel the

hatchling's growth horsetails are

considered superfood for the animals

that can digest them and would have

supercharged the growth of these baby

hadrosaurs baby hadrosaurs grew quickly

and died young from a sample of 50

individual myosaura tibiae found at egg

Mountain the massive fossil nesting site

in Montana it was found that these

dinosaurs had a mortality rate of about

89.9 percent in their first year of life

if the animals survived their second

year their mortality rate would drop to

12.7 percent the animals would spend

their next six years maturing and

growing sexual maturity was found to

occur in their third year while skeletal

maturity was attained at eight years of

age in their eighth year and Beyond the

mortality rate for myosaur would spike

back to around 44.4 percent

a few months of Rapid feeding for the

juveniles would have given them enough

weight in size to leave the nests and

follow the adult herd off to wherever

they are for the remainder of the year

in ice Worlds the prehistoric Planet

team have the babies bothered by huge

swarms of mosquitoes

despite the impossibility of Dino DNA

surviving in a mosquito's gut for

millions of years mosquitoes are still

known from the time of the dinosaurs

insects don't fossilize well due to a

lack of Bones and a generally softer

exoskeleton than most mineralized bones

sometimes they are preserved in special

places or substances but not often the

oldest known mosquito fossil comes from

Burmese Amber dating to the late

Cretaceous Epoch about 99 million years

ago this more than adequately places the

insects in the time span of the ulura

Titan segment but some researchers have

used molecular estimates that found the

mosquito lineage goes all the way back

to at least

197.5 million years ago in the early

Jurassic in today's world there are

plenty of areas where mosquitoes can

become such a nuisance that it forces

groups of animals to leave the area

which is what is replicated here in ice

world it would be cool if baby animals

in this show could go five minutes

without harassment

troodant

design

the taxonomic history of North American

troodant and dinosaurs has been in flux

since they were first named the original

Troodon formosis was named in 1856 based

on teeth this is a now frowned upon

practice as with Dinosaurs one cannot

fully determine species or Genera from

teeth alone caution flown to the wind a

bit led to a slew of more complete

skeletal remains being referred to

Troodon resulting in the classic super

smart giant-eyed hansi Raptor taloned

theropod we all know and love some more

specimens were named stenoticosaurus

inequalis in the 1930s so morbids were

given the name paliodontosaurus grandis

Phil Curry's work in the late 1980s is

largely responsible for most of us

growing up on hearing only Troodon he

synonymized paleodontosaurus

stenoticosaurus pectinodon and Troodon

together as it was thought that their

differences were really indicative of

differences in stages of growth rather

than species paleo artist and researcher

Gregory s Paul did what old Paul does

and threw in Sauron authorities of

Mongolia but that didn't stick what also

didn't stick was the combination Curry

did

Recent research has found that the

original material used to define Troodon

formosis was not up to Scientific muster

making the genus and species itself a

dubious one all diagnostic material in

the Troodon genus belong to distinct

Genera and species

stenoncosaurus was resurrected to hold a

bunch of albertan fossils and a bunch

more were used to define a new genus and

species the rather large latinovanatrix

McMaster a there is yet another unnamed

giant troodontid from Cretaceous Alaska

known for now only as the Alaskan

troodont this mystery genus makes up

two-thirds of the dinosaur specimens

recovered from the prince Creek

formation which is unusual as trodantids

are much rarer members of the fauna in

other Rock layers of similar times so

what is the troodant seen in ice World

Dr Nash has noted that he and his team

variously went for Troodon

stenonicasaurus and LA 10 of an Atrix

over the development of the show but

ultimately decided to go for the generic

troadant name Dr Nash says this thing is

human sized the segment is in a cooler

forest in the ice World episode that

also contains segments that take place

in Alaska so it might be safe to assume

this thing is based more on the Alaskan

troodant than any other troodonts

besides maybe Latin of an Atrix the

troad dinosaurs were technically not

dromosaurs or Raptors instead they were

their closest relatives as their closest

relatives they shared a lot of similar

traits like a bird-like pointed skull

long skinny neck huge arms with grasping

hands and giant penacious Wings long

skinny legs ending in Mobile feet with

killer Claws and a long counterbalancing

tail with a veined feather fan at the

end compared to the most well-known

group of dromeiosaurs the eudromeosaurus

the troodons were more lightly built

with longer skinnier legs more grass

missile feed and Claws and skinnier

snouts there were many exceptions

however especially as you get to the big

ones the wings and Feathers present in

prehistoric planets Troodon are lifted

from what is known of dromosaur and bird

feathers Plus trodots have been

preserved with feather Impressions the

troodant is decked out in a white

underbelly black mask and light bluish

gray to dark ashant gray top it also has

a funny little poof of display feathers

on the back of its head like the

Secretary Bird

Behavior

prehistoric planets Troodon is used to

teach the viewer about a unique Behavior

seen in some Modern Birds of Prey

Pyromania this segment begins at the

start of a forest fire in some Northern

Forest Attenborough says that most

animals flee the flame but that the fire

creates opportunities for some animals

we see the theropod get close to the

edge of the fire to look for some food

and it grabs a burning Ember from the

fire in its mouth and carries it a bit

before it's dropping it somewhere else

where it starts a new fire the trodont

uses the fire it just started to flush

out some multi-tuberculate mammals

catches one and then gets the hell out

of the fire abundant fossil charcoal

deposits show that forest fires were

ubiquitous throughout the Cretaceous in

part due to slightly higher atmospheric

carbon and higher temperatures but

perhaps also due to more Dynamic storms

than we see today dinosaurs would have

therefore been quite capable of staying

away from fires and understood what they

meant the stratigraphic Pyromania shown

by is based on Behavior reported in

several Birds of Prey in Northern

Australia they have been observed

picking up Embers and creating new fires

to draw prey where they want them

the exact level of intelligence or even

the sapience of the smartest trodontins

cannot be known for sure so one cannot

so easily assume they were as

intelligent as modern Raptors and could

do the same things they could however

one shouldn't discount the intelligence

of these dinosaurs either because some

animals today that are considered stupid

continue to shock us with intelligence

or novel behaviors the creators and

scientists behind prehistoric Planet

wanted to illustrate how dinosaurs may

have surprised us and illustrate this

interesting piece of archosaur behavior

we see you today

multi-tuberculate design

in the forest fire segment of ice World

these super smart pyromaniac troadant

catches himself a little mammal that

belongs to a grand order called the

multi-tuberculata this group of mammals

were largely rodent-like but with a

bunch of other unique body types and

lasted from the middle Jurassic to the

paleocene with a North American European

Asian Australian and madagascan range

with the possibility of a South American

presence as well with the ferugliotheria

Day family they are characterized by a

set of chompers convergently resembling

those of rodents with huge chisel-like

front teeth a toothless space and cheek

teeth the cheek teeth were often one or

a few huge giant things with multiple

cusps hence the group's name the Critter

in ice worlds is based on simolodon

which surprise surprise has about five

species from the late Cretaceous of

North America but across a huge swath of

it Alberta New Mexico Wyoming Utah

Montana South Dakota Idaho and Alaska

that makes the one we see in ice worlds

either a Canadian or Alaskan form

as far as I can find this is the first

time it has ever been put to screen as

far as I can find and it's limited

samola Don is not known from a lot of

skeletal material so its appearance is

filled in based on close relatives with

better specimens like meniscusis of

Cretaceous North America and a bunch of

Asian forms like bugin Batar crypto

Batar the joke to therium and catap's

Batar so here it is reconstructed like a

cross between a beaver and a marmot with

a long bushy tail Brown and orange fur a

short robust head and little grabby paws

Behavior it gets flushed out of hiding

and promptly eaten what more do you want

from me

an ice-free Antarctica

the second to last segment of ice worlds

takes us to Antarctica the great ice

Island at the bottom of the world back

in the Cretaceous it wasn't covered in

the ice it is today and was instead

quite Lush Antarctica was Ice free

during the Cretaceous Period from 145 to

66 million years ago during this time

period there were forests at both poles

fossils of trees and cold-blooded

reptiles have allowed scientists to

build up a picture of what the climate

was like cold-blooded reptiles need the

warmth of the sun to survive today we

see them basking in the sun to warm up

during the day

at the poles where the sun disappears

during the winter months it must have

been warm enough for them to survive

through the darkness

the mid Cretaceous Period was one of the

warmest intervals of the past 140

million years driven by atmospheric

carbon dioxide levels of around 1 000

parts per million by volume

in the near absence of proximal

geological records from south of the

Antarctic Circle it is disputed whether

Polar Ice could exist under such

environmental conditions a 2020 nature

paper published by an enormous team of

researchers led by Johann clagus used a

sedimentary rock sequence within a rock

core to show that a temperate lowland

rainforest environment existed at a

Paleo latitude of about 82 degrees south

during the tauronian to San Antonio ages

92 to 83 million years ago clay just

said that the core sample is definitely

the southernmost Cretaceous evidence

ever recovered on the planet the core

klages and his team extracted was taken

from seafloor in West Antarctica

approximately 560 miles away from the

South Pole inside the roughly 10 foot

long core extracted in 2017. klages and

his team discovered a fossilized root

network from the ancient temperate

rainforest the yellow strata of the core

sample reps present sandstone and green

is the intertwined root network of the

ancient rainforest clages says that the

heavily connected root network is

pristinely preserved and is more or less

indistinguishable from one you'd find if

you were to drill into modern day Forest

ground on top of the pristine root

Network the core sample also contains

fossilized pollen and spores from the

same period of time which helps to

clarify parameters of the Antarctic

environment during the mid Cretaceous

even further clasius says the mean

temperature of this environment was

probably on par with Northern Italy and

would have been an ideal location for

insects and dinosaurs due to Polar night

the phenomenon that sees the

northernmost and southernmost regions of

Earth plunged Into Darkness for months

at a time thanks to the tilt of Earth's

axis keeping the sun below the Horizon

for more than 24 hours at a time this

ancient rainforest also somehow thrived

for long stretches without the warmth

and energy that the rainforests of today

receive as far as how a rainforest was

able to survive in an area now frigid

and comfort in ice that's all about our

good old Frenemy CO2

according to the paper for an

environment like this to Arise at this

latitude there must have been

1120 to 1 680 parts per million of CO2

in the atmosphere for reference there

are just over 400 parts per million of

CO2 in our current atmosphere that

number is obviously Rising thanks to

human-driven climate change a climate

model simulation generated by klages and

his team show that this environment

would have only been possible with that

exceptionally high amount of CO2 in the

air as well as a vegetated surface

however meaning that even if we took

those super high CO2 levels and applied

them to our modern world's environment

it still wouldn't heat up to those mid

Cretaceous temperatures thanks to our

ice sheets and the fact that they

reflect sunlight and hence heat from the

Earth's surface all of the more reason

to keep our ever endangered ice sheets

intact for as long as possible

scientists also use the shells of fossil

organisms that lived in the ocean called

forminiferons to understand past climate

by analyzing the chemistry of their

shells and knowing the age intervals

when different species lived they can

get an estimate of ocean water

temperature during that time Dr Brian

Huber from the Smithsonian Museum of

Natural History investigates the

Cretaceous with a particular focus on

deep sea sites around Antarctica he

explains former nifera provides some of

the best records because you've got both

bottom dwelling ones living in the

sediments and recording bottom ocean

temperatures and then you've got the

planktonic ones that live in the top 50

meters of the ocean recording

atmospheric temperatures when you couple

those records through time and analyze

the shells from different parts of the

ocean all over the world you get a

really good idea of the evolution of

climate

Uber elaborates that what they found in

the southern ocean around Antarctica was

hard to believe at first because it just

seemed too warm we found temperatures of

30 degrees C at 58 degrees south close

to the Antarctic Circle these high

temperatures occurred during the middle

of the Cretaceous known as the

Cretaceous Hot House a hot greenhouse

effect caused by increased carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere but what

happened in the Cretaceous to create a

world where there were trees and

dinosaurs roaming Antarctica unlike the

barren ice fields of today

Huber explains what we know about the

mid Cretaceous in particular is that we

had much faster rates of seafloor

spreading and so much more volcanic

sources of CO2 Uber and colleagues are

still investigating whether the hot

house occurred as a result of a major

amount of volcanism erupting CO2 and

creating a greenhouse blanket that

warmed the earth a perfect place for

dinosaurs hibernation and occasionally

cool temperatures during the shadows of

winter

antarcto pelta design

the first dinosaur fossils to ever be

found in Antarctica belong to a small

mysterious and fragmentary armored

dinosaur found in 1986 and named and

defined in 2006 as antarto pelta

oliveroi despite being the first found

it was not the first named that honor

goes to the early Jurassic

Cryolophosaurus there is only one known

specimen that is a 15 complete skeleton

including some teeth a chunk of jaw some

isolated skull bones some backbones from

the neck back hips and tail some bits of

the legs and a handful of osteodermal

armor that is not enough to get a great

idea of how the animal looked when it

was alive

when it was first described the missing

bits were filled in with better known

relatives the problem here was that the

animal was quite primitive compared to

the rest of the ankylosaurs with some

analyzes showing it as a primitive

notosaurid or at a primitive but

unplaceable position among the first

ankylosaurs this coupled with the newly

acquired information on ankylosaur's

soft tissues from various dinosaur

mummies helped the prehistoric Planet

team construct their juvenile antarcto

peltas these guys are in my opinion

decked out in some of the blandus color

schemes in the entire show they are a

reddish shade of brown with what seems

to be a lighter yellowier shade on their

undersides most of their Anatomy is

filled in with notice or features so

their skulls are wide and their jaws are

narrow they have moderately long necks

not so stubby Limbs and moderately

killed armor along the neck shoulders

back hips and tail their tails don't end

in a club as clubs are a feature of the

ankylosaurids rather than the Nota

swords instead their tails have keeled

armor on the sides the antarcto peltas

are juveniles so they feature some

rounder and cuter features as seen in

some of the only known complete Juvenile

and kylosaurs a squad of pinnacosaurus

that lost a battle to the sands

then a bombshell paper was dropped in

2021 that totally blasted a hole through

these pouring kylosaurs that was the

description of a bizarre small-bodied

ankylosaur from Chile stegoros this

remarkably complete specimen represents

a short squat in kylosaur with a

turtle-like head long neck and short

stubby tail that had a series of

interlocking and fused cone-shaped

osteoderms that formed a rattle-like

club converging on the ancient

Mesoamerican obsidian battle ax Club the

macawito

stegoros was not alone as it's very well

preserved features told a brand new

chapter and the evolution of the armored

dinosaurs the ankylosauria group must

now be divided into two major groups the

Yuan kylosauria with all the major forms

one might be used to and the

perankilosoria which included stegoros

but also the Australian convarasaurus

and antarcto pelta

in the stegoros paper the authors

compared it directly with antarcto pelta

as they shared the most features and are

each other's closest known relatives if

one were to fill in the missing gaps of

antarcto pelta with its new relatives

which combined have everything antarcto

pelta is missing a quite a different

image emerges

some have gone as far as to reconstruct

it with the same battle Club as stagoros

this may be prescient but most

ankylosaur Genera had unique tail clubs

kunbarasaurus has the most complete

skull so it was used to help fill in the

gaps of stegoros but those skull bones

of antarcto pelta match up quite well

with stegoros so perhaps they all really

did have somewhat similar skulls no one

can account for future discoveries like

this so This depiction May unfortunately

technically fall under the label of the

most inaccurate but not for lack of

trying who cares anyway though the

models look stunning and blend right

into their natural backgrounds

Behavior

in the antarcto pelta segment we see

that there is a trio of juveniles that

stick together and hibernate together

over the dark winter months which are

fast approaching not that there needed

to be that much justification for

juveniles to stick together but the best

known Juvenile and kylosaurus skeletons

were found huddled together having died

in their sleep this death assemblage

belongs to the babies of the Mongolian

pinacosaurus and was used as direct

evidence for this segment these little

guys are Adept diggers making little

Burrows that they hibernate in though

there are no fossilized in kylosaur

Burrows yet their forearm and backbone

Anatomy plus their body shape all

suggest the ability to dig and dig

rather well this is the basis for that

behavior in prehistoric planet

Antarctic hadrosaur

design

when the hero antarcto pelta strikes out

on his own when his usual hibernation

then becomes too crowded he meets a

small herd of hadrosaurs these guys

reuse the Edmontosaurus model with a new

color scheme these guys look to have a

light gray underbelly and a dark reddish

brown top with some intricate markings

of Darker and lighter Shades the snouts

look a touch longer than the

Edmontosaurus model but I can't really

tell too well the narration leaves these

animals as hadrosaurs as there are not

yet any named hadrosaurs known from

Antarctica that being said their

inclusion in this segment is not

hypothetical ornithopod material was

reported in 1991 by J.J hooker AC Milner

and s e k sequiera this material is a

partial skeleton that included a lower

jaw chunks of the upper jaws and skull

neck back and hip vertebrae parts of the

forelimbs and hips the paper that

describe these remains left their

identity as some sort of hips low-fedant

type ornithopod but can considering how

fragmentarian weathered the bones were

and how much can and has changed in

Antarctic paleontology who knows now

then a paper by Judd case James Martin

Dan Chaney Marcelo reguero Sergio

Morenci Sergio santilano and Michael

Woodburn published in 2000 through the

Journal of vertebrate paleontology

described a single dinosaur too as that

of a hadrosaur that tooth only tells you

that hadrosaurs were present in

Antarctica at the very end of the

Cretaceous so what type is entirely

unknown considering the near Universal

distribution of the flat-headed

cyrolophene hadrosaurs it's a good guess

that Antarctica had some edmontosaur

like hadrosaurs but considering the

isolated nature of Antarctica and the

weirdness of what has been found already

it's even more likely that whatever was

living there at the time was Bonkers

weird still better for the prehistoric

Planet team to have gotten the

conservative route

Behavior they look at our main character

Antarctica pelta what more do you want

from me

pachy rhinosaurus

design

Pachyrhinosaurus is one of only two

Genera of the ceratopsidae family that

didn't have any horns on its head in

place of horns were pads of rectangular

bony bosses achillasaurus is the other

and the closest relative of

Pachyrhinosaurus the thick-nosed lizard

itself was described back in 1950 based

on a couple of skulls found in 1945 and

46 in Alberta

since then numerous specimens have been

found and described including Mass

mortality bone beds three species and

even juveniles

the Pachyrhinosaurus that appears in the

ice world's episode of prehistoric

planet is based on the Pachyrhinosaurus

protarum species which was the most

recently named in 2012 and the smallest

and endemic to Alaska the prehistoric

Planet Pachyrhinosaurus is decked out in

a bunch of colors and patterns that are

all desaturated so you don't get a good

idea of just how colorful they are

unless you are looking very closely they

are dark Grays like Tans Browns Reds

whites light Grays plus some brighter

Reds oranges and greens on the face and

frill it seems that the males have the

bright green and red splotches on their

faces and Frills while the females have

red and greenish white vertical stripes

the juveniles are more boring in color

with a light grayish tan underbelly and

reddish brown top with dark gray stripes

and some faint markings on the face

prehistoric planets Pachyrhinosaurus has

horizontal ungulate-like pupils as

opposed to rounded bird-like ones or the

vertical slits of many nocturnal and the

urinal predators

more vertically oriented pupil shapes

are best for animals that live or hunt

close to the ground as the shape offers

them a highly focused field of vision to

provide accurate depth and distance

perception these animals also usually

hunt at night so having the vertical

slit allows them to narrow the slit

during the day to prevent damage from

Bright Light during the day and open up

to see more at night animals like foxes

house cats Crocs and geckos typically

have this pupil shape prey animals

typically have horizontal slick pupils

that provide a wider field of vision

this gives them an advantage in seeing

nearby Predators although their visual

field is larger their vision is not very

sharp only allowing them to vaguely see

the surrounding area this pupil type can

be seen on animals like goats and

antelopes but is also present on all

sorts of animals whether they be prey or

Predators larger predatory animals like

lions and humans will have circular

pupils these animals hunt higher off the

ground and in packs and are generally

more intelligent this shape allows an

even focus across the entire visual

field but it also doesn't allow good

coping with sudden changes in light as

it cannot constrict as tightly

for those interested crescent-shaped

pupils are typically found in sea

creatures like dolphins this shape

allows for a wide visual field and

reduces the effects of light Distortion

by water these animals can search for

both predators and prey with a huge

Advantage w-shaped pupils are also found

in sea creatures like cuttlefish these

types of pupils likely evolved from

horizontally shaped pupils but they open

in Darker environments like the deep sea

this shape allows light to enter the eye

from many angles and provides excellent

Acuity underwater and decreases light

distortions similar to crescent-shaped

eyes none of these shapes are directly

related to whether an animal eats meat

or plants because there are plenty of

both that have every shape I went over

but they often occur in certain animals

over others the shape has much more to

do with the animal's lifestyle which of

course can overlap with what stuff the

animal eats so the prehistoric Planet

team gave their pachy rhinosaurus

horizontal pupils to help differentiate

it from the Triceratop shops and to

illustrate a scientific point about the

differences in eyes perhaps these pachy

rhinosauruses need a wider field of view

because they spend more time in open

areas than Triceratops the

pachyrhinosaurs are also decked out in

quills on their backs and Tails this is

not 100 speculation as it is based on

the presence of a bush of quills on the

tail of the very primitive ceratopsian

satakasaurus this justification was used

for something of a paleoart meme

throughout the 2010s that saw plenty of

paleo artists give their serotopsians

quilled tail bushes this even made it

onto a bunch of dinosaur figures the

issue here is that the tacosaurus comes

from outside of the Sarah topsaday group

that contains all the traditional horned

dinosaurs was one of the earliest

members of the greater ceratopsia ran on

its hind legs and carried a frilless but

horned head it would be quite a stretch

to think that one tail brush feature

would have continued on to the rest of

the more advanced Sarah topsians when

none have yet been found but skin

Impressions have and without quills

that being said the prehistoric Planet

team's justification was that it cannot

be rolled out that ceratopsians would

surprise us with the variability in

outside coverings paleo artist and

paleontologist Mark Whitten even

speculatively toyed with the idea that

the northernmost pachy rhinosaurus

species were covered in Shaggy fur-like

feathers to help them insulate against

the winter temperatures

foreign

Behavior

Dr Nash made sure to explain that what

we see take place in the ice worlds

episode is not necessarily what these

animals dealt with all the time both the

Pachyrhinosaurus and the nanosaurus were

likely more adapted to live in forested

environments not freezing Tundra as in

many modern mammals such as mammoths

musk ox and wolves there still would

have been plenty of openings where snow

accumulated during the coldest months

with snowy blizzards and temps reaching

well below freezing this is what the

team decided to show just to teach

viewers that it was possible how did the

giant Pachyrhinosaurus survive in these

cold conditions I mentioned before that

some paleo artists toyed with the

speculative idea that some may have been

covered in Shaggy feathers but this does

not look like a possibility given the

fossil data that exists Dr nage points

out that these non-insulated dinosaurs

may have dealt with the cold with

behavior like taking shelter migrating

to deeper woodlands and huddling

together for body heat on top of this

based on birds Crocs reptiles and

convergent mammalian traits dinosaurs

probably had a lot more fat than is

often depicted their skeletons seem to

suggest that they most likely stored

their fat in their rear ends tails and

over their hips rather than as a thick

layer of blubber all over their bodies

but much of this is still up to

interpretation

since dinosaurs definitely did live in

the far north and the far north

definitely did see freezing temps and

precipitation the dinosaurs that lived

there had to have coped so perhaps they

had more body fat overall to keep them

warm than dinosaurs in warmer climates

captive giant mammals known for living

in very warm climates like rhinos

elephants and hippos have all been

maintained in outdoor freezing

temperatures on occasion though not

ideal and bad practice for any long

amount of time it shows that even these

animals can endure quite low

temperatures we see a pair of pachy

rhinosaurus shove each other around with

their Frills and bosses it has been long

hypothesized that ceratopsians used

their horns and Frills in physical and

or visual intra-specific displays

some evidence exists in the form of

damage to the skull that could only be

caused by the horns of another

ceratopsian and the bulk of this

evidence is present in the remains of

Triceratops this is no surprise as it is

one of the most well-sampled and

well-known ceratopsians it's not far out

to think Pachyrhinosaurus they have done

something similar

the last bit of behavior we see the

Pachyrhinosaurus do is form a massive

Circle once they are scared out of the

woods and into the open by an

approaching pack of nanoxaurus there had

been an hypothesis about ceratopsians

floated around for a while in the 80s

90s and again in the odds of

ceratopsians forming a ring around the

most vulnerable members of the herd so

that only the sharp armored heads of the

adults faced any attackers in much the

same way that muskox will protect

themselves against wolves it's not a bad

hypothesis except there's no real way to

test it this sort of circle defense is

replicated in prehistoric Planet but is

edited a bit from the moscocks in being

far looser and more so the herd

Gathering up for defense rather than his

strategic heads and horns out sort of

thing

nanosaurus design

we are now at the final design shown off

in the ice worlds and North American

episodes of prehistoric Planet the

nanoxaurus this polar Tyrannosaur was

named and described in 2014 based on an

assortment of fragmentary skull material

that most closely resembled the more

advanced tyrannosaurians such as the

despletto sorini tribe heavily built

medium to large sized Predators such as

the three desplatosaurus species and

thanatotheristes the remains of nanox

source come from the same geologic

formation as the small Alaskan

Pachyrhinosaurus species Edmontosaurus

and the Alaskan trodont interestingly

The Remains were originally thought to

belong to an animal about five to six

meters 16 to 20 feet in length and 1100

to 2000 pounds this would make it a

miniature Tyrannosaur of the north about

half the size of tyrannosaurus this sort

of goes against bergman's rule that

states that animals tend to get bigger

the cooler the climate or closer to the

poles they are later work based on

larger teeth from an older specimen and

undescribed skeletal material would put

the animal at least at 7 meters 23 feet

in length this puts it in the same size

class as other Northern Tyrannosaurs

such as Albertosaurus if they could

reach those sizes as adults then eight

to nine meters 26 to 30 feet is not out

of the question and nanox Source really

wasn't a diminutive animal

prehistoric planet seems to put Dynamic

Source in a middle ground as they are

taller than their Pachyrhinosaurus prey

but are far lighter and more gracile

than the other Tyrannosaurs in the

series

Dr Nash has noted that the animals they

use in the program are still a touch

small so waves it away as them not being

fully grown let's be honest that is a

perfectly fine explanation as the

narration never once mentions their age

nor exact dimensions the show gives them

a light off-white underbelly and a dark

gray and brownish gray top they have

pleasant orange and brownish orange

vertical patches on their faces and

across their plumage one thing that is

entirely speculation but which is also

rooted in some hard evidence is the

feathery Pelt the nanoxaurus carries

they are covered in fluffy simple

feathers from the top and back of the

head to the end of the tail the arms and

the thighs no Tyrannosaurus have ever

been preserved with feather Impressions

but something that was only a touch

smaller than nanosaurus that was related

to it was preserved with feathers you

tyrannus uteranus is a pro ceratosaurid

which still belongs to the greater

tyrannosauroid group that nanaxors and

every other Tyrannosaur belongs to

uteranus reached about 30 feet in length

and its fossils have feather Impressions

it's technically the largest extinct

animal preserved with feathers

if something like this Critter could be

that big and have feathers and be a

tyrannosauroid and lived in cool

climates then it is highly likely that

nanax sores did as well and that is the

hypothesis Illustrated here in

prehistoric planet

there have been some small patches of

skin Impressions from Tyrannosaurs

tarmosaurus Albertosaurus the

splitosaurus and Gorgosaurus but all of

them are in places that do not

necessarily negate the presence of some

form of other integumentary structures

such as fine hair-like feathers in the

big forms or those forms that lived in

warm climates or dinofuz in the colder

climate forms both feathers and the type

of scales seen in Tyrannosaurus can

co-exist on the same animal there is

even direct evidence in modern birds

that feathers might sometimes erupt

directly out of scales though I wouldn't

pin any hypotheses on that crazy side

note the scales on the feet or legs of

living birds may even be modified

feathers rather than being the same

scale structures seen in non-avian

Dinosaurs the one thing I have and

continue to find odd about the theropod

dinosaurs in this show is that their

elaborate keratin crests and ridges on

their heads are always so drab the major

majority of the keratinous crest of

modern dinosaurs tend to have some color

to them the obvious exception is

everyone's favorite dinosaur reference

the cassowary so I'm not saying that

every single dinosaur with keratinous

Crest had to have bright colors on them

but it would have been aesthetically

pleasing to see some variety in that

department personally we do see some

blues on the ulura Titans Crest I quite

like that one could easily excuse the

boring theropod horns by the animals

being outside of breeding season or

something super minor nitpick on my part

specifically

Behavior

fanatic Source pack flush out the

pachyrinosaurus heard from the woods and

into the open as a blizzard begins not

much can be said here for Behavior as

they are not shown having coordinated

wolf-like hunting strategies this is an

unlikely behavior for any dinosaur to

have anyway the nanox source and the

herd have to take a break from life and

death to wait out the blizzard and then

they resume successfully isolating and

taking down an old bull Pachyrhinosaurus

the science used for this show is

groundbreaking the speculative nature of

a lot of the stuff shown is equal parts

necessary and representative of the real

world

two of the main Consultants doctors Mark

Whitten and Darren Nash helped to bring

forth the modern dinosaur Renaissance

with their little paperback Landmark

book all yesterdays I've made a two-part

series of their work here on edge that

you can view to get a really good idea

of the kinds of visions that team was

trying to convey with their work they

were not trying to say that speculation

should be taken as gospel or that those

who cautioned conservativeness in

reconstructing long dead animals are

wrong instead their intention was to

show the world that the animals of the

past are as the animals of today gross

complex and alive

the world around us has only been around

us for one to two million years before

us the modern Paradigm has been around

for 66 million years before that there

was an unfathomable expanse of time

184 million years of time if I wanted to

really scramble your brain there is an

even more unfathomable expanse of time

before that but we're talking dinosaurs

right now for as alien as certain parts

of the Mesozoic Era may seem the laws of

nature retained their Stranglehold

animals of the Mesozoic had a much

longer period of time to get gross and

complex so to think so narrowly as to

only reconstruct the animals of the past

as closely as their bones can say is to

completely ignore everything we know

about life in fact because of the much

longer period of time that the dinosaurs

had it is nearly mathematically

impossible to think they didn't get into

weirder stuff than we see today this

seems to have been the driving force

behind prehistoric Planet at least with

the consultants and animators I mean we

all know favro just wanted them to act

like animals and look pretty no shame or

shade there

so what did you think of prehistoric

Planet this video is way too Hefty to

only now get into the music

cinematography and directing or my

criticisms therein I have just gone

through every single aspect regarding

the science behind this show based on

the very sparse information we have

right now Darren's tweets and the

uncovered segments can only tell us so

much I think I can speak for everyone

that we are eagerly awaiting a behind

the scenes documentary on the

documentary in the meantime we can only

imagine

[Music]

I do apologize for not getting to the

rest of the series until the near

premiere of season two but titties one

of these at least it might get you to

relook at season 1 before we get more

goodies

for more interesting stories about

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thanks for watching

thank you

[Music]

thank you

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