=?UTF-8?Q?Questions_on_BBC=E2=80=99s_Prehistoric_Planet_Episode_2_=28D?
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All on Mon Jul 25 11:26:46 2022
As Attenborough states before every episode, “we now know SO MUCH about the world of dinosaurs… this is their story”. The confidence of that statement - combined with Attenborough’s formidable reputation amongst laymen - makes me jittery about
any complete speculation being show without delimiting it with advisories. Are my jitters unfounded?
Anyway, episode 2 - “Deserts” - begins with a massive group of male Dreadnoughtus - portrayed walking with necks relatively erect, like brachiosaurs - wandering far from their forests, plodding through the desolate South American desert to where a
large group of females awaits them - in the middle of nowhere - to breed. Rows of what the show itself acknowledges to be “bizarre” balloon-like “gular air sacs” inflate up and down along the length of those immense necks, each allegedly
connected to a series of “bellows” inside their neck bones. Battles for mating competition amongst males seems to be based on walrus-like behavior (I think?) with the massive creatures rearing up on their hind legs, falling forward until they slam
into each other, followed by their relatively vertical necks slapping into each other as heads bite at each other’s necks. In the meantime, grappling forelimb spikes stab at each other’s torsos.
What sort of evidence would be required to ascertain such behavior? Is there evidence for mass mating gatherings of Dreadnoughtus in South American deserts? I know that titanosaur vertebrae were extensively pneumaticized, but to interpret that as a “
bellows” system for inflating gular air sacs along the neck? If these sacs were self-described as “bizarre”, then wouldn’t the “extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence” standard have to be applied in regards to their portrayal? Is there
osteological evidence of inter-species impacts and injuries of the sort portrayed here?
In the next segment, what looks to me to be a spectacularly GORGEOUS rendering of a Mononykus darts about through the desert to come to dead branch where it uses its specialized hearing adaptations to detect the sound of termites within. Specialized
claws punch through the dead wood and a tongue - “twice the length of its head” - darts into the branch’s interior to grab up termites. Can we identify the length of tongues from the structure of the skull and neck? Anyway, the fidgety little
creature absolutely suspends all disbelief in its rendering - especially when its feathers get soaked in a rare desert downpour - until it zips around a corner without banking at all. Not as severe as the sharp turns seen by the “compys” of Jurassic
Park II, nevertheless, I find myself wondering whether such a small, agile theropod might have to LEAN INTO their turns as opposed to taking them utterly upright? A tantalizing glimpse of a flock enantiornithines appears in the foreground, completely
blurred in front of our Mononykus stalking from the background. Our hero’s attempt to catch one completely fails - along with any hope of a closer look at a rendering of an “anti-bird”. What, specifically, was backwards about these birds? I never
fully figured that out.
There’s a brief segment of a desert watering hole in which an enormous variety of dinosaurs are gathered shoulder-to-shoulder, reaching over and under each other to take a sip. Even the arrival of a Tarbosaurus doesn’t break up the gathering; the
Tarbosaurus is shown having to scoop water into its lower jaw to drink. Is there evidence of such mass gatherings of all sorts of species in the same watering hole? There must, I assume, be evidence that Tarbosaurs didn’t have a tongue or any other
alternate, more efficient means of drinking.
Barbaridactylus are shown congregating in isolated desert cliff plateaus, landing on their hind legs and competing for females. Have massive congregations of these creatures on desert plateaus been found? One male is shown chasing a competing male and
shooting it down” by nipping and tearing at its legs and wings until it falls from the sky and crashes in a heap. Have such injuries been established? They also make the assertion that females seek the maximum number of sexual partners in order to
breed the fittest young. Are there statistics of this sort to back this up? Wouldn’t such a lack of selectivity would be a disadvantage?
The final segment takes place in the gypsum dunes of South America. The hadrosaur Secernosaurus is shown with round pupils. I found this curious; I would assume these dinosaurs would have open range, herbivore lifestyle that would lead to the sort of
horizontal pupils you see in cows, horses and lambs. I suppose this could be tested: these sorts of eyes require muscles that allow the eyes to rotate so when the animal tilts its head for feeding, it can keep the horizontal slits aligned with the
horizon. Perhaps such muscles would result in attachment sites on skulls? Anyway, the Secernosaurs, like most of the dinosaurs in the series, have inner eyelids that blink at right angles to their outer eyelids. Wikipedia says it appears to be likely -
but not yet a sure thing - that Secernosaurus lived in these vicious deserts, and along with that the show asserts their ability to migrate using stars for navigation. They also talk about their ability to hear ultra-low frequency sounds: clearly the
skulls of hadrosaurs display all sorts of mysterious adaptations; would such hearing manifest itself osteologically? Finally, they show Secernosaurus licking their own skin for evaporated moisture as they move from arid air to the moister air of the
coast.
Thanks for any feedback you have on the questions I’ve posed here! Clearly I have a lot to learn…
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