Trivia / Jurassic Fight Club

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: Perhaps one of the quickest examples of an error getting validated by a future find. “Deep Sea Killers” depicted Brygmophyseter (the biting sperm whale) as being as big as megalodon (50 feet), even though the real animal was only 20-25 feet in length (about as big as an orca). Only three months after the episode aired, paleontologists in Peru found the skull of another big-toothed sperm whale that also shared the Miocene waters with megalodon and did grow as big as the giant shark, and two years later, it was named Livyatan melvillei. It's such an eerie coincidence that many people mistakenly think the biting sperm whale was Livyatan.
• Development Hell: Where any further episodes of the Animated Adaptation have gone.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: There's plenty of it, but some of the most obvious examples are:
  • As this came out in 2008, there is no justification for the dromaeosaurs looking as retro as they do. Word of God is that this was due to budget cuts, but given that dromaeosaurs were essentially flightless birds (both phylogenetically and anatomically), making a documentary with them without the budget to animate feathers is akin to making a documentary about ice age mammals without having the budget to animate fur.
  • It's claimed that Ceratosaurus was once the dominant predator of Jurassic North America, ruling for 20 million years, until Allosaurus evolved and drove it to extinction, then taking over as the new alpha predator for another 20 million years. Needless to say, no paleontologist ever made such a claim, as the two theropods are well known to have coexisted and died out together in the Late Jurassic, both lasting for around 5-6 million years.
  • The orca-sized Brygmophyseter (known only from one specimen) is described as being 35-40 feet long, but in the fight with the megalodon, it's shown to be the same size as the giant shark (50 feet). Though this wound up being Accidentally-Correct Writing.
• Follow the Leader: The premise is very similar to that of Animal Face Off, except it uses extinct animals. It's also similar to The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs but with a heavier emphasis on violence.
• Science Marches On: While the show is a major offender of Artistic License – Paleontology, some of its inaccuracies fall into this trope.
  • Nanotyrannus being treated as a distinct genus of small tyrannosaur. It was already controversial at the time, but after the series aired, countless studies have agreed that it's just a misidentified juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
  • Majungatholus is now called Majungasaurus. The Madagascar abelisaur has a rather messy taxonomic history, as it was only known from very fragmentary remains for six decades (even originally being identified as a species of Megalosaurus) until the discovery of a partial jawbone in the '50s, which led to it being renamed as Majungasaurus, while the domed top of a skull was described as Majungatholus (thought to be a pachycephalosaur) in 1979. Then during the '90s, new material was uncovered at the site, including a well-preserved skull, which was assigned to Majungatholus in 1998 due to sporting the same dome-shaped top as the holotype, while the Majungasaurus dentary was dismissed as too fragmentary to be synonymized with Majungatholus. However, far more extensive abelisaurid material was uncovered over the following decade, leading to the two genera becoming synonymized in a 2007 study (a year before the show aired), with Majungasaurus taking precedence. Some dubs use its proper name.
  • Megalodon being depicted as a 50-foot great white instead of a stockier otodontid shark. Though the former notion was starting to wane at the time.
  • Dromaeosaurus coexisting with T. rex and Edmontosaurus was based on isolated dromaeosaur teeth from Hell Creek and adjacent formations that were tentatively attributed to the Campanian taxon, but more complete fossil remains from Hell Creek later revealed that the biome housed different dromaeosaur taxa, the small Acheroraptor and the massive Dakotaraptor.
  • Utahraptor and Gastonia living in the Barremian instead of the earlier Valanginian age, along with the former being depicted as an oversized Deinonychus (down to being a simple Palette Swap) instead of a stocky bruiser.
  • Arctodus simus, the giant short-faced bear, is depicted as a pure carnivore. This is a notion that was popular for a while, due to isotope analysis suggesting that it exclusively ate meat. However, this was determined based on specimens from Alaska, where vegetation that's edible to bears is rare today let alone during the Ice Age. Similar tests on individuals that lived further south showed that it did eat plants when they were available. Now it's seen as a grizzly bear-esque omnivore.
  • The American lion, Panthera atrox, is stated to be the largest cat ever to have lived, but later finds showed that several types of saber-toothed cats such as Smilodon populator and Machairodus horribilis rivaled it in size, or possibly even exceeded it (the largest S. populator specimen is estimated to have weighed a whooping 435 kg).
  • As it aired in 2008, this show was the last serious depiction of a horned Pachyrhinosaurus. While the idea that the boss of this ceratopsid supported a keratinous horn has always been a controversial one, it wasn't until a 2009 study showcased how dissimilar the skull of Pachyrhinosaurus is to that of a rhino that the idea died for good.
  • Pachyrhinosaurus is depicted as a migratory species that annually traveled between Alaska and Alberta to escape the Arctic winter, a somewhat popular theory at the time but has since been dismissed after it was realized that the Alaskan Pachyrhinosaurus is a distinct and geologically younger species than the two species known from Alberta. In fact, Pachyrhinosaurus seems to have died out in the south and was replaced by other ceratopsids while having its last stronghold be the Arctic, while the Pipestone Creek find represents the oldest known species of Pachyrhinosaurus.
  • They claim that Albertosaurus ranged all throughout North America, from Alaska to Texas, but in reality, the genus is only known from Alberta and Montana (the same is true even if you include the older Gorgosaurus as a synonym). This reflects Albertosaurus’s former status as a wastebasket taxon, with the Alaskan fossils later being described as Nanuqsaurus (a tyrannosaurine instead of an albertosaurine), while gracile tyrannosaurs from the Aguja Formation in Texas have likewise been reevaluated as a different, indeterminate type of tyrannosaur.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The host wanted to pit numerous other prehistoric beasts against each other, however the series wasn't renewed for a second season.
  • Concept art shows both Charcarodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus were considered.
  • George Blasing heavily pushed for a completely fictitious "Tyrannosaurus vs Giganotosaurus" episode. The network was against this idea because it wanted every episode to be based on actual fossil evidence, but was ready to give in after Blasing asked for months. Then it was suddenly cut at the last minute.
• Word of God: Dinosaur George answers questions about the show and palaeontology in general on his YouTube channel. His videos are a lot more informative than the show, and George himself has a very friendly, down-to-earth attitude. Don't let his antics from the TV show fool you!