Series / Dinosaur Revolution

Dinosaur Revolution (released under its Working Title, Reign of the Dinosaurs, in Europe) is a major dinosaur-related Discovery Channel TV Documentary, which debuted on September 4, 2011.

Calling it a "documentary" may however be deceptive. It combines elements of various genres: traditional wildlife documentaries, silent movie-style "acting" and comic cartoon Slapstick, and presents them in the form of vignettes or longer, cohesive stories, focusing on the characterization and the relationships between the animals. One of the creative heads of the show was artist Ricardo Delgado, the man behind the Age of Reptiles series and the show was initially intended as a loose adaptation of that work. As always, whether this makes the show more entertaining or just plain dumb is up to the viewer to decide. However this isn't the first time that Discovery uses this borderline-Edutainment Show format for its dino-shows.

There has been a lot of buzz surrounding the production, due to the bold claims of its creators, which can be read here. Basically, what the show set out to avoid was making paleontologists cry, and to show off some CGI. Another major subject of discussion is the "sparse narration" the press releases promised. Do note, the slightly controversial dino-anthropomorphism is justified due to the fact that originally, the show was to be broadcast with no Narrator, but Executive Meddling changed that.

A feature film version, re-cut to a format truer to the production's original intent, titled Dinotasia, was released in a select few UK theaters on May 4th, 2012. It received a brand new narration by Werner Herzog. The re-cut, sadly, wasn't exactly met with warm reception by critics, who cited the uneven effects quality, loose storytelling structure, cartoony personification of the animals and the lack of real educational value as its main drawbacks, though some reviewers claimed they found its bizarreness amusing in a weird sort of way.

---

The work provides examples of:

• All Animals Are Dogs: Some people have observed that the Allosaurus cub acts suspiciously like a playful pup.
• All There in the Script: Many (if not all) of the characters have nicknames that were used during the production of the show, but are never mentioned in the final product. The exact genus and species (if any) of many of the animals featured also fall under this, and have only been revealed through Word of God.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • Non-predatory example. After eating a young Majungasaurus, one of the Beelzebufo is stepped on by a Rapetosaurus passing through.
  • The Castorocauda is spotted by the Guanlong while chasing... a fish.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The colorists really went wild with the color schemes on the animals. This is not just an observation, they said so themselves.
• Anachronism Stew: The show's Discovery website puts Gigantoraptor 90 million years ago, way too early. 80 million years ago is closer to the mark, if not 70 million years ago. Strangely enough, the show itself actually puts Gigantoraptor in the correct time period of 70 million years ago.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Averted with the T-rexes, who have visible cloacae, and are seen defecating at two points.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape:
  • Averted when the Cryolophosaurus destroys his rival's eggs. However, played straight when he doesn't actually kill his opponent. There's a similar case with the Tyrannosaurus. (However, Stumpy, the protagonist Tyrannosaurus and his mate do kill Jack Palance, the "Big Bad" Tyrannosaurus, during a rematch.)
  • Averted by a cannibalistic Anhanguera that kills one of the young Anhanguera.
• Apocalypse How: The show begins with the Permian extinction and ends with the Cretaceous extinction, both of which very easily attained a class 4.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: The people behind the show went out of their way to avert this, and mostly it works very well. However, a few errors still slip through.
  • Due to time constraints, the Ornitholestes lacks feathers, when it likely did have them in life.
  • One of the Beelzebufo snatches a baby Majungasaurus with a long, chameleon-like tongue, which frogs lack.
  • Some paleontologists have criticized the social lifestyles shown for some of the dinosaurs and especially the mosasaurs and pterosaurs for being implausible. One of the main paleontologists who worked on the show has even said that he disowns the mosasaur segment. Tellingly, the mosasaur story was completed before it was ran by the consultants.
  • The Ischigualastia and Pachycephalosaurus^note Or that's what it's called on the Discovery Channel website, but said by some other sources to be a generic pachycephalosaur, not any intended species don't particularly resemble the genera they are supposed to be, as the models were originally intended to be used for Placerias and Prenocephale respectively.
  • Protoceratops has one and Triceratops two front foot-claws more than they should. Common error, very easy to commit.
  • Volaticotherium is unlikely to have been agile enough to catch insects in the air.
  • The Rhamphorhynchus appears to lack pycnofibers and doesn't use a quadrupedal launch. Also note that Rhamphorhynchus is thought to have had behaved like modern nocturnal sea birds (avoiding thus competition from diurnal pterosaurs that also hunted fish in the same regions), and seeing one far from the open sea and on daylight would thus not be very common.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The Cryolophosaurus story ends with the antagonistic male defeating the protagonist and killing his eggs.
• Behind the Black: The Saurosuchus doesn't notice the group of Ischigualastia until the audience does, even though they're standing right in front of him.
• Best Served Cold: Broken Jaw got his injury from Woodstock whipping him. Years later, he manages to take revenge by biting off part of his tail.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Miragaia, Shunosaurus, and Ankylosaurus.
• Big Bad:
  • Insofar as this can be applicable to dinosaurs, the Torvosaurus in the second episode.
  • Jack Palance from the final episode is built up as Stumpy and Tink's main rival, but he is defeated and killed just a bit more than ten minutes into the episode.
  • The Saurosuchus in the Eoraptor story and the antagonistic Cryolophosaurus in the Jurassic Antarctica stories also qualify.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Broken Jaw, followed by Woodstock.
  • The herd of Cedarosaurus in the Utahraptor story.
  • The old bull Protoceratops in the Protoceratops story.
• Big Guy, Little Guy:
  • Broken Jaw, an Allosaurus and Ptweety, a Rhamphorhynchus. Ptweety also switches over to a Torvosaurus in a brief stint.
  • The Rapetosaurus and Rahonavis, though in this case the Rahonavis sticks with whichever Rapetosaurus that passes by instead of any particular individual.
• Bittersweet Ending: Two of them:
  • The Protoceratops story ends with the young Protoceratops finding a new family, but the old Protoceratops who protected it chooses to abandon them and die alone.
  • The Troodon story in the final episode can be seen as this. After the asteroid impact, the episode focuses on a small herd of surviving Troodon trying to survive in an "After the End" setting. In the end, only one female survives, and takes refuge in the mouth of a T.rex corpse, while trying to incubate her last egg. The camera then zooms in on her eye which then shifts to the eye of a present day bird. This shows the viewer the dinosaurs did not go fully extinct. Instead, their legacy still lives on, in the form of birds.
• Bloodless Carnage: The Ischigualastia herd attacks and seemingly kills the Saurosuchus, although the Saurosuchus appears to take down one of the Ischigualastia with it. Neither of their bodies show much sign of injury after the fight, despite the several "stabbing" sound-effects you can hear during the fight.
• Body Language: As the show was animated with no narration in mind, the animals received very expressive acting skills, which at certain points go near Disney School of Acting and Mime territory.
• Book Ends: The series starts and ends with two different mass extinctions.
  • The very first and last scenes also take place in two eras outside of the Mesozoic: the Paleozoic and Cenozoic, respectively.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • The poor Torvosaurus turns into this, since every animal around the water hole is out to get him, even the much smaller Broken Jaw. He does have a brief Who's Laughing Now? moment, but it doesn't last. As such, this can be seen as a powerful Deconstruction of the Prehistoric Monster cliché, as it's the seemingly most badass creature in town who gets shoved around, and even killed.
  • The Ornitholestes (both one particular individual as well as the species as a whole).
• Camp Straight / Gay: Matt Lamanna seems to be trying to invoke this as much as possible with his voice alone.
• Carcass Sleeping Bag: In the last episode, a Troodon mother lives through the immediate destruction of the K-Pg impact, but the suddenly-frigid climate kills her mate and eggs. Wandering in a frozen wood, she finds the carcass of a dead Tyrannosaurus, and curls up in its open mouth to shelter from the snowfall.
• Carnivore Confusion:
  • In general, the predators are portrayed as real predators, just doing what they do. Nonetheless, predators that threaten the protagonist animal in each story are often portrayed as antagonistic in a sense and generally get their comeuppance.
  • Broken Jaw the Allosaurus and Woodstock the Dinheirosaurus end up being Friendly Enemies.
• The Cavalry:
  • The Ischigualastia herd in the Eoraptor story, though more by chance than through intention.
  • The big herd of Protoceratops in the Protoceratops story.
• Chekhov's Gun: The body of the juvenile Tyrannosaurus is later used as a shelter by the female Troodon.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The antagonistic male Cryolophosaurus returns in the Glacialisaurus story and chases off the antagonistic Glacialisaurus.
  • The mosquitoes ultimately drive off the antagonistic Cryolophosaurus.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Troodon being able to pick up things two handed is first shown when they attempt an unsuccessful raid on the Tyrannosaurus nest. The female Troodon uses this ability to transport her last remaining egg to shelter.
  • Rahonavis mimicking sounds comes in handy when it is pursued by the juvenile Majungasaurus, as it summons some Beelzebufo to deal with them.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The angered Torvosaurus is no match for his smaller opponents, and though he manages to tip an adult Dinheirosaurus on its side, he soon finds himself on the receiving end when the sauropod goes on a rampage.
  • However, the first fight between the Torvosaurus and Broken Jaw is one in favor of the Torvosaurus. Indeed, it was winning the second time around as well, if it weren't for the adult Dinheirosaurus.
  • The mother mosasaur vs. the Cretoxyrhinas. At one point she does a death roll, and it looks as though the shark is instantly disintegrated into little pieces of flesh.
• The Day the Dinosaurs Died: The last episode depicts the fauna of the Hell Creek Formation in the last few months of the Cretaceous Period. The asteroid hits, killing off almost all the dinosaurs either instantly or in the impact winter that follows. The small silver lining is that the series acknowledges that not all dinosaurs died out; birds survived and continue their legacy to this very day.
• Deconstruction: "The Watering Hole" features one for the "ultra strong killer theropod" trope thorugh the Torvosaurus who muscles in to the formation and proceeds to bully all the other inhabitants loudly and aggressively as the new dominant predator.....for about a few days until almost the entire watering hole gets sick of him and beats him to death
• Downer Ending: The Cryolophosaurus story, Guanlong story, Utahraptor story, and part of the the Protoceratops story, as well as the ending of the last episode. And not just the dinosaur part, mind you. The final shot leaves us with a view of an asteroid hovering above Earth, in present day. The talking heads inform us that humanity will die. Oh, dear.
• Drunken Master: The Shunosaurus, after ingesting some hallucinogenic mushrooms, is attacked by a pair of Sinraptor. It ends up hanging off the side of a steep slope, but in its throes it flicks one Sinraptor away with its tail club and crushes the other one under its weight.
• Eats Babies: Probelesodon, the sharks, Cryolophosaurus, Torvosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, the mammals in the last episode, the cannibalistic Anhanguera, and Beelzebufo. Saurosuchus, Troodon, Utahraptor, Velociraptor, the notosuchians in the Anhanguera story, and Allosaurus try to, but aren't shown succeeding.
• Edible Bludgeon: The still moving tail of a Dinheirosaurus slaps the Allosaurus eating it in the face. A mild subversion, since the food is acting by itself.
• Education Mama: Mama Anhanguera, who takes teaching her young how to fly to a disturbing (and hilarious) extreme.
• Enemy Mine: Broken Jaw and an enraged Woodstock' combine forces to defeat the Torvosaurus. They don't fight each other ever again.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: The ultimate ending of the Jurassic Antarctic story ends this way, with the "antagonistic" male Glacialisaurus chased by the "antagonistic" male Cryolophosaurus, who is in turn trying to flee from a swarm of mosquitoes.
• Facial Markings: The male Tyrannosaurus appear to have a striking white skull-pattern on their head, in contrast to their otherwise fully black body.
  • The one coelurosaur that lacks feathers (due to time constraints) is Ornitholestes, though it also happens to be one of the more Hand Wave-able instances because of its uncertain phylogenetic position. For the most part it serves as something of a Plucky Comic Relief.
• Foregone Conclusion: The K-Pg extinction in the last episode.
• Giant Flyer: Anhanguera and especially Quetzalcoatlus are both large pterosaurs
• Gorn: Difficult to avoid when making a flashy dinosaur show.
  • Broken Jaw getting the injury that gives him his name as a baby is one instance of this. It's quite horrific to look at and even makes the mother have a double take.
  • The death of Jack, the evil Tyrannosaurus, with huge amounts of blood gushing from his neck.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Often averted, but strangely played straight in both of the long stories in similar situations. In both cases the protagonist moves in to feed on the body of the story's Big Bad, but does so just outside of the camera frame.
• Groin Attack: The Torvosaurus bites Broken Jaw in his pubic region during their first fight.
• The Grotesque: Broken Jaw. An Allosaurus with a seriously deformed jaw.
• Handicapped Bad Ass:
  • Broken Jaw.
  • Subverted in a way by Stumpy, the heroic male Tyrannosaurus. He is able to survive even with an arm bitten off, but he doesn't exactly need to use his arms terribly much to begin with.
• Hope Spot:
  • The Guanlong safely get off the back of a sauropod they were stuck on, only to find themselves stranded on an island surrounded by crocodylomorphs.
  • Ultimately, the one surviving young Tyrannosaurus. The one surviving Troodon egg is implied to be one as well.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted:
  • The Guanglong story ends with the two goofs (the Guanlongs) trapped on a small island, surrounded by crocodilians.
  • This also happens to the Castorocauda, Ornitholestes, Rhamphorhynchus, and young Anhanguera at certain points, though they manage to survive.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jack Palance in "End Game" is killed when he is knocked onto the horn of a dead Triceratops.
• Informed Ability:
  • The Ornitholestes is introduced as a resourceful predator, but never actually succeeds in catching anything on screen.
  • The Utahraptors have it worse. While the narration and talking heads describe them as the baddest killers ever, the animation shows them getting their butts kicked (literally).
  • The narrator claims that Castorocauda "has many beaver-like traits that help it survive", but it is never shown doing anything beaver like. Similarly, the Volaticotherium is said to act like a flying squirrel, but it's portrayed more like a gliding bat, catching insects in midair.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Mama Anhanguera, who throws off her offspring to die in an attempt to have them learn to fly. This wouldn't generally receive any mention (this is, after all, still a documentary, and wild animals get away with things are are far more morally repulsive from a human point of view), except for the fact that karma IS very prevalent in the rest of the series, due to its comedic tendecies. Although she does end up getting crab bits splattered repeatedly in her face. Not exactly punishment, but she is at least humiliated (in the eyes of the viewer).
  • Also Rahonavis, who sends two baby Majungasaurus to their deaths at the mouths of Beelzebufo rather unnecessarily, considering it could fly (and was already safe from the Majungasaurus when it did so).
  • Subverted by the antagonistic Cryolophosaurus, which gets a The Bad Guy Wins treatment at first, but then shows up in the Glacialisaurus story where it encounters a swarm of mosquitoes...
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Averted in several cases, such as at the end of the T. rex duel, when Jack, the victor, lets Stumpy, the loser, go.
• Lethal Lava Land: Much of Earth's surface turns into this when the Permaian extinction occurs.
• Mama Bear:
  • The mosasaur, Tyrannosaurus, and Eoraptor. Subverted by the Cryolophosaurus, who just stands there and allows her eggs to be destroyed. The Dinheirosaurus, Cedarosaurus, and Miragaia are probably either this or Papa Wolf, as their genders are never specified.
  • Averted by mama Anhanguera, who cares more about whereas her children fly off the nest rather than their own lives. Possibly Fridge Brilliance in that pterosaurs probably weren't a very maternal lot, what with the fact that their offspring flew within days after birth and all.
• Mighty Roar: By courtesy of none other than the king of roars. Jack in particular lets out a very thunderous one after he beats Stumpy at their duel.^note At least in media, we have no way of knowing if the real animal did this, Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Ornitholestes in Portugal, even though it is only known from North America.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • One moment we see the young Tyrannosaurus playing, the next they are killed by Jack Palance.
  • Also later in the same episode, much hilarity is happening around the old Ankylosaurus. We first see the Troodon chasing a juvenile pachycephalosaur, which tries to seek shelter underneath the Ankylosaurus, while the Ankylosaurus is seemingly oblivious to all this, even accidentally sitting on the male Troodon. Later, the young T. rex playfully tries to attack the Ankylosaurus, only to get knocked to the ground. Funny stuff. Then it chases the pair of Troodon into a cave. How cute. Oh, shock, the meteorite hits and almost everyone outside is killed! The rex finds the twisted corpses of its parents. How tragic. But wait, the solemn moment can't last, there is a mammal to catch. And the clumsy juvenile trips and falls. How funny. And there the rex lies on the bottom of the cliff, with a broken skull, in a puddle of blood. How... what now?
  • The antics of the ill-fated Guanlong duo are meant to be amusing at first... until they end up stranded on a small island surrounded by crocodyliforms. (Although, mind you, it's not entirely clear on whether they're sympathetic characters or not.)
  • The young Protoceratops bonds with the old bull and they manage to reach a herd of other Protoceratops (who also scare away the two Velociraptor trying to ambush them). Then, as we see the juvenile being integrated into the herd, the old Protoceratops turns around and walks away, and we then see him traveling down to a Protoceratops graveyard where he lies down peacefully...
  • It's brief, but when most of the Anhanguera story (even the deaths of the young Anhanguera) is played for laughs, it's a quick jolt back to reality when we see the broken body of one of the Anhanguera being scavenged by crabs.
• Mushroom Samba: What befalls the Shunosaurus who tries some tasty-looking mushrooms.
• Named After the Injury: The Allosaurus lead in the second episode has a fractured jaw courtesy of an angry baby sauropod when they were young, and is nicknamed Broken Jaw.
• Narrating the Obvious: A persistent problem in the original TV broadcast due to the show being originally intended to do without narration at all.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Several crocodile relatives show up, including Saurosuchus, a generic aquatic Cretaceous crocodyliform, some generic aquatic Jurassic crocodyliforms, and a generic notosuchian. Just about all of them are antagonistic.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Cryolophosaurus fight, as well as the first encounter between the Broken Jaw and Torvosaurus.
• Noisy Nature: Delightfully averted. The predators tend to stalk and ambush their prey quietly. When the Torvosaurus and inexperienced young Majungasaurus fail to do this, they get killed.
  • Played pretty straight sometimes though. The baby Mosasaurs chirp like baby birds while getting attacked by the sharks. Even when they go to the bottom to hide they don't shut up.
• Off with His Head!: This befalls an Ornitholestes after a mother Allosaurus grows weary of its vocalizations.
• Offing the Annoyance: The Allosaurus mother beheads a noisy Ornitholestes.
• Oh, Crap!: Sylvester the Ornitholestes when he realizes that he has landed on Broken Jaw. Later, both the he and Ptweety when the Torvosaurus shows up at the watering hole.
• Old Master: The old Protoceratops is depicted as this, even being able to invoke Grievous Harm with a Body on a pair of Velociraptor.
• Papa Wolf: The male Eoraptor and Stumpy the Tyrannosaurus. The male Cryolophosaurus tries, but his opponent is just too strong.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The antagonistic Torvosaurus and Velociraptor capitalize on this, looking a lot more monstrous and evil when compared to the more placid-looking Allosaurus and Utahraptor. And while more of a Jerkass than villainous, the antagonistic Cryolophosaurus also plays this straight.
• Raptor Attack: Anatomically mostly averted at least by the Rahonavis, Velociraptor, Utahraptor, and Troodon. They even have primary feathers, something previous documentaries (and depictions in general) tended to get wrong.
• Re-Cut: Dinotasia, or at least it's as close as we'll probably get to one.
• Recurring Extra: Cockroaches show up everywhere.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Rahonavis, at least in the original storyboard art. The baby Zalambadalestes, baby Eoraptor, baby Protoceratops, and juvenile pachycephalosaur also qualify.
• Road Runner vs. Coyote: The Ornitholestes tries, and fails, to catch a Rhamphorhynchus throughout the second episode. An artist who worked on the show said during production the two were nicknamed "Sylvester and Ptweety".
• Roger Rabbit Effect: In a few shots (particularly those after the end credits), some of the CGI animals show up at the lab that the talking heads are shown in.
• Rule of Cool:
  • Some features of certain animals, like the crest of Cryolophosaurus or the tail club of Shunosaurus, had to be enhanced at the expense of scientific accuracy, just so that the audience would find them more interesting.
  • The mosquito swarm actually killing a large lizard.
  • It's implied that the Torvosaurus actually succeeds in killing a herd of adult Miragaia. The original script has it kill just a Miragaia calf (which it also does later in the episode).
  • The Castorocauda uses a skunk-like musk to defend itself.
  • The ability of the Rahonavis to mimic sounds.
  • The coloration of the Tyrannosaurus rex's face causes it to resemble a human skull when viewed head-on.
  • Though Broken Jaw the handicapped Allosaurus is based on a real specimen, the injury he sustained in the show is far more severe than the one his Real Life counterpart received◊.
• Rule of Funny: As awkward as such moment are in a documentary, this show does have a sense of humor, as animation allows for much better timing than filming real animals would.
• Sea Monster: Tylosaurus and Cretoxyrhina are large marine predators.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Not quite. We see a pair of Tyrannosaurus getting it on, and only after a few seconds does the camera cut to another scene.
• Shout-Out:
  • As a Cryolophosaurus lunges at its opponent, for a brief moment they imitate Charles R. Knight's famous dinosaur painting, Leaping Laelaps◊. Earlier, it uses a kangaroo kick, a homage to Gregory Paul's art.
  • A segment fittingly titled "Pterosaur Looney Tunes" puts a tragic spin on the character of Beaky Buzzard's momma from the cartoon shorts, in the form of a strange Anhanguera mother who's too dumb to let her hatchlings live.
    • Similarly, the character designs and relationships between the Rhamphorhynchus, Ornitholestes, and Allosaurus are based on Tweety, Sylvester, and the bulldog.
    • As well, the Rahonavis design◊ looks like Woody Woodpecker◊ (likely unintentional).
  • The Ornitholestes gets a ring of bark stuck around its neck, making it resemble the Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus.
    • Heck, an Ornitholestes in a tree could be construed as another Greg Paul reference.
  • The mosquito in the amber that appears just before the Glacialisaurus scene is also an obvious homage to Jurassic Park.
  • The sequence where everyone beats up on the Torvosaurus was inspired by the Battle at Kruger wildlife video.
    • Episode 3's opening battle also has elements of the Battle at Kruger, and actually has more in common with it rather than the Torvosaurus beat-up scene.
  • The end of the second episode has a Mythbusters type sequence where the model of a diplodocoid tail is used on the model of an Allosaurus jaw to see how much damage it could inflict. One idea suggested during production was to have one of these sequences in each episode, but this was scrapped.
  • The cold opening of the third episode is similar to a scene in Raptor Red.
  • Several elements of the show were inspired by a French film about grizzly bears called The Bear, which (as was originally planned for Dinosaur Revolution) told a story about wildlife without using narration.
  • The way one of the Cedarosaurus kicks away the Utahraptor is similar to to a scene portrayed in the accompanying artwork for the description of the sauropod Brontomerus.
  • A clip of the show on Discovery's website is called Jurassic Fight Club (keep in mind that JFC and DR aired on two different networks with two different owners).
• Shown Their Work:
  • The theropod hands aren't pronated, most of the coelurosaurs are well feathered, and Noisy Nature is averted.
  • Their Triceratops skin is even based on their personal examination of the skin shown on an unpublished Triceratops specimen.
  • The Troodon are shown to be omnivores, and the males are responsible for brooding the nest.
  • This is probably the first show to feature correct ceratopsian hands (the outer two toes shouldn't touch the ground).
  • While not particularly recent discoveries, this show gets the abelisaurid and sauropod hands right when most other depictions do not.
  • The show avoids the common meme of having female theropods larger than the males. While this idea is not unreasonable, it is based on only circumstantial evidence and isn't anywhere as set in stone as commonly portrayed.
  • The juvenile pachycephalosaur in the last episode is not intended to be any particular species, in order to avoid the whole Hell Creek pachycephalosaur ontogenetic debate (and because the model was going to be used for Prenocephale).
• Slapstick: There is a considerable amount. Yes, it's a "documentary" with tons of animal slapstick from grotesque to cutesy, deal with it.
• Speculative Documentary: Unavoidable for anything prehistory-related until Time Travel is invented.
• The Stinger: At the end of Dinotasia, the Rahonavis shows up in the lab and mimics the noises made by the camera.
• Stock Footage: Mostly avoided. Though footage from Last Day of the Dinosaurs is used in the final episode. Also a clip from Monsters Ressurected is used at the beginning of Dinotasia.
• Summon Bigger Fish: What appears to happen when the two Beelzebufo croak off in the distance, then Rahonavis mimics the sound. The Beelzebufo then show up and eat the baby Majungasaurus.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The Ornitholestes to the Rhamphorhynchus, as a parody of Sylvester and Tweety, to the point that the Ornitholestes leaves the watering hole still chasing the Rhamphorhynchus!
• Tail Slap: Dinheirosaurus, a sauropod, naturally, uses its whip-like tail as a weapon.
• Talking Heads: There are cutaways throughout each episode to interviews with paleontologists, in spite of original plans not to have these in the show itself.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The final episode focuses on the Tyrannosaurus rex and their brutal lifestyles, pulling no punches on how violent and terrifying they are. Their general appearance even bears resemblance to The Grim Reaper. Jack Palance is a particularly nasty T. rex, being depicted as a cannibal responsible for eating one of Stumpy's forelimb as well as Stumpy's babies.
• Threatening Shark: Cretoxyrhina aka the "Ginsu shark". Some of them kill and eat some baby mosasaurs. They're immediately destroyed by the mother afterward.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Towards the end of the fourth episode not long after the meteor hits Earth, the younger tyrannosaur stands on a cliff overlooking his dead parents. A mammal runs into frame and he charges at it, only to fall off the cliff and die.
  • A fish being chased by the Castorocauda tries to escape by leaping onto land (!?!?) and flopping away from the water...!?!?
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Not the trailer itself, but the promotional material contains a number of spoilers. One of the earliest clips released showed the death of the Torvosaurus. One of the flipcards on the Discovery website shows the very end of the last episode.
  • This even happens within the show itself! Many of the preview clips (shown during talking head segments or before commercials) give away much of what is going to happen next.
  • The death of Jack Palance, the antagonistic Tyrannosaurus, was also spoiled in promotional materials and the Dinotasia trailer, but having been taken out of context the events leading up to it can still come across as a surprise. The images and footage of the death itself may make it look like the Jack died fighting a Triceratops, whereas he was actually fighting Stumpy and his mate and got knocked onto a Triceratops carcass.
• Uncertain Doom: Downplayed somewhat with the female Troodon and her last egg. While we never her and her last egg die, giving somewhat of a hope one or both survive, the chance of the offspring surviving to hatch, and especially to reach adulthood, is small and meaningless for their species' survival regardless.
• Villain Protagonist: The Guanlong and arguably the Utahraptor.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The pair of Guanlong. They never stop bickering.
• Voice Changeling: The Rahonavis amuses itself with its ability to copy the noises around it almost perfectly.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: One moment three Ischigualastia attack the Saurosuchus, the next the Saurosuchus appears to be fighting just one Ischigualastia. One Ischigualastia does show up later in the background, but it still looks like they vanished halfway through the fight.
• The Worf Effect: To the Torvosaurus in the "Battle at Kruger" homage scene.
• Zerg Rush: The mosquitoes. The Utahraptor try this on a young Cedarosaurus, but it doesn't end well for them when the adult Cedarosaurus come to its rescue.

---