Series / Prehistoric Planet

Unknown, unexplained, unbelievable ... until now.

"There are many ways to describe life on this planet. Some creatures could be called magnificent, or monstrous, perhaps misunderstood. But only a few creatures who roam this earth could be called all three."

— Sir David Attenborough, official trailer

Prehistoric Planet is a dinosaur Speculative Documentary that debuted on Apple TV+ on May 23, 2022, produced by both the BBC Natural History Unit and Jon Favreau, and directed by animators Andrew R. Jones and Adam Valdez of Moving Picture Company (who also provided the series' VFX and animation). It documents prehistoric life around the world during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous which spans from 72.1 to 66 Million years ago, just before their extinction, each episode focusing on a different biome - namely, "Coasts", "Deserts", "Freshwater", "Ice Worlds", and "Forests". It's basically Planet Earth but with Dinosaurs. David Attenborough narrates, while Hans Zimmer provides the score.

Teaser, Trailer #1, Trailer #2, and preview.

On March 2nd, 2023, a second season was confirmed to begin airing on May 22nd. The official teaser for Season 2 was released on April 18th, 2023. This new season features a number of new species, as well as several returning faces, alongside new environments and ecosystems - namely, "Islands", "Badlands", "Swamps", and "Oceans", as well as an entire episode dedicated to North America. The official trailer for season 2 was released on May 2nd, 2023.

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This series provides examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: From the first full trailer, we get two examples:
  • First, Attenborough states that the creatures of our world could be called "magnificent, monstrous or misunderstood".
  • At the end, he declares that the stories of the prehistoric past are "unknown, unexplained, unbelievable, until now."
• Aerial Canyon Chase: In "Deserts", two Barbaridactylus males are fighting over territory on a tall cliff and chase each other in tight loops around the summit to settle the dispute. The duel ends with the challenger being driven into the cliffside by the ruling male and falling to his death.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • An adult Tyrannosaurus is the largest land predator of the Latest Cretaceous, but it's far outweighed by an adult Mosasaurus. The narration does note that, even in water, a full-grown Tyrannosaurus is a dangerous potential prey animal, and the Mosasaurus focuses on the much smaller baby T. rex instead.
  • A Masiakasaurus searching for small animals hiding in burrows and threatening a nest of Adalatherium juveniles is itself ambushed and killed by a huge Madtsoia.
• Amphibian at Large: The Beelzebufo, a huge, prehistoric bullfrog, makes an appearance.
• Anachronistic Animal:
  • Mostly avoided, since almost all of the animals in the show are from the Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous. The biggest exception is Velociraptor, as the genus is known only from the Campanian stage, about 5 million years earlier than when the show takes place. The creators of the show have said that it isn't actually meant to be a species of the Velociraptor genus, but an indeterminate velociraptorine which are found at various Maastrichtian east Asian locations.
• Artistic License – Biology: Male Dreadnoughtus are depicted with balloon-like gular sacs on their necks, however gular display structures in extant species inflate upon exhalation, so they should inflate from the lungs up not the head down.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • Both mosasaurs that appear are too stiff as they swim. The shows's mosasaurs are depicted as thunniform (all the propulsion comes from moving the tail fin) when they should be carangiform (propulsion comes from moving the posterior third of the body) swimmers.^note Green 2017, masters thesis on mosasaur vertebral mobility determined they would have been carangiform swimmers rather than thunniform depicted in the show.
    • Kaikaifilu is depicted as a reskinned Mosasaurus when during the show's development the former was a tylosaurine and the latter a mosasaurine, as such it should have a longer skull and a tail that is proportionally much longer compared to the body.
    • The Mosasaurus hoffmannii model also possesses quite a few inaccuracies as detailed here.
  • As seen by this snapshot the Therizinosaurus is depicted with the tip of the hallux claw touching the ground when it should have all four of its toes bearing weight.
  • Cimolodon is larger than its real life counterpart and lacks tarsal spurs.
  • As seen in the show Carnotaurus is depicted using arm waving as its primary display to attract a mate. While abelisaur arms did have huge shoulders and a balljoint at the base,multiple studies have concluded that their arms would have been vestigial as the nerve fibers responsible for arm motor function were reduced, similar to extant birds with vestigial forelimbs.^note It has been noted however that Cassowaries and Emus possess similarly reduced nerves and retain some degree of arm mobility, though their mobility is limited. It was tweeted by the consultants that the question of whether or not abelisaur arms were mobile is still uncertain. It is instead more likely that their horns were their main display, as horns in extant animals are used for both sexual display and intraspecific combat. While this doesn't rule out the arms having a secondary display function, this is unlikely to be the main driving force behind the evolution of their courtship rituals.
    • The behind the scenes video for "Forests" mentions the ball joint at the base of the arm as a justification for such a display. It also brings up peafowl, deer, and other animals today that have features that do nothing but attract mates. This ignores important details that 1) Sexual selection typically drives features to become more exaggerated and pronounced, with peafowl tails and deer antlers being highly costly to produce, as well as very cumbersome and conspicuous hindering the individual's survival.^note Abelisaur arms conversely are highly reduced being the smallest relative to body size of any theropod. 2) Natural selection does not put selection pressure to lose features if they don't help or hinder an animal's survival. Abelisaur arms were very likely vestigial but stuck around because there was no selection pressure to lose them as they didn’t hinder the animal's survival.
  • Forests in the series are portrayed with closed canopies, but evidence suggests that Mesozoic forests had generally open canopies due to herbivorous dinosaurs either feeding or felling trees (this is even seen in "Forests" with Austroposeidon). It is also speculated to be the reason why angiosperms went on a spree in the Paleocene; already dominant by 50% of most assemblages, they now could form closed canopies and prevent conifers and ferns from being efficient competitors anymore. This seems to be fixed in season 2, which features far more open-canopy forest settings.
• Audible Sharpness: When the Mononykus is shown brandishing her claw, a stereotypical sword drawing sound effect plays (presumably non-diegetic).
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Mosasaurus hoffmanni is introduced approaching a stray pycnodont fish as if going to eat it, only for it to stop short and lie still with its mouth open before it does. Then it turns out it wanted the fish to clean it.
  • In the Barbaridactylus segment of the second episode, one male is able to sneak into the harem of a much larger male because he's part of a "sneaky" morph that physically resemble the much smaller, crestless females. The alpha male spots him and singles him out, but after a tense moment (made more so because we previously saw him killing another rival), it's stated the sneaky male merely caught the alpha male's eye as a possible receptive female, not as a rival.
  • In "Freshwater", after the old Tyrannosaurus feeds on the dead Triceratops, he goes to a riverbank to clean the wound he suffered hunting the giant herbivore. It is then that another T. rex appears, hinting that this is a rival male who wants to fight him. However, the intruder is revealed to be a younger, smaller female, but may also been a rival. After a few seconds where it looks like a battle may indeed break out, the male then raises its neck and lets the female know that he means no harm and wants to mate with her, an action the female reciprocates. Afterwards, they end up mating.
  • A foraging Adalatherium is shown coming across a clutch of eggs hidden in a burrow, with the narration making it seem like it's going to eat them. Then, it's clarified that they're the mammal's clutch of eggs and she's returning to her own burrow.
• Beak Attack: The Quetzalcoatlus is armed with a huge beak over six feet in length, and capable of inflicting terrible injuries with its pecks. It's enough that a pair of the giant pterosaurs are able to drive off even an adult Tyrannosaurus.
• Behemoth Battle:
  • The first episode features a sequence between two adult Mosasaurus, the planet's largest and most powerful carnivore during the end of the Late Cretaceous. The narration states such battles can be deadly, and fossils of mosasaurs have been discovered with teeth of other mosasaurs embedded in them.
  • The second episode features two huge male Dreadnoughtus, each nearly fifty metric tonnes, battling for control of the females in the mating grounds. The battle is brutal, with both animals slamming into each other on their hind limbs, stabbing with their thumb claws, and raking each other with their teeth. Because they're so huge, it takes tremendous energy to fight like this, and the loser dies from exertion.
  • The third episode features a fight between two Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest flying animals to ever live, specifically instigated between a mother defending her eggs and a rival female attempting to destroy the nest to remove competition for her own offspring.
  • The tenth episode features a battle between two male Triceratops (an old one and a younger one) fighting for mating opportunities. The younger male is six tonnes, while older male is said to weigh ten tonnes.
  • The tenth episode also features a fight between a Tyrannosaurus (one of the largest ever land predators) and a pair of Quetzalcoatlus (one of the largest ever fliers), though unlike the other examples, this combat consists mostly of posing and threat displays, and never gets physical apart from a few brief pecks.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool:
  • The first episode features a sequence of ammonites using bioluminescence as a courtship display.
  • In the fourth episode, the juvenile Antarctopelta finds a cave to hibernate in which is lit up by countless fungus gnat larvae living on the ceiling.
  • One segment in the fifth episode shows a sequence of bioluminescent forest fungi.
• Bittersweet Ending: The T. rex, Alcione and ammonite segments in “Coasts” end this way; one of the baby T. rexes, several baby Alcione and all of the breeding ammonites die. However, several of the former two groups still live to see another day and the ammonites have passed on their genes, ensuring that a new generation will be born.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Male Barbaridactylus are shown with an enormous forked head crest, while females have a small, rounded one. However, another type of male is instead similar to the female in appearance and mimic females, in order to avoid the aggression of the large crested males and mate in secret.
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • The fight between the two Mosasaurus in the first episode; although the two rivals are viciously snapping at each other all over, with bites explicitly strong enough to crack into each other's skulls, not a drop of blood seems to be spilled.
  • Even more prominent with the Dreadnoughtus: the battle is surprisingly clean for something based on elephant seal fights (which can get downright gory.) The narrator describes how they rake each other with their teeth and stab each other with their claws, very little of that blood is actually shown.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The first segment of "Freshwater" ends with the female Velociraptor running off with her prey, leaving the two males Zerg Rushed by hundreds of pterosaurs.
• Bookends:
  • "Forests" (the last episode of the first series) ends in the same way that the first episode of the series began; with a shot of a beach.
  • "Deserts" begins and ends with a herd of herbivores in South America.
  • Both the very first and the very last (for now) segments of the series focus on a family of tyrannosaurs, (Tyrannosaurus rex for the former, Nanuqsaurus for the latter).
• Call-Back: The opening segment of "Swamps" can be seen as one to the Alcione segment of "Coasts", once again following hatchling pterosaurs trying to migrate across open water to a safe refuge and being accosted by opportunistic predators along the way (this time featuring juvenile azhdarchids and the crocodyliform Shamosuchus).
• Camera Abuse: As a possible nod to its repeated usage in the Walking with… series, when the azhdarchids root through a titanosaur carcass with their beaks, they end up prodding the "camera" inside the carcass a few times.
  • Several animals are also shown to curiously investigate the "camera", such as the female Mononykus in "Deserts" and one of the Hesperornis in "Oceans".
• Carnivores Are Mean: Averted. The Tyrannosaurus is shown as a doting parent watching over his young and teaching them how to hunt, and a Tarbosaurus that approaches a watering hole crowded with sauropods simply wants to drink.
• Chasing a Butterfly: In "Freshwater", a baby Masiakasaurus strays away from its mother, chasing after a crab. Suddenly, a giant Beelzebufo leaps out from a puddle and swallows the baby whole.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When the mother Adalatherium is out foraging, it's shown that many predators stalk the night. One, shown clearly, is a Majungasaurus, another is shown only in extreme closeup slinking through the brush. This second predator later ends up accidentally saving the lives of the Adalatherium's young; it's a huge Madtsoia, which kills a Masiakasaurus that was close to finding the nest.
• Circling Vultures: Circling Azhdarchids in the second episode, but the principle is the same. They're afraid to land to feed on a sauropod carcass because a pack of Tarbosaurus are still sleeping nearby, and have to wait until they leave before descending.
• Covered in Scars:
  • The old male Tyrannosaurus in "Fresh Water: is covered with nicks and faded slashes from a long life hunting large, armoured prey. Even the tip of his tail has been torn off from some prior bout. However, it's noted the scars make him more attractive to females, because it's a clear sign he's fought long and hard in life and won.
  • In "North America", the older Triceratops bulls are covered in scars from frequent fights over the females. One young male gets rejected by a potential mate specifically because he doesn't have any scars. Still trying to impress, he gets into a fight with an older and more established male. He loses, but now he has a Rugged Scar, which the narrator tells us might help him out in next year's mating season.
• Darker and Edgier: Season 2 puts a slightly greater focus on the Nature Is Not Nice elements introduced in season 1, with more segments dealing with extreme environments and violent or otherwise aggressive interactions between animals.
• Deadly Gas: "Badlands" shows a herd of female Isisaurus venturing through the highly volcanic Deccan Traps to lay their eggs in a dormant caldera. The biggest danger isn't the lava, but the toxic gases which seep from the volcanic vents. The adults are normally kept safe from the gas by their great heights, but when the winds whip the gases higher, even they're at risk. However, this journey is worth the risk, because the gases keep predators away from the nests. By the time the eggs hatch, seasonal weather conditions temporarily blow away the poisonous gases, allowing the babies a window to escape.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: A younger male Pachycephalosaurus challenges the older alpha male for dominance, and is able to knock his opponent to the ground. He starts bellowing in victory, only for the older male to recovery and pummel his rival into submission while he's celebrating.
• Don't Wake the Sleeper: In the second episode, several Tarbosaurus are napping after feeding on a sauropod carcass, but the smell of meat coating their bodies attracts flies, which in turn attracts insect-eating lizards that clamber over the sleeping tyrannosaurs to catch the flies. The lizards in turn attract a group of Velociraptor, and one of the raptors accidentally bumps into one of the Tarbosaurus attempting to catch a lizard, waking all of them up. It just barely avoids being snapped up.
• Duel to the Death:
  • The Dreadnoughtus are so huge and heavy that fighting for mating rights is a death sentence for the loser. Most Dreadnoughtus males dare not challenge ruling bulls because of this.
  • In the same episode, two large male Barbaridactylus engage in aerial combat (though it is more a chase than a duel). The winner breaks the wing of the loser, who plunges to the ground to his death.
  • Subverted with the Mosasaurus duel: though the narrator claims they are trying to drown each other, keen-eyed viewers can spot the loser swimming off in the dark depths before the winner emerges victoriously.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Therizinosaurus appear as background animals in the second episode among the many animals crowding around a desert oasis, but wouldn't get a segment dedicated to them until the fifth episode.
  • Nemegtosaurus and Tarchia also appear as unidentified background animals in the oasis, but both eventually get segments with more focus on them in the "Badlands" episode in the second season.
  • A dead Triceratops appears as the prey of a Tyrannosaurus in the third episode, but they are depicted alive in their own segment in the fifth episode, and again in the fifth episode of the second season.
  • invoked The end of the third episode briefly shows an unnamed titanosaur, but Word of God confirms this sequence is in South America, and made on its appearance, it's likely Austroposeidon, which has its own segment in the fifth episode.
• Easter Egg: A green Triceratops toy can be seen in the hadrosaur migration sequence in "Ice Worlds".
• Eats Babies: This occurs very frequently in the series, which is intentionally done to show how this happens incredibly frequently in the wild, especially for animals like dinosaurs or pterosaurs which intentionally flood the environment with lots of tiny babies knowing most will not survive to adulthood (unlike most large mammals today, which have a small number of large young per litter).
  • Several examples in the first episode alone; a baby Tyrannosaurus is eaten by a Mosasaurus, the baby Tyrannosaurus themselves feed on sea turtle hatchlings, and some newly hatched Alcione are eaten by opportunistic Barbaridactylus and Phosphatodraco.
  • In the third episode, a female Quetzalcoatlus is depicting eating the eggs of a rival to remove competition for her own young, and a young Masiakasaurus is swallowed by a giant Beelzebufo frog after straying too far from its mother. It's also never specified in the episode itself, but the pterosaurs the Velociraptor hunt appear to be juvenile azhdarchids.
  • The fourth episode depicts a pack of dromaeosaurs eating a dead juvenile hadrosaur, although in this case the hadrosaur merely drowned in a river crossing, so they didn't need to actually kill it themselves.
  • The fifth episode shows a group of baby Zalmoxes being predated by the giant pterosaur Hatzegopteryx. The sixth episode also shows Hatzegopteryx hunting and feeding on young Tethyshadros (although from the way even the adults flee, even the full-grown hadrosaurs were in danger).
  • The seventh episode shows a number of Rajasaurus hunting the huge caravan of Isisaurus hatchlings migrating from their birthplace in the Deccan Traps to the forest undergrowth.
• Establishing Series Moment: The first prehistoric animals shown are a T. rex and his offspring swimming in the ocean, showing right from the start that the series wouldn't follow typical "dino-doc" conventions.
• Failures on Ice: A Morrosaurus pursued by a pack of Imperobator is able to evade its hunters by running on the icy surface of a frozen lake, causing the lead Imperobator runner to slip and give its quarry a chance to break free from the pack's reach.
• Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Plenty of examples, some of them rather unexpected.
  • Dreadnoughtus bulls display in leks like grouse (with inflatable gular sacs based on sage grouse) and have a fighting style modelled after giraffes and elephant seals.
  • Carnotaurus make colorful mating displays like bowerbirds^note However multiple studies published so far point towards abelisaurs having vestigial arms so using their arms as their main display is probably not likely.
  • Velociraptor hunt from cliffs like snow leopards, and are generally modeled after birds of prey.
  • Troodontids use arson to flush out prey like firehawks.
  • Tethydraco gather in the beaches like gannets and seals, while Phosphatodraco prowl the colonies like pelicans.
  • Barbaridactylus act like frigatebirds, hunting the chicks of smaller flyers and forming elaborate mating leks.
  • Cimolodon has the same coat as some herbivorous rodents despite being a carnivorous mammal.
  • Tuarangisaurus is highly social, moving around in pods and deterring predators in groups like cetaceans.
  • Deinocheirus is shown as a large shaggy herbivore wading in swamps to eat water plants, much like a moose.
  • Mononykus both appearance and behavior-wise combines features of roadrunners, owls and anteaters.
  • Nanuqsaurus are the counterparts of grey wolves, hunting in packs through snowy wastelands, chasing prey for days. Their primary prey is Pachyrhinosaurus, which is the equivalent of a bison or muskox, being a large, head-butting herbivore moving in herds.
  • Olorotitan are shown migrating in large herds, including a dangerous river crossing. This is very reminiscent of wildebeest in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem.
  • Triceratops eat clay to neutralize plant poison similarly to parrots. The way they access the clay, by entering the dark cave and chewing on rocks, is based on how certain herds of African elephants access salt. The social behaviour of the Triceratops also invoke the Honorable Elephant trope.
  • Therizinosaurus is a fuzzy brown omnivore with large claws that steals honey from a hive of bees, similarly to a bear.
  • The azhdarchid pterosaurs in the Mongolian desert are the counterparts to vultures, circling in the sky searching for carrion, which they approach only when the large predators (in this case Tarbosaurus) leave the area.
  • Qianzhousaurus is a forest-dwelling ambush predator with striped coating similar to a tiger. It is even native to Asia.
  • Mosasaurus is shown resting at a coral reef so that fish can pick its body clean of dead skin and parasites, much like modern sea turtles and hammerhead sharks. The shot of it breaching out of the water with a young Tuarangisaurus in its jaws from "Oceans" is a lot like great white sharks doing the same thing, but with seals.
  • Ornithomimus are depicted as nesting communally and stealing nesting material from each other, much like various penguin species.
  • Simosuchus are shown to be burrowing animals that live in small groups, just like prairie dogs.
  • Similar to the Olorotitan, Isisaurus bury their eggs in volcanic soil to incubate them, just like Galapagos iguanas.
  • While they're more closely related to ducks, Styginetta live more like flamingos, feeding on prey in toxic lakes.
  • Morturneria are shown to be feeding on the sea floor for small animals hiding in the sediment, very similar to how grey whales do the same thing today. The elasmosaurs also peak their heads out of holes in the ice, just like belugas.
  • The Secernosaurus in "Deserts" are shown migrating great distances across their environment and navigating by the stars - something camels do in real life.
• Feet-First Introduction: The Velociraptor is first shown this way in the second episode. Because what better way is there to introduce a dromaeosaur than by immediately showing its most iconic anatomical characteristic?
• Flipping Helpless: Downplayed with a baby turtle in the "Coasts" episode — when flipped over, it quickly rights itself, but the delay allows a baby Tyrannosaurus to catch it.
• Fragile Flyer: Played With:
  • "Deserts": A colony of Barbidactylus is the focus of a segment where the much larger males are competing in fierce territorial displays for the attention of the females around them. One of the fights escalates violently, as a male takes to the air to flee with another male closely pursuing. When the pursuing male gets close enough, he nips at the wings of his opponent. While it doesn't appear that the bite does much damage, it does throw the loser off-balance and forces him to collide against the steep cliff face of the mesa the colony is using as breeding grounds, which likely killed the loser instantly (although even if he did survive that, his subsequent forty plus foot fall to the ground certainly finished the job).
  • "Freshwater": A segment early on follows a small pack of Velociraptor hunting a colony of unnamed juvenile azdarchids along the steep cliffs the pterosaurs call home. The female raptor manages to nab one, although it's only after said pterosaur fell to ground beneath them after surviving and escaping the female's first attempt to pin it down. Notably though, after the colony is alerted to the trio of dromeosaurs, they actually try to come to the aid of the pterosaur the female raptor took, and, although they fail, the colony becomes a serious threat to the remaining pair of male raptors, who were abandoned by the female shortly after she grabbed her prize. It's left up to the viewer to decide whether or not the males are driven off or killed.
• Genre Relaunch: For big-budget dinosaur documentaries, which had largely fallen out of fashion since the failure of the Walking with Dinosaurs movie.
• Gentle Giant Sauropod:
  • Averted with the Dreadnoughtus. In a rarely-depicted display of violence, the male Dreadnoughtus battle ferociously over territory and mates, biting each other's throats, stabbing with their thumb claws, slamming their necks with brute force and ultimately inflicting so much damage that some of the combatants are outright killed.
  • Played straight with the other sauropods in the show, such as the "Mongolian titan" (drinking at a watering hole, ignoring the smaller herbivores), Austroposeidon (pushing down rainforest trees to graze on their leaves), and the various unnamed sauropods (such as the pair that gently cross necks at the edge of an European forest).
• Giant Equals Invincible:
  • Played with rather realistically. Most of the larger animals have little to fear besides members of their own species, but in disputes between individuals that are nearly equal in size over territory or mating rights, the fights can get outright lethal. Though smaller species will still defend themselves, such as the case with the Tuarangisaurus pod when they're being hunted by the larger mosasaurid Kaikaifilu, the best they can hope for is to drive off larger predators and convince them to seek an easier meal elsewhere.
  • Outright inverted with the Dreadnoughtus where their giant size is explicitly stated to be a weakness: at 40-50 tons, their fights are extremely costly, and merely falling over can result in fatal injuries for something so big.
  • An adult Alamosaurus, stated to reach one-hundred feet long and eighty tons, explicitly making them far too large for any predator to take on; no small feat considering they live alongside Tyrannosaurus rex. Their skin alone is three inches deep, so thick that smaller predators are unable to even pierce it. Nonetheless, the "North America" episode does feature the death of an Alamosaurus - of old age. Even in death, though, a pack of troodontids are unable to make any kind of headway on his corpse, because of the aforementioned three-inch skin.
• Giant Flyer: The giant azhdarchids Hatzegopteryx and Quetzalcoatlus make appearances. The less massive, but still quite big Barbaridactylus and Phosphatodraco also show up. Two of the background enantiornitheans also appear to be rather large.
• Gigantic Adults, Tiny Babies: The T. rex, pterosaurs and hadrosaurs adhere to this trope. Notably averted with the pleisiosaurs, which were almost half the size of the mother at birth.
• Goofy Feathered Dinosaur: While it's averted for most feathered dinosaurs in this series, particularly the fearsome variety, there are a few that play it somewhat straight (though notably in a more naturalistic fashion than most examples):
  • While averted for the sparsely-feathered adults, the fluffy-coated baby Tyrannosaurus are portrayed in a more comical light, play-fighting with each other, curiously exploring their environment, and romping about on the beach like kittens.
  • Mononykus, a feathery, toothy bird-like dinosaur with a barn owl pattern, is shown to be rather inexperienced with hunting insects, whether it be getting termites on her face or having trouble choosing her prey due to her unfamiliarity with the desert bloom.
  • Deinocheirus, a giant duck-billed ornithomimosaur with giant claws, is depicted as a voracious plant-eater whose major conflict in his segment is dealing with blood sucking flies. When dealing with these flies, the Deinocheirus uses a dead tree as an itch-scratcher, which is played with ironic dramatic music. After dealing with the flies, Deinocheirus ends his segment by pooping in the water, which the narration delightfully notes to be the result of his plant-based diet, and how it'll help fertilize new growth in the future.
  • The Ornithomimus segment in "Ice Worlds" features a late-arriving male desperately looking for nest materials at his meager spot on the island. He turns to a life of crime by stealing branches and leaves from his rival, leading to a comical situation where he constantly freezes in place whenever his rival turns his head back at the nest. Averted with the Ornithomimus in "North America", who appear in a much more dramatic scene, being hunted by a tenacious (and equally feathery) Nanuqsaurus.
  • In "Forests", a trio of young Therizinosaurus spots a honey-filled beehive on a tree, and naturally try to get it by climbing onto the dead branches to get a taste. Their first several attempts have them clumsily fall off and they finally do reach the hive, the angry bees attack these hapless dinosaurs, giving them a stinging of their lives. It's subverted with arrival of the adult Therizinosaurus looking for honey as well. While the bees sting the adult with as much ferocity as they did to the youngsters, the giant's coat of feathers is too thick to penetrate, allowing the adult Therizinosaurus to destroy the hive with ease. All of this is awe-inspiring to the youngsters watching from the bushes.
• Gone Horribly Right: Downplayed. Some Barbaridactylus males look like the females so they can sneak past the large, aggressive males to mate but sometimes this disguise is so effective that the alpha may try to mate with them as well, though they can usually deter him by acting like a disinterested female.
• Headbutting Pachy: Played straight in "Swamps", where male Pachycephalosaurus are shown butting heads like rams. The "Uncovered" segment at the end explains the history of the debate over whether they actually did this, and ends by concluding that they very likely did.
• Herbivores Are Friendly: Averted. In a complete opposite of how sauropods are usually depicted, the Dreadnoughtus are shown here engaging in territorial disputes to the death. "Swamps" and "North America" also features some ferocious combat between, respectively, Pachycephalosaurus and Triceratops, though the stakes are not quite as high.
• Hidden Depths: Especially when it comes to deconstructing the Prehistoric Monster portrayal of Mesozoic predators.
  • The Mosasaurus that eats one of the young T. rexes is later shown at a reef. Not hunting or fighting (at least initially), but simply relaxing near the surface while allowing fish, crustaceans and other reef animals to groom him, cleaning his teeth and removing dead skin.
  • Barbaridactylus, introduced hunting the baby Alcione, are later depicted as having complex social structures and elegant displays to impress mates.
  • The Hatzegopteryx makes its entrance devouring a baby Zalmoxes. However, it's not portrayed in a monstrous light, but is shown as an elegant and awe-inspiring creature, ending with it majestically soaring off into the sunset while peaceful, orchestral music plays.
• Hope Springs Eternal: In the fifth episode, there's a fire that reduces much of a forest to cinder and ash. However, this isn't as destructive as it seems because some plants need the fire to spread their seeds, and some animals use the aftermath of the fire to their advantage, such as an ankylosaur consuming some of the charcoal to help neutralize the toxins in the plants it consumes, beetles which can feed on the now massive quantities of rotting wood, and an Atrociraptor using the smoke to delouse itself. The last shot drives this home as it shows a fern already beginning to push through the ashen soil, indicating it won't be long before the forest recovers.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: The last segment of the first episode has the mother Tuarangisaurus going into labour with another pup, and her irregularly sluggish motions make her a target for a Kaikaifilu mosasaur. Fortunately, the other plesiosaurs, including the mother's older pup, mob the mosasaur and drive it away.
• Jump Scare: A brief one in "Coasts" that happens without any foreshadowing. Just as the old Mosasaurus is peacefully basking and breathing in the reef where he came to be cleaned by the pycnodonts and cleaner shrimps, a younger male suddenly attacks him to take over his territory, starting a fierce battle. Unprepared audiences will likely be taken out by surprise at this scene.
• Just Before the End: Downplayed. The series is set in the last million years of the Cretaceous period, so the viewer is definitely aware that the end isn't far off - at least, in geological time. However, the narrator never really dwells on it and there is no big "extinction event" episode.
• Lethal Lava Land: "Badlands" features two segments set in the Deccan Traps, a vast volcanic region in India that has been spewing lava so long and in such large quantities, it now covers the surrounding earth a mile thick. However, herds of Isisaurus venture into the hellish wasteland annually to deposit their eggs in a huge caldera, as the incredibly hostile conditions are a highly effective defence against nest raiders.
• Life Will Kill You: In contrast to most of the other deaths from predation, the beginning of "North America" shows an elderly Alamosaurus simply passing away of old age after a long and successful life.
• Matchstick Weapon:
  • In the fourth episode, a species of troodontid has learned that prey animals are flushed out by forest fires, and that it can help spread the fire by carrying burning sticks to other areas of the forest.
  • In the fifth episode, an Atrociraptor uses a smoldering stick to help rid itself of parasites, by holding the stick under its wings to smoke them out.
• Medium Blending: CGI dinosaurs are composited onto real environments and alongside real animals in some sequences, such as the baby sea turtles in the Tyrannosaurus beach segment, as well as using practical effects.
• Misplaced Wildlife: The third episode features Quetzalcoatlus (known from North America) in southern Africa (notably a region from which virtually no Late Cretaceous fossils are known), although it's implied they only flew so far from their usual range because it's their breeding grounds. Giant azhdarchids in general are thought to have been capable of transcontinental flight so it is also reasonably plausible.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Many of the dinosaurs combine behavioral traits and features from several modern animals.
  • The Mononykus resemble a mix of a barn owl and a roadrunner, with foraging habits similar to anteaters.
  • The ornithomimosaurs are shown nesting communally and stealing each other's nesting material, as many penguins do, though they more physically resemble ostriches.
  • The Dreadnoughtus have sex-segregated herds like elephants, gular sacs like frigatebirds and have a combat style similar to elephant seals.
  • The Velociraptor resembles a flightless hawk, forms loose packs like coyotes, and hunts from cliffs like snow leopards.
  • The plesiosaurs travel in fresh and salt water like river dolphins, swallow stones like crocodilians and cooperate in pods like whales.
  • The Triceratops move in herds and go underground for minerals like elephants, but instead of salt, they eat clay with their hooked beaks to neutralize plant poison, similarly to parrots.
  • The hadrosaurs live and migrate in large herds like some modern ungulates.
• Mood Whiplash: Done twice in one segment. A Mosasaurus is introduced as a scary, menacing predator, but it turns out to just be settling into a cleaning station to relax. As it's in the middle of relaxing however, a rival Mosasaurus suddenly rams him in a violent territorial dispute.
• Mosquito Miscreants:
  • The Deinocheirus is depicted being tormented by swarms of biting flies that drive him crazy. He's able to alleviate his itchiness by rubbing himself up and down on a dead tree.
  • A much less humorous take appears in the fourth episode, with the herd of Olorotitan being menaced by large arctic mosquitoes, which are an irritant for the adults but prove fatal for many hatchlings.
• Mythology Gag: A few segments appear to be inspired by past David Attenborough documentaries:
  • The lizard hunting flies by the sleeping Tarbosaurus is very similar to a sequence in Africa (a previous BBC project also narrated by Sir David Attenborough) in which a lizard hunts flies around sleeping lions, down to moments where the narration is almost identical.
  • The sneaky male Barbaridactylus tricking his larger male counterpart into thinking he's an uninterested female so he can sneak past him and court one of the females clearly borrows from a similar scene involving cuttlefish from Blue Planet II.
  • The male Ornithomimus stealing nesting material from his neighbors resembles a scene from Frozen Planet where an Adélie penguin does the same thing.
• Nature Is Not Nice: As with many nature documentaries, Prehistoric Planet pulls no punches in how cruel nature can be. Notable examples being the apathy some animals show to the deaths of their own offspring, especially the Tyrannosaurus father in "Coasts" and the Olorotitan herd in "Ice Worlds".
• Never Trust a Trailer: The sneak peek clip of the Tyrannosaurus family on the beach uses different narration and animation than in the actual episode. Most notably it cuts out the footage of the adult turtles, including the end where the father Tyrannosaurus is actually eating a giant dead turtle, and moves the setting from the shore of the Tethys Ocean (which only barely overlapped with T. rex's range) to the Western Interior Seaway (which spanned most of its known habitat).
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: In "Swamps" a pair of Tyrannosaurus are shown stalking herds of Edmontosaurus and Triceratops during the day, but only attacking at night when the cover of darkness helps hide them from their prey.
• No Name Given:
  • Several species are not identified by specific names, only more generally, either because their real life identification is in question (like the Alaskan troodontid and the Javelina troodontid), they're based on fossils which are too fragmentary to have a name (like the Mongol Titan or the Antarctic hadrosaur), or they're a hypothetical species (the agamid lizard in the "Deserts" episode).
  • invoked Strangely, in the forest fire sequence with Atrociraptor, the ankylosaur is not identified by name, even though the fact it's contemporary with Edmontosaurus and Atrociraptor and its distinctive pronged tail club clearly identify it as Anodontosaurus (which is confirmed by Word of God).
• No-Sell: The bees are able to ward off the baby Therizinosaurus from their hive with their stings, but their stings have no effect on a five-ton adult Therizinosaurus, which whacks down their hive with one swipe.
• Out with a Bang: The ammonites are depicted as dying after they mate, similar to most modern-day cephalopods.
• Palette Swap: The various crestless hadrosaurs, such as Edmontosaurus, Barsboldia, Secernosaurus and Telmatosaurus, look very similar to each other apart from their colouration. Averted with the various dromaeosaurs, tyrannosaurs and ahzdarchids, who have distinctly different body shapes despite their similarities.
• Parental Abandonment: Zig-Zagged with pterosaurs. While the Tethydraco are depicted to be raising their hatchlings on the beach, the Alcione abandon their eggs shortly laying them in cliffside nests, leaving the Alcione hatchlings to fend for themselves the moment they are born. This is to emphasize that not all pterosaurs have the same method of reproduction, thus justifying Tethydraco's speculative parental care. The Quetzalcoatlus take a third approach, guarding their nests fiercely but abandoning their young once they hatch.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: One Simosuchus is unable to retreat into a burrow in time before it's cornered by a Majungasaurus. However, by hissing, charging, and kicking dirt into the dinosaur's face, the small crocodilian fends the much larger predator off for long enough to find a vacant burrow to hide in.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: An earlier segment of the "Islands" episode is seen from a herd of Tethyshadros fleeing from a flock of giant predatory Hatzegopteryx. The last segment in the episode shows one of the same Hatzegopteryx with the Tethyshadros baby it killed, but now focuses on it trying to attract a mate. Justified seeing as it's an animal with no concept of morality to begin with, with the segment merely being used to illustrate another facet of its life beyond its predatory behaviour.
• Riding into the Sunset: The last episode of the first season ends with a Hatzegopteryx flying off into the sunset.
• Rugged Scar:
  • An old male Tyrannosaurus in "Freshwater" is covered in nicks and faded cuts from decades of battles with huge armoured prey animals like Triceratops. However, the scars actually potentially make him more attractive to females, as it's an honest indication that he's had a long and successful life despite facing numerous challenges.
  • During the mating season for Triceratops, a healthy young adult male Triceratops shows off his meticulous horns and frill. However, it's noted that the fact they are meticulous might put off females, because they are a sign of inexperience. A giant elder male, with a hole in his frill, a broken brow horn, and worn-down nose horn, is much more attractive to females despite his advanced age. A brutal duel between the young and old male leaves the young male with a broken horn too, although it's indicated this injury might make him more attractive in later mating seasons.
• Rule of Cool: invoked Choosing the Campanian Velociraptor over the actual named Maastrichtian dromaeosaur that coexisted with Tarbosaurus, Adasaurus, (with the Word of God justification that it's an indeterminate velociraptorine) is most likely down to the former having far more name recognition.
• Sea of Sand: In the last segment in the second episode, the Secernosaurus need to navigate in a constantly shifting, featureless desert stretching for many, many miles. With no landmarks to follow, they travel by night and rely on the position of the stars to prevent from getting lost in a sequence modeled on real-life camel migration.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: A group of young Therizinosaurus attempt to raid a bees' nest for honey only to be warded off by the defending bees when they get too close. Fortunately for them (and unfortunately for the bees), a full-grown Therizinosaurus arrives who isn't deterred by the stinging at all, swatting down the bee nest with one swipe, and leaves enough honey left over for the babies to snack on.
• Scenery Censor: The shot of the T. rexes mating in "Freshwater" has a fern tastefully in the foreground.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Carnotaurus segment in the fifth episode has a male meticulously keeping a display arena clean, bellowing into the forest, and doing an exhausting Mating Dance to impress an arriving female. However, she's not sufficiently impressed and leaves without mating. The sequence is rather obviously inspired by birds-of-paradise, and this is almost always the outcome for them too.
• Shout-Out:
  • The sunrise opening as seen in the teaser and the preview clearly evokes the opening of the intro to Walking with Dinosaurs, as well as executive producer Jon Favreau's previous project with photorealistic CGI animals, The Lion King.
  • The second episode introducing Velociraptor seems to have a reference to Jurassic Park, specifically the part where one raptor acts as a decoy for another raptor from the side. The fifth episode also has a segment where Triceratops have to deal with eating poisonous plants. Doesn't that sound familiar?
  • The scene in the second episode where various species are congregating in an Asian desert oasis evokes the water truce from Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book. The arrival of the Tarbosaurus even resembles that of Shere Khan with all the other animals giving him a wide berth.
  • A male Tyrannosaurus mating with a female of his species after killing a Triceratops. Does that scene look familiar?
  • A sequence in "North America" has two Late Maastrichtian male ceratopsids engaging in a courtship duel which ends when one has its horn snapped off, with a shot of the bloodied horn lying on the ground seems very similar to the scene in the last of episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, except replacing Torosaurus with Triceratops. In this case however, the horn breaking off makes the loser more attractive to females in his future rather than dooming his chances of ever finding a mate.
  • A male Ornithomimus stealing materials from a rival's nest to build his own is no doubt a reference to a male Adélie penguin stealing rocks to build his nest in BBC's previous documentary work featuring David Attenborough, Frozen Planet.
  • Similarly, the "sneaky male Barbaridactylus" sequence is extremely similar to the sneaky cuttlefish sequence from Attenborough's Blue Planet II.
  • A Carnotaurus flashes its brightly-colored arms to court a potential mate, much like how All Yesterdays postulated they could have done. The male Tuarangisaurus also display by vertically raising their necks out of the water exactly as portrayed by elasmosaurs in the book.
  • The Beelzebufo in "Swamps" having to navigate its way past a herd of Rapetosarus to get to a suitable waterhole for attracting mates calls Frogger to mind. Also, both episodes featuring Beelzebufo - "Fresh Water" and "Swamps" - debuted on Wednesdays, in what has been confirmed as a deliberate reference to the "It is Wednesday, my dudes" meme, which also featured a frog.
• Shown Their Work: Has its own page.
• Social Ornithopod: invoked In numerous episodes, hadrosaurs make appearances, and in all appearances they are depicted as herd-dwelling animals which care for and travel with their young. Word of God has confirmed the series intentionally show hadrosaurs with young very often on purpose; dinosaurs, unlike mammalian megafauna, have large clutch sizes and therefore many young.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In the Deinocheirus scene, the mundane activity of scratching against a tree is made awesome thanks to the epic orchestral music accompanying it.
• Square-Cube Law: This is used against the Dreadnoughtus males when they fight each other for mating rights. It takes a huge amount of energy to even fight all and if a Dreadnoughtus falls to the ground in combat, he is crushed by his own weight and will never get up again. Had the species been smaller and lighter, the loser would have a chance to live for another day and possibly engage in a rematch with his usurper.
• Stock Animal Behavior:
  • Defied. The show goes out of its way to show dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in unconventional behaviours that are still supported by evidence or at least speculatively plausible, such as introducing Tyrannosaurus swimming in the ocean, showing plesiosaurs collecting gastroliths and Mosasaurus being picked cleaned by tiny reef animals, rather than hunting fish, or showing a Tarbosaurus menacingly approaching a herd of hadrosaurs... which it totally ignores because it just wanted to drink water.
  • Some of the more stereotypical animal behaviour we see is Austroposeidon (a large sauropod) pushing down trees to feed from the leaves, a pack of Dromaeosaurus stalking a herd of Edmontosaurus (though instead of swarming an adult they just disrupt the herd and eat a juvenile that dies from falling into a river), and Nanuqsaurus (a tyrannosaur) hunting Pachyrhinosaurus.
  • Played straight with the angry bees.
• Stock Animal Diet:
  • Defied by the Tyrannosaurus in "Coasts", which is only seen eating a dead sea turtle, while his children chase after baby turtles. Played straight in "Fresh Water", where a male Tyrannosaurus is shown eating a Triceratops he had just killed, and in "Swamps", where a pair of Tyrannosaurus hunt and kill an Edmontosaurus.
  • Nyctosaurid pterosaurs are also not shown eating fish as they're normally inferred to: Barbaridactylus is shown hawking like a falcon and Alcione is seen eating insects (admittedly both were in highly unusual circumstances, taking advantage of a juvenile bloom and being that said juveniles are away from the sea respectively). Considering pterosaurs as a whole still get plagued with the piscivore stereotype, this is refreshing.
  • Troodontids in "Ice World" hunt Mesozoic mammals as usual. This time, however, they're proportionally massive mammals, Cimolodon, which is definitely a first.
• Summon Bigger Fish: In the second episode, a small agamid lizard, chased by a Velociraptor, runs to hide under a sleeping Tarbosaurus. The raptor bumps into the large predator, which wakes up and snaps at the raptor, chasing it away. The lizard, too small for the Tarbosaur to bother with, is triumphant.
• Swallowed Whole: Happens to many animals in the show, since its reptilian subjects can't chew. Special mention goes to Phospatodraco, which swallows a baby Alcione in front of its flock.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur:
  • Averted with T. rex itself in Season 1. A father T. rex and its babies appear in the first episode and, while they're mostly shown engaging in non-predatory behaviors such as playing and scavenging. In the third episode, a male T. rex is seen eating a dead Triceratops it killed, but we never get to see the hunt itself. Played straight in Season 2 episode "Swamps", which showcases a terrifying T. rex hunt of the Edmontosaurus at night, demonstrating why Attenborough calls them the planet's most powerful predators.
  • Downplayed with the Asian tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus in the second episode. The other dinosaurs treat it as The Dreaded, but the most threatening thing it does onscreen is taking a snap at a Velociraptor that accidentally wakes it up. Otherwise it's just mostly seen lounging and taking a drink at a watering hole.
  • Played mostly straight with the two smaller tyrannosaur species Nanuqsaurus, and Qianzhousaurus, who are both presented as formidable hunters. Nanuqsaurus is a pack hunter that relentlessly chases a Pachyrhinosaurus herd until killing an old bull; Qianzhousaurus is a stealthy ambush predator sneaking up on a flock of Corythoraptor. However, both predators are portrayed as fairly realistic animals rather than Prehistoric Monsters. Nanuqsaurus is also shown to be a devoted parent in the second series.
• Thirsty Desert:
  • The second episode focuses on the challenges faced by dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals living in arid deserts, particularly the last segment. The hadrosaur Secernosaurus lives in a desert so arid, the sand is made not of silica, but of powdered gypsum (which is water-soluble, so can only exist where it almost never rains). They're able to subsist on nutrient-poor vegetation, but are forced to migrate to the coast every decade or so when periodic droughts make survival impossible.
  • The second episode of the second season also revolves around arid climates, and one scene has a few dinosaurs getting into a face-off over access to a small oasis in a canyon.
• Title Drop: In every episode, usually in the closing lines, the narrator refers to Earth as a "prehistoric planet".
• Uncertain Doom:
  • The first segment in "Islands" has two Zalmoxes stranded on a raft of vegetation being swept out to sea after a tropical storm. While the narration ends on a hopeful note for an Adam and Eve Plot when they land on a distant island, it's left ambiguous whether they will be lucky enough to find land before they run out of food or water.
  • Another segment in the same episode shows a female Majungasaurus attempting to hunt a colony of Simosuchus. It's noted that her hunting prowess has been greatly diminished due to being blinded in one eye, and she is close to starvation. The segment ends with the Simosuchus evading her, leaving her eventual fate ambiguous.
• Whale Egg: The Adalatherium, a small badger-like Mesozoic mammal, is depicted as laying eggs. This is actually not as surprising as it would seem: most mammals in the Mesozoic laid eggs and it simply so happened that only the two types of monotremes survived until today while the live-bearing marsupials and placentals, a minority in the Mesozoic, ultimately became the dominant mammals.
• Zerg Rush: In the third episode, a pack of Velociraptor attempt to hunt pterosaurs nesting along the cliffs. They manage to catch one, but this alerts the whole colony, easily many hundreds strong, which mob the raptors en masse to drive them away.

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