"Walking with dinosaurs?! I wish it was that easy!"
"I don't know what I'm gonna see, but whatever happens, this is going to be a cracking adventure!"
— Nigel Marven as he starts his adventure in "The Giant Claw".
Chased by Dinosaurs is a series of two half-hour specials that are spin-offs of the Speculative Documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs. Unlike prior installments in the franchise, Chased by Dinosaurs features a host in real-life zoologist Nigel Marven. In both specials, Nigel travels back in time to investigate specific dinosaur behaviours up-close. The presenter format allows Nigel to actually interact with the dinosaurs he comes across and show how these creatures might react to humans coming across their territory.
The following specials make up the series:
- The Giant Claw: (75 MYA, Mongolia) Nigel travels the Mongolian deserts of the Late Cretaceous in search of Therizinosaurus, a mysterious dinosaur that had claws over a meter long.
- Land of Giants: (100 MYA, Argentina) In the Mid-Cretaceous period, Nigel searches for a herd of Argentinosaurus in the hopes of seeing the largest predator-prey dynamic in history.
The series was followed up by Sea Monsters in 2003, where Nigel dives into the prehistoric seas to swim with the ocean's largest predators. The specials later served as the inspiration for the ITV miniseries Prehistoric Park, which also starred Nigel Marven.
Tropes present include:
- Anachronistic Animal:
- “Land of Giants” is particularly guilty of this. South American Sarcosuchus shows up nearly 30 million years after it died out (although the larger African species survived until slightly later), Tropeognathus (again identified as Ornithocheirus) some 12 million years after it died out, and Pteranodon shows up some 12 million years before it evolved. On a more minor note, Giganotosaurus and Argentinosaurus also weren’t contemporaries (with Giganotosaurus being slightly older), though the former existed with a giant, unnamed titanosaur in the same size range as Argentinosaurus, and the latter coexisted with the former’s close relative Mapusaurus.
- “The Giant Claw” mixes fauna from the Nemegt and Djadochta Formation, although it is set in the latter's time period, meaning several of the animals featured wouldn’t evolve until about 4-5 million years later, with Protoceratops and Velociraptor being the only ones that were around 75 million years ago. The token pterosaur Azhdarcho (from the Zhirkindek Formation) is the most glaring example, as it lived over 15 million years earlier.
- Art Evolution: The dinosaur models are much more detailed than in Walking with Dinosaurs, and many of the anatomical flaws in that series were ironed out in the specials. Tarbosaurus looks much more convincing compared to its very close relative Tyrannosaurus (rather infamous for wonky anatomy), and the Gigantosaurus has more accurate carnosaur anatomy and a unique model, unlike the carnosaurs of the original series, which were fairly crude and all palette swaps of one another. The same cannot be said for the Saurolophus however, as it's just Anatotitan with a crest (with even the same skin patterns) and carries over all the anatomical flaws.
- Bait-and-Switch Credits:
- The opening intro of "The Giant Claw" shows footage from Walking with Dinosaurs's second episode Time of the Titans and The Ballad of Big Al despite being unrelated to the plot of the series. Likewise, the opening from "Land of Giants" shows a brief scene from Sea Monsters of Nigel getting a into a scuba suit and plunging into the Ordovician sea, while that documentary would air a lot later.
- The opening sequence of the documentary shows a Stegosaurus along with the Late Cretaceous Mongolian fauna featured in "The Giant Claw". Stegosaurus obviously doesn't appears in the series proper, as it was long gone during the timelines Nigel visits and he never travels to Late Jurassic North America in Chased by Dinosaurs.
- Behemoth Battle:
- The climax of "The Giant Claw" involves a brief but heated fight between the Tarbosaurus Nigel found previously and the Therizinosaurus he tried to find through the episode in the beach of a lake. In a realistic outcome, the Tarbosaurus opts to leave the beach after the herbivore violently scratches it in the face with its claws.
- The main plot of "Land of Giants" deals with Nigel's quest to witness the biggest hunt of all times, with the prey being the humongous sauropod Argentinosaurus and the hunter the giant theropod Giganotosaurus. He gets the chance to see it at the end of the episode, but to his disappointment and horror, rather than a spectacular, fast-paced hunt like the one lions perform on zebras, the Giganotosaurus's main tactic to take down the sauropod consists in biting it little by little while they tire out her and let blood loss and trauma do its thing, ending up with a drawn out, agonizing process way less exciting and more bitter than what Nigel expected.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Therizinosaurus is one of the most bizarre dinosaurs ever, resembling a giant, overfeed turkey with Wolverine Claws. Said claws, however, allow it to fight off a Tarbosaurus (the top predator of the region and close cousin of T. rex).
- Bittersweet Ending: The climax of "Land of Giants" ends in a somber note, as the hunt of the Giganotosaurus pack on the young female Argentinosaurus turns out to be long and torturous instead of spectacular and flashy like Nigel hoped, with the poor sauropod suffering an excruciating end that Nigel doesn't films due to the coming of the night (something he thanks). However, the end of the episode, where the Argentinosaurus herd arrives to the lake to lay off their eggs adds some spark of hope and wonder to Nigel's prehistoric safari, who gets amazed at the spectacle... And then one of the Sarcosuchus from the lake suddenly emerges from it to attack the cameraman, with uncertain results.
- Camera Abuse: This happens a lot, usually when Nigel Marvin and the camera crew are quite literally abusing camera. In one scene, an unseen crew member is shown using the boom mic to encourage a Protoceratops to back off. In another, the cameraman is implied to have been eaten by a Sarcosuchus.
- Circling Vultures: Subverted; a flock of Azhdarcho (which are referred to as scavengers on the official website) circles over Nigel at one point, but nothing sinister comes of it. Nigel actually seems to like their presence, in fact.
- Conveniently Interrupted Document: "The Giant Claw" does this with the remnants of an egg. Nigel discovers an abandoned Therizinosaurus nest, which includes a broken egg with the partial skeletal remains of an unhatched embryo. However, the skeleton is missing its skull, which would have made it obvious the Therizinosaurus is no predator.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: This is how Giganotosaurus is portrayed hunting Argentinosaurus. Even a relatively small adult Argentinosaurus is so huge, that it takes a whole pack of carnosaurs collectively snapping and tearing at its flesh for more than a whole day to bring it down.
- Demoted to Extra: Ornithocheirus appears very briefly in "Land of Giants", although it's just used to show another giant animal of the time (although it didn't actually live at the time), rather than being the main character, as it was in Walking with Dinosaurs.
- Feathered Fiend: Velociraptor, Mononykus, and Therizinosaurus, though in the program, only Mononykus is depicted with feathers.
- Foreboding Fleeing Flock: Nigel is walking through the brush when several Mononykus run past him, right before he spots a Tarbosaurus standing nearby.
- Giant Equals Invincible: Played with the Argentinosaurus. Even a mob of fully grown Giganotosaurus cannot take down an adult, so they go after a half-grown youngster, but even with her, the predators have to rely on exhaustion and blood loss from repeated biting to bring their massive prey down, and it takes a whole day of relentless attacking for the young Argentinosaurus to finally collapse. Meanwhile, as the herd arrives at their nesting site, one of the adults casually plods towards the Sarcosuchus, utterly dwarfing the giant croc and forcing it to retreat into the water, and immediately after lowers its head to drink, showing no fear of being attacked.
- Giant Flyer: Pteranodon and Ornithocheirus. And, while they're not focused on or mentioned by name, Azhdarcho.
- Hand Wave: How does Nigel time travel? The series never says, just with Nigel announcing what time period he's in as if he just took a flight from Sydney.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: Nigel is cautious about encountering a predator with claws as massive as Therizinosaurus, but most of his cautiousness goes away once he discovers it's actually a plant-eater and goes up to touch one, which it allows him to do without irritation. Although he does point out to the cameraman that giant herbivores are still very dangerous animals.
- Killer Rabbit: The herbivorous theropod Therizinosaurus, which honestly looks like a giant goose-but, as Tarbosaurus finds out, this giant goose has giant claws.
- Misplaced Wildlife:
- Velociraptor being put in the rainforest instead of the desert. It can, however, be justified or handwaved, as the forest is located right next to the desert.
- The Sarcosuchus in “Land of Giants” is largely based on the African S. imperator while the South American species, S. hartii, was much smaller. Likewise, Pteranodon is only known from North America. Granted, like the Ornithocheirus from Walking with Dinosaurs, the latter could be interpreted as migrating (though that would be entirely speculative behavior).
- Monster Delay: The main subject species to be found within both episodes, those being both the Giganotosaurus and the Argentinosaurus in the first episode and the Therizinosaurus in the second episode, all take awfully long amounts of time to ever even show up on-screen at all, and it's even worse with the Giganotosaurus in the sense of him not ever even receiving a name-drop prior to his first actual on-screen appearance within his respective episode.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: One of the first animals encountered by Nigel is the 40-foot Sarcosuchus. Nigel, being Nigel, lures it onto land and then tries to get it to snap its jaws by probing them with a stick. It’s never shown catching anything, though Nigel alludes to it being a threat to young Argentinosaurus. A promotional image does show it nabbing an iguanodont.
◊ - Never Trust a Trailer: The beginning of the trailer of the DVD of the series shows Nigel being chased by some Velociraptor and a Tarbosaurus in what looks like the volcanic environment from Argentina in "Land of Giants" instead of the Mongolian one (mixture of deserts and tropical forests) used for "The Giant Claw" where they should be. In the actual show both dinosaurs are shown in the correct location and ecosystem, and while Nigel gets attacked by Velociraptors in the documentary, no Tarbosaurus join the persecution (although Nigel does runs away from one in the opening of Sea Monsters). Curiously enough, the scene does appears at the beginning of Sea Monsters, but with only Nigel running and none of the theropods appearing.
- Palette Swap:
- Averted by the iguanodonts and the Tarbosaurus, as these received new animation models (or at least new details) instead of being straight reuses of almost identical models from the original series.
- Played straight with the Azhdarcho on the official website's (now long gone) picture; it was basically just Pteranodon with different colors and a shorter crest.
- Also played straight with the Saurolophus, which is basically just Anatotitan with a crest, even though the two species actually had very differently shaped skulls.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Both episodes were inspired by recent paleontological discoveries of the mid to late 90s. Specifically, "Land of Giants" was based upon groundbreaking finds in Argentina of the gigantic Argentinosaurus (named in 1993) and Giganotosaurus (named in 1995), while "The Giant Claw" was inspired by the descriptions of Beipiaosaurus (in 1999) and Alxasaurus (in 1993), which confirmed therizinosaurs were giant, herbivorous theropods (both the idea of herbivorous theropods and that therizinosaurs even were theropods were highly contentious beforehand).
- Spoiler Opening: The intro opening of "The Giant Claw" briefly shows footage of the Therizinosaurus. Considering the true appearance of the dinosaur is kept a mystery until the climax, keen viewers may realize it's the animal Nigel searches through the episode.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- During the Tarbosaurus vs Therizinosaurus fight, when the latter scratches the giant carnivorous theropod in the face, the tyrannosaur, rather than keep fighting to the death, opts to abandon the battle and retire before things get uglier, clearly not wanting to take any further injuries.
- While Nigel expects an exciting hunt scene of the Giganotosaurus pack against the herd of Argentinosaurus, he doesn’t take into account that despite the predators targeting a sub adult individual, an Argentinosaurus of that age is still a big, formidable opponent, so the theropods employ hit-and-run tactics where they bite the sauropod and retire to let blood loss, exhaustion and shock take out their target. As a result, the hunt ends up being a dragged off agony for the Argentinosaurus, not at all what Nigel had in mind.
- The Unreveal: How Nigel travels back in time is never shown, as he's already in the time periods he desires to visit when the episodes start.
- The Worf Effect: To Tarbosaurus, and again, courtesy of another animal (Therizinosaurus).
- Too Dumb to Live: Nigel Marven is practically the embodiment of this trope. He lives, though.
- Zerg Rush: How the Giganotosaurus attack the Argentinosaurus, and even then, it takes them a whole day to bring a young Argentinosaurus down.
