The Scientific Accuracy of Walking With Dinosaurs - Episode 1: New Blood

I loved walking with Dinosaurs I must have watched it for the first time when I was about three or four not long after it originally aired and since then I've rewatched it again and again and again as the years went on and I watched it more though it became apparent that certain parts of this series had not stood the test of time too well as paleontology and technology progressed but to me at least this still never took away from the magic of walking with dinosaurs as of October 2019 it's been exactly 20 years since this program first came to TV and much has changed since then I've seen a few requests of people asking me to talk about this series and given the timing this seems like a pretty good opportunity to do that have I been a lot smarter about this and far more prepared it would have been pretty fun to do one of these videos a week for all six episodes as the date of the 20th birthdays went by but I didn't actually realize until too late when they had first aired nevertheless here we are we're going to start with just the first episode for now looking at the accuracies inaccuracies and overall effectiveness and enjoyment of it but if you like this sort of video I'd be more than happy to cover every episode of the original series and perhaps eventually even some of the spin-offs and specials as I've already made apparent I really do love this series but it's definitely not perfect and so any criticisms I make of this wonderful program are made out of love for it and respect to all those involved as I'll be forever grateful there's such a unique and truly special series the likes of which had never been seen before and still to this day has never quite been seen again was produced helping a great deal to nurture and inspire my love of dinosaurs and the history of life on Earth despite the many criticisms walking with dinosaurs has received from paleontologists most of which has admittedly completely valid due to his inaccuracies and fairy spectra Tauri nature in some parts I think the thing this series has done so well is in its portrayal of these creatures which before this point had only really been shown as vicious monsters when on screen has real believable animals that weren't just constantly hunting and being hunted but performing other behaviors you could quite easily see in a nature documentary about modern animals this is done much better in this show compared to many others and for all his errors and controversial decisions at least it treats its subjects as animals so here we go the scientific accuracy of walking with dinosaurs Episode one new blood this episode takes place during the Late Triassic period being based on discoveries made in the chimney formation and with the episode stating that is specifically occurs in Arizona there are three main story focuses within this installment that of the Coelophysis the cynodonts and the post asuka's although several other prehistoric animals are also featured such as plus serious Plateosaurus and the pterosaur patina Saurus let's begin this examination of the show's accuracies and inaccuracies by looking at the main dinosaur star of the first episode Coelophysis now clearly one of the most noticeable features of this dinosaur design as the lack of any sort of feathery integrant to be fair there is currently no direct evidence of feathers in the specific theropod however given how widespread has been found that feathery filaments likely were amongst dinosaurs and even probably among other arcus ores it would be a reasonable assumption to make that Coelophysis presumably possessed feathers to some extent but despite the first direct evidence of feathers and non-avian dinosaurs having already been published and the time walking with dinosaurs was being created it would have been even more speculative at that point to assume that feathers were that basal to theropods perhaps a few sparse filaments could have been a nice touch although apparently adding any fur or feathers to a model significantly increased the cost and difficulty of animating and compositing the creature so it's understandable that this was avoided in this case another major anatomical inaccuracy present in the Coelophysis design is of course the fact that the hands are pronated something we know that theropods were incapable of doing due to the way the bones in their arms and wrists were articulated instead of the palms of the hands facing backwards they should in fact face inwards and towards each other the coloration of the Coelophysis in this episode while obviously being completely speculative is nevertheless a very striking and attractive looking design as are many of the colors of the creatures in the show producing an iconic look for this dinosaur especially with the red markings on the head however the designs failed to take into account the well-documented sexually dimorphic nature of this dinosaur since so many fossils of Coelophysis have been found this has allowed paleontologists to realize that there are two stink t'v morphs of these animals with a more gray cell form being found to probably represent females and a more robust form representing male individuals but in new blood all the Coelophysis models are exactly the same and their proportions another slightly odd error is the fact that this episode is said to take place 220 million years ago when in fact the Coelophysis genus is only known from rocks as old as 216 million years the behavior of Coelophysis seen in this episode has brought about some controversies - as towards the end is shown that one of the adults has cannibalized a youngster this behavior is based on fossils of these dinosaurs that were claimed to show the bones of juveniles preserved inside the body cavities of fully grown individuals however later research showed that these particular specimens in fact contains the bones of crop Adela morphs and not the bones of their own species additionally one of these specimens was also found to have just been deposited on top of the bones thought to belong to a juvenile and therefore they were never actually stomach contents although an argument can still be made for cannibalism in Coelophysis as a paper from 2009 described new fossil evidence that preserved what was interpreted by the paleontologists as regurgitated material around the head and neck area of an adult individual and among the bone fragments identified in this region are some bits of skull and several teeth the anatomy of which look identical to that of a juvenile Coelophysis so this theropod still quite possibly practiced cannibalism and therefore this behavior shown in walking of dinosaurs might still be valid just not based on the right fossils next we'll move on to another of the stars of this first episode host asuka's luckily unlike Coelophysis this animal was in fact actually around 220 million years ago living from 221 million years ago to about two hundred and three million years ago and has indeed been found in the formation in Arizona this is another iconic and beautiful looking animal design however the major flaw in this reconstruction is how it is portrayed as a quadrupedal creature described in this episode as two front-heavy to run on two legs the locomotion of this akka saw was disagreed on by paleontologists around the time the episode was being made with an older publication suggesting that post asuka's and other members of its family may have been capable of bipedalism then a more recent paper at the time of walking with dinosaurs production finding that the massive pectoral girdle among other features of the four limbs suggested the animal actively utilized as front legs in its locomotion but they also noted how this didn't rule out to the possibility of post asuka's also walking on two legs sometimes however in 2013 there was a study published which thoroughly examines the known body skeleton of post asuka's which is actually represented by some fairly complete remains discovering that there are all kinds of characteristics indicating it was likely an obligate biped meaning it only ever walked on two legs this evidence included the limb proportions the hands being much smaller than the feet the very reduced digits on the hands and features of the spine a lot of these anatomical details were found to be pretty similar to many theropod dinosaurs which were mostly all bipedal and therefore the study concluded that post asuka's would likely have been a biped - so this is definitely a bit of outdated paleontology in the show but to be fair there are a few scenes where the animal is shown rearing up on its hind legs likely paying recognition to the ongoing debate at the time as to how it moved but science and our knowledge of prehistory has progressed and we can now say with more certainty that post asuka's wouldn't have moved like it does here this brings us to the other main issue to do with post asuka's and oh what a controversy it is in this episode one of these animals is shown urinating oh no this generated a storm of angry people complaining about the supposed inaccuracy but as it turns out these objections are actually not particularly valid the problem that many people had with this behavior being shown is that it's a widely held belief that living arcus oars that is birds and crocodilians don't actually urinate at all instead expelling all their waste at once and secreting solid uric acid and not urea containing fluids so the post asuka's another member of the arcus oars shouldn't be producing all that urine however crocodilians and birds do actually make both of these compounds in their bodies as do mammals but unlike mammals modern arcus oars generally produce more uric acid than urea whereas we produce more urea when birds and crocodilians release the white colored uric acid there is in fact almost always some water fluid containing urea that accompanies it and sometimes these animals will store a great deal of this liquid inside their colons and intestines before then releasing everything out of their clickers at once in birds this often appears as a white colored stream of liquid due to the white solid uric acid being mixed in but in crocodilians it can be quite clear and even yellowish as the post asuka's urine is in this episode there are many videos across the internet of crocodilians and ostriches especially urinating that aren't difficult to find and in many cases the birds will urinate before then immediately defecating in addition there's actually some interesting trace fossil evidence of non-avian extinct dinosaurs potentially urinating with one site in Colorado preserving a large depression amongst the trackway that looks very similar to the shape produced by pouring water on to sand from the approximate height of a large dinosaur another localities in Brazil where two traces clearly made by liquid pouring onto sand dunes were found and the only things around in this area to pour liquid from a large height would have been dinosaurs anyway I certainly ended up doing more research into orcas or urination than I expected I would ever have to do but as you can see the urinating poster circus isn't actually as far-fetched as some people thought it was since the living members of its lineage do indeed urinate and there's some evidence that even extinct dinosaurs probably did too so while controversial this behavior is in fact entirely plausible though clearly it would have been a waste of water still next we come to the tragic tale of the cynodonts the struggle of these animals to survive and protect their young throughout the episode is perhaps one of the best examples of a particular individual or individuals being used to tell a compelling story in a series and the outcome of their predicament in which they're forced to eat their own babies is both heartbreaking and unexpected but unfortunately they shouldn't actually be there at all while never specifying which genus these Saladin's belong to in the show in one of the accompanying books they're apparently referred to thrinaxodon this genus however is in the completely wrong time and place to be featured in this episode as these animals are only known from about 250 million years ago in South Africa and Antarctica not 220 million years ago in North America however apparently the cynodonts shown in the episode are based on the fact that some sana Dawn's teeth are known from the chin deformation though whatever animal they belonged to is currently unnamed so the design of the mysterious chimney cynodonts for this episode is heavily based on what we understand for an accident to have looked like even though it did not live here something that walking with dinosaurs definitely got right with the cynodonts though is that these animals were certainly burrowing creatures there is a 251 million year old partial burrow cast from south africa which preserves the entire skeleton of a throne accident inside presenting the earliest known evidence of burrowing in sauna Don's and also suggesting that this behavior may have developed as a response to the dramatic changes in climate that occurred during the massive extinction event just before the Triassic another pretty nice detail with the sauna dance is the presence of whiskers while still speculative to some degree this feature is based on evidence found in the fossils of this animal with a publication from 1961 that examines the cranial Anatomy offered through an accident finding that it possessed many small openings in the nasal bones of the skull which is possibly indicative of sense organs such as whiskers clearly the extent of hair coverage over the rest of the body is complete speculation in this model but the amounts shown is not unreasonable the assertion that the cynodonts laid eggs is also pretty accurate since this would probably have been the ancestral state for the group as indicated by the fact that today the monotremes still lay eggs while only therian mammals give live birth this brings us next to + serious these creatures are indeed in the correct time and place for the episode living about 220 million years ago and being known from fossils found in the formation in Arizona despite this though it's possible that plus Eris would not actually have been a very common sight at this time this is because although known from several hundred fossil specimens most placeas remains are concentrated in a single location in Arizona called the place' risk wory outside of this locality though these dicen add-ons uh pretty rare meaning is likely that this high number of individuals represents an unusual accumulation of this species and in reality they would have been a scarce site and possibly not as ubiquitous as shown in walking with dinosaurs though to be fair the so it is following a single herd so the abundance of Perseus is probably excusable as for the look of the creatures luckily many specimens of this animal are known from that quarry so the reconstructions in the episodes generally look quite good though obviously some hair coverage would have been likely in the species and in da cynodonts and even if the rhapsode in general as indicated by discoveries of coprolites from their predators that contain traces of hair another thing that's said in this episode is that plus Sirius is one of the last of its kind an endangered species however it's now known that Dyson Eden's actually continued to exist for a while longer with species such as the very recently named Lisa wikia being found in even later Triassic rocks a criticism that people have pointed out in the past is that there's evidence that Dyson Adonis had in fact even survived until the Cretaceous sighting very fragmentary fossils found in Australia however these have been recently determined to more likely belong to a Cenozoic mammal so yes the Dyson adults were dying out it just wouldn't have happened as soon as the episode seems to indicate there's also a species of pterosaur that makes an appearance in this first chapter named as patina soros while this reptile was another species that indeed lived 220 million years ago the fossil remains of putana soros are only known from Europe not North America where the episode is set however in fairness Kenneth does mention how it is an exotic hunter from far and wide likely showing how it was understood that this creature lived in a different localities and would have had to travel over a massive distance across the supercontinent Pangea to reach the region where Coelophysis was living still it's highly unlikely that this pterosaur would have come into contact with the other animals shown in the episode a nice bit of behavior is demonstrated here when the patina Saurus preys on ancient dragonflies an action that is quite plausible for this animal as it is indeed thought to have been insectivorous as for the actual model of the reptile the head is probably a little bit smaller than it really would have been but there's also an interesting detail of a light coat of pikmin fibers on this animal the hairy filaments that pretty much all pterosaurs would have possessed in life while probably not nearly as dense as it should be it's cool to see that this bit of anatomy had been incorporated into the animals design adding to the authenticity of its look other parts of the pterosaurs Anatomy on not as accurate though with wingtips that appear much too pointed whereas it's now understood that pterosaurs likely had more rounded wingtips than those shown here additionally when the patina Saurus lands its wings fold in from the sides which would not have been possible instead pterosaur wings would have folded in from the back where the metacarpals rotating and causing the digits to point more towards the rear finally there's the Plateosaurus --is which turn up at the end of the episode unfortunately these animals aren't in the right time either as the genus only appeared 214 million years ago and most remains of Plateosaurus are known from Europe however there is some evidence of this genesis presence in greenland as fragments of bones are very similar looking to this dinosaur have been recovered in East Greenland and consequently referred to the genus the anatomy of the dinosaur shown in this episode has become quite a bit outdated too since the animals walk on all fours here at the time the episode was produced there was still a bit of a debate over how Plateosaurus moved about however many paleontologists thoughts that a mostly quadrupedal lifestyle was very likely with the occasional switch to bipedalism when the animals moved faster the reconstructions shown in the episode seemed to reflect the science of the time showing most individuals moving quadrupedal II but also having one of them briefly rare up onto two legs but since the episode aired there has been a complete change in how we understand Plateosaurus locomotion a study published in 2007 discovered that this dinosaur was actually incapable of pronating his hands due to the way the Fallen bones articulated with each other which were manipulated by paleontologists to see what their actual range of motion would have been without the ability to pronate his hands Plateosaurus would have been forced to walk only on its hind limbs a discovery further supported by the fact that like in post asuka's as we discussed earlier the arms were much shorter than the legs and when digital models of Plateosaurus were constructed it was found that the centre of mass was positioned right over the back legs this also means the Plateosaurus walked on two legs no matter the speed it was traveling at and probably did not walk on all fours at any point except possibly as hatchlings there may also be a slight issue with some shrink wrapping of the Plateosaurus design since at some angles you can sort of see the outline of some skull openings such as the ant orbital finesse though it doesn't seem to be a major problem and again these animals have a particularly nice-looking color scheme that gives the creatures a very iconic appearance before we end this video I also want to quickly discuss the more entertainment focused side of things - firstly the music now I should probably leave it to Matt to discuss it more fully but personally I love every track in the episode as they're all incredibly effective at adding to the sense of a harsh and unforgiving environments that the episode concentrates on so much and then of course the iconic and triumphant time of the Titans theme that plays at the end as the Plateosaurus arrived in late episodes especially the beautiful but tragic giant of the skies the music then gets even better in my opinion and has to be one of the very best things that helps to make this series so special another excellent part of this series is the narration with the original by Sir Kenneth Branagh adding so much to the magic of the show with his brilliant shifts in tone perfectly portraying the emotions of the scene the Discovery Channel version replaces Branagh with Avery Brooks and though I haven't seen it before I've always been a fan of Benjamin Sisko so I'm sure he's excellent as well of course one of walking with dinosaurs greatest achievements was his use of CGI which although in some cases doesn't always look that great today was truly revolutionary at the time of its production heavily inspired by the success and incredible looking dinosaurs of Jurassic Park it was always going to be a challenge to create approximately three hours of dinosaur footage for this documentary as opposed to just the six minutes of CG dinosaurs in the film but they managed to pull it off originally it was planned for walking of dinosaurs to focus more on the scenery plants and insects with only the occasional animated dinosaur making an appearance but luckily they ended up filling the programme with dinosaurs once they found a cheaper way to do the CGI an interesting point mentioned by the creator Tim Hannes himself is that the show sort of tricks the audience in many ways into believing they saw what they wanted to see without actually explicitly showing it as a way to reduce the cost of the CGI I think an example of this from the first episode would be the poster sucrose attack on a placeas the actual action is blocked by the body of the Dyson Adhan but you know what's happening behind it and can imagine the bloody incident without even seeing the biting it still doesn't take away from the value of the seer but it's an interesting thing to note another random fact that Tim Haines mentioned which is pretty interesting is that when the Coelophysis walks into frame before hunts the lungfish you can see how it steps in behind all these small piles of dirt on the ground that's because it looked like the dinosaur was actually floating and the feet weren't touching the soil property when it was first to composite it so they decided to hide the feet with the piles just an amusing point I thought you might find interesting anyway the use of animatronic puppet is always good too and the models look very nice and every shot therein understandably often looking better than the CGI my favorite from this episode has to be the dying post asuka's which looks incredibly creepy with its pupil lacking eyes and the blending of the practical post asuka's with the digital Coelophysis is quite impressive for the time and finally the overall story of the rise of the dinosaurs throughout the episode is an excellent way of introducing the series in its primary focus despite the way in which the dinosaurs are presented as far better adapted than the post asuka's not necessarily being very accurate since post asuka's would really have been a far more formidable creature than it's shown in the episode still especially with the arrival of the time wandering Plateosaurus at the end it leads in nicely to the second episode of the series the emotional story of the cynodonts is also a nice touch and introduces a theme that then seems to be replicated in later episodes especially giant of the skies with harrowing stories of particular individuals and the lives they led in their prehistoric worlds well that's pretty much everything I wanted to say on this episode and it's gone on long enough now anyway I have no doubt that I've probably missed some other details so let me know if there are any inaccuracies or accuracies you think I should have mentioned I hope you enjoyed this review of new blood it's been very fun for me to go through it and discover what was right and wrong about the animals shown in the episode and I feel like doing this has given me a new sort of appreciation for walking with dinosaurs allowing me to better understand what is really based in science or not in this vision of prehistory anyway let me know if you'd like me to continue reviewing this series there's certainly a lot more to say about each of the episodes thank you so much for watching this video if you would like to find out more about our world its history and the wonderful life that surrounds us all please feel free to subscribe to the channel if you think we deserve it and if you would like to see more from us

Channel: Ben G Thomas

Views: 1,388,632

Keywords: Biology, Science, Paleontology, Palaeontology, Dinosaurs, Animals, Nature, Wildlife, Ben, Thomas, Prehistory, Anatomy, Fossil, Bones, News, 7Daysofscience, Days, of, postosuchus, coelophysis, cynodont, thrinaxodon, placerias, lisowicia, dicynodont, peteinosaurus, plateosaurus, kenneth branagh, bbc, archosaur

Id: 7b2T6JXcjo4

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/pgm123]

Very cool video. I'm watching now.

I didn't know that Coelophysis was strikingly dimorphic, but I'm a bit cautious, so I'm curious how this was determined? There is a common trap to group robust/bigger specimens as male and gracile/smaller specimens as female. This has a tendency to exaggerate dimorphism. (This is a huge problem in paleo anthropology.) Did they have good evidence that the robust specimens were male before they grouped them as male?

[u/Annoyedskunk]

Keep in mind this came out years ago and was based on the current understanding of this animal plus with some creative liberty to make the animals seem more alive.

[u/javier_aeoa]

I've been following Ben G Thomas for a while now, and I'm impressed by the quality of his videos. YouTube videos is my main source of palaeontologic knowledge as I'm too unfamiliar with the scientific words used in official papers.

And even though he is quite critic about many of WWD's flaws, he also points out many times that some of them were found out after the show was made, and you can tell he has an immense love for the series. I think we all want a WWD remake, and "New Blood 2" would be incredible with 2019 knowledge. Though if you ask me, I would choose Ischigualasto Formation over Chinle, but that's just me :P.

[u/ZhenHen]

You can’t really judge the scientific accuracy of something made 20 years ago with the knowledge we had 20 years ago. It was accurate to our scientific knowledge at the time (excluding maybe feathers on theropods, that’s been floating around for a long, long time), of course it’s going to be wildly inaccurate now.

[u/TARDISeses]

Tbf, BBC did Planet Dinosaur after this which tried harder to be more scientific based.

[u/LarperPro]

I was really put off by the scene in which Cynodonts eat their young to escape the Coelophysis.

How did we know Cynodonts would do such a behavior? What evidence do we have for it?

[u/Iamnotburgerking]

Anyone else angry at the episode's depiction of dinosaurs outcompeting everything else? Even in 1999 this was being questioned.