Series / Amazing Dinoworld

Amazing Dinoworld (Japanese: Dinosaur Superworld) is a 2019 documentary co-produced by both NHK and the streaming service Curiosity Stream. It focuses on dinosaurs and has two episodes.

• The Feathered Revolution, which focuses on feathered dinosaurs.
• The World of Sea Monsters, which focuses on marine reptiles like mosasaurs.

In 2023, the series returned for a second season with two new episodes, one focused in the dinosaurs inhabiting the southern continent of Gondwana and another dealing with the mass extinction that happened at the end of the Cretaceous. The second season premiered in Japan on the 21st of March.

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This documentary provides examples of:

• Always a Bigger Fish: Occurs a bit in The World of Sea Monsters, such as with an unidentified pliosaur against a Spinosaurus or with a mosasaur.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Deinocherius, Avimimus and Zanabazar are all vividly coloured, with the former being bright pink (with its hump being red in females and blue in males), and the latter two shades of bright green and blue. In fact, the latter is actually modelled off an actual bird, the Taiwan Barbet.
• Anachronism Stew: The dates given for each segment is 66 million years ago, but most of the fauna in the episodes are from earlier.
• Artistic License – Biology: The above don't make that much sense, since predators like Zanabazar need relatively drab and uniform colour to blend into the environment to ambush prey and avoid alerting it, while prey like Avimimus need those for same reasons, only to be invisible to predators; this is also including the fact dinosaurs see in colour.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Quite a bit.
  • Most of the theropods have pronated hands to some degree.
  • The tyrannosaurs are all feathered when there is no physical evidence, for most of them, that they had feathers. They are also are carbon copies of Jurassic Park's, and thus have the inaccuracies it has too (shrink wrapping, excessive horns).
  • Pachyrhinosaurus has a massive nasal horn, when it is famous for not having one. It also has some feathering on it, which is plausible as suggested by British palaeontologist Mark Witton. Except it's described as fur, which no reptile (let alone dinosaur) has.
  • The predatory troodontid Zanabazar has very flashy blue, green, and yellow plumage, even though predators normally have subdued colors that help them blend in with their environment. Not to mention that dinosaurs would have had excellent color vision, making it all the more necessary for predatory theropods to invest in good camouflage.
  • The sauropods all have feet that are too elephantine◊. They should instead have four long toes on each hindfoot with one toe that dangles uselessly. They should also possess five toes on each front foot, two of which don't support the weight, and should possess claws.
  • Protoceratops and Halzkaraptor are both not from the Nemegt Formation, where the Mongolian segment takes place. Instead, they hail from the slightly older Djadochta Formation.
  • The show's outline◊ of Yutyrannus doesn't look much like the real animal◊.
  • Troodon isn't even likely to be a valid genus.
  • All of the dinosaurs make roaring sounds, when fossil evidence^note so far shows that dinosaurs didn't possess the vocal structures required to make such sounds. As such they should only be able to make sounds as a result of forcing air in and out of their bodies. As well as use closed mouth vocalizations to make low frequency calls as found through studies done on their range of hearing.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: None of the Deinochierus or Troodon have any fluid on them when they hatch.
• Colony Drop: The Chixculub asteroid that ends the Mesozoic, of course, as shown in “Survivors: A New Theory”.
• The Day the Dinosaurs Died: The plot of “Survivors: A New Theory” features, of course, the dreaded asteroid, and focuses on a theory which suggests that some non-avian dinosaurs didn’t quickly go extinct, but managed to last for quite a while after the impact.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Happens to one Xiphactinus courtesy of a ticked off mother mosasaur.
• Informed Species: The Mosasaurus has a short snout, making it look a lot like Prognathodon.
• Mama Bear: The mother Deinocheirus and Mosasaurus fight to protect their young.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The color of the back sail and throat of Deinocheirus indicate their sex. On females, they are reddish-pink; on males they are blue.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The baby Troodons and Deinocheirus. The adult Troodon also qualify, in part because of the sounds they make.
• Shown Their Work:
  • All of the theropods are feathered ^note Though quite a few of them have no evidence of being, and most likely weren't, feathered. Also, the show uses talking heads to explain oviparity in reptiles and birds' neurology and the role feathers play in it.
    • Carnotaurus is accurately shown with osteoderms when it shows up in the second season.
  • Mosasaurs are shown with tail flukes.
• Wrestler in All of Us: The mother Deinocheirus during a fight with a Tarbosaurus grabs onto it and literally suplexes it. It must be seen to be believed.

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