When I saw the trailers for yesterday’s episode of Primeval I wondered whether they were going to give any explanation of how the giant arthropods could survive in our atmosphere, and pleasantly they did – oxygen rich air leaking through the rift anomaly from the Carboniferous.
Then they go and spoil it by having the good looking bloke use a blowtorch right in front of the rift anomaly with no side effects what so ever. If the oxygen levels were high enough to affect the soldiers then wouldn’t any flames also be affected?
Oh, and they doubled the size of Arthropleura. There could be a larger species that simply hasn’t been found in the fossil record yet…
Science aside, it’s fun tea time nonsense, but the geek is very annoying and only Douglas Henshaw shows any signs of actually being able to act.
One last thing. We’ve all been conned. On the ITV web site for the series there’s a list of creatures. Have a look and see if you spot whats missing:
- Coelurosauravus
- Scutosaurus
- Gorgonopsid
- Giant Spiders
- Arthropleura
- Mosasaur
- Hesperonis
- Dodo
- Parasite
- Pteranodon
- Agnurognathus
- Predator
Not one of those is a dinosaur. No dinosaurs. Weren’t we promised dinosaurs? But all we get is arthropods, synapsids, and birds (I know birds are dinosaurs). Give us some proper dinos!
Was it the raptors in Jurasic Park that people said were twice the size of all the ones from the fossil records and then they started digging up ones the size of the ones from the film? Clearly the fosil record is being faked by TV and film companies to support these shows and soon
Arthropleura will be found that match. It’s all a conspiracy 😉
The Jurassic Park Velociraptors in the book were based on Deinonychus which are larger. The movie versions were portrayed as larger even than Deinonychus, but still smaller than Utahraptor which is the really big one discovered after the first film came out. An intermediate between Deinonychus and Utahraptor is quite possible.
By the third film they’re referred to as just ‘raptors all the time, presumably both for faster flowing dialogue and to obfuscate the exact fossil identification.
Don’t forget Bambiraptor, Microraptor and Megaraptor, Variraptor if we are listing all the Dromaeosaurids.
There are at least 5 more.
Megaraptor has been reclassified as a Carnosaur according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaraptor